(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a

columnist for Reuters.)

LONDON, July 26 (Reuters) - For a special operation, it

looked extremely limited - scarcely the evolving future of a new

face of warfare.

A short video posted Wednesday on the Telegram social media

channel of Ukraine's Special Operations Headquarters showed what

appears to be a Russian Zala 41-16E unmanned aerial vehicle

flying high above Ukraine's contested Kherson region as a

smaller Ukrainian UAV repeatedly attacked it with an attached

wooden stick.

What kind of UAV the Ukrainians were using remains

unclear - the footage was filmed directly from a camera on the

drone, which was itself therefore out of shot. All that was

directly visible was the forward-pointing wooden pole which the

Ukrainian drone pilot attempted to ram through the Russian UAV

propeller, eventually appearing to send both crashing to the

earth.

Against the colossal scale of the conflict in Ukraine,

particularly since Vladimir Putin's 2022 full-scale invasion,

that engagement on its own is not of any great significance.

Tens if not hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian

drones have gone into battle since the war began, with ever more

each month - a battle which looks to be as critical as any other

to the outcome of the war.

Many of the individual drones may look low-tech - the

Russian Zala 41-16E is based on a type first displayed at a

Russian arms fair in 2012, and is reported to have entered

service three years later.

The wider confrontation around their use, however, has

become one of the most important arenas of the Ukraine conflict

- one in which a war-winning system one week can be rendered

swiftly obsolete.

The scale of the change this has wrought on Ukraine's

battlefield is hard to overstate.

While drones have been used throughout the war, the volume

and intensity of their use - and the tit-for-tat technological

race to keep them in the air and striking targets while

rendering the enemy drones unusable - continues to accelerate.

U.S. officials have publicly acknowledged holding back some

ultra-secret drones and associated technology from Ukraine to

avoid losing its secrets ahead of a potential even larger war -

such as one sparked by a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Increasingly, however, the sheer tempo of fighting within

Ukraine means technology being used there is developing at a

pace far faster than elsewhere in the world.

Those who watched the conflict say both sides are now taking

technologies from concept to battlefield often within weeks,

very different to traditional defence multi-year procurement

timelines.

While Ukrainian troops continue to be pushed back slowly by

numerically superior Russian forces on the ground, long-range

missiles supplied by the U.S., Britain and France continue to

reach deep into Russian territory, destroying much of the

Russian Black Sea fleet and forcing it out of Crimea.

Meanwhile, drones have made it almost impossible to fight

either side to amass significant forces for an offensive.

Many of the drones themselves are built by small or

medium-sized Ukrainian firms. As it has run short of both

soldiers and ammunition, and realising that the U.S. and its

European allies would fall well short of pledges to provide more

than two million artillery shells by now, Ukraine has set itself

the target of making a million drones a year to fill the gap.

The technology behind them, though, is backed up by some

giant and growing tech firms that see the conflict as a testbed

for new technology in general and artificial intelligence in

particular.

U.S. AI firm Palantir ( PLTR ) - which also supplies the

Pentagon - has been active in Ukraine since 2022, while German

counterpart Helsing signed a memorandum of understanding with

the Kyiv government in February.

Another AI firm on a publicity blitz this week is Anduril,

named for a sword in Lord of the Rings and founded by U.S. tech

entrepreneur Palmer Luckey, 31, a billionaire from his twenties

after founding the virtual reality headset company Oculus.

Luckey's firm says it has also been in Ukraine since the

first period of the war, and is also refining AI drones and

submarines for the Pentagon.

CELLPHONE TOWER MICROPHONES DETECT DRONES

Ukraine continues to have a tough time not just on the

ground - Russian drones and missiles continue to pound Ukrainian

critical infrastructure, especially its electricity grid.

Again, however, this has not prevented sometimes striking

innovation.

Over the past week, U.S. Air Force General James Hecker, who

commands U.S. and NATO air forces in Europe and Africa, and

Lieutenant General Stephen Gainey, who leads U.S. Army air and

space operations, have both praised a Ukrainian system that uses

microphones on cellphone towers to detect drones by their noise.

Based on much more primitive Allied systems during World War

Two, data from the direction-sensitive microphones can be used

to triangulate the location of Russian drones, allowing them to

be engaged by gunfire, jamming or, in theory at least, rammed by

another drone with a stick.

Hecker told an audience at the Royal International Air

Tattoo this week that the system had been designed and built by

two Ukrainian engineers in their garage, and rolled out quickly

and cheaply.

The trick, officials say, is getting other major Western

nations - especially the U.S. - to develop new systems with the

same urgency and effectiveness, rather than taking years or

decades.

A report this week by the U.S. Defense Innovation Board - an

official body staffed by ex-top officials - warns that the pace

of technological change particularly in unmanned vehicles and

artificial intelligence risks leaving behind the world's

pre-eminent superpower.

It described the Pentagon procurement system as a "plodding

leviathan with a systemic aversion to risk and a lack of urgency

that has led to a culture of sustaining the status quo ...

Success in related innovation is neither measured nor awarded,

and failures are always admonished."

Some steps forward are bearing fruit - but they often

involve bypassing more sclerotic official systems rather than

reforming them. Last year, the Pentagon unveiled a project known

as "Replicator" designed to deliver very large numbers of drones

quickly for any future China war.

'HELLSCAPE', DRONE SHIELDS

Officials say some of those drones - "switchblade" loitering

munitions - have already been delivered.

According to commanders at the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command,

U.S. military leaders hope to use a plethora of unmanned

weaponry to deny the Taiwan Strait to China in the event Beijing

tries to invade Taiwan itself, a project known as "HELLSCAPE".

Drones potentially operating autonomously and feeding back

sensor information into a vast network are also at the heart of

emerging multi-million-dollar border protection plans from

Poland, the Baltic and Nordic states.

These plans are described sometimes as a "drone shield" and

their intent is to field tens of thousands of unmanned vehicles

along the borders of exposed eastern European countries to

counter any Russian attack.

This week at the British army's annual conference in London,

Britain's new army chief General Sir Roland Walker put unmanned

systems at the heart of a reform package he said would make his

force at least twice as lethal by 2027 - the date by which U.S.

officials say China may be prepared to invade Taiwan.

Growing numbers of U.S. and European officials fear any such

attack would be accompanied simultaneously by a war in Europe,

overstretching the U.S. and its European allies.

The threat is now so close, Walker told the conference, that

much of the military equipment Britain had purchased for the

coming years might not have arrived by the time any conflict

erupted. That would deepen the need to invest quickly in drone

and artificial intelligence technology to be ready.

In both Europe and the Pacific, there are clearly hopes this

new form of fighting might help defeat any Russian or Chinese

attack with relatively small numbers of friendly casualties.

The Ukrainian experience, however, has been anything but

bloodless. Thousands of videos show both Russian and Ukrainian

soldiers hunted down in dugouts, buildings or open ground by

"first-person-view" drones being piloted by other soldiers

sometimes only a few miles away.

Giving the drones more ability to select their own targets -

essentially by doing the computing and target identification

within the drone with or without direction from a human operator

- will not make that conflict any friendlier.

The lesson of Ukraine is that technology can evolve at

amazing speed, but the visceral nature of war remains as vicious

and unpleasant as ever.

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)