Evolution of European Defense
Report based on 7-9 September workshop in Strasbourg
The war in Ukraine has brought tectonic changes to European security. Part of them, which is most often discussed by think tanks, stems from the changing geopolitical configuration of global powers, the withdrawal of the US from Europe, and the Russian threat. The other part arises from the changes to military strategy, brought upon by technological developments, the so-called “lessons from Ukraine”.
These “lessons” are often perceived by European armed forces and defense ministries as though they were mere academic lectures, with the time to debate what a future war might look like and whether the realities of the present should inform preparations for it. Meanwhile, the limitations of NATO training manuals have become increasingly apparent, and a growing source of concern for those who deliver and receive the training. All the while, Russia has been adapting and upgrading its armed forces, while its ambitions remain fixed beyond Ukraine. China and North Korea have learned from the conflict, as has Iran, with the ongoing Gulf war already having direct and immediate repercussions for the global economy and energy security.
To explore the evolution of military strategy and defense technology – and their impact on regional alliances and the future of European defense – French think tank Eastern Circles, in partnership with the Universities of Strasbourg (France) and Kehl (Germany), brought together policymakers, EU, Ukraine, Norway and US military leaders, industry representatives, and defense experts for a 1.5-day seminar in Strasbourg this September to reflect on the future of European defense and the role of Ukraine in it.
The workshop was structured in 3 parts:
Part 1 analysed the evolution of military strategy and tactics, and what it implies for European defense, in 3 areas: on the front in Ukraine, in deep rear, and in society at large (total defense).
Part 2 focused on technological adaptation and the changes it brought to industrial cooperation and how it has been shaping the priorities of European defense industries, investment and procurement.
Part 3 discussed geopolitical consequences of these changes and what it means for European security through the lessons from Ukraine for the Middle East and the changing nature of naval warfare.
Please find the workshop report below:
Part 1: Evolution of Military Strategy and Tactics
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Frontline changes from 2025 to 2026 and since early 2026
Throughout 2025 the struggle was for the superiority of the “kill zone”. Russia’s bet on throwing more people on the front and using infiltration tactics, with small assault groups sieving through the interpositional space, has not brought a breakthrough since 2024. One of the reasons is Ukraine’s advantage in drone deployment, which allowed since early 2025 to reach the goal of 35 000 of dead and wounded Russians a month, undermining Russian recruitment effort. The Russians are now facing a strategy paradox on the front: the more people they deploy, the less of the battlefield advantage they gain.
In 2026, the Russians kept deploying more drones on the battlefield and have improved the coordination of drones with the conventional force. But the quality of the Russian force is degrading due to heavy losses and improved Ukrainian defense, able to throw back even the more “innovative” combined drone, mechanized and light motorized assault (Dobropillia assault), also due to low morale and planning on the Russian side. As a result, Russians have not been able to achieve a breakthrough on the front through September 2026.
At the same time, Ukrainian forces grew better organized. Ukraine’s expanding middle strike capabilities limited Russian offensive potential by cutting off logistics, allowed Ukraine to conduct more successful offensive operations, degrade Russian defenses 70 to 100 km from the front, and prevent enemy units from reaching the front line. This in turn has relieved pressure from Ukrainian front units. It also causes problems in the Russian rear, shifting commander focus from sustaining their advance to finding the responsible for the weakening of positions and leading to lying (“garbage in” on the tactical reporting end – “garbage out” on operational decisions). But impairing logistics is not enough: it needs to be enhanced by growing the number of offensive operations.
Ukraine’s weakness is the lack of the strategic purpose of the war: the understanding how to win or stop the war. The main effort is not focused on the front line or on the “kill zone”, but on shaping the operations, or operational design. The latter is impaired by the structure of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, in which most of the corps behave as big brigades, focused on the tactical level, without the perspective of corps level operations.
On the tactical level, Ukraine is focusing on destroying as much enemy resources as possible (human or otherwise) with small-group dug-outs. But this approach undermines Ukraine’s capacity to develop all 4 pillars of defense: the defensive line, the battle order, the system of fire, and entrenchment. Ukraine lacks especially defense lines and stable infantry positions because of the 20 to 50 km infiltration zone (the so-called “kill zone”). In the spring and till the summer Ukraine managed to stabilize the frontline and undermine Russian logistics with mid-strikes (70 to 150+ kilometers). Cost-effective platforms like the “Hornet” drone relieves frontline pressure and forces hostile commanders to divert focus toward rear area security. Since the summer 2026, the ratio between the mid- and deep-strikes has changed in favor of the deep-strike, not the optimal outcome for the front, as it can ease logistical pressure on enemy forces, as occurred in critical sectors including the Donbas.
