Drone War: Accelerated Evolution In Ukraine
In Ukraine, drones are having the same impact that machine guns did in the early twentieth century. Mainstream military science has a lot of catching up to do. Ukraine is showing the way.
As expected, the Ukraine War shows no sign of cooling down over winter. Muscovite forces have started massive attacks on Ukraine’s power system again, prompting the US to finally let Ukraine use long-range weapons inside russia.
The White House is saying that the presence of North Korean troops on the front line pushed Biden over the edge, but every fall Moscow has hinted at readiness for negotiations before bombing Ukrainian cities yet again. Biden uses that to justify taking the next half-step in properly arming Ukraine, always leaving room to do more, as if this really scares or deters, Putin.
Though the full impact of untying Ukraine’s hands is unclear, as Ukraine might only have a tiny inventory, it won’t be zero. Just having to worry about taking hits will force adaptation.
The orcs also tried to eliminate the Ukrainian forces holding Free Kursk - again - and failed in spectacular fashion - again. No wonder the Ukraine can’t possibly win choir is getting louder. And it isn’t just Putin’s propagandists pushing this line, but a whole lot of Ukraine’s most vocal backers from only two or so years ago.
Just as the American media constructed a false reality where Biden was some brilliant savant (until he wasn’t) and Harris couldn’t possibly lose to Trump (yet she did), many pundits insist that the Ukraine War is at a stalemate or worse. Hard science suggests otherwise, but precious few scientists in the English-speaking world are focused on Ukraine.
Of course, Moscow’s are pretty rotten, unable to get it through Putin’s addled brain that every time Ukrainian cities get bombed the orcs remind people who might otherwise be content to forget the war exists that their lives really are on the line. Serve at the front or get killed by a drone or missile or falling wreckage at home: the hell of being Ukrainian right now is that death is never far away.
More and more people abroad are coming to understand that this may soon be true for them. And not because Ukraine is now allowed to use the small number of high tech missiles it likely has against what is almost certainly a highly restricted set of targets.
No, the true danger lies just around the bend, in a scenario where the powers that be force Ukraine into a ceasefire. This gives Putin time to lock in his gains, declare 2022-2025 to have been a tough but spectacular victory against the might of the united West, rebuild his shattered army, then go for Kyiv again in a few years. And that won’t be the end.
If Putin’s declared and unwitting allies abroad are desperate to slow Ukraine’s march to victory any way they can because the endgame really is in sight. Putin is once again pushing his forces way too hard to maintain the bluff that russia can do this forever, setting himself up for an epic crash in 2025. The last critical pieces of the puzzle need only fall into place while Ukrainian troops hang on and fight smart through winter and spring.
Weekly Overview1
Northern Theater
Ukraine shows no sign of abandoning its current positions in Kursk yet, and with justification: the latest orc wave’s initial attack has been absolutely shattered. The orcs came at the Sudzha salient from north, south, and east, and in each direction walked into a wall of fire and died.
Now, it’s still early days: more than once an orc wave has been thrashed only for the third or fourth or seventh to gain ground. As ever, it’s like watching an algorithm run operations. Assault units of any size all have the same simple mission: get close and dig in. Once enough survivors accumulate, they attack the nearest Ukrainian outpost. The size of each wave varies from a few doomed orcs to a couple hundred riding in one or two dozen armored vehicles, but they’re all just meat.
Defending against this is a matter of firepower and having numerous positions arranged in depth. The enemy is always going to gain some ground - war after war against russia has shown that you’ve got to let it expend the bulk of its strength before punching back. Those who advocate holding positions to the last are doing Putin’s bidding - this robotic thinking is what the Red Army thrives on.
Many Ukrainian commanders have lately been adopting the excellent approach of letting an orc attack wave drive as far as it wants before wiping it out. It always takes a day or two to clear out survivors hiding in basements or bunkers, but the illusion of success can make orc generals throw even more bodies into the trap before they’re suddenly out of troops and have to wait for reinforcements.
To be clear: Ukrainian commanders do make mistakes, sometimes very bad ones. An orc propaganda video was triumphantly posted this week showing a squad of Ukrainian soldiers being wiped out in the Kursk region; it offers compelling evidence of an officer screwing up.
