Ukraine's Drone Fight: The Necessity Of A Separate Drone Branch
Trying to integrate drones into units by having a designated specialist assigned to each team is a mistake. An important lesson from Ukraine's fight is the need for specialist drone teams
The latest escalation in Putin’s ongoing terror campaign against Ukrainian civilians has once again provoked the opposite response that Putin intended. All of a sudden American aid to Ukraine is flowing again - even slated to increase. Finally.
Naturally, all is not as it seems. Anyone hoping that Trump has seen the light because of his wife’s sensibilities is grasping. He’s finally got to where I always expected him to be in mid-2025, but only after sabotaging his own bargaining position at every turn on the way. This is the essential quality of American leadership now. Sorry to those who feel personally attached to American power, but the road is only getting rougher for fans from here. If you’ve never seen the satirical death metal comedy cartoon Metalocalypse, you ought to. It got more right about American culture than any high-brow entertainment.
Everything will be metal. Everything already is metal. Sorry, what’s a Taylor Swift again? Some sort of fast fashion brand? Must use that special leather.
As for myself, I’ve watched D.C betray its own people, veterans especially, for all my life. What’s coming is exactly what the fools running things back east deserve. Grab what you can from the wreckage, folks, because everyone else certainly will.
For why Trump only just now woke up to recognize that Putin was playing him, look no further than the November 2026 midterm season now fast approaching thanks to the USA’s endless partisan war. Keeping the fragile, razor-thin Republican coalition together is necessary for Trump to avoid being a complete lame duck come 2027. So perhaps Team Trump aims to set a trap for the Democrats by luring them into opposing a Ukraine aid bill in Congress that gets loaded with partisan poison pills. Or maybe Trump finally realized how badly the tough-guy image he’s so desperate to cultivate is hit by kowtowing to Putin.
Whatever causal factors prompted Trump’s latest public zig-zag on Ukraine policy, for now aid flows have been restored and ten billion dollars worth of military support is supposedly queued up for delivery to Ukraine through NATO, once the Europeans front the cash. As anticipated, though his mental state after nearly dying a year ago definitely threw a spanner in the works, Trump was unable to fully align with Putin as much as Hegseth, Gabbard, and the other orc-lovers on his team might dream of pulling a reverse Nixon.
Of course, after zigging in one direction Trump pretty reliably zags again within a few weeks, so I expect at some point for him to accuse Zelensky of being an authoritarian warmonger. Still, Trump’s hands are largely tied by the fact that Putin simply can’t help but respond to every attempt at diplomacy by taking out his frustration at his troops inability to win on the ground and killing Ukrainian civilians at random.
The sole military purpose of the hundreds of Shahed drones now launched at Ukraine every few nights is to threaten so many civilians that Ukraine is unable to concentrate on the less numerous but more deadly Iskander and Kinzhal missiles. Otherwise, it’s all about making Ukraine seem uninhabitable. It’s yet another episode of history rhyming: the Nazis also turned to pure terror tactics in the Battle of Britain in a doomed bid to stretch British defenders so they couldn’t properly protect factories and airfields and hopefully convince them to give up working for the war effort.
It didn’t work then, and won’t work now, for the same core reason. As dangerous as these attacks are to civilians caught out of shelter, they represent a diversion of ever-precious combat power from the real task of defeating the enemy’s armed forces. Same truth held when Britain returned the favor by burning cities in Germany. Whatever flickers of resistance to the government may be emerging during wartime, the moment people feel that they have no choice but to rely on it for protection, most resistance dies.
One of those dark truths about Allied strategy and conduct during the Second World War that historians don’t much talk about is how many lives were thrown away between 1943 and 1945 despite the outcome of the conflict being a foregone conclusion. In time, the Axis Powers were doomed to isolation and defeat because their economic potential was barely sufficient to hold what they’d already seized against chronic resistance.
But to hold the unholy alliance between the Soviet Union and Western Allies together, military action on all fronts had to escalate. To prevent the Soviets from agreeing to a separate peace with Hitler once Stalingrad and Kursk proved that Hitler’s war machine had peaked and could never hope to reach Moscow, the Western Allies had to prove they were committed to the war effort by bombing Germany and opening a second front. First they tried Italy, but that didn’t divert enough German combat power away from the Eastern Front to meet Stalin’s demands. The return to France at Normandy very nearly failed despite all preparations, but had to happen in 1944 to coincide with a series of all-out Soviet offensives on the Eastern Front.
The strategic imperative to show that the Allies were taking pressure off the Soviets made the destruction of as much German combat potential behind the front lines essential. All that Putinist rubbish about the Soviets beating the Nazis basically single-handedly (and being able to repeat the feat now) is a thin cover for the simple fact that the Soviet Union would have lost without having so much material support from the Western Allies. Stalin got to conquer half of Europe in 1945 because up to half of Berlin’s strength had to hold the western and home fronts.
There is every reason to believe that the Second World War might have been effectively frozen in 1943 while everyone armed up ahead of the inevitable resumption of hostilities. Such a freeze would have been fatal for the Axis Powers in short order. Without the ability to use ongoing Allied urban bombing campaigns and the demand for Germany’s unconditional surrender and submission full occupation to justify the lie that the Nazis were the only hope of the German people, Hitler’s regime would soon have faced extreme instability. A huge proportion of military production was done in occupied territories, many hosting active resistance movements. The more these were covertly supported by the watchful Allies, the more damage would have been done to the overmatched German war economy. Couple that to rapid technological advances that neither Germany nor Japan were able to keep up with and the next phase of hostilities after the pause could easily have resulted in a rapid Axis collapse. Same outcome, fewer deaths.
Obviously, this is only one possible scenario, and maybe things would have actually turned out a lot worse. Yet whatever the most likely outcome, once the war was won the victors created a mythology around their triumph that obscured just how ineptly they actually fought. The calamitous parade of pathological diplomatic errors that actually made the war happen when and even how it did is a whole other story.
Ukraine has managed to avoid repeating the mistake of targeting Muscovite civilians, no matter how justified the urge for revenge might be. Instead, it is Putin who has relentlessly proven his willingness to inflict civilian casualties, and in so doing forced the hands of leaders who would otherwise make excuses for the coward.
Putin’s overriding objective these days is simply to make the war look so dirty that outsiders turn away and demand it end immediately regardless of the consequences to Ukraine. He can’t win without a miracle, so to make it easier for people like Trump to cloak themselves in rhetoric like I just want to stop the killing he murders civilians. This is partly a way to punish Ukrainians for resisting and make Putin’s Soviet-nostalgic base feel big and strong, but it’s also meant to enable so-called “peacemakers” to push Ukraine into accepting a bad deal to end the pain.
What Putin always underestimates is the capacity of those his power threatens to organize and resist. Seeing wanton destruction inflicted by one side while the other refrains from replying in kind generates sympathy for the victim. That makes it much more difficult for leaders in countries that could be attacked by Moscow one day to push the problem under the rug. Even Trump is swayed by public opinion.
So despite all the eye-rolling ineptitude that has defined Team Trump’s Ukraine policy the past six months, Trump couldn’t quite betray Ukraine, though he did his very best to sabotage himself. Now that the media has been nice to him for giving them an advertiser-friendly spectacle in Iran, he’s rolling with the good feelings by conforming for a while on Ukraine.
How long will this turn last? Who knows? Who cares! Anyone who matters has already priced in Trump’s potential moves and is ready to respond either way. There’s no other viable explanation for how quickly countries across the world are finally reacting to Trump the way they should have in 2017. Small wonder Trump goes after the EU as intensively as China. The MAGA movement has written its own obituary, probably reduced to bombing cartels in Mexico after surrendering to China in a couple years, once the U.S. armed forces are sent into a devastating ambush executed by China somewhere in the western Pacific.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine the war drags on. And the past few weeks have definitely proved that it’s entered another new phase, one where getting the drone fight right will prove decisive. Drones are opening up new avenues for both sides, and the ability to rapidly field comprehensive networked anti-drone systems at scale is one of those areas which is bound to set apart fading powers from rising ones across the globe.
The second part of this week’s brief will delve a bit into how the Ukraine war is illustrating the need for drones to be handled by a distinct branch of the armed forces. NATO practices at the moment are trending towards integrating drones with teams in the field by having a fire team or squad member designated to handle their operation. This is almost certainly a mistake, as the complexity of effective drone operations in the face of rapid enemy adaptation necessitates a workload that doesn’t easily overlap with that of a line soldier.
I’ll also give a scientific overview of the key reasons why the US in particular is bound to find it very difficult to properly employ drones to their full potential. It’s all about decaying institutions no longer performing their expected function - starting with academia and flowing down from there.
In the third part I’ll touch a bit more on Team Trump’s latest political maneuvers. The first is the standard update on the fronts, with the past week offering a split-screen view of several Ukrainian sectors where the line is holding, and a couple where it is not.
