Why Europe’s security now depends on Ukraine’s ability to keep fighting

Ukraine’s armed forces today are the most combat-tested and technologically adaptive military on the European continent. This is not a matter of symbolism. It is a strategic fact. Europe’s security increasingly depends on whether Ukraine can continue to fight, adapt, and sustain pressure against Russian aggression.

Deterrence against Russia is not built on statements or inherited arsenals. It is built on military advantage or, at minimum, parity. In modern warfare, that balance is determined by the speed with which innovation moves from battlefield improvisation to industrial production and back again.

This gap between those who are already fighting and those who are still preparing their defenses became clear to me in the spring of 2024, when my fellow soldiers and I attended a major military exhibition in Copenhagen. We were searching for solutions that could stop Russian advances. Instead, we encountered systems designed for conflicts that no longer reflect battlefield reality.

Artillery and armored vehicles without an integrated unmanned component are no longer decisive instruments of war. When asked how such systems would be protected from drones, manufacturers referred to air defense units. Military planners acknowledged that unmanned warfare had not yet been fully internalized in operational thinking. One officer summarized the problem candidly: “We are at least six months behind you in understanding what is happening on the battlefield.”

In a war where six months defines an entire technological cycle, that delay is decisive.

Russia’s advantage in unmanned systems will not remain confined to Ukraine. It will be used to test Europe itself. Early signs are already visible: Russian drones entering European airspace, airport closures, and the use of extremely expensive countermeasures against inexpensive aerial decoys. These incidents expose uncertainty rather than readiness.

Consider a plausible scenario. Using a mix of hybrid tactics, proxy forces, information manipulation, and deliberate ambiguity, Moscow seizes a village or small town in a NATO country. The playbook is familiar. Armed groups appear without insignia. Local collaborators are amplified through information channels. Russia denies direct involvement while shaping the narrative that this is an internal or local conflict.

The affected state responds with a conventional counterterrorism operation. Armored vehicles are deployed to restore control. But against an opponent with extensive, real-world experience in drone warfare, those vehicles never reach their objective. They are detected, tracked, and destroyed long before contact is made.

This is not a worst-case fantasy. It is a realistic illustration of how conventional responses fail when confronted by an adversary that has mastered unmanned warfare through sustained combat. The implication is clear. European forces must be ready to confront an adversary shaped by the Ukrainian battlefield, using the same technologies and tactics refined there.

That readiness cannot be developed in isolation from Ukraine. Europe does not become safer by distancing itself from Ukraine’s war effort. Europe’s ability to deter Russian aggression depends on Ukraine remaining militarily viable, technologically adaptive, and operationally resilient.

On today’s battlefield, innovation is constant. New solutions appear, scale rapidly, and within months become standard or obsolete. The innovation cycle is roughly six months. A system produced today and left untouched in storage risks becoming outdated before it is ever deployed.

This reality undermines traditional stockpiling logic. Security is not achieved by accumulating equipment and hoping it remains relevant. It is achieved through a continuous cycle in which production, stockpiling, battlefield use, and technological refinement are tightly connected.

This is where the Rolling Modernization Model becomes essential.

Under this approach, Europe would produce unmanned systems and place them into its own stockpiles as part of normal force readiness. These stockpiles should not be static reserves. They should function as short-term buffers. As newer systems enter storage, earlier batches should be released and transferred to Ukraine, where they would be used immediately under real combat conditions.

Crucially, those systems should not disappear into a black box. Their performance should be observed, measured, and analyzed on the front lines. Ukrainian experience would generate rapid feedback on vulnerabilities, countermeasures, and necessary upgrades. That feedback should flow back into European production and procurement decisions, ensuring that new systems entering stockpiles already reflect the latest battlefield realities.

In this way, Europe could continuously refresh its reserves while Ukraine receives a steady flow of usable equipment. Innovation would not pause. It would circulate.

Ukraine contributes what no European army can replicate in peacetime: constant contact with a technologically adaptive adversary. Europe contributes industrial scale, financing, and the ability to institutionalize lessons learned. Integrated at the level of technology and innovation, this would create a living defense ecosystem rather than parallel efforts.

Most importantly, Europe would prepare for future conflicts by staying technologically aligned with the most demanding battlefield on the continent today.

When Ukraine maintains access to a sustained flow of unmanned systems, Russia’s numerical advantage in manpower loses strategic relevance. When European defense planning incorporates Ukrainian battlefield innovation in real time, deterrence becomes practical rather than theoretical.

This is not simply a framework for supporting Ukraine. It is a framework for ensuring that Europe remains prepared for the kind of war it may one day be forced to fight.