“The” right equipment for a modern war: finding the equilibrium between conventional and autonomous weapons
The question for Western military is how to adapt the traditional advantage to more automated modern warfare, to avoid a scenario where its air superiority is contested with the enemy drone air superiority, which does not allow the West to protect its ground forces. And for the drones to work, you need tens of thousands of them constantly to sustain pressure on enemy logistics.
Two debates govern the discussion about the right balance of equipment.
1) The first assumes that the equipment massively lost on the battlefield must be useless. But massive losses may simply mean massive use, not uselessness. The real problem is that integrating drones requires a change of force structure: reallocating people from the conventional to the actually people-intensive drone units, and logistics will follow. Since the main problem of the downsized western militaries is manpower, reallocation of human resources is an explosive issue. Furthermore, Western armies’ commanders are afraid that drones will lead to force reduction, as drones will do similar missions at lower cost. Finally, Western military struggles with the purpose of the force reform: you integrate drones and reallocate/recruit new people for what?
2) The second debate is about the systemic employment of drones: organisational capacity and enablers to create situational awareness: Delta and other C2 systems. C2 system is the core to the integration of drones into the force, as information flows through it, including intelligence and targeting, essential to drone use. Finally, drone work at scale. And Western militaries are not ready to dedicate resources for the change in the force structure, the organisational capacity, coordination, and deployment at scale, as opposed to tactical small-scale deployment.
The army structure and military advantage: Ukraine vs Russia
The establishment of the army corps aimed to restore an operational command layer above individual brigades to enable operational design, shaping operations and the coordinated employment of forces across a wider battlespace. Where effectively implemented, specifically across five or six functioning corps, the reform enhanced unit cohesion and utilized digital battlefield management systems like Delta to maintain real-time situational transparency. Conversely, the reform suffered major failures because many corps commanders, promoted directly from tactical brigade backgrounds, lacked formal training in operational design and continued to operate their formations like oversized “big brigades” focused solely on localized tactical fights. These structural difficulties were further compounded by persistent General Staff micromanagement, severe shortages of experienced staff officers and manpower, broader shortages in personnel and resources, and the tendency to create new brigades rather than fully reinforce and sustain existing ones. Bloated brigade structures and frequent command reshuffling further undermined operational stability.
In the meanwhile, the Russian army had the operational advantage built upon the old structure of echelons, divisions, army corps and troops grouping. But the troops showed poor execution at the tactical level, resulting in fictitious reporting from ground up, which turned in poor operational decisions.
In deep rear: evolution of air defense
Economic disruption and mass saturation tactics
Russian intensified deep-strike bombardment across Ukraine has left basic drone interceptors ineffective, as Russian drones have evolved from propeller-driven Shahed-136 systems (Geran-2) to jet-propelled Geran-4 and Geran-5 drones flying at 400 km/h cruise speed and terminal dive speeds of 800 km/h from altitudes above 300 meters. Ukraine’s air defense system has been incapable to intercept the hundreds of drones and scores of missiles, including ballistics, showering the capital and other major cities day and night. Because a large share of Ukrainian military infrastructure remains concentrated in Kyiv, cascading air raid sirens disrupt banking, administrative offices, supplies, and industrial shifts, creating a systematic paralysis of national economic activity.
Layered air defense and aviation limits
Ukrainian air defense applies strict interceptor tiers based on target flight dynamics:
- Propeller drone layer: Systems like the Sting interceptor engage slow targets (250 km/h) tracked by tactical low-altitude radars.
- Jet drone layer: Due to higher altitude of operation and jet/turbine engine of jet drones, this layer is handled primarily by tactical fighter aircraft (such as F-16s) and combat helicopters. This is the most expensive layer of Ukraine’s air defense due to high maintenance, fuel and missile (AIM-120) cost, which makes it mechanically and economically unsustainable for long campaigns.
- Ballistic and standoff missiles layer: Neutralizing Iskander-M and Kinzhal systems requires Western hit-to-kill surface-to-air systems (such as PAC-3). Fragmentary warheads remain ineffective against ballistic trajectories, creating acute interceptor deficits as Russian production of missiles and guided bombs expands. Concurrently, standoff glide bombs fitted with universal correction kits reach 150 to 170 kilometers, inflicting destruction on urban centers like Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
Decentralization, command architecture, and civil defense
Survivability depends on digital command-and-control systems that combine long-range and tactical radar coverage to detect and track UAVs. These systems are decentralized, meaning reducing the delays associated with centralized authorization, and saving more lives. This military architecture is complemented by civilian resilience measures that help people identify incoming threats. For instance, the Ukrainian railway operator has access to a military system used to track drones, while acoustic sensors that contribute to early detection. These measures are intended to strengthen population resilience and sustain endurance under daily attacks, while distributed infrastructure and production help reduce the vulnerability of critical economic assets.