Overview of the Fronts: Week 28
There is rising chatter about a(nother) new Muscovite offensive, but so far there’s been no sign of any real change in Putin’s plans of late. There are, however, strong indications that his overall strategy in Ukraine has been substantially altered by realities on the ground.
Actually taking large towns, much less small cities on the scale of Sloviansk or Kramatorsk, it very likely too much for the orcs at this point. The effort it took to storm most of Toretsk and Chasiv Yar, a process that only left the ruins a hunting ground for Ukrainian drones, does not bode well for the far larger urban assaults Moscow would have to wage.
Instead, the orcs are down to taking whatever ground is easiest to get at, aiming over time to bring important frontline towns within drone range on multiple flanks. Putin intends to make life in these areas uninhabitable, footage of ruins broadcast to the rest of the world. Once enough is destroyed, he imagines, Ukraine will be induced to give up devastated areas in negotiations. Putin can spin this as a triumph over all of NATO, setting the stage for an even more catastrophic war against Europe.
Once strategy devolves into doing stuff because action equals winning, you’re done for. It’s like Hitler ordering grand offensives in late 1944 and even 1945 that stood close to zero chance of success. The ability to perceive what actions really matter gets lost: a fatal development when resources are limited. And as analysts who monitor satellite data keep on reporting, the old Soviet cupboards are just about bare.
In complex systems, it’s unusual for a single factor to independently trigger systemic collapse. But the more switches flip against you, the more intense the feedback loops usually become, and the greater the odds grow of things running off the rails. Putin has already lost his ability to throw numerous dense armored punches at the Ukrainians, which while costly and usually unsuccessful, still created problems that some Ukrainian teams at the front weren’t prepared to solve, forcing them to retreat. Glide bombs that the orcs need to clear Ukrainian positions are no longer nearly as accurate, and the jets that carry them have to drop at maximum range to avoid getting plinked by a Patriot, Aster, or even AMRAAM fired by a low-flying Viper twenty klicks on the Ukrainian side of the front line.
Those Lancet drones that the orcs need to neutralize Ukrainian armored vehicles can now be shot down by interceptors. Though Moscow is making good use of fiber-optic first person drones, especially as mobile land mines laying in wait along logistics routes, Ukraine is rolling out new fragmenting rifle ammunition and training in hitting moving aerial targets. Ground drones are beginning to arrive at the front in force, assisting with logistics and medical evacuation, sometimes carrying heavy explosives right up to enemy dugouts. The Ukrainians long ago gained effective superiority in artillery, despite having fewer shells to use than the orcs, thanks to the superior accuracy and range of 155mm howitzers and HIMARS/MLRS.
What remains unclear is whether Ukrainian leadership has the necessary skills to effectively take advantage. High hopes have been placed on the corps transition now entering its final phase, and rightly so. But there are no guarantees. Substantial distrust between higher and lower level commanders remains, with old military hands still actively resisting the shift to a results-oriented environment. One of the oldest stories in the world, that one. Along with the one where an eager newbie full of ideas accidentally blows up something that was working just fine before they meddled in what they didn’t understand. How to tell which story you’re in is the real trick.
Commander of the First Army Corps Denys Prokopenko, a formation that has defied all expectations down on the Toresk front since before it was even an official entity, is one of those with a gift for eloquence and a clear view of what lies ahead. His excellent piece in Ukrainska Pravda this week tells it like it is: the Third World War is upon us. Ukraine is already fighting it, and everyone else will soon know what it’s like.
Lots and lots of drones will be involved, and not even American civilians will be safe in the coming world. Nor will having a nuclear arsenal much matter. Nobody is going nuclear because drones fired from a submarine off California struck Area 51 in Nevada. Or even if they instead bombed suburbs across Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. But homes may still be damaged by falling wreckage even if not directly targeted. With the range of strike drones now exceeding two thousand kilometers, and such things being easily smuggled across the vast, densely forested, functionally impossible to police US-Canadian border, not even the flyover states are truly safe.
The good news is this, if a seeming paradox: as dozens of self-starting fighting groups in Ukraine have demonstrated, states and governments field forces less able to adapt and compete than ones held together by simple scientific principles and a bond of trust rooted in a common mission. War always brings out the worst in humanity - but the best too. And the best tends to be really, really amazing, to the point it usually outweighs the bad. It’s the survivors of the miserable conflicts which ended the previous era who codify the rules that often make the next one a bit less bad.
In Ukraine, anyone can witness our common future if global conflicts are not brought under control. While Ukrainian fighters are still working wonders, it remains true that they shouldn’t have to. And statistically, in a war of this size, stuff will go wrong even when everybody does everything right.
Northern Theater
On the Sumy front, Ukrainian forces on the western edge of the Muscovite incursion have been launching effective counterattacks for over a week, with reports published by Centre for Defence Strategies suggesting a far more dire situation for the enemy than open source maps indicate. Several orc companies are supposed to be effectively surrounded on the western edge of the enemy penetration into Sumy.
Ukrainian assaults continue to tighten the noose around Tyotkino, and Ukrainian forces definitely want to make orc command worry about a major counteroffensive towards Glushkovo. But Muscovite troops are still making some progress near Yunakivka, threatening their own breakthrough to the forested high ground north of Sumy that has clearly been their primary objective since the Sumy incursion began.
That’s the story of Putin’s war, now: unable to achieve an operational encirclement on any front, all Putin’s orcs can manage is throwing endless punches at Ukraine’s drone wall. Some gain a bit of ground, which is then consolidated to make reclaiming it too bloody to be worth it. That “progress” is then used to justify the tired claim that Moscow is on the march. I mean technically, sure, but someone on crutches who heads west from the Pacific ocean is also technically hiking to the Atlantic. And yes, I meant west, not east. The analogy is more correct.
All this approach can hope to accomplish in a strategic sense in the best-case scenario is seizing some buffer areas that make sure nothing like Kursk happens again. The magnitude of the strategic defeat that Kursk inflicted on Moscow is visible in Moscow refusing to shift forces to any number of alternative fronts. Sumy is not a particularly easy place for Moscow to advance. The attempt is being made for political, not military, reasons.
Over in Kharkiv, a similar orc effort to establish a buffer is underway. There’s been another sustained uptick in assaults near Vovchansk even as the enemy continues the new push across the border at Milove that began last week. This looks meant to shield against the very real risk of a surprise Ukrainian attack towards the big ruscist base north of Valuyki, as well as threaten the rear of the Ukrainian defenses along the Oskil and northern Vovcha.
A year or so ago, this move would have been a lot more concerning, as it would have paired well with the assault on Vovchansk. Now, it’s only surprising that Moscow didn’t try it sooner. The Ukrainians are bound to be hoarding resources for counteroffensive operations later this year - media signals are being sent which suggest that preparations are underway.
Still, the last thing Ukrainian command needs right now is more demands on scarce assets. So a serious ruscist commitment here might be problematic, especially given the danger it would pose to the Vovchansk and Kupiansk areas. However, Moscow’s progress remains tentative, and whether the orcs can push more than about five kilometers into Ukraine at any point before hitting a solid defense line is most uncertain. The attempt could even lead to exactly what Moscow fears most in this area: a steady influx of Ukrainian reinforcements that turns into a counteroffensive which pushes over the border.
One factor makes another big push onto Muscovite home turf unlikely: the presence of growing numbers of North Korean troops. They will probably bolster the conscripts Moscow employs to screen the border in less dangerous areas. Calling in North Korean aid was a major humiliation for Putin and boon to Kim Jong Un, who may well come away from this believing that his surviving soldiers are now battle-hardened enough to try something dumb against South Korea. But he probably doesn’t want to see them constantly thrown away in assaults down in occupied Ukraine.
Eastern Theater
On the Kupiansk front, Muscovite troops are still slowly trying to firm up their bridgehead over the Oskil. They seem to have made some small progress this week on both flanks of the Dvorichna bridgehead. That’s worrying, but overall the pace of expansion remains glacial.
Ukraine’s bridgehead on the eastern bank is still holding incredibly firm. This allows the Ukrainians to threaten counterattacks against enemy forces behind the Dvorichna bridgehead, something that naturally checks its expansion. If the new cross-border push further north becomes large, though, the situation in Kupiansk will deteriorate.
Moving south, the Borova front saw some small enemy gains, but overall Third Army Corps has so far prettily handily repelled the attempt to encircle and force it back. This prevents the orcs from creating a bridgehead over the Oskil south of Kupiansk or actually reaching Borova. The Lyman front has been pretty stable despite the enemy seizing Zelena Dolyna the prior week.
Ukrainian forces are apparently engaged in tough battles to retake the town of Ridkodub, which sits at the edge of both the Borova and Lyman fronts. If these are successful and gain momentum, they could lead to the collapse of the enemy bridgehead over the Zherebets. At the very least its growth would be constrained, stabilizing both fronts with beneficial impacts on the Kupiansk and Siversk fronts too.
