Drone warfare developments - it's a scary future

 

Many of my readers doubtless took note of a report earlier this month about a US-Ukrainian military exercise earlier this year.

Ukrainian drone teams demolished a brigade of US Army tanks and armored vehicles during a live war game held this year—but the US soldiers were lucky enough to get “respawn” attempts while learning from the experience.

The semiannual military exercise, called Combined Resolve, gave the US military a firsthand taste of how modern drone warfare has evolved on the battlefields of Ukraine. The Ukrainian drone operators participating in the exercise were easily able to spot and destroy US armored vehicles by mimicking the actions of dropping bombs from above or moving close enough to simulate a kamikaze strike, according to US officials and a participant who spoke with The Wall Street Journal.

. . .

... by repeating the training scenario throughout the two-week exercise, US Army troops got better at figuring out how to disperse and hide from the drones while using countermeasures such as electronic warfare.

The US military is not alone in learning such lessons from battle-hardened Ukrainian drone operators.

Ukrainian drone teams also participated in a Swedish-led military exercise for NATO, called Aurora 26, that was also held in May. A mock mechanized assault by NATO tanks and infantry fighting vehicles allowed Ukrainian drones to take out dozens of the attacking armored vehicles, which eventually forced planners to reset the war game, The Kyiv Independent reported.

There's more at the link.

While trying to find out more, I came across this 45-minute video article from Deutsche Welle.  Itfeatures both a drone operator's perspective (a British soldier fighting for Ukraine) and drone casualties speaking of it from their point of view.  It also goes into how the technology is developing, and how China already has a commanding lead in the field.  As wars become more widespread, what will this mean for soldiers?  I recommend the report very highly if you aren't up to date with recent developments.

The technological advances referred to in the video report are already making headlines.  Earlier this month, we learned that US AI technology is now "enhancing" conventional Ukrainian drones.

In mid-July, the Ukrainian military began receiving Shrike drones made by the Ukrainian company SkyFall equipped with AI-powered autonomy hardware and software developed by the US company Auterion. The companies plan to deliver 50,000 drones equipped with Auterion’s Skynode S strike kits in the coming months.

That allows human operators to manually fly the Shrike first-person view (FPV) drones into a battlefield area, designate a target up to half a mile away, and then “flip the switch to turn it into fire-and-forget terminal guidance mode,” Lorenz Meier, co-founder and CEO of Auterion, told Ars.

The operator can abort a strike or choose a different target as long as they have a radio signal connection with the drone, Meier explained. But the drone can still automatically track and fly into targets without any human guidance, even if it loses its connection with the operator due to buildings or terrain blocking the signal or because of enemy jamming on the same radio frequencies.

To home in on targets, Auterion’s software relies solely on the visual information available from the Shrike drone’s main onboard camera. That means the Shrike drones can track and strike moving targets without any reliance on GPS—a crucial advantage on modern battlefields, where GPS jamming has also become common.

Again, more at the link.

When I think back on my own days in uniform, I can only be devoutly grateful that we didn't have to face such devices on African battlefields almost half a century ago.  I think my odds of surviving such combat would have been a whole lot lower if they'd been around!

The scary thing, to my mind, is that all this technology has already devolved to individual user level, in manufacturing as much as in operation.  A private person can buy just about all the drone propulsion and guidance technology used in military battlefield drones, and assemble his own versions.  A warhead isn't difficult to devise, given a little chemical knowledge and/or access to stolen military or commercial explosives.  What might happen if a well-organized terrorist outfit such as Al Qaeda or ISIS, or their various and sundry offshoots, were able to get hold of drone "swarming" technology and launch fifty or a hundred explosive drones against a major target?  I'm thinking sports stadiums, or government buildings, or even key targets such as the President when he's traveling by vehicle.  What if some of the drones could try to obstruct the takeoff or landing of the Presidential aircraft?  What if they did the same to a normal commercial flight, potentially causing hundreds of casualties and disrupting the entire air transport network for who knows how long?

I fear we haven't even begun to witness how dangerous such technology might be in the wrong hands.

Peter

Our politicians will never agree, but we can dream...

 

My hat's off to President Milei of Argentina for his "Grillete Fiscal" proposal - literally, the "Fiscal Shackles".  He wants to make sure that no future Argentinian government commits the same economic errors that have doomed the nation to half a century or more of economic fluctuations, fiscal irresponsibility, and near-bankruptcy.

Milei first unveiled the proposal in his characteristically entertaining style during a televised address to the Argentine people. The bill must still be approved by Congress, where his party, La Libertad Avanza, is expected to secure the support of allied parliamentary factions in both chambers.

Although Milei lacks a parliamentary majority of his own, his alliances have thus far proved remarkably resilient.

