Ukrainian Drone Operators Defeated NATO Combat Group During Joint Exercises

During the Hedgehog 2025 exercises in May 2025, Ukrainian drone operators defeated a combined combat group of several thousand NATO troops, including British and Estonian soldiers, who were attempting to carry out a mechanized attack.

This was reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The Hedgehog 2025 exercises brought together more than 16,000 troops from 12 NATO countries, who trained alongside Ukrainian drone operators, including military personnel temporarily seconded from the front lines. They simulated a ‘contested and congested’ battlefield with various types of drones.

“The goal was to create friction, stress for the units, and cognitive overload as quickly as possible,” said Lieutenant Colonel Arbo Probal, head of the Estonian Defense Forces’ Unmanned Systems Forces program.

In one of the training scenarios, a combat group of several thousand soldiers, including troops from the British brigade and the Estonian division, attempted to launch a mechanized attack. However, according to sources, they did not take into account that the drones had made the battlefield much more “transparent.”

“The NATO combat group simply moved without any camouflage, setting up tents and armored vehicles. All of this was destroyed,” recalls one of the participants in the exercises.

During the exercises, the Ukrainian military used Delta, a modern Ukrainian battlefield management system. It collects intelligence in real time, uses artificial intelligence to analyze large amounts of information, identifies targets, and coordinates strikes between command and units. This ensures a fast ‘chain of destruction.’

According to the publication’s sources, one of the Ukrainian units, consisting of about 10 soldiers, attacked NATO forces. In about half a day, drone operators conditionally destroyed 17 armored vehicles and delivered 30 strikes on other targets.

Overall, the results for NATO forces were ‘terrible,’ said Aivar Hanniotti, coordinator of unmanned aerial systems for the Estonian Defense League, who led a unit of about 100 ‘simulated enemy’ troops, including Estonian and Ukrainian military personnel. Overall, the ‘opponent’ forces “were able to destroy two battalions in a day,” so that “within the scope of the exercise, they effectively lost their combat capability.” Meanwhile, NATO units “didn’t even get to our drone operators.”

According to Sten Reiman, former commander of the Estonian Military Intelligence Centre, who helped bring Ukrainian drone experts to Hedgehog, it was Estonia that forced its NATO partners to confront these weaknesses.

The Hedgehog exercises also demonstrated how Ukraine can contribute to pan-European security. According to him, the results of these exercises came as a ‘shock’ to military leaders and personnel.

As a reminder, at the end of January 2026, it became known that during NATO’s annual winter exercises — Joint Viking — in northern Norway in 2025, American troops ‘encountered difficulties.’ The organizers of the exercises were forced to ask Finnish reservists, who were playing the role of the enemy, to go easier on the Americans.

“The Finns had to tell them to stop beating up the Americans because it was humiliating and demoralizing,” the source said.