For Ukraine, drones and unmanned weapons have become central to how the country has leveraged a smaller, outgunned force<\/a> against a much larger, better-financed adversary for almost five years.<\/p>\n Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ordered the creation of a new Unmanned Systems Forces<\/a> military branch in 2024, and the Defense Ministry<\/a> has said time and again that developing more autonomous weapons is a top priority.<\/p>\n But for the rest of the world, Petraeus said, the fighting in Ukraine is a window<\/a> into the future and a warning about the dangers of being underprepared for the battles to come.<\/p>\n \u201cReally, no NATO country and not even the United States is undertaking yet the urgent revolutionary institutional change that should be taken based on what we see in Ukraine, which is the future of war,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The U.S. needs a new concept of warfare that runs through force structure, training, procurement, personnel policy and bases, the general said, replacing much of the legacy, heavily manned equipment with unmanned systems that are cheaper and far more numerous.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s going to happen is we\u2019ll see the introduction of autonomous systems really for the first time in warfare,\u201d Petraeus said.<\/p>\n Washington is making \u201csome commendable steps\u201d toward developing these weapons, according to Petraeus, including establishing a new Autonomous Warfare Command<\/a> that requires each military branch to stand up its own component command.<\/p>\n \u201cBut my hope is that they will not just create an unmanned systems force in terms of force structure, but that they will also spur the initiation of true institutional change,\u201d Petraeus said.<\/p>\n That includes how the U.S. buys weapons, Petraeus said, calling for \u201cvery, very substantial manufacturing capacity but not necessarily producing all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou want it to be able to make software changes every week, hardware changes every few weeks, which is what\u2019s going on in Ukraine because the enemy continues to evolve and Russia\u2019s been innovating very substantially as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Ukraine will produce as many as 20 million unmanned systems this year, Zelenskyy said in a July speech<\/a>, with a shortage of trained operators and the acquisition of some weapons components \u2014 including optics, gimbals, brushless motors and fiber-optic cable \u2014 becoming the domestic industry\u2019s production bottleneck.<\/p>\n The general also rejected the idea that the U.S. war with Iran has hurt Washington\u2019s ability to help Kyiv, though he acknowledged the U.S. has used \u201ca fair number of missile interceptors,\u201d which \u201cmakes it more difficult to share those with others around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n The war has consumed between one-half and two-thirds of the U.S. inventory of certain missile-defense interceptors, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate<\/a> released in September.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can help the Ukrainians in any way in which we decide to assist them,\u201d Petraeus said. \u201cThese are policy decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Petraeus-2022.jpg.jpg\")