The Drone Revolution: The View from Latvia

Driven by the security threats from neighboring Russia, Latvia is rebuilding its military through conscription and heavily prioritizing low-cost, highly autonomous drone and counter-drone technologies alongside its NATO and Baltic partners.

At Military Base Ādaži, the largest military installation in the Baltic States, young Latvian recruits are hugging their parents, pointing to combat vehicles covered in camouflage netting on which they have been training on for almost a year, and proudly posing for photos. Camp Ādaži is the main hub for the Canadian-led NATO Multinational Brigade, and officers from more than a dozen NATO allies wearing national flag patches signifying their countries mingle with the crowd, congratulating the recruits.

This is just the third graduation ceremony for these young soldiers who belong to a mechanized infantry brigade. Latvia abolished conscription in 2006, but re-instituted it in 2023, a decision made primarily in response to Russia’s war against Ukraine and the danger Russia poses to neighboring countries.

It’s the largest class so far, but just 54 of the 469 graduates are conscripts; base officials tell me that roughly 85 percent are volunteers. After three months of boot camp, part of a total of 11 months of training, 117 have decided to make the military their career.

Besides the fun and celebration, there is a serious reason the families are invited on base for graduation, camp officials tell me. Latvia, along with Estonia and Lithuania, was invaded and illegally annexed by the USSR in 1940. Many Latvians still have preconceived negative notions from Soviet times about what the military is like, and even young people have heard of the Soviet (and modern Russian) custom of “dedovshchina” – or violent, even deadly hazing. In Latvia’s modern army, hazing is prohibited, and the soldiers have modern barracks and excellent food, which I enjoyed during a lunch break at the mess hall.

Martin Blumbergs, 21, left a successful modeling career in Japan to return home and pursue a career in the military. “There are some things that I missed in Latvia: the food, my family, the culture,” he explains. “So, I decided to volunteer. I’m a patriot. It’s the best decision I could make.”

“But,” I challenge him, “you have Russia and Belarus right over the border. Isn’t that dangerous?”

“That’s fine with me,” he replies, “because we are a small country, we had the history before and I know what it means, and my grandfather knows what it means. It’s a different century, but things don’t change at all, so I know what’s my position and I want to protect my country.”

Women in Latvia are not drafted, but there are 18 women volunteers in this class. One of them is 24-year-old Hannalor Voičisa. She’s standing next to a CVRT, or a Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance Tracked. She points to the small opening of the gun turret, just beneath a large 30-millimeter autocannon. “I drive in there,” she says proudly.

Hannalor tells me that, even in high school, she wanted to serve in the army. “I felt I belonged here,” she recalls, but she ended up studying law. Her father has been a member of Latvia’s armed forces for 23 years. “He’s always been my understanding of what the army is,” she says.

“As a young Latvian, I understand you need to adapt to the situation,” she adds matter-of-factly. “The war is near our country, but I think people my age, understood the situation as sad and devastating, and that we need to do something and prepare ourselves. We need to gain the knowledge to help, if needed.”

That knowledge includes drone warfare, even if it’s a mechanized infantry brigade.

“Those systems are complicated,” Lt. Col. Andris Rozitis tells me. “They must be tested, and Ukraine is testing them daily. As a mechanized infantry brigade, we will always stay with mechanized platforms, but this war has changed, so you have to have counter-drone efforts. You should have a good electronic warfare posture to preserve your own troops.”

A Drone Wall?

Throughout my trip to Latvia, visiting the military base, talking with Latvian officials, and traveling to the Latvia-Belarus border, I saw ample proof of how drone warfare is transforming the region.

At the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs back in Riga, the first question I asked Foreign Minister Baiba Braže concerned drones, specifically an incident this spring that made clear that drone warfare presents a complex challenge to Latvia, not only militarily, but politically.

In May, two Ukrainian drones headed for Russia were “spoofed” – knocked off course by a fake signal presumably generated by Russian forces. The drones crashed into a fuel depot in eastern Latvia, and the furor over that incident ended up toppling the Latvian government. Prime Minister Evika Silina fired the defense minister, accusing him of not protecting the country. Silina herself then resigned, just before a vote of no confidence in Parliament.

“Those drones, obviously, are not meant to attack Latvia,” Foreign Minister Braže told me. “So, it’s incidental. That’s how we view it. Having said that, obviously, for people living in those eastern regions, when you hear a drone flying above you, and possibly an armed drone, it doesn’t make it easier to know that it’s not, because the danger can be quite direct.”

Latvia had its first drone incident in September 2025, when a Russian Shahed drone aimed at Ukraine flew to Belarus. Ukrainian forces spoofed it and it fell in Latvia. This June, when a drone entered Latvian air space in the eastern part of the country, Latvian authorities were taking no chances, sending an emergency alert to local residents as a French fighter jet, part of NATO’s Baltic Air Policing Unit based in Lithuania, shot it down.