Siversk has also witnessed very little enemy progress over the past week, just some positions secured a bit west of Bilohorivka. It’s almost strange that Moscow isn’t putting in more effort here, given that the logistics routes leading into the town are all now vulnerable to fiber-optic drone strikes. The Ukrainian brigades responsible for this area the past couple years have done an incredible job deterring heavier attacks.
Being smaller than Pokrovsk or Kostyantynivka and easier to reach than Kupiansk, I have to expect a major orc effort to take Siversk sooner or later. Muscovite engineers dug extensive works to prevent any Ukrainian push south from here to the east of Bakhmut, so Moscow is definitely worried about the threat. In fact, a surprise counteroffensive on this direction is entirely within the realm of possibility, because reclaiming Bakhmut would have both symbolic value but also upend the ruscist offensive against Kostyantynivka, which in turn would derail the push on Pokrovsk.
I hold that there is even what might be described as a northern path to Putin’s defeat, complementary to the more familiar and obvious southern strike to the Azov coast that would isolate Crimea. If Ukraine can break through the enemy front in Luhansk, hold the gap, and build sufficient momentum on the other side, a strategic envelopment of the northern flank of Donbas along the Siverskyi Donets is conceivable.
This would depend on being able to constantly push large numbers of drone teams into exposed forward positions while keeping them protected. It’s unclear whether Ukraine’s drone branch is ready to accomplish that in the face of the power of several combined arms armies. Most Ukrainian sources I’ve run across agree that Moscow now has a strategic reserve up to about 150,000 strong on top of around 650,000 personnel deployed in Ukraine.
This begs the question of where they might be committed - in Ukraine and beyond - but Moscow seems to have learned the lesson about completely exhausting reserves. Another unknown is their quality. Though I’d bet that Putin is cultivating a kind of Republican Guard to protect the core of the empire against a repeat of Wagner’s revolt by the regular army. His new security elite won’t deploy in force to Ukraine, because part of the implicit pact guaranteeing loyalty to the regime is being excused from working at the front, save in a dire emergency - or some provocation on the borders with Latvia, Lithuania, or Estonia.
That’s good, because while Ukrainian forces do retain the upper hand most places most of the time, an additional influx of new troops would force Ukraine to commit resources it would otherwise hold back to power a counteroffensive. A dangerous thing they could do would be to dramatically reinforce the Pokrovsk-Kostyantynivka sector, where Muscovite forces appear to be able, if all their remaining power is focused, to force a serious operational crisis onto Ukrainian command. Dangerous successes in a couple sectors are presently outweighed by the ongoing failure to advance in most others.
Muscovite troops are actively trying to avoid more frontal assaults on firmly-held Ukrainian areas, so in the Kostyantynivka area they’re working to get around Toretsk and Chasiv Yar rather than punch through. They’re seeing the most success near two villages between the two towns, both named Dyliivka for reasons I bet would be fun to learn, and look set to force Ukrainian positions away from Kurdiumivka, a town that’s been on the front line for two years. Some additional small advances came north of Chasiv Yar and west of Toretsk.
But the assault on Kostyantynivka appears to no longer be the main Muscovite priority. In accordance with the ongoing strategic imperative to claim territory for the sake of looking in control - and do Beijing’s bidding by keeping Europe occupied - Moscow’s military doctrine has evolved.
Centre for Defence Strategies just the other day claimed as much in one of their excellent regular updates, and once I read it put that way I realized something that I’ve been grasping to put into words for months: Putin’s war machine isn’t merely inept - it’s working towards a totally nonsensical goal, the sort of objective a bureaucrat would set. It now aims to maximize the territory gained at a given price under the assumption that fighting like this long enough will lead to inevitable success. This is faith-based strategy, plain and simple, and orc doctrine follows from there. There’s no real differentiation between strategy, operations, and tactics.
As a result, Moscow is likely to prioritize reinforcing any advance that shows signs of progress. Instead of seizing bases capable of powering a new wave of concentrated attacks in a systematic manner, all the orcs are after is crawling forward without entire regiments having to expose their flanks. Individual teams and companies, sure - they’re thrown towards Ukrainian lines nonstop to keep Ukrainians busy. They’re disposable. But bigger formations staffed by specialists and managed by officers hiding in bunkers a hundred kilometers from the action - their parent formations are carefully rotated out after suffering their allotment of disposable casualties.
No longer is the enemy trying to systematically create exploitable battlefield asymmetry, beyond concentrating lots of personnel in a sector Ukraine lacks readily defensible terrain. There is no serious military art involved in orc operations any more. If zombies existed and could organize, this is about how they’d fight.
Instead of advancing directly into Pokrovsk or Kostyantynivka, the orcs are more apt to keep on extending jaws around them as deep into Ukrainian territory as they can go in hopes of forcing a voluntary retreat. Only once drone operators can firmly establish and reduce logistics throughput to an urban area can any sort of frontal assault be contemplated.
The net effect is that Muscovite campaigns are now increasingly predictable and easy to channel. Instead of immediately swinging to assault Kostyantynivka or Pokrovsk, the orcs can be expected to push their breach of the front between the two further north and west. They won’t stop trying to approach the town on the flanks, because maintaining pressure prevents counterattacks. But real progress happens in open country.
That isn’t a wise move on the Muscovites’ part, because as salients extend they become increasingly vulnerable. Logistics invariably gets snarled at choke points, like water crossings. And as so much of the past year and a half of fighting has proven, the farther orc logistics lines run, the less efficient they become - drones make sure of it. Worse for their prospects, having a sizable urban area on either side of an advance with an increasing density of smaller ones appearing the farther north and west you go is not grounds for a sustainable operational effort. Eventually, a counterattack will be organized that forces a retreat.
Nevertheless, Muscovite forces are focusing substantial effort on getting across the Kazenyi Torets, and actually succeeding in getting across at Razine and even reaching the outskirts of Rodynske. The soldiers who got that far are all but doomed - the area is a natural trap, with two mining tailings hills just to the south. But those that follow after may be able to expand the bridgehead north towards Shakhove, disrupting Ukraine’s defense of the rest of the ridge between the Bychock and Kazenyi Torets that the orcs need to secure before making any further big moves.
This is one of those areas where an immediate counterattack looks required to avert a dangerous situation from developing. Another crossing to the north near Boikivka may already be underway. Unlike the even larger recent orc gains on the southern side of the Novopavlivka front, this situation feels like the result of a genuine command screwup, not part of a planned maneuver. North of the breakthrough over the Bychok, the Ukrainians have managed to draw a clear line and control the north side of the ridge. The eastern road into Pokrovsk needs to hold at the line of the Kazenyi Torets. Just a few kilometers to the west runs an important rail line serving Pokrovsk, so the enemy really needs to be held - ideally thrown back.
For the most part, the rest of the Pokrovsk front has held firm despite the growing danger of the town being cut off. All routes can be hit by enemy drones, though, which isn’t comforting. The orcs have managed to advance due south of Pokrovsk near Shevchenko, but multiple other assaults were repelled, so again a frontal attack looks highly unlikely. The most concerning advance in the area come south of Udachne, where Ukraine really needs to keep the orc bridgehead over the Solona from ever becoming secure. Taking Udachne is a necessary step.
The front has held pretty well west along the Solona all the way through the northern half of the Novopavlivka front. Muscovite attacks have expanded the gray zone slightly in several areas, but Ukraine appears to have wiped them out. Further advances are likely, but might easily be too costly to sustain.
The rest of the Novopavlivka front is shifting as it had to following the enemy breakthrough on the south bank of the Vovcha from a few weeks ago. Ever since, Ukrainian forces have almost certainly been withdrawing to a new defense line on a low ridge midway between the north-south bend of the Vovcha and the Mokri Yali river. That has allowed the orcs to fill in gaps between their advance spearheads, giving the illusion of rapid progress.
Looking back through my store of maps the other day, I noted that six months ago I expected the lines to be here in mid-April. How much each side paid for the three month delay is the only question that matters. Especially under the new Muscovite doctrine, which can only be countered with ruthless efficiency and emphasis on average exchange rates over time. Well, new in the sense that after going from trying to bum rush Ukraine’s cities to doing the sensible military thing and trying to crush the main Ukrainian forces in Donbas - but too late - then Moscow tried seizing key urban areas before finally resorting to advancing as far west as possible.
But politics is war, per Clausewitz. Putin’s political objectives got his dismal empire into this mess, and now they’re driving strategic and operational decisions. I do actually somewhat pity the poor orcs stuck trying to innovate tactically in order to accomplish an equally damned and doomed mission.
Southern Theater
One of the consequences of Moscow’s doctrinal shift - note how it accompanies the near-exhaustion of salvageable Soviet vehicle reserves and the approach of major economic problems - is that it may be attractive to pressure Ukraine on as many fronts as possible. And so the prospect of both the Huliaypole and Orikhiv fronts becoming more active must be considered.
