Posted on 08/26/2025 10:51:58 AM PDT by marcusmaximus
US President Donald Trump said America is studying Ukraine’s use of drones in warfare, according to remarks he made to reporters.
Responding to a question, Trump noted that the war in Ukraine is being fought with drones in a way not seen before - and that the US is examining those lessons closely.
Trump stated that there hadn’t been a war of that scale since World War II and that it was the most significant development in the history of military affairs. He added that it was a completely new form of combat, a drone war, something that hadn’t existed before. He noted that he, Pete Hegseth, and others were studying it very closely, and that it was a completely new kind of war, albeit a brutal one.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
I don’t get the impression that we’re learning much. The Ukrainians and the Russians and even the chinese seem to be years ahead of us on drones.
Every war is a weapons test lab for the next one.
The silicon chip has changed the nature of warfare. Hopefully from what the US military observed in Ukraine and during the Armenian-Azerbaijan war they stop investing huge sums in naval surface combatants ad land armored vehicles.
This is the funniest headline I’ve read lately! Hello! The US military are using this war as a training / experiment environment.
The current media buzz about drones and how the Ukraine and Russia have advanced way past the US is a lot of BS media buzz.
The US is light years ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to drones, we just don't publicize our developments.
The current implementation of drones in Ukraine is a low tech solution to a war fought by adversaries who have run out of high tech weapons and high value targets.
The drones both sides are using would not have near the success against the US military.
What both the Ukrainians and the Russians have come up with are some innovative uses for marginally capable, low payload $2000-$10, 000 drones to stand in for weapons like the Javelin while still having an individual soldier real time ISR capability.
In fact, a lot of the ordnance that the Ukraine is using is bomblets and anti armor shaped charges pulled from US supplied ATACM cluster munition warheads that they have run out of US supplied missiles to deliver and either adapted to be dropped from drone or reverse engineered Ukraine produced knock offs. .
That said, the Ukraine and Russia have pioneered a new type of warfare capability that the US needs to evaluate, refine and implement.
DoD is partnering with Palmer Luckey’s company, Anduril, the most advanced drone developer [both defense and offense] in the USA ... Palmer Luckey is the Elon Musk of drones ...
Don’t kid yourself; our military activity at Nellis in Nevada and Alamogordo in New Mexico have been devoted to this for years.
And so is the rest of the world.
Specifically the Mexican drug cartels who have recieved not only drone training from the Ukies but also shoulder fired anti tank and aircraft missiles from the Ukie run black market.
If you think drones are scary don’t start contemplating what you flying things terrorists can make out of cardboard, a glue gun couple of servos hooked up to a rasberry pi/arduino and small lithium battery.
Could be wrong but my impression is that until now we’ve focused on high dollar high altitude surveillance drones whereas this war is fought with swarms of drones cheap enough that they use them even to go after individual soldiers. They are burning through thousands of one-way drones a month.
I vaguely remember a picture in my high school history text where foreign observers were present watching the Revolutionary War battles.
“”””The US is light years ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to drones, we just don’t publicize our developments.””””
That is my impression as well, and a lot of it is defense against drones, we have been at it for many, many, years.
The current implementation of drones in Ukraine is a low tech solution to a war fought by adversaries who have run out of high tech weapons and high value targets.”
That's true but the Ukes have more practical experience of using drones in combat than anyone else and a lot of knowledge how russians are using them. The mass use of micro drones might be needed in case of full scale war as the stocks of those high-end weapons are limited + the micro drones are unfortunately the perfect weapon for terrorists, organized crime etc. so I'm afraid we're going to see more of it in the coming years.
The big threat from low cost drones is terrorism and internal sabotage and those are very real threats that are very difficult to counter
Without a doubt drones are going to be a major threat going forward and coordinated mass attacks either drones using flocking algorithms can be very effective at overwhelming defensive systems
But the kind of attacks by lone FPV drones we see in Ukraine would not be as effective against an American military
Maybe this is part of the reason for investing in intel chips. Our drone production and counter-drone technology needs to maintain many steps ahead for this coming new type of engagement. It is coming and already employed elsewhere. The chips which are necessary, better be made in the US, rather relying on other nations for them.
Our enemies are already planning on how to use drones to attacks us.
REMEMBER the stealth attack on Russian bombers? Then the same type attack happened elsewhere a few weeks later. Then, a few days later, all of our bombers abandoned a ME airbase. Intel was on the learning curve, or probably had knowledge of a credible threat.
The threat of drone warfare is not limited to nation on nation warfare. Terrorists are already scheming and some potential scenarios are ugly.
Recall holiday drone “shows” all controlled to preplanned, choreographed positions from one computer? Wisdom asks; “What other ways could this technology be used?”
Yes, we had better be many many steps ahead in the technology, because it’s coming.
It’s said; “knowledge is power”
This is a half-truth
Knowledge is mere facts.
On the other hand, wisdom is the application of knowledge, history, experience, tact and timing. Wisdom is power.
When I think of drones, I’m eerily reminded about swarms of unusual looking locusts spoken about roughly 1900 years ago. To that man anyway, they ~looked~ like locusts.
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