Radio War Nerd Episode #351 — Drone Warfare in Ukraine, feat. Samuel Bendett
We talk to analyst Samuel Bendett about the rapidly evolving drone warfare in the Ukraine-Russia war.
Guest: Samuel Bendett, Researcher at The Center for Naval Analyses
Recorded: October 21, 2022
We talk to Samuel Bendett, who researches Russian drone & AI capabilities, about the rapidly evolving drone warfare in the Ukraine-Russia war.
Follow Samuel Bendett on Twitter.
CNA reports by Samuel Bendett cited in the show:
-February 2022
-July 2022
-September 2022
Intermission music by Brendon Anderegg
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Total time: 1:15:15
Comments (21)
Man, mark keeps extolling Michael Kofman, but I follow him too and the dude seems to be wrong an awful lot.
Interesting guest! I recently heard a professional e-sports player say that the physical peak of e-sports players is around 17years old. As in peak reaction times, hand-eye coordination and such. So child drone warriors should be considered as inevitable I'd say.
Request for a show topic - could we get an episode on the armaments industry, covering not just the US companies like Raytheon, but the Brits, the French, the Czechs etc?
"Speaking of tundra" xD
gamers rise up
Is this the first RWN guest who's an active employee of the DOD?
That might be so. They've talked to several U.S. veterans, but I can't remember anyone who was active-duty. Most of the guests so far have been journalists, professors, and authors. And a few fellow podcasters.
Incredible episode
This whole war is like watching The Godfather 2, except Fredo runs the Corleone family, and Hyman Roth's son Fredo runs his empire.
It's Fredos all the way down.
I kinda wonder if helicopters could be given a new role as drone hunters, just hovering above the treeline looking for drones to blast with specialized weapons and jammers. Probably would be even more expensive than equipping them for ground attack.
But why would the helicopter need a pilot in that case? There's already plenty of drone helicopters. Also it's funny you say "specialized weapons" when in most cases (at least with smaller drones) that just means a big net. The girl from Mythbusters rigged up an anti-drone gun once that's just a handheld pneumatic air cannon that shoots a net, and that's all you need for the little store-bought types.
I remember seeing footage from Donbass a few years back where the video description claimed one of the soldiers seen in it was using an "anti drone rifle" which looked real weird, and I figured it must have been a directional jammer of some kind (assuming it wasnt just like those IED detectors we sold to iraq that were just a pole with a wire)
Really great episode!
That was interesting. The thinking behind the use of cheap drones seems to be the same as that behind spam mail.
Ahem... Obama and Clinton were both great politicians even if one didn't like their policies (which I do not).
That was a good episode! I still have this one thing that I would like to know more about: what about ground based or naval drones?
I remember pulling an all nighter and waiting from 3am to be guaranteed a spot for the German office for residency in Berlin.
Of course, Frankfurt is civilized and you can get an advance appointment
Audio drops out for a bit after 1:02:36
For a bit or entirely?