Summing up: an MT-LB troop carrier was packed to the brim with Ukrainian infantry, many riding on top - something that should only happen in an emergency, like a forced retreat under fire where anyone left behind is otherwise doomed. As best as I can tell, this troop carrier was heading towards the front, something you generally only see orcs trying nowadays.
I try to be careful about criticizing how soldiers behave in combat videos, because the pure chaos of a firefight is hard to appreciate unless you’ve been through realistic training (I have) or the real thing (I have not, thank the gods). Knowing who is shooting at you from where is not always easy, no matter how TV makes it look. There are, however, certain basic rhythms that all trained soldiers should be trained to follow without even thinking.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen an orc on a drone video not even try to seek cover in a firefight; even orc propaganda shows most Ukrainians behaving more professionally. Likewise, there are certain practices that no competent commander should ever allow - packing soldiers into troop carriers like sardines is very hazardous in the drone age. Even if nobody did anything wrong in this incident, let the tragedy at least be a teachable moment that prevents a few more like it.
There’s little more to be said about Kursk this week - have to presume heavy fighting is underway. But that there are many reports of orcs refusing orders to attack after seeing comrades’ lives thrown away in droves is a good sign for Ukraine’s defense.
The rest of the Northern Theater has remained little changed, although Moscow seems to be ramping up cross-border sabotage operations. Anything to distract from the debacle in Kursk, I suppose. Kharkiv isn’t looking any better, though ruscist troops still remain on Ukrainian soil.
Eastern Theater
The Eastern Theater is intense right now, despite the worsening weather. The Vuhledar-Velyka Novosilka Front remains the toughest. Moscow continues to evolve operations here along opportunistic lines, pushing Ukraine away from Donetsk city and the vital railway node at Volnovakha. I doubt that this was the plan when the offensive west from Avdiivka began this spring - the present effort to get behind Kurakhove from the north stems from Moscow’s progress towards Pokrovsk being halted.
Success this is not: history will remember it as something approaching the military madness of the Western Front’s dumbest campaigns. 100,000, maybe 200,000 casualties to take 2,000 square kilometers? This is the very definition of Pyrrhic.
Still, a new attack vector to the west of Velyka Novosilka is concerning, as the defense of that town depends on maintaining control of the ridge overlooking its western flank. Ukraine pulled back several kilometers in this area, hopefully avoiding the main power of a ruscist assault. Whether attacks will continue is unclear, but with only territorial guard brigades confirmed in this sector, Ukraine may have to dispatch a heavier formation to reinforce the line.
The fighting on the broader Kurakhove front continues to proceed as expected, Ukrainian brigades slowly withdrawing. The orcs entered the eastern suburbs of Kurakhove and blew up a bridge connecting the district to the rest of the town to hinder any Ukrainian defense. On the north bank of the Vovcha reservoir Ukrainian troops are continuing to pull back towards Shevchenko to evade a flanking attack that 59th Motorized Brigade is holding off at Sontsivka.
South of Kurakhove, 79th Air Assault is now in a very dangerous position, nearly encircled thanks to 33rd Mechanized being pushed back to Dalnie this week. Fortunately the arrival of 37th Marine Brigade on the right flank has kept the orcs from closing in too fast, but I expect both brigades to pull behind Uspenivka soon. Provided that the orcs are held back by 128th Mountain Assault and 113th and 123rd Territorial Brigades along with their attached battalions further west, Ukraine might stabilize the line here for several weeks.
Though it would be entirely reasonable for Ukrainian forces to withdraw from Kurakhove now to reinforce a line from Velyka Novosilka-Kostyantynopil-Pokrovsk, clinging to Kurakhove for as long as possible might be warranted. A major industrial facility and several high rise tower blocks could delay the orcs well into December. This might be necessary to establish an effective defense line farther back.
My sense is that Ukraine will make a determined stand at Velyka Novosilka and Kostyantynopil if pushed that far. At the operational level, it should be much easier to hold the enemy here than at an arc passing through Vuhledar. If the orcs concentrate a major force between the Mokri Yali and Vovcha rivers, that would expose their flank to the exact offensive I’d love to see Ukraine run next summer aimed at Volnovakha, Mariupol, and Rostov-on-Don.
Moving north, the Pokrovsk front has seen plenty of fighting, especially near occupied Selydove, but the scattered orc attempts to advance farther were largely swatted back. Reserves may be concentrating for the next wave of attacks, but every delay should give Ukraine more time to fortify the area.