Directed-energy limitations vs. kinetic realities
Experimental lasers and microwave systems face major technical hurdles. High humidity, dust, and rain degrade beam coherence, while massive electrical generation requirements create large thermal signatures vulnerable to counter-strikes. Kinetic interceptor missiles remain the sole reliable all-weather capability, directing near-term research toward lower-cost guided interceptors, anti-jamming navigation, and sovereign satellite communications.
Operational focus on logistics nodes
Ukrainian deep-strike operations produce superior military results when targeting active logistical subjects rather than static storage facilities. Striking moving transport convoys—such as destroying multi-truck drone transports 200 kilometers behind the front line—eliminates munitions and specialized operating crews before dispersal. Similar strikes against rail chokepoints and fuel refineries induce systemic transport bottlenecks across the Russian interior, whereas striking civilian e-commerce warehouses invites destructive retaliatory strikes against more concentrated domestic infrastructure.
In society: the future of total defense
Social resilience and the concept of total defense
Total Defense extends far beyond traditional military boundaries into a broad framework of societal resilience. While conventional crisis management focuses on specific sector plans, genuine societal resilience operates across three primary dimensions: coping, innovating, and anticipating.
Rather than relying solely on top-down state structures, modern total defense includes civil defense, ecosystemic protection, and the active involvement of non-military civic stakeholders. Furthermore, total defense is increasingly understood as an interconnected network of critical societal sectors, such as energy supply, transport, digital infrastructure, communication networks, and space-based assets, requiring coordinated protection to sustain national functionality under severe stress.
Social resilience: what we should be prepared for
European security planning must prepare for complex, unplannable, and unforeseeable threats that fall outside standardized risk-assessment models. While predictable hazards can be managed through pre-calculated probabilities and fixed protocols, modern crises present unpredictable disruptions for which no specific operational plans exist. Europe faces expanding hybrid risks, including energy grid failures, satellite communication blackouts, cyber disruptions, and targeted attacks on critical national infrastructure. Moreover, these threats manifest not as isolated events, but as a series of compounding shocks to destabilize societies, ranging from drone saturation and rapid military technological shifts to long-term societal attrition, and demanding prolonged endurance, resource allocation, and psychological fortitude.
The war in Ukraine demonstrates that national survival relies heavily on decentralized civic activities and millions of spontaneous grassroots micro-actions. When formal administrative or military authorities are delayed, overwhelmed, or absent, local communities (hromadas) maintain vital social and operational continuity by taking direct responsibility for survival. Civilians adapt their professional qualifications and localized knowledge to meet urgent needs, such as drivers navigating hidden routes for evacuations and food supply delivery, or tradespeople fabricating protective iron nets against uncrewed aerial vehicles. These grassroots initiatives can successfully scale into organized, sustainable civil-military support institutions. Furthermore, Ukraine highlights the importance of institutionalizing readiness by integrating mandatory, specialty-aligned resistance training into higher education, while maintaining low-tech redundancies—such as paper maps and scanned offline document backups—to ensure continuity when technological and cellular infrastructure fails.
Crucially, resilience is not an end in itself; without a clear plan and a defined objective, endurance degenerates into merely a faulty way to lose a war of attrition, where the outcome is strictly dictated by resource exhaustion.
Part 2: Technological Adaptation and Industrial Cooperation
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Transformation of the Ukrainian and European defense industries: cooperation scenarios with and within Europe
Industrial transition and ecosystem scale Ukraine’s defense industry has evolved from a 1991–2014 period focused on the export of Soviet-legacy conventional weapons and the depletion of much of the inherited arsenal toward a wartime ecosystem of private defense companies and scaled domestic production. Ukrainian forces consume approximately 6,000–10,000 FPV drones per day, while the domestic ecosystem includes hundreds of drone producers and between 200 and 300 companies developing electronic-warfare systems. The industry has also developed increasingly integrated digital command-and-control capabilities, centered on the Delta system, which combines battlefield data with operational applications such as Kropyva, a fire-support solution. Delta provides a common digital architecture for sharing battlefield information and integrating different operational systems across military units. Structural obstacles to industrial cooperation Deeper integration between Ukrainian and Western defense firms remains blocked by three primary factors:- Intellectual property vulnerability: Western defense contractors limit the transfer of sensitive technical designs to prevent proprietary IP from being reverse-engineered by the enemy and shared with Iranian and Chinese manufacturing centers.