The first front is mostly threatened because of the consolidation of new orc lines to the northeast, on the road to Velyka Novosilka. Once the orcs hit a wall along the Vovcha, outflanking it to the south will look easier than fighting near reservoirs of Ukrainian-held cover. Putin has made it a priority for his forces to cross over into Donetsk district, and they can accomplish that on the road between Velyka Novosilka and Huliaypole.
A push up the Yonchur river valley could, if it gained any momentum, lead to serious problems for Ukraine. I don’t consider this at all likely, but Muscovite forces reaching the outskirts of Pokrovske would represent a serious operational breakthrough with strategic consequences.
It’s slightly eerie to see the orcs now grasping towards more or less a reversion to the same plan they shifted to in April of 2022. Before the all-out assault on Ukraine began, my forecast was that two enveloping jaws, one heading north from Crimea and the Azov Coast and the second south between the Oskil and Kharkiv, were intended to trap the bulk of Ukraine’s forces covering Donbas. Only the Kharkiv counteroffensive in 2022 that liberated Kupiansk and Izium finally ended Moscow’s hopes of pulling this off.
But here Putin is again, trying to re-do in slow motion what his elite forces failed to accomplish before. Still, the open plains of southern Ukraine ought to be more conducive to motorcycle rushes than most places. Ukrainian authorities have made a habit of failing to construct proper fortifications, and it could well prove true again.
Orikhiv could also witness an intensification of Muscovite efforts. Near Kamianka orc assault teams continue to fight for a foothold. Over time conditions in this area could deteriorate, leading to a threat to Orikhiv. But at present Ukrainian troops seem so well dug in that Moscow’s attacks are making extremely little progress.
But this close to Zaporizhzhia, and one of Ukraine’s primary supply arteries, the odds of a ruscist breakthrough are exceptionally low. The same holds true in Kherson, where despite ongoing fighting no major change has been noted.
Also in Kherson the sick ongoing orc drone safari claimed a one-year old child playing outside in her yard as a victim. Ukrainian drone operators claim to have tracked down and destroyed the perpetrators. Good. Look, I knew a few American soldiers who claimed to have harmed children in Iraq thought it was funny. There are orcs among us all. But in Putin’s empire, they rule the roost. American war crimes happen when command loses control and get shamefully whitewashed by the Military-Industrial-Media complex. Muscovite war crimes are deliberate and systematic. Being culled by force of Muscovite arms is a sacred initiation rite for entry into the russian world. Only once all have been similarly brutalized can they take their place on the bottom rung.
When fighting a cult, it really is them or us. Their world is built on writing the distinction in other people’s blood. I hate it, but it is what it is.
Aviation Duel
Surprisingly little news this week on the aviation front, excluding drones. Vipers are ostensibly doing solid work taking down inbound Muscovite Shaheds. Ukraine ought to have at least a dozen in the sky to repel every mass assault, maybe double that. In total, that theoretically allows for well over a hundred nightly intercepts using cheap, plentiful AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles. A few more when pilots go gunfighter, but as much as I also enjoy a good gun run in a simulator, they probably don’t model Shahed shrapnel quite right.
Also figure on a couple dozen Ukrainian jets of Soviet vintage, MiG-29s and Su-27s, using older Soviet equivalent missiles in defined sectors. If their efficiency is even half that of the Vipers, collectively Ukrainian pilots ought to be able to knock down a couple hundred Shaheds every night. Not bad, though Moscow can still send twice that number. Hence the need for jamming and especially drone interceptors.
Every day Mig-29s and Su-27s deliver Hammer bombs to frontline orc targets, with drone operators becoming a more frequent target. Moscow isn’t able to stop them, despite possessing interceptors with air-to-air missiles that should be able to easily hit a Ukrainian jet from a safe distance behind the front. Lack of regular AWACS coverage may be part of the issue. Notably, Ukrainian jets deliver their ordnance without having any stealth features. Just good electromagnetic warfare pods and low-altitude flying.
Open request to Saab: please make a twin-engine, two-seat version of the Gripen optimized for low-altitude work up to a few kilometers behind friendly lines. Frontal-aspect stealth only. Just need a small, nimble, rugged crewed jet to ensure reliable control over companion and other friendly drones near the front, equipped with long-range air-to-air and radar-seeking air-to-ground weapons to cope with the most serious threats. Think a MiG-29 mated with a Gripen. Super Gripens will punch a hole for drones to flow through.
Let Germany and France squabble over their big-ticket “sixth generation” super-fighter project. Unite all the smaller European countries around a project and integrate savings measures like aircraft leases and pooling airspace patrol responsibilities over smaller countries. And, of course, establish production lines in Ukraine. A hub of Soviet-era aviation, it should reclaim that legacy - minus the dictatorship.
Strike Campaigns
Ukraine’s ongoing fight to bleed the orc war machine from factory to railway continues to bring notable results, with half a dozen industrial sites of various kinds hit by drones over the past week. However, Ukrainian success is once again being overshadowed in the media by raw Muscovite mass applied to inflict terror, with Kyiv suffering attacks of unprecedented size.
As I’ll discuss more in the next section, drone warfare is reaching a point where mass can only be countered by mass in reply. The only long-term solution to counter Moscow’s drones is to deploy lots of interceptor drones, which are always bound to be able to compete cost-wise with strike drone deployments. What Ukrainian developers have to face down is the challenge of making the impact phase of an intercept automatic.
Skilled operators are always in short supply, and they’ll soon be needed everywhere. It would be ideal for them to be able to designate a target spotted on the drone’s camera and have it automatically home in for a kill. The technology is now widely available, but has taken longer to develop than hoped because of the intrinsic challenge of devising a control system capable of matching a target’s movements in three dimensions.
The Ukrainians are locked in a tight race with the Muscovites to determine who can produce more effective drones faster. This helps explain a recent Ukrainian drone strike against a drone plant deep in the empire. So far, Moscow tends to scale working solutions better than Ukraine, but once the Ukrainians develop a counter to it - which happens quickly, because lots of Ukrainian teams are working in parallel - the orcs are almost back to square one. Either way, striking production and development facilities helps slow the enemy down.
Of course, the Ukrainians are naturally running into quality control issues with first-person drones, having a huge number of suppliers in the market. You always want to avoid monopolies from forming, but a balance must be struck between multiple innovative centers and having certain common standards. A solid way of ensuring this seems to be having a large pool of companies that aggressively compete for design contracts but who then get a share of production work once a design is chosen. Standards stay common, but are adopted after being put to the test, and companies have an incentive to participate even if they lose. Pretty sure this was one of the factors that made Japan a world leader in military aviation until the system was overburdened in the mid 1940s.
Ukraine’s leaders have invested more in the strike drone program, so it appears less impacted by quality control issues. Month by month Ukrainian drones become more common in Muscovite skies, reminding Putin’s subjects that he can’t keep them save. This doesn’t make them love Ukraine, but it’s when people start to see drones going after their neighbors’ houses that they offer their reluctant support to the regime that got them in this mess in the first place. Don’t let that happen, and they stay as mad at their own hapless government as the country sending the drones.
Naval Matters
Also a relatively quiet week on the naval front. That’s to be expected. Naval operations unfold on longer timescales than ones focused on the ground or air. And with a lot fewer independent sensors around, it’s easier to go unnoticed until the shooting starts. A weekly brief on naval issues is always bound to be short about three quarters of the time. When things get interesting, though…
I do think it’s worth pointing out that for all the justified acclaim drones receive, Ukraine is still set to receive some traditional crewed naval vessels in the near future. A couple corvettes - small multirole ships able to defend themselves against air and naval threats - are prepping for delivery in Turkiye. The Europeans are also donating minesweepers to help keep the sea lanes clear of weapons that, even if both sides try to keep them away from civilian shipping lanes, sometimes break free.
At the same time, reports indicate that Moscow is finally admitting that Putin’s sole aircraft carrier,1 poor Admiral Kuznetsov, is probably just too ragged to be worth repairing. Unlike China, which bought the vessel’s incomplete mate from Ukraine when it was still known as Varyag and transformed it into China’s first aircraft carrier, the Muscovites never could keep the one the Soviets managed to commission before Ukraine declared independence in proper working order. Thing could hardly go on a voyage without enduring a major mechanical malfunction. The vessel’s enlisted crew was reportedly press-ganged into an army battalion and sent to the front last year, so nobody was probably left to run it anyway. Wonder if Moscow sells it to North Korea. That’d be about right for lord Kim.
Staff Affairs
The corps transition is supposedly on the verge of completion, with more details about the exact structure and operational areas expected this summer. Lately, the media has been less filled with stories talking about how exhausted Ukrainian forces are. It is to be hoped that casualty rates really have halved since January through some combination of factors.