On the Toretsk front a fairly substantial Ukrainian counterattack appears to have taken place at some point during the past week. The Zabalka suburb just south of the town center was targeted by a Ukrainian attack that lasted a couple days before apparently pulling back. It looks to have been a disruption attempt against the flank of the orcs pushing on Toretsk down its main avenue.
Whatever happened, Toretsk still stands. And the orcs still haven’t cleared a group of towns on the western flank that I was pretty sure this spring Moscow needed to secure before it could hope to seize Toretsk. That theory is holding up pretty well.
The situation in Chasiv Yar may finally be deteriorating, however, with the orcs pushing Ukrainian forces off a slope to the southeast and behind a key canal. That position made it hard for the enemy to sustain their small bridgehead over the canal closer to town, which now appears to be much reinforced. In the coming weeks Moscow will probably try to expand it, either pushing towards Chasiv Yar or trying to get closer to Toretsk from the north.
Ukraine’s hold on Siversk remains secure for the present, and across the Siverski Donets to the north Terny still holds despite strong ruscist pressure. Though the long arc from here to Kupiansk has seemed at risk of serious deterioration in recent weeks, for the most part Moscow’s progress is beyond plodding. The Kupiansk front, like Kharkiv, has apparently been cannibalized of effective reserves.
The area around Berestove is an exception to the general stall, but it was nearly surrounded by prior advances. And ruscist forces made big news when a column pushed all the way into the Kupiansk suburbs down a major road, right through Ukrainian lines that have held for many months. At first it looked like a crisis was in the offing, then the footage of shattered armored vehicles and surrendering orcs revealed that the Ukrainians had let the enemy walk into a trap.
Game, set, match - and a few more for the exchange pool. Well done, 14th Mechanized Brigade and friends! Though I might have to change my tune if it turns out that the orcs actually broke through because Ukrainian troops are exhausted. But there haven’t been any published Ukrainian drone strikes in the area for several days - not the standard pattern after a successful orc push.
Southern Theater
There isn’t much to say about the Southern Theater this week, though an orc officer responsible for missile attacks on civilian target was killed by a car bomb in Crimea. Most of the frontline fighting here is of a skirmishing character, with each side launching a few attacks with rockets and glide bombs far behind the front lines.
Strategic, Air, Sea Theaters.
Obviously, the resumption of massive missile attacks by the orcs is the biggest news this week. Ukraine’s F-16s went to work, knocking down ten targets, which suggests that at least four aircraft were airborne and committed - and nobody went down so far as anyone has reported. I’d put money on Ukraine now operating a small squadron of a dozen aircraft and close to twenty pilots, but operations are so far thankfully opaque so it’s impossible to be sure.
Most of the inbound missiles were shot down, though videos of three cruise missiles reaching a power plant in western Ukraine suggests that there are still major gaps in Ukraine’s defenses. No sign yet of NATO doing as it should and protecting its own airspace by creating an air defense buffer over western Ukraine, and since everyone is pretending that any no-fly zone demands flying aircraft into enemy SAM range, in turn requiring attacks on the enemy air defense network, Ukraine is stuck.
At least license to use long-range missiles inside of russia brings numerous bases and logistics nodes into range:
Given that the remnants of the Black Sea fleet were involved in firing Kalibr cruise missiles from their refuge in Novorossisyk, I have to wonder how far a Ukrainian F-16 flight could make it across the Black Sea undetected, perhaps skirting Turkish airspace. The right anti-ship missiles could knock out the remaining surface vessels. As for submarines, I’m sure Ukraine is working on a drone for that.
Drones: Emergence Of An Ecosystem2
An ecosystem is made up of numerous interacting populations of species. Their relationships are defined by where they derive their motive energy. Each species occupies a niche in a broader ongoing exchange of energy, what scientists call the food web.
A battlefield is a peculiar kind of landscape where extreme rules apply that tend to reveal and destroy inefficient forms of organization. The pressure to survive drives adaptation at every level: individual, team, company, brigade, all the way up to country.
In a very real sense, since Moscow’s all-out invasion began, two Ukrainian defense efforts have run in parallel: one built up a classic army, while the other looked to the future. Ukraine would have lost the war early on if a self-motivated drone army hadn’t risen up to support the people riding to battle in armored vehicles.
Ukraine’s drone warriors have proven their mettle to the point that no effective frontline brigade can do without a company or three - sometimes full battalions. Soon there will be dedicated drone regiments and brigades.
