A top NATO commander says cheap drones are breaking the West’s old air-defense playbook

• NATO commander says the West can no longer “sit back” with its jets and missiles and confidently face modern air threats.
• Cheap drones are forcing militaries to rethink air defenses.
• The West needs more defenses — and may not be able to protect everything.

The West’s long-standing approach to air defense — relying heavily on advanced jets, expensive missiles, and the ability to shoot down just about whatever comes its way — is being strained by a new era of cheap drones and mass air attacks, a top NATO commander warned.

New air threats able to challenge conventional approaches are rapidly emerging, and “the days of thinking that you can sit back and be reactive and engage every threat that comes at you using traditional means like fast jets and some surface-to-air missiles … those days are over,” Sir John Stringer, NATO’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, told Business Insider.

Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are showing that future conflicts may not resemble the ones Western military forces have grown used to fighting.

The West has long been able to enjoy total or near-total control of the air against weaker adversaries; however, future conflicts could pit NATO against major militaries like Russia or China, while even smaller actors now have access to cheap drones that can be launched in large numbers to overwhelm defenses.

Instead, “we’re going to have to deal in the reactive sense of stuff coming at us in a different way,” whether it’s using new drone types to stop drone attacks or using electronic warfare, Stringer said.

Western militaries still need advanced missiles and aircraft, Stringer said. They’re still important. But now the West needs large numbers of cheaper defenses because there are more threats in the air than ever before.

The “threat is now everything from cheap air systems, uncrewed air systems, drones at one end of the spectrum to air-launched ballistic missiles” and hypersonic weapons, at the other, he said.

That spread of threats is forcing NATO to rethink not just what it uses to defend the skies, but how much it needs. Stringer called it one of the “biggest changes” facing Western militaries. They now need defenses at scale.

Western forces need “to play catch-up” in some areas, Stringer said, and the response needs to “be on the right part of what we call the cost curve” — meaning it cannot keep using multimillion-dollar interceptors against far cheaper threats.

He said the “most obvious example of getting that wrong” would be using US-made Patriot air defense missiles against the kind of Shahed-style drones Iran and Russia are fielding. “That’s unsustainable.”

Iran’s Shahed one-way attack drones cost an estimated $20,000 to $50,000 each. Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) interceptors are estimated to cost roughly $3.7 million each, and their stockpiles are strained and take a long time to replenish.

This mismatch has already set off alarm bells within NATO. Officials and military leaders have warned that while these advanced defenses are still necessary, they can no longer be the only type of defense Western militaries rely on.

Ukraine has developed some solutions, including cheap interceptor drones that it can use against drone attacks instead of using expensive missiles, and partner nations are now following that lead. Stringer said the West also needs cheaper sensors like the ones Ukraine uses to detect drones, alongside the more powerful systems NATO is used to fielding.

But Stringer warned that defense alone is not enough.

He argued that the West can’t forget what has been key in air power doctrine for around 100 years, that “your defense needs a good offense.” The West needs to be able to hit where these weapons are made, the source of an incoming weapon.

“You’ll hear people talk about going against the archer, not just the arrow. That’s true up to a point,” Stringer said, “but I actually want to go after the places where the arrows are made.” He said it cannot just be “hoping to deal with everything that comes at you.”

NATO members need to scale their industrial bases, not just with defense companies but through broader industry, he said, noting that Ukraine, which is developing and fielding new weaponry at speed, has demonstrated the value of having more companies ready to adapt for war.

If you look at the innovative drone companies in the West, Stringer said, “how many of them were even in existence five years ago, let alone how many of them spawned out the kind of traditional defense background or defense industrial background?”

But even with huge investments in defenses, the growing number of threats in the air means that the West may not be able to protect everything in a serious, large-scale future war, officials and analysts warn. Instead, countries might have to make difficult choices about what to protect, as adversaries could target military sites, cities, and civilian infrastructure.

Stringer also warned that the air threat now means that in a large-scale war, Western countries can no longer count on their homelands remaining safe while their militaries fight overseas. Missiles and drones can threaten places that previously would have been considered safe in the rear.

The challenge is forcing Western militaries to rethink air superiority itself. Officials have warned that full control of the air may not be possible. Gen. David Allvin, when he was the Chief of Staff of the US Air Force, warned that Ukraine’s fight showed the US that it might not be able to enjoy “ubiquitous air supremacy for days and weeks on end” and that it instead may only be possible in small bursts.

Stringer said securing control of the air still has to be a priority, even if the ways of doing it are different.

“You still need to secure air superiority,” he said. “The ways of doing it may change, but it fundamentally provides a foundation on which the entire joint force operates. So if you’re not able to secure the access and then the maneuver that your force needs, then you’re failing.”

Even NATO’s approach to overseeing and coordinating its air may need to change amid the growing threats, Stringer said. The West has long used large command centers to coordinate air patrols and air warfare, including directing what its aircraft do, seeing what they observe, and deciding how defenses should be used.

But, Stringer said, “that’s going to have to change.” Those command centers will need to be more dispersed so they are harder to target, even if that makes air operations more complicated.