Latvia was very grateful for the assistance, the foreign minister said. “But, of course, the most efficient answer would be to get low-cost systems, with sensors and things that are needed, and not use those expensive missiles,” she said.

Taking down a drone presents its own danger, she said. “If you do it above an inhabited city, it can bring more danger than if a missile or drone falls somewhere in a field. So, this is what makes it sort of complicated for armed forces and for everyone to invest huge amounts of money in taking out [a few] drones.”

Latvia’s answer has been to work with Ukrainians, the masters of drone technology, to make sure systems are in place that are able to quickly and correctly identify a drone and then stop it. The day before our interview in June, Latvia signed a ‌drone deal with Ukraine, part of a broader Ukrainian with the Nordic-Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Iceland, Finland, Sweden and Norway. Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs said the deal would allow Ukraine to share its technological know-how and create the opportunity for joint military production. It included deploying what he called Ukrainian “drone warriors” to Latvia.

There have been drone incursions in several other European countries, including Belgium, Poland, Romania, Denmark, and Germany. In August of last year, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described the concept of what she called a to protect the continent.

“The Drone Wall is our response to the realities of modern warfare,” von der Leyen said. “Think about what happened in Poland. We had to deploy very expensive systems – latest-generation fighter jets – to take down relatively cheap, mass-produced drones. This is absolutely not sustainable. We need a system that is affordable and fit for purpose. For swift detection, swift interception, and when needed, swift neutralization. And we have much to learn from Ukraine in this field, both on capabilities, but even more importantly, on their ecosystem of rapid innovation. And Ukraine is ready to support our efforts.”

The Latvian Foreign Minister thinks the name “Drone Wall” is misleading, giving the impression of some type of physical construction. More correctly, she said, “It’s a layered system of different sensors; different interceptors; different low, middle and high range capacity to identify and intercept or use electronic warfare capability to push back. So that is what everyone is working on.”

And working on at with maximum speed. Attack drones are deadly effective, and defense from them can be even more critical. In a new report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Seth G. Jones and Riley McCabe cite estimates that “over 90 percent of Russian casualties are from drone attacks rather than a result of human-to-human engagements. Casualty rates are extremely high for soldiers that enter the kill zone.”

“Future-proofing” Europe

To see how drones are designed and built in Latvia, I drove to another district in Riga and parked at what looked like a warehouse. I was ushered in through a door that opened to a large, brightly lit factory-style room.

The back of the room was filled with worktables, where young engineers and technical personnel were assembling the miniature electronic components that make up the “brains” of their drones. Checking their work on computer screens, some attached tiny screws to plastic housings. Others secured thin wires to what look like control boards. Still others packed anvil cases with assembled drones, preparing them for shipment.

Origin Robotics is a Latvian deep-tech defense startup that develops and produces autonomous unmanned aerial systems (UAS) for NATO allies. As its website puts it: “We empower cost-efficient hardware with state-of-the-art software to deter and defend.”

I was met by Raitis Kipurs, Head of Marketing. “In 2014 we started out with drone technology,” he recounted. “The company was called Airdog, so our experience in this field is more than a decade. That’s where the capability comes from and that’s why we are so quick on our feet.”

Origin Robotics, with approximately 100 employees, was founded just after the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. “That’s when most of the founders understood that they have to do something to basically enable small democracies like Latvia to have tools to defend themselves,” he said. “The team got back together and did what they do best: they started building drones.”

All the company’s drones are for military use only, including in Ukraine, and both hardware and software are designed under one roof. “The product is very software-centric, software-heavy, because of the autonomy, almost all of its capabilities, come from the software part. That’s where the know-how from 2014 comes in.”

We moved over to a table where a fat, grey-white drone about two feet high stood on its tail, supported by four fins. It had four stubby arms to hold propellors and a camera at the top, staring straight at me. “So, this is the BLAZE, the interceptor drone. Fully autonomous system from the very launch. It’s built to intercept Shahed-like drones,” the Iranian drone modified and now manufactured by Russia and used in Ukraine.

“It receives radar information about the target and its relative position to the target,” Kipurs continued. “It uses this information for its onboard autopilot, and it autonomously gets behind the target. When we are behind the target, we switch to visual, lock onto the target and track it with our cameras. At that point, the operator, who is always in the loop, can make the decision whether to intercept the target. If the decision is made to intercept, the system autonomously approaches the target, detonates its warhead, and takes out the target.”

The system has a reusable function: if the operator, for some reason, decides not to engage the system, it can be called back. It disarms its warhead, lands back on its tail, and can be recharged and used for another operation.