For all the talk about drone swarms and killer robots in the media, the actuality of drone combat in Ukraine has been entirely different than widely anticipated. Teams of people have adapted commercial technology to demonstrate capabilities, leading to mass production of concepts proven on the battlefield. In an astonishing real-time demonstration of industrial development at record speed, Ukraine now churns out around a hundred thousand drones a month, updating their software as often as every few days.
Most military experts failed to see this coming because they’ve been too busy looking at the future of technology from the perspective of defense companies that prefer million-dollar drones with built-in profit margins. Ukrainians have, meanwhile, been demonstrating that people in garages sharing how-to videos can bring a “superpower” to its knees.
While plenty of people have argued that drones would play a major role in the future of warfare over the years, none that I’m aware of foresaw techies who made a living photographic weddings transforming into lethal battlefield killers. But on the road to Kyiv and in cities across Ukraine, hobbyists trying to watch what was happening in their neighborhoods soon noticed that the orcs didn’t have any reliable way to knock them down.
While machine guns are more than a match for most drones, the little Chinese Mavic models are extremely hard to spot amid buildings and trees. The noise they produce is nothing compared to that of a firefight, so Ukrainian civilians soon learned that they could watch combat operations unfold in real time.
Kyiv was defended by a scratch team of territorials and security forces backed by two artillery brigades. In conventional terms, the fifty thousand or so soldiers that Moscow sent at Kyiv should have been an overwhelming force. But unprepared for actual resistance, they tended to bunch up under fire. Ukrainian drone hobbyists started contacting nearby Ukrainian forces to warn them of ambushes or impending attacks. It took no time at all for them to become artillery spotters.
Expensive fixed-wing drones like the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 played an important role too, of course, but their numbers were few. Larger drones are also more vulnerable to missiles, which is why they tend to stay behind the front. Most drone designs developed abroad share the same flaw: if robust enough to survive, they tend to be too expensive to readily lose.
It didn’t take long for Ukrainian forces to start using drones everywhere to handle basic surveillance tasks. But ruscist troops slowly wised up, and powerful electronic warfare systems began to appear which could interrupt the channels used to relay signals between drone and operator.
Whether through broadcasts or wires, to control a drone requires maintaining a signal connection. For most, two separate channels operating on different frequencies are needed, one for control signals, the other for video. Thanks to networks and cheap transmitters, a simple quadcopter drone suitable for basic combat use costs under a thousand US dollars. That’s comparable to the cost of an assault rifle, and an explosive drone is potentially much more accurate while giving the operator much higher survival odds in a fight.
These, however, are extremely vulnerable to either channel being jammed by electronic warfare emitters or even hacked. To prevent this, you’ve either got to use a cable, limiting range and driving up cost, use AI at an even higher price, build in more robust communications gear, use signal repeaters, or attempt some combination.
While a lot of hope has been placed in AI, all it does is analyze lots of signals of some sort to identify valid targets. Computing power is costly, meaning that robots remain a lot more expensive than drones. Certain forms of AI, like image recognition that allows a jammed drone to make a hit once locked onto a target by the operator, are already appearing.
Throughout 2022, Ukrainian developers worked on the many problems facing drone use in a more hostile electromagnetic environment. They were aided by the fact that using electronic warfare will interfere with friendly communications if not coordinated extremely well, meaning that when the orcs were using their drones Ukraine could jump into that fight too.
Putin’s military has long emphasized drones, but for most of 2022 these were used to spot for artillery. They played less of a decisive role during the rapid movement phase of the initial invasion. But for both sides, the situation began to shift in early 2023.
I’ve seen 72nd Mechanized Brigade credited with the first drone drops, but whoever started rigging surveillance models with grenades began a new epoch in frontline combat. Now the old nightmare about shells and bullets having eyes is all too real, drone operators literally hunting down individuals on the battlefield. It’s possible to record the abject terror in the eyes of another human being the instant before their violent demise. There truly is no limit to human ingenuity. Who needs the horror genre when you’ve got real life?
The range of a drone is limited by battery power and enemy electronic warfare, and operators prefer to sit as far from the front as possible for understandable reasons. As a result, and their low cost, simple quadcopter drones have been treated as disposable. Adding a bigger battery and a small explosive charge makes the inevitable demise of a recon drone into an asset. Other payloads, including gas and thermite, can be used. Initially, ranges were restricted to a few kilometers, but repeater drones are extending this to almost twenty.
