Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Taiwan: how small nations are rebuilding their air power with drones and missiles, without being able to completely eliminate fighter jets.
Summary
The idea of a “kit air force” is appealing to more and more countries with limited budgets. The principle is simple: replace some of the functions of fighter aircraft with a combination of drones, long-range missiles, ground-to-air defense, dispersed sensors, and lighter command networks. Ukraine has turned this into a testing ground out of necessity. Azerbaijan has demonstrated its tactical effectiveness in the Caucasus. Taiwan has made it part of its doctrine in relation to China. This change is based on cold logic: modern fighter jets are expensive to purchase, maintain, train and support. Conversely, drones and missiles offer volume, dispersion and resilience. But the idea that a country could completely eliminate its fighter jets remains exaggerated. Drones and missiles are good at replacing certain missions. They cannot absorb everything. The real breakthrough is not the disappearance of the fighter jet. It is its demotion within a more modular system.
The myth of aviation without aircraft
The idea seems provocative, but it is no longer absurd. For decades, air power has been equated with the number of fighter jets, their generation, their radar, and the quality of their pilots. This interpretation remains valid for the major powers. It is less so for states that have neither the budget, the industrial depth, nor the time to build a homogeneous combat fleet.
For a small nation, owning a credible fighter force requires four major expenses: the acquisition of aircraft, maintenance, armament, and training. Added to this are air bases, parts inventories, shelters, radars, electronic warfare capabilities, and maintenance teams. A squadron is never just a dozen aircraft. It is an entire infrastructure. This reality is pushing many countries toward asymmetric defense based on simpler, more dispersed, and more replaceable systems.
The problem is that the debate is often poorly framed. The question should not be whether drones are “better” than fighter jets. The question should be which missions can be transferred at lower cost to drones, missiles, or precision artillery, and which remain fundamentally linked to piloted aircraft.
The model of a kit-based air force
The emerging model is based on a layered approach. It does not seek to replicate all aspects of conventional aviation. Instead, it seeks to divide its functions among several less expensive tools.
The layer of ubiquitous drones
Drones have become the basic tool. They are used to see, correct fire, saturate, harass, strike, deceive, and exhaust. Ukraine plans to purchase approximately 4.5 million FPV drones in 2025, up from 1.5 million the previous year, with an announced budget of more than $2.6 billion.
The Ukrainian ministry has indicated that 96% of the FPVs purchased in 2024 came from domestic manufacturers. That says it all: drones are no longer a supplementary tool. They are now mass-consumed.
This approach changes the very notion of air power. A small nation may not have many aircraft, but it can permanently deploy thousands of sensors and loitering munitions above the battlefield. It is less prestigious than a fighter squadron. It is often more useful on a tactical level.
The long-range missile layer
The second building block is long-range firepower. Ground-to-ground missiles, anti-ship missiles adapted for land strikes, guided rockets, and long-range drones form a kind of air force without an airfield. They can strike depots, radars, logistics centers, and infrastructure hundreds of kilometers away without exposing a pilot.
Ukraine has illustrated this shift. Reuters reported in October 2025 that Kyiv was aiming to produce at least 30,000 long-range drones over the year, whereas both sides had produced around 1.5 to 2 million military drones of all types the previous year. The Ukrainian Liutyi and FP-1 drones, capable of flying more than 1,000 kilometers, show that a state under pressure can build deep strike capability without fielding a large bomber fleet.
The ground-to-air defense and sensor layer
A kit air force cannot exist without dense ground-to-air defense. If a country reduces its share of fighter jets, it must compensate with radars, command centers, short-, medium-, and long-range mobile systems, and jamming capabilities. Without these, it simply abandons its airspace.
The heart of the model is therefore not the drone alone. It is the combination: dispersed sensors, remote fire, air defense, mobility, and camouflage. A small nation that adopts this model trades speed and flexibility for mass, survivability, and controlled costs.
The Ukrainian laboratory under pressure
Ukraine is the most brutal example, because its model was not born out of a calm doctrinal choice. It was imposed by war. Its 2025 budget already allocated 2.23 trillion hryvnias for defense, or about $53.7 billion, equivalent to about 26% of GDP. This is colossal for a country at war, yet insufficient to rebuild a large-scale conventional fighter force in the short term.
Kyiv has therefore invested in quantity: FPV drones, long-range drones, improvised munitions, electronic warfare, and locally produced strike systems. This logic has created a fragmented, highly aggressive, and partly decentralized air power.
But Ukraine also demonstrates the limitations of this model. Despite this rise in the use of drones, it has been requesting fighter jets for years, and will receive F-16s starting in 2024, followed by a first batch of French Mirage 2000s and new Dutch F-16s in February 2025.
This point is decisive: even in the most “drone-centric” army on the continent, fighter jets are still considered indispensable.