The speed of innovation and modification is blinding, led by Ukraine’s military, which is constantly adapting to changing battlefield conditions. “In this field, you have to be very technology savvy,” Kipurs explained, “and you have to develop your product all the time. Especially on the software side, all the systems are being continuously improved and the end user, through the firmware updates, has improved versions all the time.”

If software needs to be updated, Origin Robotics can ship it to the end user, and they can upload it. “The hardware part is a bit trickier,” he added, “and those usually are being updated through batches. So, you basically just release the new product version with the next batch.”

The BLAZE, Kipurs said, has been deployed by the Latvian , Estonian, and Belgian armed forces, and a couple of other unnamed European nations. “We are at the stage,” he said, “where other European countries understand the edge that an autonomous system has.”

The Next Threat

Both Ukraine and Russia are producing massive numbers of drones, but Ukraine outmatches Russia in both innovation and speed of technological development, according to a

for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) by Michael Horowits and Erin Dumbacher, How Ukraine’s Drone Innovation Reversed Russia’s Momentum. The report notes that “Ukraine was able to produce an estimated four million robotic and autonomous systems in 2025, and is, by all accounts, on track to produce between five and six million in 2026.” What’s more, the authors report, “Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister said the country’s defense industry could produce as many as 20 million military drones if allies commit sufficient funding to Ukrainian manufacturing.”

Europe is coming to the fore.The European Commission has allocated for advanced drone technology to Ukraine; the first tranche was released at the end of June.

Ukraine, in return, is sharing its battlefield experience and technological know-how, sending its military drone trainers to Europe, something I witnessed during a NATO military exercise this spring.

The United States, in contrast, is just getting started: “Out of the 22,320 systems the Pentagon has ordered through the drone dominance initiative, less than 3,000 have been shipped as of writing,” the CFR report concludes.

But the US is watching the Ukraine military’s drone transformation closely. Defense One’s Thomas Novelly reports the Senate Armed Services Committee wants the War Department “to adopt the future of warfare by permitting the establishment of the Robotic and Autonomous Systems Combatant Command.”

According to Novelly, “A staffer told reporters that senators were inspired, in part, by Ukraine’s of a drone-focused military service.”

Fortem Technologies is a US-based aerospace security company founded in 2016. It initially specialized in small, light radar technology, some of it hand-held or the size of a laptop computer.

In a telephone interview, CEO Jon Gruen told me that DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon’s research and development agency) approached the company with the concept of putting that radar on a small drone. After eight years of development, the result was what he called an “air-to-air seeker”: the autonomous DroneHunter® interceptor, used by the US military, the US government, and commercial operations domestically and in countries around the world.

Gruen was aware of the May drone incursion in Latvia. The day after news broke, he was meeting with a senior Latvian official, he said, and, the day after that, with an Estonian official. “They're all very concerned.”

In our interview, Gruen agreed that drone technology is developing with lightning speed. But, he explained, true “autonomy” does not exist with the current kind of “effector,” that is, the part of the drone that takes action to achieve its mission – to kill the attacking drone.

“Ukraine is producing faster effectors, but they're all FPV-driven,” or First Person View, meaning a pilot watching on a screen. “They're usually tethered with a fiber optics, because true autonomy doesn't exist today in that kind of effector.”

“The future is fully autonomous drones on guard at the border that can take out the threat autonomously. So that gets into your drone wall concept.”

Once launched, he said, “our drone hunters are fully autonomously hunting. They don't require ground sensors; they don't require the data feed. They don't require satellite navigation. So that was the step we had to take from Ukraine. We developed capabilities that truly would work autonomously in [electronically] jammed environments.”

Ukraine, under attack by Russia’s missiles and drones since 2022, has become the world leader in drone technology deployed in a full-scale war. However, Jon Gruen told me countries still technically at peace also face the threat from drones.

“So that's the problem,” he continued. “If you're a government security professional, what are you preparing for? You have to be ready theoretically for everything, and that creates the need for layered solutions. So, you try to add as many layers you can afford, in both the detect and the mitigate, so that you cover as much of that range of threat as you can. But you're never going to get 100 percent, unless you're spending tens of millions of dollars for the absolute most critical, which is what the Department of War does.”

Drones are now being deployed in conflicts around the world. In late June, the United Nations reported that, as part of a between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and a paramilitary group (the RSF), “drone attacks reportedly targeted multiple locationsincluding a power substation and a fuel station,” forcing the closure of several medical facilities and the shutdown of water stations.

At a recent security conference in Washington, DC, I listened as a US Army general stated categorically his belief that the US is likely to be hit with a “9/11-style” attack with drones. I asked Fortem Technologies’ Jon Gruen what he thought. “Oh, it's going to happen,” he said. “Every government official you'll talk to, everyone who's in security, will tell you it's not if, but when.”

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