Yet sooner or later Ukrainian forces will have to demonstrate their enhanced mettle by conducting serious counterattacks. And until that happens, it will be impossible to say whether certain deficiencies in leadership, organization, and doctrine that hindered efforts in 2023 and also, though to a lesser extent, the Kursk operation in 2024, have been sufficiently addressed.
As interviews with people who took part in the Kursk incursion’s early stages have hit the media, a compelling portrait has emerged of a daring operation that did more than doubters who knew about it thought possible but also fell short of its potential. The main cause of this was a lack of operational flexibility: when the situation evolved such that the original exploitation plan had to be adapted, there was too much confusion among the staffs involved.
To put it bluntly, Ukrainian leaders failed to properly plan for the full range of scenarios that they might face in phase two. Field commanders were unprepared to adapt on the fly. Opportunities were missed that, if properly exploited, could have left a huge chunk of Kursk in Ukrainian hands behind a sustainable defense over the long term. An unraveling of the Northern Theater all the way to Kharkiv might have followed.
The corps reforms now culminating should fix the underlying issue, provided that coordination between corps where their areas of responsibility met is handled well. Whether Syrskyi really is an inveterate micromanager who meddles too much in subordinates’ decisions, or fosters appropriate initiative among the corps teams now in place, will soon be proven. Some of the new corps staffs are filled with people who won’t hold back their critique if things go wrong.
So far, the evolution of Ukraine’s drone branch of the forces gives cause for hope. Promoting the founder and capable head of Magyar’s Birds to run it was a good move. He, Denys Prokopenko of 12th Azov, and a number of other appointments seem to imply that he either picks subordinates based on merit, or someone does it for him.
Speaking of Magyar’s Birds, they’re a major case in point proving the need for drone teams to be their own distinct branch of every force. While drones are often - and correctly - compared to machine guns in terms of their felt impact on tactics and operations, it is actually a lot more difficult to incorporate drone operators into frontline teams than machine gunners.
Why is a function of some of the most important systems of all: those tied to cognition. This overlooked factor seems bound to lead too many military professionals into a wholly preventable disaster not far down the road. But a bit of a diversion is necessary to get at the scientific cause.
A Separate Drone Branch: The Only Way To Go
Rarely is the lack of any truly solid intellectual grounding behind most public analysis of military affairs as evident as when drones are discussed. The vast majority of what gets published about drone affairs is tainted by the failure of military science to catch up with the cutting edge of broader scientific theory. Either they’re going to change everything or absolutely nothing - there seems to be no nuance in the discussion. There never is.
There’s a straightforward reason why this is so, but it demands some unpacking - and extensive analysis of how the knowledge production system really operates. Sorry to the university professors in the audience, but I’m gonna reveal some of your deep dark secrets. I know how much you hate it when someone goes meta on you :)
If you study for a doctorate in most any field, one of the first seminars students will work through covers the intellectual history of science over the past few centuries. It’s usually titled History and Philosophy of our special field or something like it, and though many fields will use the seminar to argue how special theirs is, what students are supposed to take away from it is how different paradigms of doing science are constructed. The many eager minds who go into it expecting to finally find the answer2 will invariably be disappointed: unfortunately, they tend to be the ones who go on to write about science topics for a general audience.
What they choose to report is only half the truth, if that. Few who earn a PhD like to admit the harsh truth that stalks their pretensions of being experts: scientific truths are as context-based as any other kind. Even physics, per Einstein. The history and philosophy of science is a chronicle of constantly developing descriptions of the world only to have to discard them when they no longer serve. That’s the real scientific process, with forming and testing hypotheses one very useful method for going about a scientific investigation, where it can be used in a situation where most variables can be strictly controlled.
All observation - and communication about it - requires interaction with the experiment on some level, violating a basic assumption holding together the classical scientific process as it is taught to young students: that experiments are closed systems, isolated from their environment. That all variables can ever be controlled.
An electron will appear as a wave or a particle depending on the experiment. Choice of methodology preordains the answers that can be obtained. Pure objectivity is an illusion embraced by lazy minds, representing a total abdication of any responsibility to improve. It’s a claim to power in a certain social context, nothing more.
Postmodern philosophers mostly ignorant of mathematics use this fundamental indeterminacy of reality as we experience it to argue that nothing is in fact real, deep down: people construct reality. Which is of course true - from a purely social frame of reference. Most of those who assert this claim, however, have never done without water, food, or sleep for an extended period of time. If they had, they might understand that material factors control how people construct their social reality. Any human group is a complex adaptive system that emerges precisely because of the eternal demand to reliably meet physical needs now and into the future.
Social frame of reference is an extremely important and almost totally ignored concept. Just as in physics the relative motion of two different objects alters their perception of one another in subtle ways, the same is true of minds. One of the most basic forms of violence is to insist on adherence to a singular worldview governed by eternal truths beyond the simple reality of ongoing change. Systems thinking is almost impossible for postmodernists to use without contorting it beyond recognition, because their faith-based paradigm roots truth in a certain moral aesthetic. Accepting the reality of social frame of reference - everyone existing in a certain relative context within a broader system defined by action, first and foremost communication - means accepting the intrinsic value of what they consider deviant moralities. This upsets their worldview, which is ultimately geared towards identifying bad things worthy of violent repression.
The social class that disproportionately produces academics these days is, by grace of its economic, social, and often political privilege, deeply concerned with how scientific knowledge impacts its parochial interests. Hence certain topics being more intensively studied than others, despite universities being allegedly insulated from market pressures. Not so - hence it being a lot easier to get rich studying business cycles than, say, bug larvae. Even if sometimes those larvae wind up making something that spawns a world-spanning business enterprise - hello silkworms!
For the record, I don’t pretend that these posts of mine ought to be taken as comparable to peer-reviewed science - but they are developed using the same underlying approach that generates research papers. Collect data, evaluate it3, present in proper context. I don’t always follow formal academic practices, though, like citing a source every other damn sentence.
On that, vast majority of readers never click on links of any kind anyway4. Also, what the average undergraduate professor doesn’t like to admit when making students cite their sources to back up facts is that professional citations are usually as political as functional in nature. A way to signal hey, reviewer, I read your favorite works and/or publications and included them to help boost your signal if you publish this. If you include lots of citations to previous editions of an academic journal, that makes editors very happy.
Ever wonder why American (and others, I’m sure) academics are diligent about traveling to conferences? Networking - which means hopefully rubbing shoulders with someone who reviews for a prestigious journal or maybe even National Science Foundation grants. That and showing their department’s flag, a mandatory expectation in the collective. All part of the business. Why else are tenure-track professors made to jump through hoops for seven years before being awarded a job for life? You have to pay your dues and prove your fealty to whatever paradigm is popular where you got a position to land that kind of gig. Once inside, strong pressures tend to reinforce the groupthink.
Another aspect of the general university experience in the USA (again, probably most places to some extent) that’s deliberately hidden from students is the degree to which any general curriculum depends on an ongoing process of vicious haggling between powerful departments determined to secure access to a flow of students. To put it bluntly, most formal education involves a ruthless culling of topics that aren’t popular enough to warrant study, with ones that manage to stick around doing so because they maintain a big enough audience of people they’ve convinced to see their field as important. Try to axe, say, a philosophy department that drives away students, and some powerful stakeholder will throw a fit about the destruction of Liberal Arts, with members of allied fields piling on in a show of solidarity.
Departments that can’t compete when it comes to getting students to sign up for their courses by having something interesting to teach are forced to lobby for their courses to be considered a required part of the general curriculum. This also secures the flow of students they rely on to generate new acolytes who will carry on the field - within certain bounds.
The net result of this system is that, at an early stage in their education, students are placed into silos that become increasingly unable to productively communicate. Eventually, this feeds back on the real world by distorting perception of essential but under-examined scientific matters, like war and warfare. Most intensive scientific work on these fields is done either by professionals purely interested in application or academics who come at it with roots in a totally distinct (or so their scholarly heritage usually presumes) field of science. The latter tend to set the rules of the road when it comes to establishing high-level principles.
Postmodern aesthetics broadly rejects serious study of war or warfare by positing them as anomalies, distortions caused by someone’s failure to obey rules the postmodernists have unilaterally decided are correct for everyone. War makes people sad, and is therefore intrinsically bad, a moral problem to be made invisible where it cannot be solved because any exposure to it automatically taints those in contact, effectively blaming the victim for their experiences. Except, of course, the postmodernist also demands the existence of a class of people whose job it is to be tainted on behalf of the rest of society, allowing the moral majority to keep their hands clean.
When solutions to divergent frames of social reference are inevitably hard to come by, the postmodern solution is a pure resort to tribal thinking, boundaries everyone is expected to fight and die to preserve determined by language, which becomes increasingly complex, driving a process of social dissolution. It’s a devolution back to the movement’s theological roots in a few priests deciding what parts of the Bible counted as canon. That was the trigger for the first crusades, which weren’t directed at Muslims, but fellow Christians of wrong sects.