If enacted, the legislation would break with one of modern politics' unwritten rules: the assumption that governments can always buy votes with higher spending, higher taxes, and ever more debt. The business of burdening future generations and taxpayers with politically manufactured credit expansion would, at least for the time being, come to an end.

Milei's idea is straightforward: future Argentine governments should have their wings clipped before they are even able to take flight on another debt-financed spending spree.

The mechanism is equally straightforward. Should the federal budget remain in deficit for several consecutive months, Congress would be given a deadline to restore fiscal balance. Failure to do so would automatically trigger a U.S.-style government shutdown. Non-essential government activities would be suspended automatically—without further parliamentary debate or political horse-trading. The President, Vice President, cabinet ministers, state secretaries, and every member of both houses of Congress would receive not a single peso in salary until the budget is balanced once again.

Furthermore, all new spending would be frozen. No new contracts could be awarded, and no additional public employees could be hired. Even more striking, discretionary transfers from the federal government to Argentina's provinces would also be suspended.

At the same time, the law deliberately protects the state's core responsibilities. Pension payments, healthcare services, unemployment benefits, as well as the salaries of police officers, members of the armed forces, and correctional staff would remain fully exempt from these austerity measures.

There's more at the link.

I'd dearly love to see similar principles enshrined in US law.  It would take years to achieve, because we'd have to pay down our enormous national debt first;  but it would shackle the hands of future politicians, and stop them buying votes by enacting legislation for massive handouts to attract supporters.  We'd also have to figure out how to keep essential functions (e.g. defense, etc.) going when we're savagely cutting back everywhere else.

There's also the question of what to do with the literally hundreds of millions of Americans (and others) who are dependent on government handouts to a greater or lesser extent.  They'd have to be "weaned" over a period of time, to allow them to grow accustomed to the idea that nobody's going to pay them to live at taxpayer expense any longer.  Expect civil unrest as a minimum;  possibly riots to make the George Floyd/BLM brouhaha look like a Sunday school picnic . . . but it's still an attractive idea.

All those difficulties notwithstanding, unless we can enact some form of President Milei's program here, I can't see how our present system of government can survive in the medium to long term.

Peter

Verily, the mind doth boggle...

 

Believe it or not, this is a genuine e-poster from an outfit calling themselves Mainebreastfeeds.  Click the image for a larger view.

The caption is "National Breastfeeding Month", but the subtitle below it is "Celebrating trans lactation, two-spirit and chestfeeding".  Needless to say, "breastfeeding" and "chestfeeding" are not interchangeable terms (except in the sick minds of those who conceived this travesty)!

I imagine that for most normal people, that image is about as stomach-turning as one could wish.  It makes a mockery of natural breastfeeding, and is medically and physically impossible as well.  I find it nauseating.

I think anyone holding such views, or supporting those who hold them, should have their sanity examined as soon as possible.  That may be the only benefit to such arrant nonsense - to expose those who are, mentally speaking, three or four cents short of a nickel.

Peter

Tab clearing

 

A number of articles caught my attention over the past couple of weeks, but I didn't have time to write about them in detail here.  Therefore, I'll provide links to each, and encourage you to go read them if the subject interests you.  In no particular order:

1.  Evil, by Divemedic.

Speaking of numerous recent reports of child abuse, up to and including murder, he writes:

"So to the people who say the mothers above are sick or should have some sort of mercy given to them because of post partum depression, I have to tell you that there is true evil in this world. I was once one of the victims of that sort of abuse. I’ve also had to be there to see where that abuse often ends. It’s always a tragedy. When I see stories like this, I imagine the child standing there crying to its mother for protection as they watch her strangle their siblings to death, knowing and fearing that they are next, and wondering what they did wrong to deserve this. It’s overwhelming."

Having had to work with child abusers as a prison chaplain, I honestly can't disagree with his sentiments.

2.  How we die, by Eaton Rapids Joe.

Joe writes of the suicide of a young man, but notes that "other causes-of-death are increasing and thus dilute the share caused by suicide".  The accompanying chart is eye-opening, particularly the toll taken by MAiD in Canada, which now accounts for more than 1 in every 20 deaths in that country.

3.  NAMIBIA: The Desert That Swallowed an Entire City

This hour-long documentary is a spectacular look at Namibia, with particular reference to the Namib Desert, one of only three true deserts on the planet.  I've been in most of the places it mentions, and learned to love the Namib as a place to leave the world behind and find your soul.  It made me very nostalgic to watch the video.

4.  Chicago’s Wrongful Conviction Scandal Needs an Investigation, Not a Buy Now, Pay Later Plan.

Chicago Contrarian investigates the extraordinarily wasteful and corrupt system whereby Chicago charges someone with a crime, convicts them, then has to reverse the charges and pay out hundreds of millions of dollars every year in "damages".  Meanwhile, of course, the true perpetrators of the crimes make their getaway and get off scot free.  I'd call it a system tailor-made for corruption, rake-offs and crooked politicians, but what do I know?