Within months organized Ukrainian attack drone companies were appearing in brigades with wise commanders, and their arrival was timely, because Moscow had not been idle. The orcs also began turning to attack drones, Lancets deployed first to strike Ukrainian artillery but later directed against any vehicle in sight. Lancets forced substantial adaptation in protecting artillery and bunkers. The orcs also use small first-person drones, but less effectively and in smaller numbers overall, the latest being wire guided to cope with Ukrainian electronic warfare.
Ukraine’s abortive 2023 counteroffensive was not defeated by drones, but Lancets were often used to destroy a damaged and abandoned armored vehicle that otherwise might have been recovered and repaired. Surveillance drones were always nearby to aid orc artillery. Ukrainian drone operations came fully into their own the next winter, when months of interrupted American support forced Ukraine to rely on them.
Moscow around this time also began making extensive use of re-branded Iranian Shahed drones to hit targets in Ukraine. These in truth operate more like small cruise missiles, though some may now have the ability to receive control updates in flight. But the line between drones and cruise missiles is ultimately as fuzzy as the ones separating either from robots.
Starting in early 2023 the drone strike video became one of the most potent symbols of the Ukraine War thanks to their proliferation across the front. While many appeared throughout 2022, there are now thousands of graphic videos online, a significant fraction geolocated by volunteers who can pin down the location of events using only three or four reference points. Moscow got in on the action too, but all in all Moscow is better at mass-producing mid-sized drones than small ones, and they always edit their videos for propaganda effect, at times showing their own troops getting killed.
Heading into early 2024, small first-person attack and bomber drones became a critical mainstay of Ukraine’s defense. Concepts proven in early 2023 were scaled up dramatically thanks mainly to explosive growth in Ukraine’s domestic drone industry. In garages and basements across Ukraine drones are assembled, tested, and shipped to frontline units. Some forward-thinking Ukrainian brigades gathered several drone companies together, forming full-on battalions. Surprisingly, a great deal of the financing, especially early on, came from the private sector and individual donations.
Throughout the war Ukraine has also been experimenting with long-range strike drones. Some as large as light crewed aircraft have slammed into targets well over a thousand kilometers inside russia. And by late summer the new Palianytsia jet-powered strike drone was hitting ammunition depots hundreds of kilometers inside russia with spectacular effect.
And also in 2024 ground drones started to appear, some performing combat missions, more helping with logistics and casualty evacuation. These look set to radically reduce the danger that Ukrainian ground troops have to face in certain situations down the line, though they remain highly vulnerable to their airborne counterparts. Ukraine’s success with naval drones has also been critical, helping push the Black Sea Fleet into refuge and lifting the orc blockade of Ukraine’s coast.
But around the middle of 2024 Ukraine’s drone fight made another dramatic evolutionary leap. Facing the threat of ruscist surveillance drones always calling down fire up to a hundred kilometers behind the front lines Ukrainian innovators finally managed to build small quadcopter drones fast enough to chase down ruscist fixed-wing models. The era of the interceptor drone has begun.
I suspect this will soon begin to radically transform airpower at the lower to middle altitudes. The appearance of large numbers of cheap decoy drones, some built out of simple cardboard, suggests that traditional air defenses will not be able to cope. Just as during the Second World War thousands of pilots were churned out and put into cockpits to safeguard the skies alongside flak gunners, soon interceptor drone operators will be in high demand, replacing crewed jet aircraft in many local air defense roles.
Though the aerial drone ecosystem will absolutely continue to evolve, the cost of added capabilities like range and electronic warfare resistance has created several size-based niches. For simplicity, I call them Copter, Midsize, and Heavy.
Copter drones cover pretty much everything used in a tactical sense, that is, very close to the front lines. They’re not very efficient in aerodynamic terms and have limited payloads, but even a hand grenade is often enough. All presently require direct user control because AI capabilities are still costly, though some are beginning to incorporate image recognition to defeat electronic warfare. And when it comes to AI, the heat produced by advanced ships is a serious concern if you want a drone to survive for very long.
