Radio War Nerd EP #523 — Drone Warfare in Ukraine (Year 3), feat. Samuel Bendett

Hello all, new listener here. Anyone able to point me towards a good podcast ep of any podcast providing an overview of drone warfare, how it has changed war, what it means for the future of war etc?

Bendett is a MIC grifter that found a way to leverage his knowledge of Russian to sell his "analysis" which consists of regurgitating what he read in various Telegram channels, both Ukrainian and Russian. He has no apparent background to actually analyze anything or any unique sources of information. Just another Michael Koffman. That's the level of analysis in today's empire for you.

I found this recent interview with a Russian drone developer to be highly informative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmfNUM2CbbM

Reminds me of a short story I read a long time ago where we are in a perpetual war without soldiers. Instead, drones duel in the sky far above and the effects are never felt down on the ground beyond the occasional explosion of color or sound from the clouds. The drones have grown so advanced that their offensive and defensive capabilities nullify one another leading to a seemingly eternal stalemate. I wish I could recall the name as I remember enjoying it (even though I'm sure I'm butchering the details).

On the lighter side, I’ve been fucking with my gun but coworkers about how damned obsolete their fetish has become. Bunch of French officers on horseback, etc.

Oh also China's launching the Jiutian drone in a month which ought to be an interesting step up in the race

Using older radars to find the F35 reminds me not only of the F117 debacle in Bosnia but also the unconfirmed(?) debate that the radar for the Soviet SA-2 was capable of seeing the F117 as well. Older tech maintaining it's relevance is a weird twist of the supposedly straightforward game of one-potato-two-potato that usually characterizes the arms race

Breaking news: Ames's cat Løven has merged with the tree to become an ambulatory cat/tree hybrid and is now stomping around terrorizing New York State. The State National Guard has already been routed, and President Trump is meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to discuss the possibility of launching a nuclear strike on New York. As a preemptive measure against future tree attacks, the White Wizard Saruman has been selected to lead a federal task force of wild men and orcs in attacking and subduing forests around the nation.

Lol @ “Reno 9/11”

What Samuel said about civilians manufacturing drones really struck me. I think someday soon we'll start seeing homemade drones proliferate among local militia groups and lone nuts / Luigi copycats. Why print a gun when you could print a kamakaze drone?

Looks like the cat came down per Mark on Twitter, for those who are worried.

Keep up the amazing work! 💎🚀

Couldn’t stop thinking about Marks kitty, major bummer. I hope he’s alright.

What was the number of drones in the battlespace that the guest said ? I remember it was millions but I do t remember how many millions

Did Mark's cat come down?

Call a tree surgeon! They will get the kitty down.

It is wild to me that what you wrote back in the 2000s has all but come true

I kept listening to this and my mind boggled at the horrifying possibilities of what those drones will do domestically. Because there's a 100% chance they will be deployed domestically to keep control of us.

what a disaster, this guest has no idea what he's talking about. I doubt if he's even a drone. Why can't we ever hear from the actual robots themselves? UAV and UGV perspectives are always erased by the humanarchy. Dolan and Ames need to be empowering drone voices on their podcast, not amplifying the hegemonic human-centric narrative.

Regarding the near shootdowns of F16s and F35s, I can't shake the memory of the 10,000 fixed and rotary wing aircraft the US lost in Vietnam to the supposedly backwards Vietnamese. Seems like there is still a veneration of high technology driving us towards some stupid wasteful war

I don't know how this was missed but Mark clearly needs a (farm) drone with a cat box attached to it.

I was an emt and we got called to standby for a cat in tree rescue and the fire department called the electic company to come out with a cherry picker.

If you're still dealing with the cat emergency, I'd also recommend calling a tree removal service and asking if you could pay one of their folks to scale the tree, they usually have climbing gear that allows them to climb up without cherry pickers if need be

If the US military can’t pivot away from massively expensive weapons, they’re cooked. There’s been plenty of signs that the hegemony would be eclipsed in the next 30 years, but it’s the equivalent of taking decades to train an elite warrior vs giving a peasant a musket and 60min of instruction

C- and finally- I think we will soon see what I can best call "neutral buoyancy" attaack drones. A hydrogen ballon will be attached to the quad-copter, giving it neutral buoyancy, allowing for a much larger payload. Upwind and cross-wind capability will be limited but if launched in a favorable wind, the extra payload could be very useful.

B- Bi-static radar (the transmitter and receiver are separate) can detect and track stealth aircraft. All fighters have, in addition, a large IR signature that no amount of careful design and careful directing of the exhaust can eliminate. The US Sidewinder, a constantly updated IR missile is one of the most successful tools in the US arsenal. Manpads in sufficient numbers will eventually take down an F-35. Even were a swarm of drones merely to shatter the canopy, that would take the plane down. Manned fighter aircraft, like carriers, are becoming a mere boondoggle.

A. Carriers- new US carriers use a type of electro-magnetic rail gun as their launching catapult. Older carriers use a steam-driven system. Even slightly misalignment renders the electro-mag catapult unuseable. The older ones are more tolerant of some damage. A cheap swarm of drones aimed only at the catapults would most likely succeed in hitting and damaging the system, rendering the carrier useless and very vulnerable to follow-up attacks. The era of big carriers and big fleets is surely over;

Armor heads SEETHING rn

As the wars continue, one can only hope (probably in vain) that someone with authority in the US military is paying attention.

Good luck with the cat rescue. We had the same thing a few years ago, one of our cats climbed about 15 feet up a pretty thin tree. It did it twice and the first time I was able to rescue it with a ladder, but the second was during a storm, it was dark, and the tree was swaying side to side, and there was no way I was going up there. Cat came down after a few hours looking terrified and has never climbed a tree since.

Have to admit I was almost in tears laughing imaging someone trying to coax a cat into entering a basket on a stick 30ft in the air. If that doesn’t work maybe a hot air balloon? One of those ornithopters Da Vinci designed? Poor Løven!

Perhaps, a rope tied to a rock could be thrown over a nearby branch. Then the carrier with food could be lifted up to near the cat. Anyway, good luck.

I have a friend who is an arborist in Minneapolis and he is constantly rescuing cats. He does it for free too because he is a big cat guy. Maybe reach out to some local mom and pop arborists in Rochester

It feels awfully forced for Sam to even mention the "threat" that young men with technical drone experience pose to the Russian state. As with everything in this war, if it applies to Russia it applies 1000x more to Ukraine. Life will not be good for the elderly pensioners or whoever is left in that miserable country once the war ends and young men with technical knowledge in inflicting death are demobilized and sent back to their hometowns. Ukraine hardly had a functional state before the war, what makes us think they'll have one capable of controlling their mentally ill after the war?

Please update us on your cat :((( when you get the chance. Great episode y’all, the subject does make one giddy with possibility.

Hope the cats okay!

The "American Bushido" philosophy of the elite SOF-centric military, as championed by Hegseth, is about the worst possible way to organize a military in the face of massed artillery, ISR, and limitless drones. As a result, have a horrible feeling that the Hegseth run DOD is going to ignore the lessons of the Ukr/RUS war completely and act like the UK generals ordering troops to charge machine gun nests in WW1 for the next big war.

The whole Ukraine civilians buying supplies reminds me of the phase during operation Iraqi freedom where families bought their deployed soldiers body armor with their own money. “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want.” -Rumsfeld

Autonomous cars are going to come out of this stupid fucking war.

We could use an update on the cat