5.  The Joke that Sparked Death Threats for Arynne Wexler.

How a young conservative comedian roused the ire of an entire politically correct industry.

She was at the White House in the spring of 2025 as part of an influencer gathering. She got some face time with spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, and she opened with the riff that caused a kerfuffle. Leavitt brought up President Donald Trump’s work with deportations and securing the southern border.

That gave Wexler an opening.

“I can attest to the fact that deportations are working because my Uber drivers finally speak English again,” she told Leavitt.

“Everyone laughed,” she recalled. “I leave the room and my phone is blowing up … I’m getting so many death threats in my Instagram, to my web site. I was put in touch with the FBI because I was getting so many threats over it … over that joke.'”

6.  Making idiots useful, by El Gato Malo.

people speak often of “suicidal empathy” as a plague consuming the west, and to be sure, they have a point. but where does this come from? from whence did it arise and take hold? i have an idea around a dovetail. hear me out on this:

the other day, i spoke about communism being a failure of second order thinking and that basically anyone capable of asking the question “but if we do that, it creates a certain set of incentives and won’t those incentives then lead to X?” does not become a communist. (apart from the select few who know exactly what it will do and see it as a path to personal power. more on them in a minute.)

well, how is “suicidal empathy” not functionally the exact same thing?

7.  Why I Quit the Tenure Track.

(If the article is paywalled, there's an archived version here.)

A black professor discusses his experiences in academic utopia, and how it eventually drove him away with its pretentiousness and condescension.

The very system that was designed to protect the faculty’s right to free thought collapsed. By 1980, as many as two-thirds of American college professors were tenured. Today, only about a quarter are. We went from a world where most faculty members could say what they think without fear of being fired to one where most people teaching college courses have to worry that their contract won’t be renewed if they cause intellectual offense. It is not surprising that a professoriat disproportionately composed of contract workers would also be one that could be pressured into groupthink.

8.  The NGO Business : Your Emotion Is Our Money.

Subtitled "How One Machine Sells Optionality To The Rich And Survival To The Poor And Why You Should Care".  You'll never look at NGO's in the same way again.

Ask someone to name a humanitarian organization and they will say Red Cross, or Save the Children, or Oxfam, or UNICEF. Ask them to name Chemonics and you will get a blank stare, every time, from almost everyone who has never worked inside this industry. And yet between 2008 and 2024, Chemonics was awarded more than $17 billion in USAID contracts — more than triple its nearest competitor — making it, for over a decade, the largest single implementer of American foreign aid on earth. It is not a charity. Does it have a donation button? Does it have a telethon? No. It is a private, for-profit development firm headquartered in Washington, DC, and roughly 95% of everything it has ever earned came from one single government client.

That fact alone should reorganize how you think this industry works, because it means the entire public image of "the NGO sector" — the child sponsorship letters, the disaster telethons, the branded polo shirts — describes only one half of a market that is actually built from two almost entirely separate businesses wearing the same public label. Understanding the difference between them, and where the real money actually concentrates, teaches you something durable about every heavily regulated, publicly-adjacent industry you will ever look at.

9.  The Permanent Underclass Is Already Here.

Subtitled "While San Francisco’s tech community frets over AI-driven job displacement, we have more to fear from misguided government welfare policies".  

What explains the flurry of concern in San Francisco over the supposedly imminent creation of a “permanent underclass”? The phrase, prominent in tech circles on X, refers to the vast, impoverished caste that many fear AI automation could create as jobs disappear and wealth flows increasingly to owners of capital. Murmurs about the permanent underclass began as a kind of inside joke in San Francisco—a winking reference to the awe and anxiety sweeping the tech industry as AI models steadily improved and engineers realized that they would either embrace the new tools or get left behind. As one popular meme put it: “You have [blank] months to escape the permanent underclass” (where the blank is a stand-in for your “artificial general intelligence timeline”—or how long you think it will take the models to automate almost all work).

... the permanent underclass meme does not just suggest that some people will lose purchasing power. It suggests that they will be irrevocably relegated to misery and destitution. There is a real-life analogue to this class in San Francisco: the drug-addicted and mentally ill homeless allowed to decay on our streets. Maybe the resonance of the “permanent underclass” meme comes less from concerns about downward mobility and more from the experience of passing a half-naked man smoking fentanyl on your way to work; or watching a swarm of drug dealers cater to wheelchair-bound addicts from the window of a self-driving taxi; or repeatedly pressing the “call for assistance” button in front of a locked toiletries display at a pharmacy. These experiences have become banal in many American cities, but their banality is especially striking in San Francisco, the hub of the most consequential technological revolution of our time. The permanent underclass already lives among you—are you just one twist of fate away from joining it?

There you are.  They're all worth reading.  I hope you enjoy them, and that they make you think.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 324

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.