BRUSSELS, Mar. 5 (Reuters) - NATO armed forces are not ready for a modern drone war, the military commander in charge of Ukraine's unmanned systems warned, three years into a conflict with Russia in which both sides are pushing for a technological edge.

Kyiv is striving to stay ahead of the enemy, employing artificial intelligence, deploying more ground drones and testing lasers to bring down Russian unmanned aerial vehicles, said Colonel Vadym Sukharevskyi, head of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces.

Speaking in a newly outfitted office for the recently founded Unmanned Systems Forces, the location of which Reuters was asked not to disclose, Sukharevskyi laid out the leaps and bounds in which drone warfare had advanced since the start of the invasion in 2022, and the ways in which it upended the established doctrines of war.

"From what I see and hear, not a single NATO army is ready to resist the cascade of drones," Sukharevskyi told Reuters in a recent interview.

He said NATO should recognise the economic advantage of drones, which often cost far less to build than the conventional weaponry required to down them.

"It's just elementary mathematics. How much does a missile that shoots down a (Russian) Shahed (drone) cost? And how much does it cost to deploy a ship, a plane and an air defence system to fire at it?"

Long-range drones can cost as little as several thousand dollars for the most basic decoy models, although the Shahed strike drones have been estimated to cost in the tens of thousands. Air defence interceptor missiles usually have a six or seven figure U.S.-dollar price tag and many countries only keep limited stocks, thus making their use highly uneconomical.

Sukharevskyi's comments come as some NATO members in Europe ramp up defence spending to prepare for war should the Ukraine conflict drag on or escalate. With U.S. support for Ukraine and Europe wavering, those efforts have intensified.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, there has been a vast expansion in drone use.

Ukraine says it made 2.2 million small First Person View (FPV) drones and 100,000 larger, long-range ones in 2024. Russia previously gave estimates that it would make 1.4 million FPV drones in the same year.

"Right now, even the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine says that more than 60% of targets are destroyed by drones," Sukharevskyi said.

"The only question is how the tactics of their use will develop, and, following on from that, the technological aspect."