The nature of drone warfare is “changing rapidly,” driven particularly by the fight between Moscow and Kiev, the US president believes
Washington is actively following drone warfare developments in the Ukraine conflict, US President Donald Trump told West Point Military Academy graduates on Saturday. He said the US is “learning” from the tactics used by both Moscow and Kiev and that it was important to stay “at the top” amid the rapidly changing nature of warfare.
“We are studying it. We are seeing different forms of warfare, we are seeing the drones that are coming down at angles, with speed, with precision. We have never seen anything like that. We are learning from it,” the president said, referring to their use in the current struggle.
He then called on the cadets to “have the courage to take risks and do things differently” in a bid to stay up-to-date in the field of military tactics and strategy.
His comments came as The Times reported that Russia was beating Ukraine in “the drone race” when it comes to both the production of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and their use on the battlefield. It particularly pointed to the fiber optic drone types connected directly to their operators through a gossamer thin fiber optic thread that makes them difficult to detect or intercept.
Such drones are “essentially a wire-guided, highly maneuverable killer drone, impervious to jamming, and difficult to track by radio-based drone detector units,” The Times reported, adding that the Russian UAVs were “altering the physical make-up of the front line, the tactics of the war and the psychology of the soldiers fighting it” and were “devasting” the Ukrainian military’s logistics in the process.
Russian President Vladimir Putin highlighted the important role drones had been playing on the battlefield back in April. Speaking at a meeting of the Russian military-industrial committee, he called UAVs “one of the serious factors of battlefield success.” According to the president, some 4,000 first-person view (FPV) drones were sent to the troops daily throughout 2024.
FPV UAVs have mostly been used as kamikaze drones by the Russian military to strike a wide array of targets, ranging from tanks and armored vehicles to other drones. Earlier this month, the Russian military published a video showcasing the successful deployment of low-cost FPV drones against more expensive Ukrainian reconnaissance UAVs.
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