Retired Army Gen. David Petraeus said on Oct. 16 that the United States and its NATO allies have not begun the sweeping institutional overhaul demanded by modern warfare, even as unmanned systems inflict more than 90% of Russia’s casualties on Ukraine’s front lines.

Speaking at an American Primary Aluminum Association event in Washington, Petraeus said Ukraine and Russia each use roughly 10,000 drones every day. The former CIA director and onetime commander of U.S. Central Command said the scale of the drone war remains underestimated.

“This is an unmanned systems war,” Petraeus said. “Tanks aren’t survivable there anymore.”

Ukraine has made drones and other unmanned weapons central to its effort against a much larger and better financed adversary. The systems have helped the country leverage a smaller, outgunned force during almost five years of war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ordered the creation of an Unmanned Systems Forces military branch in 2024. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry has repeatedly identified the development of additional autonomous weapons as a top priority.

Petraeus said the fighting offers the rest of the world both a glimpse of future warfare and a warning about entering coming battles unprepared. His assessment was blunt about how far NATO members still must go.

“Really, 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,” he said.

The United States needs a new warfare concept that reaches across force structure, training, procurement, personnel policy and bases, Petraeus said. He called for replacing much of the legacy equipment requiring large numbers of personnel with cheaper and far more numerous unmanned systems.

“What’s going to happen is we’ll see the introduction of autonomous systems really for the first time in warfare,” Petraeus said.

Washington has taken “some commendable steps” toward developing those weapons, according to Petraeus. Those measures include establishing a new Autonomous Warfare Command that requires every military branch to create its own component command.

Petraeus cautioned that creating another command or specialized force will not be enough by itself. He said the effort must drive changes throughout the institutions responsible for preparing, equipping and organizing American forces.

“But 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,” Petraeus said.

Weapons procurement and industrial capacity also must change, according to the general. He called for “very, very substantial manufacturing capacity but not necessarily producing all the time.”

“You want it to be able to make software changes every week, hardware changes every few weeks, which is what’s going on in Ukraine because the enemy continues to evolve and Russia’s been innovating very substantially as well,” he said.

Ukraine will produce as many as 20 million unmanned systems this year, Zelenskyy said in a July speech. A shortage of trained operators and difficulty acquiring some weapons components have become bottlenecks for the country’s domestic industry.

Those components include optics, gimbals, brushless motors and fiber optic cable. The production figure illustrates the enormous scale at which Ukraine is building unmanned systems while adapting to battlefield demands.

Petraeus also rejected the argument that the U.S. war with Iran has damaged Washington’s ability to support Kyiv. He acknowledged that the United States has used “a fair number of missile interceptors,” which “makes it more difficult to share those with others around the world.”

The conflict consumed between 1/2 and 2/3 of the U.S. inventory of certain missile defense interceptors, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate released in September. Petraeus maintained that decisions about additional assistance remain a matter of policy.

“We can help the Ukrainians in any way in which we decide to assist them,” Petraeus said. “These are policy decisions.”

His prescription reaches beyond buying more drones. Petraeus called for a new American approach spanning weapons, manufacturing, training, personnel, bases and force structure as autonomous systems reshape the demands of warfare.