Checking into my hotel in Kyiv, Ukraine, this past June was not much different from checking into a hotel in New Delhi or New York. The desk took a credit card imprint, explained when breakfast hours would be and where the gym was, gave me the Wi-Fi access code, and had me sign a form making clear that guests could not smoke in rooms. Normality ended when hotel reception asked guests to download an early warning app to alert them to incoming ballistic missile, drone, or glide bomb attacks and recommended they familiarise themselves with the bomb shelter.
Normality ended when hotel reception asked guests to download an early warning app to alert them to incoming ballistic missile, drone, or glide bomb attacks and recommended they familiarise themselves with the bomb shelter.
The early alert app was a lifesaver. Ukrainian programmers had the programme up and running within a week or two. Users manually enter their oblast and raion — roughly province and district — to receive general alerts or enable their GPS to give block-by-block warnings. The interface received intelligence in real time from both the Ukrainian government and U.S. intelligence services to fine-tune alerts or cancel them once the trajectory of the attacks became clear.
When I went to eastern Ukraine — cities like Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Zaporizhzhia — the app and the alerts it broadcast could help me and my colleagues, as well as every Ukrainian on the street, determine routes to take or when to curtail a meeting to seek shelter. Kharkiv was and remains one of Europe’s great university towns, even though it is just perhaps 20 kilometres from the front line — close enough to hear the thuds of distant explosions. Students remained in restaurants and toddlers played in playgrounds under the watchful eyes of their babushkas because everyone had fair warning when the inevitable attacks would come. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian government and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees had repurposed former Soviet-era nuclear bunkers and even metro stations to serve as emergency schools for the days when ballistic missile and drone attacks occurred, so that life and commerce could continue and residents would remain.
With Pakistani Field Marshal Asim Munir cocky after escaping diplomatic accountability for the Pahalgam massacre, renewed conflict with Pakistan is inevitable. The next Pakistan war will be unlike any previous one, however. The Russia-Ukraine war and, to a lesser extent, the U.S. war with Iran have redefined warfare. Russian President Vladimir Putin initially believed he could conquer Ukraine in a matter of days, utilising his jet fighters, tanks, and Black Sea fleet. Ukraine absorbed the first blow and then devastated Russia’s technologically superior planes, ships, and other platforms with drones. In Kyiv, I visited a drone factory that employed 10,000 Ukrainians. Employees, on average, appeared to be in their early 20s. Engineers who just three years ago had a small shop built into a garage now oversaw assembly lines that could produce multiple drones per minute. Many drones were short-range, but some could transit hundreds of kilometres and strike their targets with precision. Russia might have a quantitative edge in terms of military hardware and men, but Ukraine blunted Moscow’s advantage. The entire world has learned lessons from Ukraine’s ingenuity and drone warfare.
Pakistan might never have the national solidarity that Ukraine has, but Rawalpindi is capable of learning lessons, especially after the military walloping it took during Operation Sindoor.
There are two questions Indian policymakers must face: How might Pakistan fight differently, and what steps can India’s government take now to defend the home front?
Pakistan has an economy just about one-tenth the size of India’s, roughly the same proportion as Ukraine’s economy relative to Russia’s before the full-scale Russian invasion. Pakistan, like Ukraine, was also corruption-riven. Pakistan might never have the national solidarity that Ukraine has, but Rawalpindi is capable of learning lessons, especially after the military walloping it took during Operation Sindoor.
What this means in practice is that the next Pakistan war might begin with thousands of drones launched at Srinagar, Rajkot, or even Delhi. Loose technology controls and the Pakistani preference for plausible deniability mean that groups Munir and his fellow officers sponsor, like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, could launch drones. Regardless of who initiates the conflict, Pakistani authorities may believe drone warfare to be the best way to blunt India’s edge in advanced jet fighters. Nor will it be alone. China and Turkey will gladly supply Pakistan, as both seek to cripple India for their own ideological reasons.
The time for the Indian military to assemble drone swarms and the means to counter them is now. Ukraine has assembled counter-drone drones, but where are India’s? Ukrainians acknowledge that both they and the Russians across the front line try to capture each other’s drones, especially with technology advancing so rapidly. Indian politicians should ask their defence officials: Where are the centres to most quickly reverse-engineer captured technology?
As sclerotic as the U.S. bureaucracy is, New Delhi’s is exponentially worse. When the drones start falling on Indian cities, it will be too late. The Indian government must now clear the path for a Ukraine-like app, or tens of thousands of Indians could die.
A broader issue involves India’s citizenry. In the new age of warfare, violence is not limited to the front line. The Americans could never develop the type of early warning app that Ukrainians and, separately, Israelis use because the Washington bureaucracy would never allow it: It can take years to build a ship or a new jet fighter, and contracting bureaucrats are notoriously defensive of their bureaucratic empires. The idea of building an app that everyone in the nation adopts and with which the government coordinates, as Kyiv has, is unfathomable in Washington. As sclerotic as the U.S. bureaucracy is, New Delhi’s is exponentially worse. When the drones start falling on Indian cities, it will be too late. The Indian government must now clear the path for a Ukraine-like app, or tens of thousands of Indians could die.
As China’s population plummets and the United States is torn asunder by political nihilism, India could be the economic powerhouse of the century. Its opponents will waste no effort to bring it down using asymmetric means. Ukraine shows how powerful those can be, and what successful resistance looks like. The questions are whether New Delhi’s top military leaders and civil servants recognise that, and whether they are willing to shake loose one of the world’s most suffocating bureaucracies to ensure India aims to fight the next war and not just the last one.
Published originally on September 30, 2026.
