Two weeks apart, NATO's top military commander and a pair of well-known retired strategists described roughly the same future for European defense. It involves very large numbers of cheap, expendable systems, many of them uncrewed, working alongside a smaller set of expensive precision weapons. They differ on how far that idea goes, and the timing matters: Washington is weighing how many American troops to keep on the continent.
On October 12 at the Warsaw Security Forum, Supreme Allied Commander Europe Gen. Alexus Grynkewich set out what NATO calls its Theory of Victory. On October 26, Harlan Ullman and Field Marshal Lord David Richards used an op-ed in The Hill to push a more drone-heavy version. Their pitch was that NATO should field tens of thousands of low-cost air, land and sea drones along its borders, so that Russia would be facing, in their words, "32 Ukraines."
What Grynkewich Actually Said
According to the SHAPE transcript of the Warsaw remarks, the concept has three phases. "We will block the initial attack," Grynkewich said. "If the attack persists, we will blunt it and prevent enemy advance. And if required, we will break the enemy's forces and the operational warfighting system that is arrayed against us."
Each phase relies on a different set of tools:
- Block: land forces dominate the assault at the point of contact and deny the attacker the seizure of Alliance territory.
- Blunt: "Using advanced sensors, autonomous systems, and multi-domain forces, we will deny the attacker the ability to generate momentum or gain the initiative."
- Break: "we will layer high-end and highly effective precision munitions with an overpowering mass of affordable and scalable systems," applying pressure "both kinetic and non-kinetic" across land, air, sea, space and cyberspace.
He also laid out an investment line: "We will invest in both high-end and affordable long-range precision strike capabilities, sensor networks, and a warfighting cloud."
For the drone industry, the important part is that "affordable and scalable" mass shows up in the concept as an operational requirement. Autonomous systems are named in the blunt phase and cheap mass in the break phase. A ground force still holds the line in the block phase. The theory has crewed and uncrewed systems working together. Nothing in it describes robots replacing soldiers.
Grynkewich also set limits. As analysis by Grosswald notes, he said "we are not seeking to impose a strategic defeat on our adversary." He said he does not assess conflict to be "imminent or inevitable," and he named no place, force number or date. Grosswald, citing Stars and Stripes, reports that the concept was finalised in classified form about three months before the speech. An unnamed NATO spokesman quoted by DroneXL described the theory as "consistent with and grounded upon" the alliance's defense plans.
The '32 Ukraines' Pitch
Ullman, best known as an author of the "shock and awe" doctrine, and Richards, a former UK chief of defence staff, take the cheap-mass idea further. DroneXL's account of their Hill piece says they want unmanned systems stationed across Europe, from the UK, Norway and Finland to the Baltic states, Greece, Turkey and Romania. "Imagine how Russia would fare against 32 Ukraines," they write.
The image refers to Ukraine's experience of using large numbers of cheap drones to hold off a larger force, and imagines that model in every member state. DroneXL describes the proposal as a variant of the "Porcupine Strategy" the two men first put forward in a Telegraph column in March 2025.
The authors also qualify their own argument. They concede that "unmanned" oversells the idea, because people still have to maintain, repair and launch these systems. A drone wall is still staffed. It needs operators, technicians, logistics and trained crews, even if fewer of them stand at the front line.
DroneXL also points out a detail in how the authors present NATO's concept. The SHAPE transcript runs block, blunt, break, and the op-ed swaps the first two phases. The difference is small but real. In Grynkewich's order, land forces take the first shock, and sensors and autonomous systems then slow any follow-on advance.
A caveat on sourcing: The Hill op-ed could not be retrieved for this report. Its content is described here only through DroneXL's account, and quotations from it should be read with that in mind.
Drones Are Not a Troop Substitute, at Least Not in the Speech
The drone-mass argument is arriving during a debate about American force levels. According to NBC reporting from September, cited by DroneXL, the Pentagon is weighing a cut of 25,000 or more of the roughly 80,000 US troops in Europe, possibly as many as 40,000. A recommendation to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is expected on November 6, per Anadolu Agency as cited by DroneXL.
Advocates of cheap mass can easily be read as offering drones in place of departing troops, and DroneXL says the op-ed authors argue the drones would cut demand for US troops in Europe. The SHAPE transcript does not support that reading. DroneXL notes that nothing in the transcript treats drones as a replacement for soldiers. When Grynkewich was asked whether US soldiers would be part of the ground force, he called it ultimately a political decision.
The Hard Part: Breaking Anything at Depth
The break phase is in practice a promise about long-range fires, and Grosswald's analysis argues that the American ground-launched means it could have drawn on are gone or late. It lists several recent setbacks. The Pentagon cancelled a long-range fires battalion for Germany in May. Germany's first Tomahawks are put at 2031 at the earliest. A June force-sourcing round cut the number of US fighters available to NATO by a third.
According to Grosswald, what is left for depth is largely European. The main effort is the twelve-nation Deep Precision Strike initiative launched in July, which Grosswald headlines as a USD 50.66 billion commitment over ten years. Grynkewich's own investment line names "affordable long-range precision strike," so "affordable and scalable systems" plausibly covers more than battlefield quadcopters, including cheaper long-range strike systems that can be produced in volume. That is this report's inference rather than something the speech spells out.
Moscow dismissed the concept. Grosswald reports that Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the theory "a madhouse on tour."
Why It Matters
NATO's senior commander has now written cheap mass into the alliance's public description of how it would win a war. Autonomous systems are named in the blunt phase, and an "overpowering mass of affordable and scalable systems" sits next to high-end munitions in the break phase. For drone makers and procurement offices, that is a demand signal from the top of the command structure, not from a think-tank paper.
The concept also has limits that the "32 Ukraines" framing tends to blur. NATO's version still opens with land forces blocking at the point of contact. Grynkewich gave no numbers, places or dates, and he did not treat drones as a replacement for troops. Even Ullman and Richards concede that uncrewed systems need people to run them. With a Pentagon recommendation on cutting US forces in Europe due November 6, the risk is that political arguments treat drone mass as a cheaper substitute for presence. Read closely, the speech treats it as one layer in a force that still needs soldiers, sensors and deep strike, and by Grosswald's account much of the deep strike now has to come from Europe.