Why? Because fighter jets still do what drones and missiles cannot do as well: emergency interception, mobile air cover, air-to-air firing, deterrent presence, in-flight adaptation, and real-time coordination over a moving area. Ukraine has modernized its warfare with drones. It has not abandoned manned aviation.
The Azerbaijani precedent and the temptation of “all drones”
Azerbaijan has popularized another version of the model. The 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh showed that a country could achieve major effects by combining drones, artillery, and intelligence, without relying primarily on a conventional air campaign comparable to Western standards. Reuters reported that at the end of the 44-day war, Baku had recaptured seven districts around Nagorno-Karabakh as well as about a third of the disputed territory itself.
The conflict established a simple idea: for a regional player, the combination of drones and artillery can produce formidable operational superiority at a lower cost than highly sophisticated aviation. Videos of drone strikes have also contributed greatly to this image.
But here again, the aftermath of the conflict is more instructive than the war itself. In September 2024, Pakistan signed a contract to sell JF-17 Block III aircraft to Azerbaijan. In other words, the country that best illustrated the effectiveness of drone warfare did not decide to do without fighter jets. On the contrary, it added a layer of manned combat to its architecture.
This is a sobering lesson. Drones can open the way, wear down the enemy’s defenses, guide fire, and destroy surface targets. They cannot completely replace air sovereignty, air policing, long-range reactive strikes, and the ability to show a flag.
The Taiwanese case, or asymmetry without abandoning the fighter
Taiwan is the most interesting case because it thinks about this issue in doctrinal terms. The island has long been presented as a laboratory for asymmetric defense against a superior power. The idea is to favor mobile, dispersed systems that are less expensive and difficult to neutralize in a single strike.
The figures confirm this shift, but also its limitations. Taiwan’s total defense budget for 2025 was set to reach a record NT$647 billion, or approximately $19.7 to $20.3 billion, an increase of 7.7%. Reuters also specified that a special allocation of NT$90.4 billion was planned for programs related to fighter jets and missile production, among other things. Taiwan is therefore investing in asymmetry, but without removing fighter jets from the equation.
Better still, in February 2026, Reuters reported that Taiwan had tested a jet-powered attack drone with Kratos to enhance its ability to deploy “large numbers” of low-cost drones. At the same time, the island continues to push for the 66 new American F-16Vs, whose delivery has been delayed. This is exactly the crux of the matter: Taiwan wants more drones, more missiles, more ground-to-air integration, but it refuses to give up its fighter aircraft.
The reason lies in geography and threat. Taiwan has to deal with daily coercion from China. In October 2024, Taipei reported 153 Chinese military aircraft in a single day during exercises. In January 2025, the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense reported 22 aircraft and ships around the island for the first “combat patrol” of the year. Such an environment requires immediate, identifiable, piloted, and intercept-capable means of response. Missiles alone do not make for effective air policing.
Missions that fighter jets still perform alone
The serious answer to this question is therefore nuanced: yes, some nations can radically reduce the role of fighter aviation; no, they cannot all eliminate it without paying a strategic price.
The role of air sovereignty
A fighter jet is not just a strike vehicle. It is also a political instrument. It takes off, identifies, escorts, diverts, intercepts, and signals intent. In a crisis, this gradation of force is essential. A missile is binary. A drone is often binary as well. The fighter, on the other hand, allows for useful ambiguity.
The role of responsiveness and versatility
The pilot retains a decisive advantage: he improvises. He changes course, re-qualifies a target, abandons, escalates, or de-escalates. A drone may be agile, but it remains dependent on data links, software autonomy, and a command architecture that can be jammed.
The role of political survivability
Losing a fighter jet is costly. But not having one can be even more costly if an adversary imposes its presence over your territory or maritime approaches on a daily basis. For Taiwan, this is obvious. For Ukraine, it has become obvious. For Azerbaijan, the re-equipment with JF-17s already suggests this.
The budgetary and strategic verdict
The air force in a box model works. It is already here. It allows countries with limited budgets to reinvent their air power without copying heavy Western formats. It is based on a robust triptych: ubiquitous drones, long-range firepower, and dense ground-to-air defense. For threatened states, it often offers the best balance between cost, resilience, and volume.
But the idea that a modern country can do without fighter aircraft altogether only holds true in very specific cases: a state protected by an ally, a strictly land-based theater, no air policing missions, or a strategy of simple territorial denial. As soon as interception, air sovereignty, visible deterrence, or responsiveness at sea and in depth need to be managed, the fighter returns to center stage. Not alone. Not as before. But it returns.
The real revolution is therefore not the disappearance of the fighter aircraft. It is its change in status.
It is no longer automatically the backbone. It is becoming a rare, expensive, and decisive part of a much more fragmented system. Small nations no longer necessarily build an air force around their aircraft. They now build their aircraft around an architecture of drones, missiles, sensors, and dispersion. And that is already changing warfare.
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