June drone war

Drone motherships, ambush drones, AI drones, 50km fiber optic drone cables, FPV shaheds, mobile command transmitters, drone deficit and decentralized corruption

Yesterday we had a look at Ukrainian complaints over their outdated fortifications. Today, we’ll go into the latest updates on the drone war.

Naturally, after their early June success with ‘Operation Spiderweb’ the Ukrainians are excited for what the future holds in terms of drone asymmetric warfare.

Stanislav Buniatov, commander of the nationalist Aidar batallion, posted this meme on June 15. It reads:

‘Engineers of the Security Services of Ukraine see a Russian delivery robot’

But as we will see today, the dazzling ‘success’ of such operations belies the fact that Ukraine is losing the real drone battle - that on the battlefield.

In this field, our Ukrainian sources have been complaining of a whole array of Russian technological developments: AI drones, drone motherships, ambush drones, fiber optic drones with a 50km range, Russian ‘shahed’ drones upgraded with cameras, and mobile command transmitters. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s drone production capacity is crippled by the weakness of state capacity and dependence on a vast ‘zoo’ of ineffective drone companies.