“Escalating Spoofing and Jamming Contest”: Russia and Ukraine Intensify Drone-Centered Electronic Warfare as Global Military Investment Shifts Toward Drones and AI

Russia and Ukraine sustaining electronic warfare through GPS spoofing operations
Jamming and anti-jamming technologies deployed extensively across the battlefield
Rapidly changing nature of warfare redirecting military investment toward drones and AI

The Russia-Ukraine war has become a testing ground for a new generation of technologically advanced warfare. As drones emerge as indispensable instruments for reconnaissance and precision strikes, both sides are continuously introducing jamming, anti-jamming, spoofing, autonomous navigation, and other technologies designed to neutralize their opponent’s electronic-warfare capabilities.

The resulting cycle of adaptation is no longer merely changing the equipment used on the battlefield, but is redefining the fundamental principles according to which modern wars are fought. This transformation is also visible far beyond Russia and Ukraine, with the United States, Europe, Japan, China, and other major powers increasingly redirecting defense investment toward drones, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and electronically resilient military networks.

Russia and Ukraine’s Expanding Drone War

According to global military publication Defense Blog on July 20, local time, Russian forces have recently begun installing inexpensive analog magnetic compasses on selected unmanned aerial vehicles to counter Ukrainian interference with Global Navigation Satellite System signals. The improvised measure emerged as Ukrainian forces continued spoofing operations intended to distort the coordinates used by Russian drones, prompting Russian units to adopt a primitive mechanical device that allows operators to verify a drone’s direction of travel without relying entirely on electronic positioning data. Spoofing is a form of electronic warfare in which false location and timing information resembling legitimate GNSS signals is transmitted to confuse the coordinates calculated by receivers aboard drones and other systems. When an attack drone is exposed to spoofing, its navigation system may incorrectly determine its current position or intended route, causing the aircraft to deviate from its target, fly in the wrong direction, crash, or make an unplanned landing.

Ukraine has long operated a nationwide electronic-warfare system known as Pokrova to defend against Russian attacks involving Shahed-series one-way attack drones. Pokrova functions as a broad defensive network connecting electronic-warfare installations across Ukraine to create extensive spoofing zones around major cities, energy facilities, military bases, and other strategic locations. The Ukrainian Air Force confirmed in 2024 that the system was operational and was being used to distort the GPS and GLONASS coordinates received by Russian drones, thereby drawing them away from their preprogrammed flight paths. The Royal United Services Institute similarly concluded that Ukraine had constructed a large-scale spoofing network capable of transmitting false GNSS location and timing data over wide areas to disrupt Russian drone operations.

Installing analog magnetic compasses on drones may provide Russian operators with a low-cost means of retaining at least a minimum sense of direction under such conditions. Russian forces have reportedly fixed the compasses to the body of the drone beneath the lens of its first-person-view camera, a miniature camera that transmits a live image from the aircraft’s perspective. This allows the operator to observe the compass heading through the video feed during flight. When GPS coordinates suddenly shift to an implausible location or display values inconsistent with the aircraft’s apparent direction, the operator can compare the compass bearing with the planned route and manually correct the drone’s heading rather than continuing to follow corrupted electronic positioning information.

Electronic Warfare Becomes Increasingly Sophisticated

Russia and Ukraine are also engaged in a sustained contest over jamming, another central component of drone warfare. Jamming involves transmitting a stronger signal across the frequency bands used by a drone, overwhelming or obscuring the legitimate communications signal. Its effects vary depending on which communications channel is targeted. Small drones commonly rely on several frequency bands to receive control commands, transmit telemetry data, and send live video, and interference concentrated on a particular band can weaken or completely sever one or more of those connections. Analog FPV drones used extensively on the battlefield often transmit video through the 5.8-gigahertz band. Selectively jamming that band can prevent an operator from viewing the drone’s live camera feed. Even where the command link remains functional, the operator may no longer be able to identify the target or guide the aircraft precisely, causing strike accuracy to deteriorate sharply. Both Ukrainian and Russian forces have therefore developed tactics for detecting the frequencies used by opposing drones and concentrating interference on the most operationally important bands.