Wire guidance has been proven viable by a couple orc units, though fiber-optic wires are relatively costly and break if struck. A spool on a drone appears to allow them to move around corners with a range of several kilometers, and there are now videos of them hunting US-made Abrams tanks, though the one I watched geolocated in Kursk would have only inflicted superficial damage now that Ukrainians have adequately protected the rear turret area.
However controlled, smaller copters are basically disposable, often made from very cheap materials with Ukraine no longer totally dependent on China for components parts. Ones that drop payloads, however, are often brought back and re-used, so those may justify electronics resistant to electronic warfare. The Baba Yaga drone, a converted agricultural model, is big enough to carry heavier thermal or night vision cameras and multiple projectiles. Soon anti-tank rocket launchers and machine guns will become common, battlefield scouting done almost entirely remotely.
The long-term future of copter drones, however, is somewhat murky. Eventually widespread deployment of active protection systems on armored vehicles will let them shoot down incoming drones. These usually employ a kind of shotgun to knock down or detonate a projectile at a safe distance, so are tricky to employ when infantry are around, but it’s when on the move that vehicles are getting immobilized by attack drones.
Even fire teams of four to six soldiers will gain a degree of protection in the future as digital sights are integrated with shotguns that can hit a drone hovering fifty meters overhead. Rifles should become compatible in time, giving infantry teams out of cover a fighting chance against small drones.
Fortunately for Ukraine, Moscow appears nowhere close to fielding defenses like these on a wide basis. Most active protection systems rely on radar, which makes them easy to detect when in use. And even ones that employ optical tracking with image recognition are no panacea, as numbers matter and copter drones are inexpensive enough that even a hundred are more than worth a single tank. Operators are the limiting variable.
So for a long time to come - and even then wherever strong hard-kill defenses aren’t available - copter drones will remain deadly tools. And the ability to string a small drone up over a vehicle or fighting position using a wire will come in handy when you want to remain unobserved. My standing view is that a major political assassination using a wire guided drone (or ten) is a matter of time. The U.S. Secret Service really ought to contract with me…
Jumping to the other end of the drone spectrum, heavy drones have also been evolving fast. Of course, these are often difficult to differentiate from cruise missiles or even crewed aircraft, as there isn’t a fundamental difference in terms of their function. High-end cruise missiles are true robots, and using formerly crewed aircraft as drone targets has been done for close to a century.
Iran’s Shaheds are, at the end of the day, cheap cruise missiles. Prop engines are relatively inexpensive, and their construction makes them hard to pick up on radars. The slow speed further confuses ones that rely on the Doppler effect, so Ukraine uses ground based acoustic sensors in a network. Ukraine’s new Paliantysia jet drone is also a miniature cruise missile, set to be joined by hundreds of more expensive strike drones that are like a smaller version of the vaunted German Taurus.
The Bayraktar TB2 style of drone is still used, just not close to the front. Reusable heavy drones face the same challenge as crewed aircraft, and while not as bad to lose, they just aren’t available in large volumes because of the cost.
Cheap strike drones, however, are set to become a serious challenge to national security everywhere. They can find the nooks and crannies in air defense networks and will eventually be able to talk to each other, receiving updated targeting instructions from controllers mid-flight. That will lead to a scenario where the threat of drone attack becomes omnipresent, everywhere. To that there is only one cost-effective solution: drone interceptors.
Midsize drones are an emerging niche produced by the need to strike juicy battlefield targets in real time. Models like the orc Lancet have been a serious problem for Ukraine for a year and a half. Moscow has also been an early adopter of relatively small fixed-wing semi-reusable drones like the Orlan, Zala, and Supercam. These fly too high up to easily shoot down from the ground with small arms fire and are too inexpensive to waste air defense missiles on. But they play a vital role in the orc military system by allowing officers far from the front to direct the lesser orcs as if in a video game.
On the whole, Ukraine has lagged in the development of midsize drones because most Ukrainian drone innovation aside from strike drone development has been done at the grassroots level. Bigger and more complex drones generally need more substantial capital investment.
But Moscow’s ability to scale up production of both the larger Shahed as well as smaller and even cheaper midsized decoys represents a serious threat. It is incredibly inefficient to have Ukraine’s limited numbers of F-16s and even Soviet era fighters running drone intercept sorties as it is.
The solution, foreshadowed by the high-end interceptor quadcopters that have begun knocking down ruscist recon drones, are midsized fixed-wing drone interceptors. These can be crudely split into two general categories: reusable and disposable.
