by SIMPLICIUS
A new piece from The Economist gives another very interesting tidbit. The article deals with Vadym Sukharevsky, Ukraine’s head of the Unmanned Systems Forces, i.e. the drone czar of all Ukraine. The article notes this is the first position of its kind in the entire world, which does show how ahead of the curve Ukraine is when it comes to drones; as I’ve always said, it’s a consequence of necessity for Ukraine. Russia can afford to be slightly more lax because they have a plethora of offensive options, whereas Ukraine has virtually nothing but drones to lean on.
But if you think that means Russia is behind on drones, as the common narrative goes, think again: Ukraine’s drone czar puts the final, decisive stamp on this much-debated fine-point:
So, according to the literal head of the entire Ukrainian drone program, Russia at worst is at qualitative parity with Ukraine, but is ahead of them quantitatively six to one. Pro-UA propagandists have no further ground to stand on on this issue.
But what’s even more interesting is the following revelation. Read the snippet in its entirety, as it pertains to a lot of issues centrally covered here for the past few months:
So firstly, the drone czar makes another huge revelation, which totally refutes claims that Ukraine can possibly be inflicting more casualties on Russia. He states clearly that drones have not superseded artillery on the battlefield—so how can Ukraine possibly be suffering less casualties when Russia has by far its largest advantage in artillery? A moot point anyway, we now know, since according to him Russia has the drone advantage as well.
But then he goes on to dismiss all the far-flung talks of AI drone swarms and the like, perhaps refuting all the highly ambitious DARPA and Eric Schmidt (“Project White Stork”) initiatives that were said to be on the cusp of turning the tide of the war against Russia.
The article ends with this foreboding clincher from the drone czar:
He jokes that he has two predictions for the direction of drone warfare: one bad and the other fairly bad. “We are the ones already in the trenches. You can’t scare us. But the rest of the world? They might be in for a rude awakening.”
