Russian drones: AI-powered swarms, motherships, mil-industrial complex

Robots vs robots. 'Destroyed logistics' and the likelihood of 'frontline collapse' at Pokrovsk. Russia's great technological leap forward.

Today’s topic is drones. More specifically, new Russian drone technologies. AI-powered drone swarms, diesel (and AI) drones punching 100 kilometers behind enemy lines, 40 kilometer fibre-optic drone cables, mid-air drone duels.

As we’ll see, Russia’s drone capacities are developing so rapidly that Ukrainian military commanders are complaining about ‘destroyed logistics’ and worrying about the frontline ‘collapsing’.

First off, an entree - robots on robots.

Ukrainian war-blogger DroneBomber posted the following remarkable video on May 29. It shows a Russian drone destroying a Ukrainian unmanned vehicles. He predicted that such cases would multiply in future because ‘their army has more and more such drones’:

The drone industrial complex

There’s been plenty of material in the western press lately about Russia’s increasing lead in the drone war. The Times put out an article last week that was particularly widely cited. But everyone reads English - what has media in the warzone been saying about it all?

According to Russian defence minister Andrey Belousov in July 2024, Russian civilian companies produced 4,000 drones a day. Meanwhile, his Ukrainian counterpart Rustem Umerov stated that Ukraine produced 2.7 thousand drones a day in December 2024. As we’ll see later, the gap has clearly grown drastically in recent months.

What is the basis of this gulf?

On May 16, Russian anti-government publication Insider put out quite an interesting article on the contours of the emerging military industrial complex that has allowed Russia to push ahead in drone production: