Roughly 240 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, two soldiers — part of the Norwegian Armed Forces’ long-range reconnaissance unit — were imperceptible from their position deep in the woods during NATO’s Cold Response 2026 exercise.

One of the only clues of their presence was a small, grey, first-person-view drone lying on the snow — a stark contrast to their all-white uniforms. The drone in question is an American system, the Skydio X10D, which is also used by Ukrainian forces.

The U.S. manufacturer was awarded a $9.4 million contract by the Norwegian Ministry of Defense in July.

“We are trying our best in Norway to implement lessons from Ukraine — for us, it’s all about increasingly using FPV and intelligence-gathering ones but adapting them to our environment,” said a Norwegian officer who spoke anonymously because of the sensitivity around the unit.

The Norwegian officer told Defense News during the NATO exercise, which lasts from March 9 to 19, that there is also an interest in incorporating FPVs into high-value target operations. While some operators have begun simulator training to fly them, this is a fairly recent development and has not yet been formally incorporated into their training.

Another drone model was displayed by the Norwegian Army Land Warfare Centre, which is responsible for training and developing weapon systems, including testing drones and sensors.

An officer with the Land Warfare Centre who flies the Skydio explained that, as part of Cold Response, almost every unit of the Norwegian Army was equipped with this capability to rehearse intelligence-gathering maneuvers. So far, it has performed relatively well, but it has experienced some difficulties, like most drones, in harsh conditions found in the Norwegian Arctic, he said.

One of the key challenges is battery life, which degrades significantly in cold environments.

An additional FPV used by the Norwegians during the exercise was a self-built one, with cheaply procured parts. It served as a one-way attack drone whose purpose was to carry explosives and see how far it could fly.

Another Arctic nation to have brought along an experimental drone was the United States.

The U.S. Marines tested a unique-looking FPV provided by Johns Hopkins University. The variant was equipped with a cage, the purpose of which is to prevent an excessive loss of the systems during training. The cage prevents it from crashing, and if repairs are needed, they can be carried out easily.

The U.S. troops used it in force-on-force scenarios, in which a friendly force engages a live adversary. This type of training allows their operators to enhance their piloting skills in a strike manner while also improving their counter-drone tactics, increasing pilots’ survivability.

Similar to the Norwegians, Master Sgt. Patrick Harrington, director of the unmanned systems center of excellence at the 2nd Marine Division, highlighted power as one of the biggest challenges to operating FPVs in Arctic conditions.

“We’ve been able to exchange with our allies here also, there’s interest in how each country [ourselves included] uses them, what they fly, how they fly it,” he said.

Figures published by Gulf defense ministries indicate that as of March 3, Iran has launched more than 540 missiles and carried out over 1,450 drone strikes against regional countries, with drones constituting roughly three-quarters of the attacks, Reuters reported.

While the patterns seen since the start of the Iranian attack window resemble the saturation logic observed in Ukraine, where large waves of cheap one-way attack drones combined with ballistic missiles are deployed to overwhelm defensive systems, analysts note some differences in their roles.

“In Ukraine, Shahed-type drones often serve as nightly, persistent harassment and infrastructure attrition tools, whereas in the Gulf they’re being used inside a broader missile campaign intended to stretch the Gulf and U.S.-aligned air defenses across multiple states, bases and urban areas simultaneously,” Kristian Patrick Alexander, senior fellow and lead researcher at the UAE-based Rabdan Academy, said.

Thus far, Gulf countries have reported high interception rates of missile attacks, and to a lesser extent, against low-flying drones. For example, data published March 4 by the United Arab Emirates, which has absorbed a large number of the offensives, claimed military forces detected 941 drones and intercepted 876 of them.

Some of the weaponry used by countries and their allies to shoot down low-cost drones includes the U.S.-made Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) systems as well as Rafale fighters, F-15s and Eurofighters.

Francesco Schiavi, research fellow at the Middle East Institute Switzerland, concurs that one of the main challenges for the region will be endurance, especially as the fighting continues.

“Each interception carries a financial and logistical cost – estimates suggest that for every dollar Iran spends producing drones, Gulf states may spend $20-$28 on defensive fire, with individual interceptors often costing more than $1 million,” Schiavi added.

Both experts advised that countries under attack must urgently look to cheaper and scalable counter-drone layers: electronic warfare, jammers, guns or close-in weapons, directed energy, and enhanced shared air picture coordination.

“The ‘winning’ defense will be the one that can kill lots of targets cheaply without burning premium interceptors – without cheaper layers and better integration, the cost curve favors the attacker,” Alexander said.

Meanwhile, Tehran’s offensive arsenal, already degraded by U.S. and Israeli air strikes, is also running lower, said Federico Borsari, non-resident fellow at the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis

What to watch

As hostilities drag on, subject experts highlight three important factors to monitor: the type of attacks, the nature of targets, and the performance of strike weapons.

According to Alexander, one tactic to watch is whether Tehran will continue to send attack drones in big waves or if they will be used in sequenced packages to probe radars before firing missiles.

Schiavi adds that it will be important to pay attention to the strike pattern Tehran adopts: Until now, the regime has followed a dispersed approach, targeting several Gulf countries at once with a mix of weapons, but it could shift toward true saturation attacks as observed in Ukraine.

The primary targets of Iranian attacks have so far been military bases and embassies. It remains to be seen if Tehran is able to expand the target set to include more critical infrastructure, such as ports, logistic hubs, or energy facilities, which experts say would signal an escalation.

Sam Bendett, advisor at the Center for Naval Analyses, said he’s keeping close tabs on the flight ranges of Iran’s Shahed drones, and the variety of similar weapons the country has in its arsenal.

It will also be important to see if Washington’s role changes as the conflict continues, considering that Gulf countries’ interception capabilities are closely tied to U.S. technology.

“Gulf air defense systems and their performance remain closely linked to U.S.-enabled radar coverage, early warning, and operational coordination – interceptions over Qatar, for example, rely heavily on radar networks connected to Al Udeid Air base, while missile engagements in Kuwait occur in airspace shared with American aircraft,” Schiavi added.

While out on a patrol in Oresund, a narrow strait that separates Denmark and Sweden, a Swedish Navy ship detected a suspicious unmanned aerial system approaching the French vessel.

“Following the observation, the armed forces took countermeasures to disrupt the suspected drone – contact with it was subsequently lost, but no other ones have been observed,” the Swedish Armed Forces said in a statement.

Speaking to local media outlet SVT Nyheter, Minister of Defense Pål Jonson said that it is likely the drone was Russian, as a Russian military ship was detected operating in the immediate vicinity of the Feb. 26 incident.

Jonson called the episode a probable “violation of Swedish airspace,” and an investigation was launched to determine whether a breach was committed.

The Swedish Armed Forces declined to provide further details.

Sweden announced last month that it is undertaking a major revamp of its unmanned capabilities, including the procurement of remote-controlled electronic warfare systems that consist of drone detection sensors, which could be based on ships or ground units.

While authorities have not yet confirmed the identity of Russian the ship, several open-source maritime observers compiled a list of Russian-flagged vessels spotted in the area roughly around the same time. These included the U.S.-sanctioned Sparta IV, a cargo ship flying the Russian flag, known for transporting military equipment between Syria and Russia.

According to Guillaume Vernet, spokesman for the French General Staff, the Swedish countermeasures used to repel the drone away from the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle “worked perfectly” and did not disrupt the flagship’s activities.

The presence of the aircraft carrier is linked to ongoing and upcoming NATO exercise activities and deployments, including the Orion 2026 exercises in the North Atlantic and Baltic regions, which began earlier this month and will run until March.

The Danish Air Force officially established Squadron 729 on Feb. 16, which will operate the four MQ-9B long-range unmanned aircraft out of Aalborg Air Base, located in northern Denmark, starting from 2028.

Earlier this month, Canada, which has acquired 11 of the same General Atomics-made drones that it will receive around the same time, signed a defense cooperation agreement with Denmark at the Munich Security Conference. The systems are planned to be based in different locations, including Nova Scotia on the east coast and British Columbia on the Canadian west coast.

The team-up brings together two Arctic nations that have repeatedly drawn the ire of Donald Trump since he assumed his second term as U.S. president in early 2025. Trump harbors a grudge against Canada for not wanting to be part of the United States, and against Denmark for having no interest in giving him the Danish autonomous territory of Greenland.

The defense-technical nexus around the MQ-9B drone holds promise in forging a closer connection between Ottawa and Copenhagen, as there is currently no formal maintenance-sharing or data-sharing arrangement between the two nations, according to issue experts.

“A joint logistics or maintenance hub would absolutely be strategically beneficial for them – maintaining equipment and operating bases in the region is very expensive – sharing facilities and having an integrated logistics system can make operations easier and more efficient for all parties involved,” Jens Marquard Sørensen, director of a Danish consulting company, said.

Still, both countries must first evaluate whether their operational plans match up.

For example, basing the Danish fleet at Aalborg Air Base would colocate the equipment with air force maintenance expertise there, but it’s a long way from strategic patrol points in Greenland, said Sørensen.

“The long distances [from Aalborg] to Greenland may pose operational challenges – flight times are long, increasing wear on drones before they arrive for a mission, and they would lose fuel going there. … It also means that any kind of rapid reaction using the MQ-9Bs is not possible, so having a forward operating station in the Arctic itself would be a notable advantage,” he said.

To put this into perspective, the straight-line distance between the Danish air base and Nuuk is approximately 3,324 kilometres (2,065 miles), and commercial jets covering the same route average flight times of about four to five hours.

Rune Raunow, a defense consultant at the Copenhagen-based Rethink Advisory, which advises the Danish Armed Forces, said a Denmark-Canada pact around the U.S.-made surveillance drones would be especially relevant for contingency plans, refueling or emergency landings.

Cooperation on sensors, too, could factor into the equation, Raunow said. While the Canadian government has opted for L3 Harris Wescam MX-20D sensor systems for intelligence and surveillance missions, Denmark has not publicly disclosed its preference.

“The drones are essentially just a platform; what will be more relevant is whether they will buy the same set of communication networks, sensors, optic detection systems, etc. … Being able to track threats in these very remote places would be extremely easier if they were using the same equipment,” Raunow said.

Canada’s MQ-9B purchase was driven by its need to bolster Arctic operations and provide continuous intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, according to government statements.

While stationing its fleet in southern bases is consistent with existing airfields and maintenance infrastructure, these areas are still far from the high Arctic and other regional chokepoints, where the country has increased monitoring needs.

Sørensen suggests that if NATO was to re-open the Keflavík Air Base in Iceland, as a common allied base, even just for emergencies, it could also serve as a possible site for the countries’ MQ-9B fleets. He noted that this location is the easiest point for patrolling north, east, and south of Greenland.

Keflavík Air Base was closed in 2006 and was primarily operated by the U.S. Navy on behalf of NATO. Today, allies conduct routine and rotational fighter and bomber deployments from there, focused on air policing missions.

As a member of NATO, Iceland has no armed forces of its own.

Sørensen added that its position south of the Arctic Circle makes operations easier and less prone to weather-related disruptions, offering a closer alternative than flying from Nuuk or Canada.

“Shipping routes are also always open year-round, making it cheaper to maintain a station or base than anywhere else in the region – technicians, spare parts or even larger equipment can be transported relatively cheaply via regular civilian shipping routes versus shipping to Greenland, which can cost up to 20$ per kilogram in some areas,” Sørensen said.

Other locations to consider may include Northern Canada, which Hans Peter Michaelsen, a defense analyst and former member of the Royal Danish Air Force, highlights as geographically close to the Danish Arctic territory. However, he notes that many of these areas face significant infrastructure limitations that would obstruct the construction of year-round drone facilities.

Beijing banked on Asia’s largest aerospace event, organized here from Feb. 3-7, to flex its aviation muscle, in a bid to attract more customers.

At the enormous booth of the country’s top aerospace manufacturer, Aviation Industry Corporation of China, or AVIC, placed in the center of the exhibition hall, a mock-up of the WL-X combat drone was displayed on the side. It was the first time the latest member of the Wing Loong family of drones, designed for maritime surveillance and strike missions, was shown in the Southeast Asia region.

Whereas Chinese military equipment may have been previously overlooked, experts say that the context has changed, as its systems are being taken more seriously, especially in the drone category.

“Chinese products are not only being noticed in the West, but their aircraft and combat drones are also being recognized as competitors – the capability gap between these systems and their U.S. competitors is narrowing while maintaining significantly lower costs,” Andreas Rupprecht, a military aviation researcher specializing in China, said.

Considering Beijing’s robust export footprint in uncrewed systems, the WL-X could could find similar success among customers interested in bolstering their maritime capabilities.

“The Wing Loong family and CH-drone series have been sold to dozens of states; it is plausible to expect the new drone on the buying list of countries that cannot access or afford Western systems due to cost, export controls, or political constraints,” Federico Borsari, resident fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said.

At a 2024 exhibition in China, AVIC displayed a prototype of the drone armed with different maritime weapon systems, including underwing sonobuoy dispenser pods and electric-propulsion torpedoes. At the Singapore Airshow, while information was displayed regarding the physical capabilities and 24-meter wingspan of the WL-X, the manufacturer offered no information on payload options.

Among the list of operators of the Chinese-made Wing Loong drone models are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Pakistan, Morocco, Algeria, Indonesia, and Nigeria. In 2024, the Royal Saudi Air Force reportedly reached a new milestone with its Wing Loong II fleet, logging 5,000 flight hours.

According to Borsari, some of these countries could be potential recurring customers of the new variant, interested in integrating it to support their navies.

The success of the WL-X will largely be contingent on its price tag, which is traditionally an area where China faces weaker competition from more expensive Western-made platforms.

A waiting game

While China has been profitable in the combat drone sector, it has not seen the same success in the smaller market for fifth-generation fighter jets, even if the large-scale model of the J-35A here garnered attention from visitors here.

A company representative declined to answer whether foreign buyers had expressed interest in the Chinese-built aircraft.

According to Timothy Heath, senior international defense researcher at RAND, the Asian country will have a hard time marketing it in an already saturated market.

“The industry is small for Beijing since many of the wealthiest countries that can afford fifth-generation airplanes are either allies with the U.S. or long-standing clients of Russia. … Only a few, such as Pakistan, have enduring security ties with China,” Heath said.

He suggested that the country’s best attempt is likely to result from “poaching” clients from Moscow, especially as its military industry has lagged due to the war in Ukraine.

A 2025 report to Congress of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission noted that Beijing reportedly offered to sell 40 J-35As to Pakistan in June 2025, but that these deliveries have not yet been completed.

Local firm ST Engineering and Shield AI signed a memorandum of understanding at the Singapore Airshow here on Feb. 5 to combine the Hivemind autonomy software on different platforms manufactured by the national defense-tech champion.

An ST Engineering spokesperson told Defense News the company sees possibilities for integrating Hivemind into its manned-unmanned teaming operating system, or MUMTOS, marketed on the firm’s website as a tool for balancing “human judgment and machine precision.”

The open-architecture system is designed to connect a wide range of unmanned platforms, such as micro-drones, unmanned surface vessels, and robotic ground vehicles.

The Singaporean Armed Forces have been experimenting with collective drone operations. During its largest overseas exercise in Australia recently, the military deployed the largest number of drones in its history, according to the Singapore-based news network CNA. Over 100 drones logged 560 flight hours during Exercise Wallaby.

Hivemind allows unmanned systems to sense and adapt while executing missions by generating new navigation alternatives based on targets and environmental conditions. According to Shield AI, it is designed to continue operating in a GPS- or communications-degraded environment without constant remote control.

The company’s V-BAT drone equipped with Hivemind has been deployed in Ukraine. The AI-intelligence software provides the platform with a global navigation satellite, or GNSS-denied state estimator, that merges sensor data to continue navigation in jammed areas.

“To date, V-BAT has completed about 200 flights in Ukraine [including operational and training missions] – in 2025 alone, it identified more than 200 Russian targets, and we are working with Ukrainian company Iron Belly to integrate Hivemind onto more autonomous strike platforms,” a Shield AI representative said.

“We’re no strangers to drones, having used them for almost 40 years, but they will play a much bigger role in the Republic of Singapore Air Force in terms of scale,” Maj. Gen. Kelvin Fan, the chief of Singapore’s Air Force, told Defense News. “We are currently operationalizing our Orbiter 4 and Hermes 900 UAVs.”

Both drones are produced by Israeli-based companies, namely Aeronautics Group and Elbit Systems, and were center-stage at the static display of this year’s Singapore Airshow.

The Orbiter 4 is a close-range drone for maritime and land operations, designed for surveillance and intelligence-gathering missions. It can fly for up to 24 hours and has a maximum range of 150 kilometers, according to a fact sheet from the Singapore Ministry of Defense.

The country purchased an undisclosed number of the drone in 2022 and acquired the variant that is launched via a catapult and recovered with a parachute.

Although the manufacturer advertises that it can operate in harsh weather, some RSAF operators here told Defense News that it has struggled in windy conditions.

Singapore confirmed last year, meanwhile, that it bought the medium-altitude long-endurance Hermes 900. Elbit lists the system as having a maximum takeoff weight of 1,180 kilograms, or 2,601 pounds, and an endurance of up to 36 hours.

In a 2024 interview, the former RSAF chief stated that the service’s fleet of Hermes 450 and IAI Heron 1 drones needed to be replaced, with the former having entered into service in 2007.

As part of the country’s move to becoming more drone-centric, Singapore will implement drone training for all operationally ready national service members, known as the trained reservist force that has already completed their two-year full-time national service duty.

The first units are set to begin training in mid-2026. The preparation will include videos and theory, simulations and flying drones in urban environments. It will then move on to operating them in the field.

Fan also highlighted that in July, the island country established a new Drone Rapid Operational, Integration, and Deployment, or DROID, unit tasked with experimenting, modifying and operationalizing small drones.

It also created a dedicated UAS Warfare and Tactics Centre, whose role is in part to support research and trials of micro and mini drones.

Singapore is unique in that it is an entirely urbanized city-state, where all of its population of over 5.6 million resides in urban areas. According to the World Bank, the vast majority of its land is dedicated to non-rural infrastructure and industry.

This environment makes operating military drones vastly different and in many ways more challenging than in open-field operations, considering the complexity of obstacles, risks to civilians and signal interference.

“Just as we harness the potential of drones, we are also developing the counter-drone shield, especially against low-cost and swarm attacks,” Fan added.

In a speech given in Parliament last year, Singaporean Minister for Defense Ng Eng Hen said that the country’s air force is focused on developing sensors, jammers and other weapons to detect and counter smaller drones in addition to existing air defense capabilities.

For the second consecutive year, Russian manufacturers were absent from the roster of attendees at the Singapore Airshow, the largest aerospace exhibition in Asia, which runs from Feb. 3-8.

Moscow previously had a much larger presence at the event, even launching joint exhibition pavilions at the 2020 show for Russian Helicopters and United Aircraft Corporation, which was attended by a range of officials. The country also used to showcase several aircraft models.

“What we are seeing is not a strategic pivot away from Asia, but a forced reallocation under severe structural constraints,” said Francesco Schiavi, research fellow at the Middle East Institute Switzerland. “Russia’s absence from these key shows reflects the shrinking, regionalized and increased concentration of its arms-export profile that has been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine.”

Russia’s arms exports to Asian customers peaked from around 2005 to 2011. During this period, it won major contracts with India and China. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in 2025, Beijing accounted for 60% of all Russian deliveries of major weapons.

A reminiscence of this past at this year’s airshow is the modified Sukhoi Su-30 MKM jets that the Malaysian Air Force flew during an aerial performance here. A Russian delegation led by the Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu did visit Myanmar this week to sign a military cooperation agreement.

Over the last year, Russian arms makers have increasingly courted potential Middle East customers, especially in the Gulf region. This has, in part, translated to reinforcing their presence at defense fairs, as was the case at the IDEX and NAVDEX exhibitions in February 2025 in Abu Dhabi.

The country had over a dozen exhibitors that afforded a prominent display of weaponry and pitched upgraded variants of their weapons.

Schiavi added that Moscow’s outreach to the Middle East and Africa is “selective and compensatory,” citing Algeria’s Su-57 purchase and continued engagement with Mali, eastern Libya and Ethiopia as examples.

Russian President Vladimir Putin recently said the national arms industry earned more than $15 billion in export revenues last year; however, the expert said that this figure has been widely questioned by Western analysts.

It is important to note that since February 2022, Moscow has not published official defense export information, rendering the verification process more challenging.

Russia also flew some of its military equipment to Saudi Arabia weeks ahead of the World Defense Show taking place next week. In an interview with the state news media TASS, the director general of Rosoboronexport said that the country will unveil new battle-tested systems at the event.

The Singapore Airshow, organized here from Feb 3-8, marks the first time the T-Scope has been shown overseas. The device was designed specifically for unguided munitions and uses a variety of sensors and AI to instantly calculate and predict the projectile flight paths, taking into account environmental and physical factors.

“What we’re doing rather than placing sensors on the rocket itself, is we are putting them into an AI-driven guidance kit, which essentially transforms unguided rockets into precision-guided munitions to improve their accuracy for cheaper,” Alan Kuo, Tron Future’s director of sales, told Defense News.

Taiwan has been gradually building up its inventory of anti-tank weapons, including an unknown number of unguided rocket-propelled grenades, to deter potential attacks.

Wang said they were approached by one of the country’s leading defense institutes to develop a device that could help quickly mobilize personnel, if needed.

“By combining automated complex ballistic calculations and displaying a live corrected aiming point, T.Scope allows soldiers to achieve marksman-level proficiency within a very compressed training timeframe,” Kuo added. “It would allow for combat readiness even under limited preparation.”

Although it has already been tested, the company is hopeful that it will receive army certification before the end of the year.

Further testing has already been planned to see how it performs in shallow water, per a request from the undisclosed defense institute.

The National Chung-Shan Institute of Science Technology, or NCSIST, is largely regarded as the leading research and development center in the defense sector in Taiwan. It focuses on designing and producing indigenous weapons, including missiles and unmanned systems.

Tron Future’s counter-drone radars have been used by the Taiwanese Army for several years. The company has also been assisting the government in integrating counter-drone technologies with Taiwan’s low Earth orbit satellites through its T.SpaceRouter user terminals to increase the island’s communication resilience.

Dubbed the Dataroom, the secure digital environment will allow Ukrainian defense companies to train and validate their algorithms by relying on real-world intelligence on Russian aerial threats collected by the country’s military.

The workspace has been envisioned with the goal of equipping interceptor drones with AI to enhance their target detection, classification and neutralization capabilities.

“In the future, we plan to expand the Dataroom’s abilities to other areas related to autonomy and AI – but for now, our focus is on the most urgent task: countering the threats that appear in our skies, Shahed-type drones,” Mykhailo Fedorov, the Ukrainian Minister of Defense, wrote in a post on his LinkedIn page.

The official noted that while interceptor drones have been effective on the battlefield, defending against thousands of targets requires a high degree of autonomy and the ability for the systems to identify and counter targets independently.

The Dataroom is currently only accessible to Ukrainian industry, primarily due to the sensitivity of the information used for training.

Palantir Technologies, co-founded by libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel, opened an office in Kyiv and has cooperated significantly with Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation. The company’s MetaConstellation software is used by Ukraine to gather and visualize data of enemy positions and equipment via a network of commercial satellites, sensors, drones, and other systems.

Ukrainian military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi said in an interview with online media outlet lb.ua this week that Russia can produce more than 400 different kinds of Shahed-type drones daily and that it plans to increase this number to 1,000.