How much AI does Ukraine use in Its self-defense against Russia?

The result has been a surge of anxiety, debate, and hesitant pledges to spend more on defense. Yet amid this uncertainty, one European country already offers concrete lessons on how to survive in a harsher world.

That country is Ukraine, and the lesson it offers is inseparable from artificial intelligence.

The most common misunderstanding about Ukraine’s war effort is that it relies on futuristic, fully autonomous weapons. In reality, Ukraine’s use of AI is neither glamorous nor abstract. It is deeply pragmatic.

AI does not replace Ukrainian soldiers; it accelerates them. It shortens decision cycles, filters overwhelming volumes of data, and allows humans to act faster than an adversary who relies on mass and brute force. In a war defined by seconds rather than days, this acceleration is decisive.

The Russian invasion has become the world’s first sustained conflict in which AI-assisted systems operate continuously across land, sea, and the electromagnetic spectrum.

Drones are everywhere, but drones alone do not explain Ukraine’s resilience.

What matters is the software behind them. AI-enabled image recognition helps Ukrainian operators distinguish tanks from decoys, artillery from civilian vehicles, and real threats from electronic noise.

These tools compress observation-to-strike timelines dramatically, allowing frontline units to respond before Russian forces can disperse or adapt.

Ukraine’s advantage is not superior algorithms in the abstract; it is speed of learning.

Since 2022, Ukrainian developers and military units have operated inside a brutal feedback loop. When Russia modifies its jamming techniques, Ukrainian systems are adjusted.

When Russian drones change flight profiles, Ukrainian AI models are retrained. Innovation cycles that once took months are now measured in weeks, sometimes days.

Failure is immediate and unforgiving, which is precisely why successful adaptations spread so quickly.

This adaptive capacity has reshaped drone warfare itself. Ukraine now treats drones as disposable yet intelligent tools—cheap platforms enhanced by software rather than exquisite machines protected at all costs.

AI assists in stabilizing flight, planning routes, recognizing terrain, and maintaining mission continuity even when communications are disrupted.

The result is resilience rather than perfection. Ukrainian systems are designed to degrade gracefully, not collapse entirely.

At sea, Ukraine’s AI-assisted naval drones have altered the strategic balance in the Black Sea. Autonomous navigation, obstacle avoidance, and mission-based targeting have allowed these drones to operate under intense electronic warfare pressure.

Russian warships have been sunk, ports disrupted, and the Black Sea Fleet forced to retreat from occupied Crimea. These are not symbolic victories. They demonstrate how AI-enabled systems allow smaller forces to impose costs on larger, conventionally superior navies.

Long-range strikes inside Russian territory also reflect this logic. Ukrainian drones increasingly rely on AI-supported route planning and terrain mapping to penetrate layered air defenses.

Human authorization remains central, but once launched, AI helps ensure that missions adapt to changing conditions.

This blend of human control and machine assistance defines Ukraine’s approach. Autonomy serves survivability, not escalation.

Perhaps the most important lesson for Europe lies not in offensive applications but in defense. Russian drone harassment around European airports and critical infrastructure has already revealed how exposed the continent is.

Ukraine has learned, through painful experience, how to build layered air defense networks that integrate sensors, interceptors, electronic warfare, and human judgment.

AI plays a crucial role in prioritizing threats, distinguishing decoys from real targets, and allocating scarce defensive resources efficiently.

Europe’s current discussions about a continental “drone wall” remain fragmented and conceptual.

Without Ukraine’s battlefield data and operational insights, such projects risk becoming expensive but ineffective.

Only Ukraine has experienced sustained, large-scale drone attacks and learned how to absorb, adapt, and survive them. That experience cannot be simulated in peacetime laboratories.

Ukraine also offers something Europe lacks: a real-world training environment. The entire country has become a living laboratory for AI-enabled warfare.

New systems move from prototype to battlefield at a pace unknown in most European militaries, where procurement cycles are long and risk averse. For European forces, cooperation with Ukraine is not merely about acquiring technology.

It is about internalizing a different way of thinking, one that accepts constant adaptation as normal rather than exceptional.

It is important, however, not to exaggerate Ukraine’s capabilities. Ukraine is not an AI superpower on the scale of China or the United States.

It lacks industrial depth and research ecosystems of major powers. What it possesses instead is relevance. Every AI system Ukraine deploys has been tested under fire.

Ineffective tools are discarded without sentiment. Effective ones are refined relentlessly.

In this sense, Ukraine’s value to Europe is strategic rather than symbolic.

It demonstrates that AI does not eliminate the need for soldiers, discipline, or courage. But it also proves that soldiers without AI will struggle to survive against adversaries who can move faster, see further, and adapt quicker.

Ukraine’s war answers the question clearly: artificial intelligence is no longer optional in modern defense. As Europe confronts a more uncertain security environment, Ukraine should not be viewed merely as a buffer state or a recipient of aid.

It is a repository of hard-earned knowledge about AI in warfare—knowledge bought at enormous human cost. Ignoring those lessons would be not only shortsighted, but dangerous.

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Phar Kim Beng, PhD, is Professor of ASEAN Studies and Director of the Institute of Internationaliation and ASEAN Studies (IINTAS) at the International Islamic University Malaysia.