Disposable interceptor drones will be more like a heavy drone optimized for short range and higher payload. Their role will be to act as simple boosters for traditional air defense missiles like the AIM-9 Sidewinder, the carrier platform flying up to a hundred kilometers into ruscist airspace at very low altitude, guided to terminal intercept by AWACS jets flying hundreds of kilometers away. The goal will be to create a kind of aerial minefield that orc jets carrying glide bombs have to cross to reach their launch points too often to sustain operations.
Reusable interceptor drones, on the other hand, will be mid-sized affairs intended to reach a preset altitude then wait to dive on Shahed or Zala type targets and hit them with a small laser-guided rocket or burst of gunfire. They can then deploy a parachute to come down to the ground for repair and recovery.
For many years to come, I strongly suspect that ground-based operators controlling midsized interceptor drones like these will be the optimal solution to the threat posed by hostile strike drones attacking behind the front line Eventually, these will be networked to act like true swarms, each drone flying independently on a course that is periodically updated whenever a signal can get through hostile jamming and percolate across the swarm. In the final stage of an attack, all an operator sitting on the other side of the world will have to do is get a signal through to one member of the swarm to tell it where to fly and what to attack. Interceptor operators will have to hunt them down.
This is getting long, so I’ll wrap here - I’m sure I’ll write more about drones in the future. It’s going to be a very interesting decade if global conflicts aren’t brought under control soon. All hope of that depends on ending Putin’s imperial project in Ukraine.
Strategic Brief3
America and Ukraine
American politics this past week with respect to Ukraine was, until Biden finally authorized ATACMS use in russia, dominated by speculation over what Trump’s cabinet picks may entail. As someone who has studied American politics for a long time, the game is painfully familiar. Trump is rewarding loyalists who will soon be pitted against each other. Democrats will wail and moan about how dangerous and unqualified the lot are. All shall be duly entertained while the real damage is done behind the scenes.
It is amusing to see just how fast the turn has been among the those who spent three years insisting that Biden was brilliant and amazing. First he flubbed it on stage and made them look like idiots, then they blundered about for a few months touting Harris’ appeal to wealthy suburbanite “brats” as evidence of how they couldn’t possibly fail this time.
As predicted, losing has led to most swiftly backpedaling from their prior rhetoric about fascism. Welcome to Vichy America, where Trump actually turning out fewer voters than he did in 2020 is billed as a landslide victory. With the count nearly done, Trump’s margin wound up being less than three million voters - Harris won the West Coast by a margin of about four million - with a 400,000 vote margin across three swing states keeping her from the White House.
I feel really bad for the young people who get taught in civics class that this nonsense constitutes democracy. Hell, it doesn’t even truly respect the U.S. Constitution. The document that military personnel swear an oath to uphold and defend now means, to the average partisan, whatever their team’s authorities say. Don’t tell me that isn’t dangerous.
Anyway, there is absolutely no correlation between Trump’s cabinet picks and his administration’s Ukraine policy. None. Trump’s decision will ultimately depend on what he thinks will most benefit his personal brand. Just like all American leaders.
Ukraine and Europe
Naturally, uncertainty about the stability of the US-Europe relationship as America turns more protectionist and self-destructive is driving major changes. In truth, most were already long underway, the delusions of American leaders fully apparent since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. This is the true root cause of the collapse of the Postwar Order, the moment when all countries that any leader in the US ever referred to as an enemy knew they had better prepare for the worst. China’s growing military power and Putin’s wars are both directly linked to Iraq.
Europe’s adaptation was glacial until Putin marched on Kyiv; then it took a couple years to mobilize. The process is now underway, generally going much faster than in the margin-obsessed USA.
While there is much to criticize about sanctions, not least the steady flow of microchips to orc factories through third countries like Kazakhstan and (NATO member!) Turkey, in general Moscow’s lack of free access to international capital markets is steadily generating massive wave of internal inflation. Dedicating over ten percent of GDP to the war effort only amplifies the macroeconomic effect.
This won’t end well for Moscow. Economic collapse could easily drive the Kremlin to further misadventures if Putin is given a breather - another reason to ensure it coincides with a severe military defeat.
Speaking of Europe, major shout out to the French for training and equipping a complete Ukrainian brigade this fall. 155th Mechanized, named Anne of Kyiv after a medieval Kyivan noble who became a French queen, will soon demonstrate its mettle in battle. Best of luck, all - and to those in the rest of the new brigades steadily entering the fight.
