We are seeing a rapid, practical rebalancing of what militaries call electronic warfare. Cheap, ubiquitous drones have changed the tactical calculus more quickly than any single new radar or fighter aircraft program. Rather than a single large EW throw that protects high value assets from long range sensors, commanders now need layered, mobile, low-SWaP (size, weight and power) EW and spectrum tools that operate at platoon and company level to blunt a different kind of threat: many small, often expendable, unmanned systems used en masse for reconnaissance and strike.

The evidence is not theoretical. Reporting and field studies from the Ukraine conflict have repeatedly shown how dominant electronic attack and protection have become in day to day fighting, and how jamming and PNT denial shape what drones can and cannot do on the modern battlefield. Analysts outside the conflict pointed to very high rates of small-UAV attrition and highlighted the centrality of EW in degrading or denying drone missions.. Independent reporting from front line coverage also documents how GPS and data links have been contested and how units hunt for jammers and seek to destroy them before committing precision fires..

Those ground truths force several concrete shifts in EW priorities.

1) Spectrum situational awareness becomes the primary sensor. Traditional EW emphasized broadband transmitters and big receivers that could blanket an area. Today, knowing when, where and how small UAS controllers and their relays are operating is more valuable than drowning a sector in power. That means distributed direction finding, rapid geolocation, and integration with ISR and fires. EW nodes need to be small enough to move with maneuver units and rugged enough to live under direct fire.

2) Effectors must be layered and discriminating. A single omnidirectional jammer is attractive but blunt. It can create deconfliction problems with friendly systems and is easy to avoid by preprogrammed or autonomy-enabled platforms. Practical counter-UAS today leans toward a mix of directional RF denial, protocol-level mitigation, cyber exploitation when lawful and safe, and kinetic or hard-kill options when necessary. The counter-drone market and programs that combine sensors and soft-kill/kinetic effects reflect that reality..

3) Positioning, navigation and timing resilience is now a core EW priority. Many modern munitions and commercial drones rely on GNSS. When GNSS is denied or spoofed, units must have robust inertial navigation, visual odometry and mission architectures that allow safe operation without continuous satellite updates. That pushes design changes into autopilots, sensor fusion stacks and mission planning tools for both offensive and defensive drone operations.

4) Autonomy and swarming change the attacker-defender trade space. Swarm concepts are maturing enough that defenders cannot assume single-target engagements. Swarms multiply decision points and saturate individual sensors. The U.S. GAO and open think tank literature capture that drone swarms are a serious emerging vector and that their command and control modes vary from preprogrammed waypoint flights to semi-autonomous cooperative behaviors. Those differences matter in the EW response: jamming works against link-dependent swarms but will be less effective against preplanned or local-sensor-based autonomy..

5) Proliferation and cost dynamics force a doctrine change. Cheap drones are consumables. That undermines a procurement and defensive posture that relied on expensive, high-value assets being decisive. Instead, militaries must accept high rates of attrition and build sustainment models that combine mass-produced drones, improved electronic hardening for mission critical units, and doctrine to prioritize which systems must survive in contested EM environments. Field reporting and analysis from recent conflicts make this consumption model apparent..

Operationally these shifts create hard engineering and logistical problems. Small mobile jammers require power, cooling and maintainers. Direction finding and signal exploitation need networks and low latency datalinks that themselves are contested. Integrating EW outputs into the tactical common operating picture requires rules and training so that EW activity does not accidentally blind friendly navigation or ISR. Those are solvable engineering problems but they require procurement cycles and training pipelines that move faster than many defense bureaucracies currently allow.

Policy and legal constraints also matter. Domestic and international regulation of spectrum and rules for electronic attack remain underdeveloped for the scale and speed of small-UAV use. Civilian infrastructure shares many of the same bands and the risk of collateral impact is real. Unless legislatures and regulators provide clearer deconfliction and liability frameworks for counter-UAS operations, militaries and police will be constrained in how aggressively they can operate in urban or densely populated areas.

What should planners prioritize right now? First, invest in distributed spectrum awareness and geolocation at the tactical edge. Second, fund resilient PNT for mission critical platforms and open-source navigation alternative research. Third, treat counter-UAS as combined arms: sensor fusion, layered soft-kill and hard-kill, doctrine and logistics. Fourth, accelerate training and doctrine to push EW competence down to small unit leaders so they can operate safely without waiting for centralized EW control. Finally, invest in rapid field-upgrade paths for both offensive and defensive unmanned systems so software level countermeasures can be delivered in weeks not years.

The net effect is this. Drones have not made electronic warfare irrelevant. They have made it indispensable and more tactical. The spectrum is now a contested maneuver space where small decisions and quick decisions matter. Militaries that continue to treat EW as a rear-area enabler rather than an organic frontline capability risk losing the most adaptable part of their force structure to massed, low-cost unmanned systems. That is a fundamental change in priorities and one that will shape procurement, training and doctrine for the next decade.