In The News

Samuel Bendett says, “The volunteers … are still complaining that the country’s defense industrial sector is not fully involved in FPV drone manufacturing.”

Samuel Bendett says, “Given that anything that moves in the Ukraine combat will be observed, tracked and hit with a drone, many of these unmanned ground vehicle designs are very simple and inexpensive, DIY-ed at the front by units or delivered by volunteers.”

Julian Waller says, “Rufo is very intentionally acting as a bridging actor between people to his right – in a variety of dimensions and different ideological segments – and the more institutional establishment world: the harder right of American politics.”

Samuel Bendett says, “One of the more remarkable developments two years into this conflict has been our assessment of and how much we were probably off in that assessment in Russia’s ability to take casualties.”

Samuel Bendett says, “This technology needs a lot of testing and evaluation, this technology needs a lot of iteration, [and] many times the technology isn’t ready.”

Dmitry Gorenburg says, "They tried something, it worked even better than they hoped, with the Moskva sinking," and then they said, 'Oh great! And let's build on that!' and they've been working on that for the last two years."

David Broyles says, “The thing that typically comes up is, ‘Why can’t I have a little clippy on my machine that says it looks like you’re writing an email, you might want to classify this paragraph.’ It sounds easy in theory. And given all the cool things that we’re continually seeing being developed on the large language model stuff, you’d think this would be a slam dunk. It turns out, it’s really hard.”

Samuel Bendett says, “We are at a point where we have achieved a certain parity between tactics, weapons, and systems. But this parity does not always hold for long.”

Samuel Bendett says, “I have seen both claims since the MoD wants to promote this as an AI-enabled wonder weapon.”

Samuel Bendett says, “Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started, the use of commercial quadcopters was fairly widespread in many conflicts around the world, including the Middle East.”

Samuel Bendett says, "An AK-47 is almost 70 years old at this point, and has changed little. Simple submachine or machine guns have remain unchanged as well, like the M2 Browning still in use."

Samuel Bendett says, “Ukraine is not done for, but the ideas coming from on top, the military leadership, indicates that Ukraine needs to adapt to a very different approach to combating Russia, especially given the situation it finds itself in with the relatively stable stalemate. “

Samuel Bendett says that both Moscow and Kyiv are racing to find ways of operating their own drones during harsh weather conditions, like wind and sleet.

Ken Gause says, "If the Russians could actually accelerate the timeline" for North Korea to enhance its nuclear missile capabilities to target the U.S. and "hold U.S. cities hostage with their weapons," then the United States would feel it necessary to "deal with the situation."

Samuel Bendett says, “Rather than investing in more expensive combat capabilities, this shows it is cheaper to buy a drone and hope it either hits something or your enemy expends resources shooting it down.”

Samuel Bendett says that more fighting is taking place at night as more and more drones enter the fight.