I’ve been advocating that the US do this ten times over for years. Guess I owe France an apology for many decades of being one of those Americans who always made jokes about the French propensity to surrender.
Now do another brigade, France - and Britain too. Scandinavia should be able to train and equip another. Perhaps the Dutch can make the Germans get on board for another. Italy, Spain, you guys used to do the war thing all the time - the weight of history demands that you jointly provide a fifth. Five brigades training at once over a period of 10 weeks comes out to fifteen by the summer of 2025. Since South Korea can deliver within weeks of an order, it’s high time to get the rest of NATO to offer up its armored vehicle stocks.
Oh, and Gavin Newsom of California, your presidential ambitions will be well served by getting the other West Coast governors to pursue a collective foreign policy agenda to the degree Constitutionally allowed - including sending aid to Ukraine and training Ukrainians here using the National Guard. Your position should be that the US federal government has effectively collapsed, so it’s up to regional groupings of states to find a way forward.
Any US military officers who depart the armed forces in the coming months are welcome to get in touch about building a West Coast Defense Force. Don’t worry, it’s not a paramilitary group, just a non-profit organization committed to the defense of folks’ Constitutional rights here on the West Coast. They’re mainly threatened by natural hazards sure to be worsened by a dysfunctional federal government.
Middle East
The Middle East remains a dismal tragedy. Thankfully Israel and Iran appear to have called it even after their last major exchange. Israel is bogged down in both Gaza and southern Lebanon, though advancing more in the latter lately. Hezbollah is still launching regular rocket barrages and Hamas joins in from time to time along with the Houthis, while Israeli airstrikes across sovereign Lebanese territory continue.
Netanyahu now has a strong incentive to maintain this violent status quo until Trump takes office, at which point he only has to wait for an incident that harms US personnel to push Trump into a war with Iran. So: all is as Putin could hope for on that front.
Pacific
Little of note is happening in the Pacific other than the naval displays that happen all the time nowadays. China recently sent both of its fully-operational carriers, Liaoning and Shandong, on joint exercises for the first time. Beijing presently seems content to remind everyone that it can maintain two or three naval task groups east of Taiwan that are roughly equivalent in strength to US Navy carrier battle groups when factoring in China’s land based assets. A lovely little dagger at Taipei’s throat. Japan and South Korea are meanwhile wondering how to best counter North Korea’s moves.
The US finally got the Washington out to replace Reagan, compensating for Lincoln still boating around in CENTCOM’s zone. It annoys me that a US carrier group is not permanently on patrol off Kamchatka these days, but at least Truman is doing some NATO exercises by Norway over near the ruscist empire’s European flank. France is reportedly sending its lone carrier Charles de Gaulle out to the Pacific for exercises soon, which I guess I should welcome now that the USA might do what France did during the presidency of their flagship’s namesake and withdraw from NATO unified command.
Conclusion
Wars like the one Putin unleashed on Ukraine have a way of slowly spreading and pulling in other conflicts. Contemporary historians have done a terrible disservice to scientific understanding of why the world is the way it is by portraying wars as having defined start and end dates. The assassination of an Austrian royal in Sarajevo and Hitler rolling over the Polish border twenty-five years later were both just notable moments in a broader collapse.
The World Wars were periods of chaotic disorder where raw power decided who would create what order would follow. North Korea joining the Ukraine War as a belligerent is only the first international escalation of its kind: the war in the Middle East is part of the drama too, Netanyahu Putin’s effective partner in driving a massive power shift.
As in both World Wars, leaders don’t realize the traps they’re walking into until it’s too late. In the end, Putin’s regime is going to fall, and if Beijing decides to play empire, it will destroy itself too. That’s the cycle of history - when the collapse begins, the best thing to do is speed it along.
So let the ATACMS and hopefully Storm Shadow and SCALP missiles fly, Ukraine! If you’re a civilian living within a few hundred kilometers of the international border, especially Bryansk, Kursk, Voronezh, and Rostov-on-Don, now is a good time to reinforce your windows and stay indoors at night. You’ll experience the Crimea treatment very soon.
For the record, like old Gandalf, I pity my enemy’s slaves. But if one of them won’t fly a killer drone through Putin’s bedroom window, someone else has to, for the sake of us all.
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