At the same time, both countries are accelerating efforts to construct anti-jamming systems capable of offsetting hostile radio-frequency interference. Russia has diversified its drone architecture according to mission type and operational distance. Some aircraft have been equipped with Starlink satellite-communications terminals, allowing them to continue receiving control signals and transmitting video beyond the effective range of ground-based electronic-warfare equipment. Russia has also deployed fiber-optic drones on a large scale along the front line. These aircraft transmit control commands and video directly through a physical fiber-optic cable rather than over radio frequencies, meaning they emit little or no conventional radio signal and are largely unaffected by jamming or radio-detection systems.

Ukraine, meanwhile, is fielding autonomous-navigation systems that allow drones to determine their own direction and location without relying on GPS. One prominent example is a GPS-independent visual-navigation system developed by Ukrainian defense startup Blue Arrow. A drone equipped with the system compares live footage from its onboard camera with previously stored terrain maps and combines that visual information with data on flight speed, direction, and azimuth to estimate its current position and route. Rather than attempting to repair a corrupted GPS signal or filter out hostile interference, the system neutralizes the attack by removing the drone’s dependence on satellite navigation altogether. In test footage released by the Ukrainian government, a drone was shown successfully following a predetermined route while its satellite-navigation capability was completely disabled.

Drones and AI Move to the Center of Modern Warfare

Experts argue that the electronic-warfare competition between Russia and Ukraine provides a clear illustration of how the balance of modern warfare is changing. Rapid technological development has begun to alter the fundamental logic of the battlefield, encouraging armed forces to move beyond traditional crewed weapons platforms and place greater emphasis on drones, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, software, and integrated data networks. The US Cyber Command, for example, requested a 2,660% year-on-year increase in funding for AI-enabled cyber operations in its fiscal year 2027 budget proposal. The request indicates that the US military no longer regards AI merely as a technology for the distant future, but as a core operational capability that must be deployed immediately. A significant portion of the funding is expected to flow to defense-technology companies such as Palantir, Anduril, and Shield AI, as the Defense Innovation Unit increasingly uses rapid contracting arrangements with shorter contract periods and more flexible requirements to accelerate the adoption of private-sector technologies. The value of US defense contracts awarded to major defense startups approximately tripled between 2022 and 2025.

Europe is similarly incorporating lessons from the war in Ukraine into its own military architecture. In its Strategic Defence Review released in 2025, the British government committed more than £4 billion, or approximately $5.4 billion, to drones and autonomous weapons systems. The plan calls for the British Army to combine AI, software, long-range weapons, and swarms of ground drones, while the Royal Navy expands its fleet of unmanned vessels. The European Union is moving beyond the individual procurement of weapons toward the establishment of joint research and development structures. Through the European Defence Fund, the European Commission is pursuing the Stratus project, which aims to develop a cyber-defense system for AI-enabled drone swarms, and has included Ukrainian companies in the program to obtain access to data derived from actual battlefield experience. In July, the EU also concluded a defense-industry partnership with Ukraine and agreed to establish a joint production framework for drones and counter-drone equipment by the end of 2026.

Japan has also begun moving away from a defense strategy heavily dependent on expensive crewed weapons systems. The Japanese Ministry of Defense allocated ¥100.1 billion, or approximately $680 million, in its fiscal year 2026 budget for the construction of SHIELD, a multilayered coastal-defense system based on unmanned platforms. The plan calls for large numbers of aerial drones, unmanned surface vessels, and unmanned underwater vehicles to be deployed along Japan’s coastline and connected through a unified command-and-control network capable of intercepting hostile ships and amphibious forces. China’s People’s Liberation Army is meanwhile conducting experiments that combine AI with the autonomous operation of unmanned combat vehicles, vessel tracking, cyberattack detection, and the identification of land, maritime, and aerial targets. Beijing is also accelerating its military-civil fusion strategy, through which advanced technologies developed in the private sector are systematically transferred into military applications. Together, these developments show that the electronic contest unfolding over Ukraine is not an isolated feature of one war, but an early demonstration of the direction in which global military competition is moving.