Postmodern thought is deeply uncomfortable with systems thought because it accepts just how un-special humans generally are. People make themselves special through action, their beliefs only actually expressed to others in this way, with production of words among the least effective forms of action in most cases. But being easy, it does allow people to sort themselves into groups defined by the simplicity of communication - a seriously adaptive survival trait.
On the battlefield, soldiers do not transfer information in the form of a dissertation for what I think ought to be obvious reasons. When survival depends on swift action, get the fuck over there! beats the delivery of a manuscript with a full cost-benefit breakdown of the available cover options. Hey, it ain’t true profanity (or bad grammar) if used in a combat context. That’s a rule, unless a sergeant somewhere would like to contradict me. Then I shall stand corrected. In my world, experienced NCOs will always get more respect and have a higher effective rank than any officers, and I know which side of the divide I’m best suited for.
And I am well aware that with how long these posts are, it’s highly ironic that I just harped on the value of brevity. Other forms of media are likely a superior mode of communicating systems concepts, but writing is what I know best. Given a more reliable income stream, branching out should be possible.
As far as what makes systems thinking different from the norm and highly useful, any decent model of a system will structure itself around points of interaction between objects. Systems are defined by material flows - even information being ultimately material in nature, as signals shift through space by exploiting a medium.
The goal of developing a systems model is to understand its function in a truly holistic sense, stepping outside any individual context as much as possible without ignoring it completely. Knowledge may be contingent and contextual, but it’s still real enough to perform better when put to the test than myth or faith. Systems thought reconciles the longstanding material/moral divide that has so afflicted the development of social theory for decades.
The baggage of obsolete intellectual debates bedevils most analysis of the fighting in Ukraine, but especially anything to do with emerging technologies, like drones. The heart of the problem goes back to the professional education that members of the American Military-Industrial-Media complex receive.
American professionals are fighting a costly, doomed battle to make drones fit in with existing standards and practices, refusing to see them for what they really are: something functionally new but ancient in design. At a high level, drones represent supply meeting longstanding demand for disaggregated, on-call delivery of packages, lethal or otherwise. They don’t represent a revolution, and no magic technological fix is making them go away any more than anything has or ever will land mines. Attempting to make them into that will go horribly awry.
Retired Australian general Mick Ryan often uses the term Cambrian Explosion to describe the emergence of so many drone types in Ukraine, and not without substantial justification. Yet I cannot help but see the drone fight as more akin to a lush landscape waking up in spring. You can mash it into something artificially controlled with great effort (lawns, ugh), but nature defies you every step of the way.
It’s striking how little of the technology either side is racing to produce at scale is really new: networked drones capable of carrying a payload have been tested for at least twenty years with the intent of using them to replace soldiers on the front line. How, despite trillions thrown at the military-industrial complex across most of the world in that time, did nobody figure out until 2023 that huge numbers of simple, locally manufactured first-person view drones could deliver anti-tank warheads and mortar shells with as much reliability traditional means?
Because robust, distributed solutions never bring members of an oligopoly the level of profit that custom, niche technological wonders can. Consolidation of the industrial base after the Cold War led to a few large companies having a stranglehold on Pentagon procurement, the impacts spilling over to most other American allies - and driving the development of professional military education curricula. The close relationship between senior military leaders in D.C. and industry representatives has led to the Pentagon becoming little better than a feeding trough, military science distorted to justify the fad of the day. If some nitwit political hack decides that lethality and dominance matter, a supply of science purporting to quantify and manipulate these will appear.
A consequence of this perverse system is the way drones are being slowly incorporated into American service. Hegseth’s Pentagon is making a big deal about streamlining procedures so commanders can do more independent experimentation with small drones thanks to their now being classified as expendable goods, but this won’t solve the problem of pressure to adopt drones sold by certain companies with an incentive to package as much bloat in as possible to maximize profits. Feature creep is another way to suppress rivals, creating silly expectations for what the next generation of tech must have to compete. And so everyone’s damn smartphone has become a damn Gameboy with ads and nobody will admit it and resort to something less likely to contribute to accelerated cognitive deterioration. Or at the very least, lasting neck pain5.
Giving officers license to play without negatively impacting their career stats does absolutely nothing to address the deeper issue with how the Pentagon seems bound to pursue drones, imagining them to be a simple extension of the hollow faux warrior culture a bunch of misguided War on Terror veterans promote. In this fantasy world, operators will be adept at both marksmanship and drone piloting, experiencing minimal friction between the skillsets or workload requirements that fire teams in contact with the enemy have to cope with.
To accept Ukraine’s important lesson and establish a separate drone branch of the armed forces coequal with armor, infantry, artillery, and all the rest is almost certainly too heavy a lift for the Pentagon. It will only ever take that step after drones haven’t lived up to the hype in the hands of American personnel who are probably suffering casualties as a result. Just like the Pentagon brass did when insurgents relied on homemade mines in Iraq, and neither the army nor the marine corps was prepared for such an obvious threat. It’s kind of weird reading how great Bradleys perform in Ukraine, because in Iraq they got torn up by IEDs.
I can’t stress enough that the ultimate cause of this sad situation is a broken intellectual culture not just in military, but broader American scientific circles. It is my sense that abroad, especially in smaller countries, the corruption does not run nearly so deep. Therein much hope lies.
Just as it was inconceivable to the American experts that Putin’s grand invasion of Ukraine in 2022 could fail, so are too many unable to comprehend the full impact of the evolving drone war in Ukraine on military best practices. Niches that have existed unfilled for decades - the first steps towards drone warfare were taken during the Second World War - are rapidly being found and exploited. After three and a half years, countermeasures adopted by both sides have led to dramatic shifts in tactics over the space of a few months or even weeks. Could existing American professional military education hope to keep up?
Again, a purely analytical sense, drones are just a delivery device. Their shape and configuration will always be variable and probably constantly changing. Blanket jamming of all frequencies has not proven practical thanks to the impact on friendly communications, so there are always electromagnetic windows to exploit. Signal will get through, and even if intermittent a few fairly simple AI routines can suffice to keep a drone in a position where, once signal is restored, it regains full function.
Then there’s the ability to attach a fiber-optic cable to the things, the possibilities of which are far from exhausted. Ukraine lagging behind the orcs in their adoption has been frustrating to witness, because I’m pretty sure I was suggesting the possibility of wire-guided drones to get around jamming two years ago. By which point someone better informed than me probably had prototypes ready to go, but Ukraine’s defense ministry failed to move with requisite speed - a common issue, it seems.
Because their design is so flexible and can be altered in the field with 3D printers and good engineers, it’s really important to think of drones not as individual platforms, but as expressions of a constantly evolving system for delivering payloads to places with incredible precision. If a target can be identified, the right ordnance to cripple it can be generated, and whether it’s delivered by shell or drone is a matter of context - the essential activity is remote delivery.
Drone operations are about ubiquity, which means that drones must be available in large numbers to keep multiple sizes and types near target-rich areas. Countering drones is as much a function of mass as deploying them. In Ukraine, first-person drones have gone through an accelerated evolution under immense pressure, about like going from 1914 to 1942 in an aviation context in the space of three and a half years. As a result, and just like crewed aviation did, drones have slowly taken on additional roles beyond surveillance. Bomber and fighter drones are natural evolutions of the original scout models, the original tests improvisations of proven models soon giving way to dedicated production lines.
Though the Ukrainians are definitely in the lead on this, it is becoming standard for both sides to knock down the enemy’s drones with interceptor drones. This adds a vital layer of drone protection that will only become more important as wire-guided drones appear in ever larger numbers. More powerful drone interceptors are also the best solution to get at strike drones like the Shahed now that they are flying above the level that most teams on the ground using machine guns can reach.
Stopping the enemy’s drones from flying at will over friendly forces is now as essential as denying the enemy’s aircraft the skies. The latter can be achieved by keeping even a few surface-to-air missiles systems in an area if airborne radar is available to handle detection and tracking of targets until right before they are attacked. The former necessitates both intensive passive measures - signals jamming, nets over roads, dispersal of targets - and active ones. Not only do teams and vehicles have to be equipped with last-ditch anti-drone weapons, but an anti-aircraft drone team covering them as well.
The emerging drone fight has to be organized into layers. Some interceptor drones of all types regularly launched to patrol will form an outer wall, even extending over enemy territory where possible. Ideally, most hostile drones are engaged before they ever enter friendly skies to minimize the hazard of falling wreckage.
Another layer will be formed by anti-drone patrols moving along logistics routes and around the exterior of threatened settlements. These can also guard against infiltrators and respond to penetrations by motorcycle riders. It’s best to keep interceptor drones away to prevent accidents. Ultimately, dedicated anti-drone vehicles will appear, equipped with machine guns or autocannons and optical sensors, to form a flak barrier behind the interceptor front as well as along key logistics routes.
