Cheap drones and missiles have transformed critical energy infrastructure into prime military targets. From Ukraine to the Strait of Hormuz, modern conflicts are reshaping how governments and energy companies think about resilience, infrastructure design, and national security.
The rise of drones has exposed new vulnerabilities in energy infrastructure
The relationship between drones and energy is forcing governments and industry leaders to rethink energy security. Modern warfare, increasingly driven by low-cost drones and missiles, has made critical infrastructure far more vulnerable than in previous conflicts. Oil pipelines, gas pipelines, refineries, LNG terminals, and power facilities are fixed, well-known assets that can be identified and targeted with relative ease. The 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines demonstrated how vulnerable strategic energy infrastructure can be.
Ukraine shows how drones can disrupt energy systems
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Russia has relied extensively on drones to strike the country’s energy infrastructure. Ukraine has responded with its own campaign targeting Russian power plants, fuel depots, oil refineries, and other strategic energy assets.
By attacking Russian energy infrastructure, Kyiv has demonstrated its growing long-range drone capabilities. Ukrainian drones have repeatedly struck refineries, fuel storage facilities, and industrial energy sites deep inside Russian territory, disrupting fuel supplies and proving that strategic infrastructure remains vulnerable even hundreds of miles from the front lines.
Iran and the Strait of Hormuz highlight the power of asymmetric warfare
Since late February 2026, Iran has repeatedly used drones and other asymmetric tactics to disrupt maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. These operations have demonstrated that closing one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints does not necessarily require overwhelming naval superiority.
Instead, drones costing only hundreds or, at most, a few thousand dollars have been capable of disrupting shipping operations and threatening global energy flows.
Iranian forces have shown the ability to strike targets across the Persian Gulf. Perhaps the most important lesson from these attacks is that inexpensive drones and missiles can overwhelm traditional air defense systems. Conventional anti-aircraft and missile defense systems are extremely expensive and can be defeated through saturation attacks, overwhelming defenses with enough incoming drones or missiles that not all can be intercepted.
Even a handful of successful strikes can disable a critical facility. Protecting these assets increasingly requires physical defenses, such as anti-drone barriers, although these remain ineffective against missiles, as well as fixed electronic warfare and jamming systems capable of disrupting drone guidance.
Expanding pipelines also expands the threat
Oil and gas pipelines are particularly difficult to defend against asymmetric threats because they are fixed assets stretching across vast territories. They are also significantly more expensive and time-consuming to repair once seriously damaged.
Several Gulf countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq, are developing alternative export routes to reduce their dependence on the Strait of Hormuz. However, as multiple analyses, including reporting by Reuters, have noted, expanding overland energy corridors also increases the number of vulnerable targets, exposing additional infrastructure to potential attacks.
Smaller, distributed energy systems may prove more resilient
One emerging strategy is to make energy systems more mobile, modular, and replaceable.
Tatiana Mitrova, a researcher at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, told Axios that energy infrastructure planning should be fundamentally reconsidered. More distributed energy systems may involve higher costs, but they also improve resilience.
Following repeated Russian attacks on its electricity grid, Ukraine has increasingly relied on locally available and more easily deployable energy resources. Decentralized solar power, for example, is inherently more resilient because widespread distributed generation can continue operating even when parts of the grid are disabled.
“For many decades, throughout the last century, the guiding principle was geographic concentration and economies of scale,” Mitrova said. “Today, however, the larger the target, the greater the damage an adversary can inflict. That makes modular, smaller-scale infrastructure, which is faster and less expensive to build and relocate, significantly more valuable.”
Why drones and energy require a new approach to energy security
The drone revolution is already triggering a defensive revolution
The Modern War Institute’s analysis, The Drone Revolution That Isn’t, argues that drones require massive industrial ecosystems, experience extremely high attrition rates, and are already facing an emerging counterrevolution driven by electronic warfare and increasingly sophisticated jamming technologies.
Even so, NATO members have acknowledged the scale of the challenge by announcing plans to invest $40 billion in counter-drone capabilities over the next five years.
The growing asymmetry between inexpensive offensive weapons and multibillion-dollar energy infrastructure demands a fundamental shift in energy security strategy.
Three priorities for protecting critical energy infrastructure
Distributed energy systems and microgrids
In regions exposed to military conflict or hybrid threats, highly centralized energy systems have become a strategic vulnerability. If a single large facility is disabled, entire regions can lose electricity or fuel supplies. Distributed energy systems and local microgrids help contain disruptions, allowing the rest of the network to continue operating even when individual assets are damaged.
Hardening critical infrastructure
Some strategic assets, including large power plants and major transmission hubs, cannot realistically be decentralized. These facilities require stronger physical protection through blast walls, reinforced barriers, protective cages around high-voltage transformers, and the relocation of critical control systems underground to reduce exposure to aerial attacks and surveillance.
Closer cooperation between the military and the energy sector
Recent conflicts have repeatedly demonstrated that protecting energy infrastructure is now a matter of national security. Governments, armed forces, utilities, and private energy companies should integrate both active and passive defense systems into infrastructure planning from the earliest stages of project development.
