Battlefield Lessons for Drone Businesses: Future‑Proofing for BVLOS and Over‑the‑Horizon Challenges

By: Dawn Zoldi

Drones have reshaped military and commercial operations, from frontlines to farmlands. This year’s Law-Tech Connect panel “Future-Proofing for Over the Horizon Operational Challenges” gathered top experts from industry and law to distill hard-won battlefield lessons into actionable business strategies. Their insights reveal how to anticipate and thrive amid evolving regulatory, security and technological headwinds.

Ukraine’s conflict has become an innovation crucible for uncrewed aircraft. Drones, deployed under dire circumstances and with scant resources, face relentless real-world testing. Brian Sardoch, former deputy sheriff, owner of Kodachi Solutions and Director of Safety and Defense at Bavovna.ai, shared intimate knowledge of these dynamics. From the front lines, Sardoch saw firsthand how dynamic threats, like AI-driven countermeasures and GPS jamming, forced constant adaptation.

Battlefields are proving grounds for rapid, iterative innovation. But this comes at a steep human cost. Sardoch recalled, “A lot of my time there, the first 4 to 8 months, we were looking at the failures of American systems.” The hard truth, he noted, was that deploying American drone technology on the front lines came with immense risk. Not all systems performed as promised. For some of his Ukrainian colleagues involved in testing and iteration, that gap between expectation and reality proved fatal.

When off-the-shelf solutions fell short, Ukrainians quickly moved to innovate on their own, improvising, learning and advancing new approaches under the most extreme conditions. Yet, as Sardoch noted, trying to replicate that intensity of innovation in peacetime, without the urgency or existential stakes of conflict, presents a challenge of both culture and resources. “It’s not about having the ability,” he emphasized. “It’s about having the right motivation.”

Lessons for Organizations: 

• Build organizational structures that actively support rapid prototyping and experimentation.
• Establish feedback loops rooted in real-world, field-driven insights.
• Identify and empower “skunkworks” innovators, those testing and iterating on the margins.
• Combine agility, hands-on operator experience and strong institutional support in your R&D process.

The Gap from Military to Commercial Deployment

Translating battlefield technologies into commercial success rarely involves a straightforward path. Technologies honed amid the urgency and chaos of conflict often expose their shortcomings not because of technical failure, but because wartime necessities don’t always align with the practical demands of daily commerce, public safety or scalable deployment.

As the commercial drone ecosystem matures, the pressure to deliver accuracy, accountability, and interoperability only intensifies. Urban and critical infrastructure environments require persistent improvements in detection, identification and mitigation systems to ensure safe, reliable integration. Solutions that work in war zones can stumble when confronted with civilian expectations or regulatory scrutiny.

Brett Fedderson, Vice President of Strategy and Government Affairs at D-Fend Solutions, drawing on experience spanning law enforcement, Army aviation, and federal cybersecurity, cut to the heart of this challenge. “There is no one silver bullet. Everything takes an integrated approach. That’s the one thing that we always see when we come back from the battlefield: you can’t just have one big system that’s going to take care of your entire issue,” he said.

For Fedderson, war zones accelerate not just the pace of tactical innovation, but also expose the limitations of compartmentalized, stand-alone technology. Adapting to the commercial airspace means embracing integrated solutions, robust user training and seamless data exchange between diverse systems.The stakes for precision and reliability are far higher when drones operate in proximity to people and property. As Leo McCluskey of Echodyne explained, “In the military space…you can blow things up around it. In the civilian space, you’re not really going to have that luxury. And so how we identify exactly where things are is important.”

Lessons for Organizations

• Plan Deliberately for Integration: Battlefield performance is not a shortcut to commercial readiness. Civil airspace demands cohesive deployment strategies, not just raw capability.
• Invest Heavily in Real-World Training: Hardware excellence is meaningless without operational teams who understand integrated workflows, civil protocols and safety standards.
• Prioritize Interoperability: Stand-alone “hero” devices can’t handle the complexities of national airspace. Success requires layered solutions—sensors, effectors, command-and-control—all communicating and adapting together.
• Bridge the Cultural Divide: The tolerance for risk and collateral damage is dramatically lower in civilian settings. Rigorously test, validate, and adapt systems to ensure precision and accountability before fielding at scale.
• Embrace Collaborative Approaches: As safety expectations and regulatory oversight rise, organizations that foster true partnerships—across vendors, agencies, and sectors—will be best positioned to bridge the gap from concept to compliant, reliable deployment.

The regulatory landscape for drones remains a moving target—especially as battlefield breakthroughs migrate to the civilian sector. Legal and policy requirements shift with evolving threats, accidents and market realities. 

Evan Wolf, a veteran cybersecurity attorney from Crowell Moring with experience advising both government agencies and private enterprise, highlighted a key pitfall. Too often, companies underestimate just how radically the legal and contractual landscape shifts between deals with government agencies and those with commercial customers. “The first thing that we see is that companies don’t understand that there’s a different contractual obligation. You have different contracts,” Wolf explained, warning that both security and privacy requirements can differ not just between public and private sectors, but across state and national boundaries as well.