- Regulatory and export restrictions: Major European nations (France, Germany, the United Kingdom) enforce strict regulatory frameworks shaped by foreign policy considerations, fear of escalation, and domestic labor preservation, imposing timelines uncompatible with battlefield requirements.
- Production model incompatibilities: Ukrainian units require inexpensive systems produced rapidly using commercial components, iterated every few weeks. In contrast, European procurement operates on multi-year validation and certification processes built for legacy requirements.
Part 3: Geopolitical Consequences
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European defense strategy: what role for Ukraine?
Innovation loops and strategic realities High-intensity combat indicates that rapid innovation cycles dominate static defensive posture. Traditional European procurement cycles take decades to field systems, rendering hardware obsolete before deployment. With French strategic planning targeting 2030 and German force goals focused on 2028 or 2029, normal missile delivery lead times of 14 to 20 months create severe capability gaps that require joint testing agreements with Ukraine. Institutional disconnects and strategic funding European defense integration suffers from overlapping mandates between the European Union and NATO, stalling high-level advisory groups under the European External Action Service over jurisdictional disputes. While the EU loan facility to Ukraine provides budgetary support of 30 billion euros annually and the European Defense Industry Programme allocates 1.5 billion euros (with 300 million designated for shared testbed facilities), these programs represent modest steps given the continent’s aggregate procurement deficits. In the meanwhile, both NATO and EU accession processes remain politically frozen. Domestic electoral timelines and defense budgets European public polls indicate that voters consistently reject the domestic tradeoffs required for structural rearmament, such as reduced funding of healthcare, pension, or infrastructure budgets. This disconnect encourages politicians facing two-to-four-year electoral cycles to discount long-term security investments, exposing defense commitments to political shifts in upcoming national elections across France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Spain. Economics of support vs. escalation Analytical modeling indicates that providing comprehensive military aid of approximately 850 billion euros over multiple years is far more cost-effective than managing an uncontained conflict. A Russian advance to the Dnieper would create regional instability, border militarization, and refugee costs projected to exceed 1.5 trillion euros. Furthermore, concluding an unstable ceasefire without firm security guarantees risks creating a volatile post-conflict environment in Ukraine, echoing the political radicalization observed in Italy following the First World War. European autonomy and missing enablers European defense autonomy remains constrained by the absence of an independent, pan-European defense requirements process. Force planning continues to assume the availability of American satellite reconnaissance, strategic airlift, and command infrastructure. Purchasing long-range strike munitions without the sovereign targeting constellations and battle damage assessment assets needed to guide them results in disconnected, incomplete capabilities.New naval warfare: how to balance conventional arms and autonomous systems in different operational environments in the Black, North and Baltic Seas
The High North theatre
The strategic landscape of the High North is anchored by four primary strategic issues: (1) maintaining transatlantic supply- and reinforcement routes across the North Atlantic, protecting digital subsea communications cables, securing energy and commodity flows from the Nordic countries to continental Europe and the UK, and (2) Russia’s nuclear second-strike capability operating out from the Kola Peninsula. The region contains 8,800 kilometers of subsea gas pipelines that supply one-third of the gas consumed by the United Kingdom and continental Europe, positioned at moderate depths (300 to 400 meters) reachable by conventional and specialized submarines. Russia’s maritime posture is assessed to rely on a dual-layered “bastion defense” with the first line centered on the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) Gap and Norway, and the second line on the line Svalbard-Bear Island-North Cape. The first layer would be attack submarines between these lines, with further attack submarines and a surface attack group behind the second line. The Bastion Defence is primarily designed to screen attack submarines and project surface groups armed with cruise and ballistic missiles. Crucially, the Kola Peninsula houses Russia’s nuclear second-strike submarine fleet near the Norwegian border, making its defense an existential priority for Moscow, which is the primary task for the Bastion Defence. However, integrating a joint defensive line with a land position inside Norway, meaning a landward offensive from Russia with the objective to create a buffer zone also on land, should also be expected. Alongside deep-water submarine risks, shallow littoral zones near coastal refineries and transport hubs in Norway, such as the critical iron ore sea lines connecting Kiruna (a town in the far north of Swedish Lapland) to European industry, face expanding grey-zone vulnerabilities from civilian small craft, covert sabotage teams, and uncrewed aerial systems.The Baltic Sea theatre
The Baltic Sea represents a hyper-dense, shallow operational arena (averaging just 55 meters in depth) where over one-third of Europe’s gross domestic product is generated. Physical vulnerabilities are concentrated because Nordic connectivity to continental Europe depends on extremely narrow bottlenecks, such as the single bridge linking Sweden and Denmark and the Suwalki Gap. Far from being a “NATO lake,” the Baltic remains an international sea heavily navigated by non-sanctioned traffic and adversary trade. Adversaries routinely utilize grey-zone operations, such as cutting subsea cables (often masked as commercial anchor drag accidents), GPS spoofing, airspace violations by fighter jets, mapping Finnish islands, and launching high-altitude balloons—to continuously probe alliance cohesion and response thresholds without triggering formal military escalation.