Beyond about twenty kilometers from the front, small first-person drones lose effectiveness because of the size of the signal receivers or fiber spool needed to maintain contact with a controller. Even when automated targeting is incorporated, users locking on to verified signals will remain essential to mitigate the impact of decoys. Even thermal signatures can be faked.
The mothership drone concept can extend the range of small attack drones, but being relatively large they are likely to attract an intercept soon after passing into hostile territory. The main threat at this depth is loitering munitions like the Lancet backed by surveillance drones to help cue them onto targets.
These are also only possible to efficiently intercept with other drones, unless they fly in range of a radar-guided flak system. Thankfully for the defender, it will always be more cost effective to deploy a drone interceptor to protect a target than a strike drone to hit it because one has to fly farther with a heavier load. This still demands enough drones in the fight of the right type, however, and the government of Ukraine has been way too slow to fund them. In every drone unit larger than a battalion there needs to be one or more companies focused on deploying mid-sized interceptors to protect rear areas.
There exists a definite need for both short and medium-range interceptor drones as well as a class of heavier models designed to knock down strike drones like the newer jet-powered Shaheds. These likely need to be handled by separate drone formations which can freely rove to cover forecast danger spots more than a hundred kilometers behind the front. It may be that they also handle the upper sky over it, but given the different flight paths likely followed by Shahed type drones going after targets near the front as opposed to the Ukrainian interior, it seems wise to have a few heavy interceptors in the hands of frontline drone teams with the majority reserved for those guarding the rear.
But all drone teams must ultimately be integrated into a comprehensive drone tracking system that monitors friendly and hostile drones at high resolution across every battlefield across Ukraine. Ultimately, where the enemy concentrates drones and drone operators will signal intent, and this information is needed as soon as possible to vector enough Ukrainian assets into position to stop a dense stream moving down a narrow corridor. No matter where drone teams formally operate, they’ll always have to flow to locations within their sector and sometimes adjacent to it to help counter mass attacks.
Knowing what types of drones are moving where demands access to a lot of highly contextual information in real-time. Drones improperly coordinated only lead to fratricide when used at the densities common in Ukraine. So the entire airspace above friendly forces and territories has to be carefully organized and managed, even down to the tactical level, with user views carefully segmented for security so only a part of the whole map is visible.
Where does a NATO-standard fire team of four fit in to a comprehensive drone management scheme like this? One member at least will have to act as a designated drone operator, and that can’t be their sole job, because everybody at that level wears multiple hats. If the team’s task is to hold a fighting position and one team member is providing drone support with goggles on, that’s only three bodies left holding other weapons. To properly match the drone type to the mission at hand, the drone operator will have to know how to operate one of several different drone types and recall the details while under fire. If they come prepared for immediate deployment, there’s no need to attach ordnance or other stuff, but flexibility suffers. If they are custom, the drone operator has to handle payload preparations too.
Further, the drone operator’s tools have to be constantly maintained. Tweaking what frequency bands are used to communicate is now routine for operators, as enemy jamming patterns frequently shift. Updating onboard software is a never-ending job, as are repairs to reusable models. In Ukraine, teams in the field are perpetually in touch with manufacturers to offer feedback that gets used in the next development cycle. They’ve also got to maintain lateral communications with adjacent teams, because there’s only so much bandwidth available and fratricide is a real hazard.
The workload is simply not comparable to what your average private first class on a standard fire team is expected to handle. I’m not arguing that your average line soldier or marine can’t hack it - it’s that they shouldn’t. It makes about as much practical tactical sense to have a single drone operator in a fire team or squad, or even a single small team embedded in a platoon, as it would to give each team a mortar. They’d become mortar teams in that case. You want to make the headquarters detachment handle first-person drone ops? Okay, maybe. But what other tasks won’t they perform?
This is one of the most important reasons why Ukraine started establishing drone companies, battalions, regiments, and eventually a whole new branch of the armed forces. The best way to manage the astonishing diversity of tasks to be performed is setting up dedicated institutions that can handle most of the backend organization, assigning field teams to support line forces on a semi-permanent basis. You may even get a team attached to each line platoon, but all its support will come from the parent drone unit.
Incorporating drones directly into small units will tend to make them into drone teams, causing a shift in how they fight that will have knock-on effects across the rest of doctrine. This leaves the problem of having enough infantry and supporting forces in place to actually hold frontline positions against hostile stragglers not taken down by the drone shieldwall. And there will always be some, because some drones will always get through. The essential principles of battlefield survival - cover, speed, firepower - will remain.
For the record, up until about a year ago I too thought that drones needed to be integrated into every squad. But while there should be no prohibition on a squad using drones, they need to be rugged, simple, fiber-optic recon models which can be operated from a hide or strike models capable of self-guiding attacks on pre-programmed targets - take a picture, upload, let onboard image recognition do the rest. Being able to log in to a video feed from an orbiting surveillance drone is another excellent option. But as far as anything requiring lasting user control, leave it to a specialist.
Most Pentagon types and fellow travelers can be expected to fight hard against making drones a coequal arm of the army like artillery without having paid its dues, so to speak. And a whole new independent drone branch, equivalent to the army and dedicated to reforming standards and practices in accordance with lessons learned in Ukraine? Fat chance! If it ever did happen, Elon Musk would get involved and manage to discredit the entire enterprise. At least the ex-Google guy who is working directly with Ukraine has the decency to not jump into every headline. The way Google has evolved lately, I do not have high hopes, unless Ukrainians are somehow actually running the enterprise.
I’d go so far as to assert that one of the key pillars of power in the twenty-first century will be how many drones can be produced and deployed in a short period of time. Canada or Australia is as likely to win this race as the USA; the UK even more so. The Ukrainians are churning out a couple hundred thousand drones of all types every month, with capacity for a lot more given funding. Ukraine is probably capable of making a drone for every ten members of the population every year, with most of the supply chain now domestic, not reliant on Chinese imports.
Who else can say the same? A long-term goal of Earth Forces will have to be full control over our own drone production cycle. Hey, nothing says that a non-profit can’t make a buck for the cause. Revenues simply can’t flow to shareholders. If people back Earth Forces, they’ll purchase a product. Where competitive grants are available, we’ll win our share on merit. When the time comes to exchange a more sustainable funding stream for proper degree of direct public accountability, all proceeds will still be poured right back into the mission. Drones for the people!
What’s been incredible about watching Ukraine’s drone game evolve has been witnessing some extremely useful scientific principles illustrated in real time. The Ukrainians have organically, with only haphazard government support, discovered and exploited niches that have altered battlefield dynamics in Ukraine’s favor. Moscow adapts eventually, but never produces anything resembling the fidelity of the original. There are always gaps once the choice to scale a particular solution is made by the Kremlin. Ukraine finds a counter, then the enemy is set back, sometimes to square one. That Moscow has not been able to get ahead of this game is evidence that Putin is losing the war.
But institutions are self-reproducing organisms, and in older ones those with power will often see continuation in the current mode as the only acceptable outcome. All else is apocalypse, Ragnarok, and to be avoided at all costs: even sacrificing basic principles, like no unilaterally changing sovereign borders and refraining from genocide. That is the dynamic presently jeopardizing the lives of tens of thousands of people in uniform around the globe. What leaders did in 1914, committing so many to the slaughter instead of holding the line while working out effective adaptations, can and will happen again. Putin is not alone in his disregard for the welfare of his subjects.
One of the most important steps that any government can make right now is to establish a separate drone branch within their armed forces now, while there’s still time to catch the wave. Otherwise, prepare for the spectacular wipeout. And too many funerals.
This drone branch need not be restricted to ground support and strike operations alone. Ships absolutely should employ their own small drones for utility purposes and have crew trained to handle only that. If enemy jamming is affecting you so much at sea that you have to constantly tweak operating frequencies, you’re probably in a lot more trouble than you can cope with already. But many warships will also benefit from hosting separate drone detachments, becoming a little bit like aircraft carrier battle groups. On American aircraft carriers at least, there’s a captain in charge of the ship and another who commands the air wing. Each is the master of their own domain, but they’re linked at the hip.
If the work routinely involves coping with shifting electromagnetic conditions, which is generally bound to be the case in serious operations, dedicated drone operators are the way to go. Perspective matters, and crew on a ship need to think differently than the drone operators they host. Only in dedicated aviation operations using companion drones will the skillset boast so much overlap that pilots - though ideally a second crewmember - can handle the workload. Assuming of course that the drones take on all serious risks. Staging drone teams on warships allows each side to focus on what they do best: the former performing missions as conditions allow, the latter keeping everyone from a watery grave.