Overlapping jurisdiction and the piecemeal evolution of regulatory frameworks compounds this complexity. Dan Sennott, partner at Holland and Knight and former staff director for the House Armed Services Committee, pointed to the persistence of policy gridlock. Recent years have seen repeated attempts, many stalled, to update drone laws in the U.S., UK and EU. Inconsistent timelines and jurisdictional patchworks challenge even well-resourced manufacturers and operators. 

The practical result is a regulatory environment in which commercial drone operators must do more than simply comply. They must anticipate. Legal and policy requirements may be introduced, revised or subject to new interpretation at any time, with real consequences for liability, market access and operational permissions.

Lessons for Organizations: 

• Monitor pending legislation and regulatory trends in your operating regions.
• Cultivate relationships with regulators and industry associations to stay in the loop.
• Build flexibility into operational policies. Expect rules to change and test your ability to adapt.
• Develop “policy-ready” documentation and training so new requirements can be rolled out quickly.

As battlefield technology moves into the civilian sector, new risks follow, especially regarding cybersecurity.  Wolf observed, “You operate cool things that move around in the world, but you also have computers that are connected to the Internet.” Adversaries, including highly sophisticated state-sponsored hacking groups, actively search for vulnerabilities. 

The same software vulnerabilities that plague traditional information technology (IT) systems can prove disastrous if exploited in uncrewed vehicles. Sophisticated hacking groups, such as the so-called “Typhoon” cluster that targeted aviation and telecommunications, have already forced agencies like the FAA to reexamine the resilience of their entire digital ecosystem, from field modems to data centers. (See prior AG coverage of Volt Typhoon and other cyber threats here).

The rise of electronic warfare in Ukraine, such as GPS jamming, has forced rapid evolution on both technical and organizational fronts. Sardoch echoed this from his Ukraine work. Technical countermeasures aren’t enough. The real challenge is building new habits of constant software updating, patching and a willingness to overhaul workflows quickly. “Cyber-defense isn’t a product, it’s a process,” he emphasized, a mindset rooted in continuous updates, fast feedback cycles and a willingness to overhaul workflows on the fly.

Integration, once a hardware concern, now extends across the digital supply chain, operational training and inter-system communication. For businesses, this has meant building not just stronger products, but stronger linkages between systems, teams and vendors, all while staying alert to evolving attack vectors and regulatory expectations.

Lessons for Organizations: 

• Prioritize a culture of proactive cybersecurity. Don’t treat software as “set and forget.”
• Integrate real-time updates and vulnerability testing within your drone operations.
• Insist on transparency from vendors regarding their software supply chain and security practices.
• Train personnel across functions—not just IT—in basic cyber hygiene and ongoing vigilance.

A critical yet overlooked impact of the Ukraine conflict is the coming surge of skilled drone professionals into the global workforce. “As soon as the war is done, we’re going to see this proliferation of folks who not only…have retooled to war production…they’ve gone through iteration cycles on wartime productions in the thousands per day,” Sardoch noted. These tech-savvy operators, battle-tested and deeply versed in rapid innovation, represent a tremendous potential boon for the UAV industry worldwide.

But there are also risks. As McCluskey observed, “They’re going to go for the best hire. And that might be in the black market, where all of a sudden now you’ve got non-state actors with increased capabilities around drones.” History shows that highly skilled, conflict-forged expertise may not remain within regulated channels unless proactively recruited and integrated by legitimate organizations. If not, underground markets and malicious actors will seize the opportunity.

Lessons for Organizations: 

• Create efficient, ethical pathways for integrating conflict-zone operators into commercial and research sectors.
• Collaborate with government, academic, and global partners to support professional transition programs.
• Strengthen workforce screening, training, and compliance to preserve a secure, legitimate talent pipeline.

The future of drone innovation and operations will increasingly reflect the lessons learned under fire: relentless iteration, continuous updates, talent-driven advances and nimble compliance.

Drone business leaders must go beyond simply copying military solutions. To truly future-proof operations, they should borrow wartime habits: rapid prototyping, frontline feedback and readiness to overhaul systems as the threat environment evolves. Building teams that combine agility with a commitment to regulatory engagement and cybersecurity will be the foundation of sustainable competitive advantage.

Invest not just in the latest hardware, but in resilient processes, from supply chain integrity to regular software patching, from staff education to flexible compliance systems. The organizations that succeed will be those who embrace change, adapt proactively, and attract top-tier technical talent fueled by global expertise.

In short, future-proofing commercial drone operations is less about battlefield bravado and more about integrating lessons learned, across people, processes and platforms, into a unified and safety-first approach. By adapting these hard-won battlefield insights into their business models, organizations can confidently address over-the-horizon operational challenges, unlock opportunity and minimize risk.

This article was made possible thanks to our Law-Tech Connect Premier Sponsors: Akin (Gold), Holland & Knight (Silver), Crowell Moring (Silver) and GrandSKY (Bronze).