The Black Sea theatre
The Black Sea has served as a primary testing ground for asymmetric uncrewed naval warfare, where Ukrainian uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) destroyed approximately one-third of the Russian surface fleet. Operational doctrine in the Black Sea has evolved across three key layers: deep-strike attacks against high-value economic targets and harbors, zero-echelon maritime air defense (using USVs armed with interceptors to destroy kamikaze drones over the water before they strike coastal cities), and baseline passive harbor protection. Although USV hulls and multi-channel satellite communication fail-safes have achieved technological maturity, adversaries are rapidly adapting by constructing specialized USV launch bases in Crimea, creating an urgent threat of massed uncrewed counter-swarms across European waters.
Critical technological and operational gaps:- Sensor & targeting integration. Uncrewed surface vehicles remain primarily delivery platforms rather than standalone combat units. Current systems lack successful integration with 3D on-the-move radars capable of providing real-time targeting data for maritime air defense interceptors.
- Space-based ISR & targeting constellations. Standoff missile strikes and long-range USV operations require persistent satellite Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) coverage, a domain where European forces currently suffer from severe delays and heavy dependence on foreign space assets.
- Deep standoff munitions & heavy autonomous mine-laying. European militaries face severe shortages in conventional cruise and ballistic missiles resulting from post-Cold War under-investment. Furthermore, autonomous mine-laying via USVs remains technologically bottlenecked by the heavy payload requirements of naval sea mines.
- Operational readiness & system redundancy. Many European surface vessels lack integrated anti-ballistic missile defense capabilities, standardized damage control protocols, and realistic combat training under direct drone and missile saturation, leading to severe operational failures when deployed to active combat zones.
Strategy and Technology Lessons Learnt from Ukraine to the Middle East
Vulnerabilities in Gulf air defense architecture Arab Gulf states face acute technical vulnerabilities against Iranian loitering munitions:
- Radar filtering laws: Strategic systems like the 1.1-billion-dollar Qatar Early Warning Radar focus on tracking ballistic trajectories at 2,000 to 3,000 kilometers. The software applies automated low-speed filters allowing Iranian Shahed drones to slip through by flying at minimal cruising speeds beneath detection floors.
- Environmental degradation: Intense thermal hazing and dust in the Gulf reduce tactical microwave radar coverage from 30 kilometers to under 20 kilometers, compressing air defense reaction times against inbound targets to less than eight minutes.
- Economic interceptor depletion: Although aggregate intercept rates against missile and drone waves remain between 85 and 90 percent, single penetrations cause catastrophic economic damage against unhardened, concentrated oil, natural gas, and desalination installations. Complex strike sequences mixing ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and loitering munitions rapidly exhaust expensive interceptor inventories (reducing Saudi PAC-3 MSE stockpiles from 2,800 to roughly 400).
- Fragmented command networks: Neighboring military units within the same operating territory often do not link radar feeds, preventing the creation of an integrated air defense picture.
- Electromagnetic fratricide: Operational commands lack defined coordination channels between wide-area electronic warfare jamming units and counter-drone interceptor teams. Friendly electronic warfare jamming often severs the control links of defensive interceptor drones, disabling intercept systems due to poor frequency deconfliction.
- Forward maritime screen: Tactical surveillance radars monitor maritime approaches and cue long-range, fixed-wing interceptors to engage incoming drones at maximum standoff range.
- Terminal screen: High-precision radar units, such as the RPS-42, monitor the sea surface at ranges of up to 15 kilometers and direct agile short-range interceptors, such as the Sting, against surviving threats.
- Navigation in an electronic-warfare environment: Intense electromagnetic jamming can disrupt GPS signals over water. Maritime surveillance platforms and interceptor drones therefore require non-satellite navigation capabilities to operate reliably through contested corridors.
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