Summing up: drones are incredibly powerful tools, but used incorrectly are little better than junk. The need to rapidly shift their configurations to complete the task of delivering a payload to a target necessitates dedicated institutions for effective management. In other words, attach drones to existing military formations, don’t try to integrate them directly. Not at this stage of their evolution, anyway. In a few years, everything else may organize around them the same way they did tanks for a fair few decades.
World System Brief
Zooming out to the global level, Ukrainian news has been buzzing this week as a function of Trump’s latest zig, which just so happens to have gone in Ukraine’s favor right when the midterm pre-season is heating up. Unfortunately, despite big promises of more sanctions and massive flows of military aid, as was the case when Biden’s sycophants were blathering in front of cameras, I’ll believe any talk of Ukraine getting Tomahawks - which it would need one of those Aegis cruisers I’ve been after D.C. to donate for three years to fire - or even F-16 launched JASSMS.
Existing ordnance types? Sure. Hopefully more Patriot systems and especially missiles, as appears to have actually been promised. But nothing capable of hitting Moscow, or that the US might need to fight China. Other medium-range missiles F-16s can use, however, do exist. The AGM-154C JSOW would make an excellent complement to French Hammer rocket-powered glide bombs. Their warheads are twice as big. AIM-120D model AMRAAMs would be a wonderful counter to Sukhois carrying glide bombs.
Trump presently wants to be seen as being tough on Putin because the international press is talking about about the latest round of big terror attacks launched by the orcs. If Kyiv or anything in western Ukraine burns, the unstated rule is that Putin is escalating. To maintain the ragged veil of American claims to relevance requires some posturing that happens to conform with common sense. Who knows how long it will last, or what will actually come of it.
Ukraine’s victory has always been in the USA’s strategic interest - and Trump’s. Only the unfortunate persistence of a clique of useful Christian Fascist idiots who want to bring Putin’s world to America pulled him into the doomed peace push and silly Oval Office ambush of Zelensky. But Trump plays all sides. The whole charade with Hegseth pulling Ukraine aid again only for Trump to demonstratively declare he knew nothing about it - case in point.
And journalists go along with it! Talk about a tired institution that cares only about securing its narrow interests. Which at the national level in the USA amount to manufacturing a false consensus about certain issues, like Iran and China. Gotta have those external enemies to distract from the authoritarian cult rising at home. Replete with Vichy Democrats sanctifying Team Trump nonsense while Progressives lie to themselves about reaching some magic threshold where protest converts into actual change. 3.5%, according to some academics who really knew how to abuse distort data to serve an audience hungry for hope. Funny enough, with proper organization and a coherent strategy, a much smaller portion of the population can achieve more.
The next few years may test whether a very rich person can at last create a third party with a sufficiently large following to trigger the death and rebirth of today’s American two-party duopoly. Good luck to your America Party, Elon Musk. Too bad you’re two elections too late. And constantly parroting incredibly boring ideologues. Such a shame, all the potential wasted on self-indulgent loops.
Obviously, the USA could do a huge amount to help Ukraine, even guarantee victory by the end of the year. But here’s the kicker: if Trump actually is serious about opening the aid floodgates, more likely than not it’s because his intelligence people worked out that Ukraine really is about to go on the offensive in a big way - and probably succeed. In that case, he’ll aim to make moves that allow him to claim credit for Ukraine’s hard-won victory. That’s vanilla tactics for American social climbers. His base won’t care - look how they caved on him attacking Iran, exactly as predicted?
Speaking of climbers with an agenda, Biden’s execrable excuse for a national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, managed to make Ukrainian news recently. He’s still spinning Biden’s ruthless abandonment of Kyiv to Putin in 2022 and subsequent reliance of escalation fears as an excuse to withhold vital aid as Team Biden somehow saving Ukraine.
America is America, and has written its own bitter ending. Globally, the most important trends in the slow-unfolding Third World War/Second Earth Civil War this week were arguably:
Moscow bleeding itself out in Ukraine while Europe re-arms faster than D.C. dreamed possible - hence the shift to Team Trump demanding that Europe buy more American stuff for Ukraine. Though the Ukrainians are producing 40% of what they need, Ukrainian industry is reportedly still only at 60% capacity. With European funds, any shrinking future American contribution can be made up. Even Patriot interceptors will be produced in Europe by late 2026. Americans expand existing factories in key districts. Europeans build new ones. Pretty darn sure I know which strategy wins out in the long run.
Beijing sitting back and watching the US blunder about, trying to get Australia and Japan to commit to fight for Taiwan when D.C. won’t even go that far. Ah, how American leaders love their human shields. Meanwhile the Aussies may have figured out that AUKUS was a big mistake, apparently deciding to talk to the French about buying its conventional submarines again. Canberra already has so much tied up in the F-35 basket that American nuclear submarines which might be obsolete by the time they’re put to work seems like an obvious bridge too far. But governments can be quite stubborn when they’re onto a bad idea.
Israel is slowly moving towards basically admitting that its policy in Gaza is straight-up ethnic cleansing. The Arab regimes issue routine condemnations, but do absolutely nothing physical to justify all those years of Israeli propaganda about the fanatical Arabs coming to push them into the sea. Iran’s nuclear program has been set back between a couple months and a couple years, depending on the estimate, so despite taking some unexpected hits to the leadership Tehran drew fairly even in that round. It’s always funny to see the real damage reports filter through once the media is done proclaiming anything Israel did a grand triumph for the ages.
Turns out that the Iranians actually hit their target at that US base in Qatar, a communications dome visible in satellite shots before it got bonked. This despite two Patriot interceptors allocated to each of the fourteen missiles launched. A good rate in Ukraine, where targets are decentralized. But American forces are scattered just across the Persian Gulf from Iran, and important assets can’t be comprehensively protected from even a small attack. But America won! Go America! Sigh. Just… sigh.
Oh, and Syria seems to be slowly falling apart. A happy outcome there was too much to hope for I suppose. Though Israel is involved, so what might be happening now is a process of effectively giving land to Tel Aviv in exchange for the new government in Damascus being allowed continue existing.India and Pakistan are arming up for the next crisis, and Chinese military gear is apparently in demand across the rest of the Middle East and North Africa now that Moscow’s kit is having so much trouble in Ukraine. Solid performance against French gear also helped advertise Beijing’s wares. Lots of shadow wars are underway across Africa, but they’re ancillary to the fighting everywhere else, even if Moscow’s mercenaries are often involved. Still, nasty things are moving in the places most media types scarcely notice. More shocks are coming.
Concluding Comments
That’s enough for another very long post. If there’s one thing to take away from this week, it’s the importance of taking full advantage of the opportunities that drones provide.
In an optimistic future, we are on the cusp of getting the vast majority of humans off the battlefield forever. Drones could even transform conflicts into mere spectacles, a bloodless if pointlessly expensive sport where exposing an operator equals victory. You could even wind up with a sort of new chivalric age, where a common ethical stance against inflicting needless violence leads to drone combat being like a game of tag where the loser submits when out of resources.
One can only hope I’m not actually an optimist in any sense, despite my confidence in Ukraine winning the fight. Truth be told, my default assumption is that the planet is in the early days of a Third World War potentially so ruthless, filled with cheap drones targeting housing and civilian infrastructure, that the horrific atrocities committed by the orcs in Kherson and elsewhere will seem almost quaint. Oddly enough, the path to averting this outcome is the same one that leads to the optimistic scenario. It comes down to how long fighting continues before a settling point is reached, and global recovery begins.
I hope for the 2030s. I fear the 2050s. More soon on the architecture of Earth Forces, which aims to do its bit to select the first option.
Pardon me - heavy aircraft carrying cruiser, to satisfy the Montreaux Convention and people into proper maritime classifications. Which Turkiye can now kindly lift, if it will. Let orc battleboats flow in to reinforce the Black Sea. Enjoy the trap and say hi to the drone boat that comes to say hello! NATO meanwhile can send in a group of Aegis-equipped ships capable of knocking down ballistic missiles. If it can hid Odesa, it can probably hit Bucharest. Best to shoot first, bury citizens later, when it comes to robots.
The desire to imagine the universe as a kind of giant mechanical clock is pervasive across the human experience, it seems. Any sense of control in the face of randomness, I suppose. Guess some people can’t just bundle all the present unknowables of the cosmos into little bundles called gods or spirits and accept that each has its own domain.
I am entirely aware that datum is the singluar and data the plural, but I also like to promote linguistic change. Good antidote to elitism.
Substack doesn’t offer much information about users or their engagement, which is fine by me, but how frequently people click links is one, along with the number of subscribers from each country. I find the patterns on that front endlessly fascinating. Unusually high density of subscribers in Denmark, as one example, even within the belt of countries that perceive Moscow as a direct threat. Bet that’s a function of proportion of English speakers, Denmark being a leader in supporting Ukraine relative to its capabilities, and all Danes being subject to conscription.
The writer types while leaning dangerously close to a two-foot wide desktop monitor.