Ukraine will help us with drone warfare
I don’t think anyone could have foreseen this development at the outset of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the U.S. and Ukraine plan to build a drone factory in the U.S. as part of a new defense partnership combining American manufacturing with Ukraine’s battlefield-tested drone technology.
Speaking in an interview with far-right influencer Laura Zoomer, Zelensky said the agreement would expand on an initial drone cooperation deal reached with the U.S., describing the project as beneficial to both countries. …
Zelensky told Loomer that Ukraine’s drone capabilities continue to advance, with some systems now capable of operating at ranges more than 1,800 miles, adding that engineers are working to extend the distance even further.
A White House official told Reuters that the details of the agreement were under discussion ahead of Zelensky’s planned meeting on Tuesday with President Trump.
It’s a little bit like our military partnership with Israel, which has much greater depth and width. The Buchanan wing of the right is against both, but has mostly ignored the obvious benefits or lied about them.
This is a very interesting part of the article, however:
Zelensky met with Loomer this week in Kyiv after the far-right influencer, who is a loyal ally of Trump, reversed her long-held vocal opposition of U.S. military aid to Ukraine amid the Russian war.
She cited her firsthand experience witnessing air raid sirens while visiting Ukraine helped change her perspective and issued an apology to Ukraine and its government for her past critical comments.
It’s not common to change one’s mind so publicly on such an issue.
Drone warfare seems to be the wave of the future, and we need to play catch-up on it.
This reminds me of what I commented here in the spring ‘23 (iirc):
Spring has sprung
I got stung
I’ve seen the shape of things to come
Drone swarms
The Hill needs a proofreader; Laura “Zoomer” actually Laura Loomer.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia needs to drone up as well. Killer drones hunting Houthis.
Killer drones from the sky
Slaughter bots that fight and die
Five thousand drones to make them pay
Five thousand men will die today
Or something like that.
Perhaps I make a distinction without difference but it seems to me the US is doing fine on the positive side of drone warfare and in need of catching up on the anti-drone side of drone warfare. This can, but won’t necessarily involve drones as anti-drone weapons.
This is excellent news! I’ve been saying for a while that Ukraine, Russia, China, and Iran are all well ahead of us in drone warfare, and if we don’t want a Pearl-Harbor-level disaster we need to get moving pronto. Since the other three are avowed enemies of the United States, we need Ukraine to help us catch up.
Unfortunately this come-to-Jesus moment has come as a result of a small (thankfully) disaster in the Iran war. Reports are that we lost about $20 billion worth of equipment and our allies lost about $80 billion worth of infrastructure. Worse, without Ukrainian-style drone defenses we expended most of our anti-missile missiles trying to take out cheap Iranian drones, leaving us very exposed. This has undoubtedly contributed to the desire of both us and our allies to avoid finishing off the Iranian regime.
So this is one case where an about-face is a very good thing. Facing Iran unprepared was a bad thing. Facing China unprepared would be a disastrous thing.
”Perhaps I make a distinction without difference but it seems to me the US is doing fine on the positive side of drone warfare and in need of catching up on the anti-drone side of drone warfare.”
This is an important distinction. The Ukrainian drones under discussion and the Iranian drones we face are not nearly as good as the missiles we have had in our arsenal for decades. That’s why the Pentagon brass going back years never took them seriously. What they are, however, is a whole lot cheaper, which allows them to be built in huge numbers — numbers that can overwhelm any current air defense system.
This is hugely important. In the recent campaign against Iran US forces were expending up to eight PAC-3 Patriot missiles to take out a single Shahed drone. We can build only about 750 Patriot interceptors *per year*. Iran can build 100 Shaheds *per day*. So we were expending a year’s worth of Patriots to take out a day’s worth of Shaheds. It is no wonder we ran out of Patriots.
Note that we shouldn’t have been expending *any* Patriots on a Shahed. They aren’t sophisticated enough to warrant a Patriot, which should be saved for incoming ballistic missiles that can’t be stopped any other way. But in the run-up to the Iran campaign both Trump and Hegseth mockingly turned down Ukrainian offers for drone defense, and we paid a price for that. So this is one about-face I’m glad to see. It speaks well of them and us.
A lot of lives will be saved because of this if we ever have to fight China. Maybe it will even cause them to call off the war.