And I wouldn’t describe myself as such. However, if even a washed-up combat-arms ex-company-grade-officer can spot this trend, then you’d think the geniuses at the Pentagon or national leadership can.

National leadership. OK, I said it. Right now, we’ve got a choice between a fella who got into politics before I was born and another who wants the job, again, but is so compromised that I have no words for it. But still, the current President’s subordinates have to point out that what we are doing now doesn’t make sense. I don’t know if they are, and the Ukraine War has put our broken procurement process into an ugly spotlight.

What am I talking about.

I’ve been discussing this subject for years on this site, and was an overarching theme in my first series of books, the Valley Trilogy. We’re talking about drone warfare and its effect on the modern and future battlefields. It all started overseas when I was still employed by the Army. Many a night, I’d be in shithole-somewhere, and we’d get drone intel, or we could even hear them far overhead, depending on the platform. The capabilities were godlike, and it made me feel almost sorry for the a-holes that wanted us dead.

OK, maybe I wouldn’t go that far. But still.

When I came home, a friend showed me a toy his son had. It was a half-dollar-sized mini drone that could do all sorts of amazing tricks. Immediately, I recognized the military applications of this “toy.” Give every soldier on the battlefield his/her own drone, and it would remove a lot of the fear factor as you head into combat. Also, you could tailor-target the bad guys without throwing around one hell of a lot of ordnance, most of which either doesn’t hit anything or hits the wrong thing.

Later, a friend told me vignettes from Syria, where a-holes had been taping old-school grenades to drones and dropping shit onto guy’s heads. This simply reinforced my earlier thoughts, and lent credence to the future combat I described in Valley.

I don’t know if you all have been following developments on the ground in Ukraine, but it’s borderline unsurvivable over there. There are several factors here. One is the implacable enmity between the foes. I’ll bet it’s tough to surrender to a guy whose home village was overrun and his friends and family were tortured, deported, or thrown down a well or some shit. Another has been the profligate use of mines. The world is re-learning the lesson that if you really want to stop an attacking army, simply sow treacherous high explosives into the ground with abandon. If you are Russia, you do not give a fuck if there is no accurate reporting, and you have rendered just about everything unusable for a generation.

A quick aside. What do I mean, rendered unusable? Easy. Land mines from the Vietnam War, over fifty years ago, still kill and maim in Southeast Asia. Now, air or artillery deliver millions of plastic, non-detectable mines willy-nilly through fields and forests, and you can see what I mean by “unusable.” When this war eventually ends, because they all do, people will die daily from shitty modern Bouncing Betties (POM2 and 3), and farmers will die as their tractors hit anti-tank mines. Kids playing in the woods will pick up a seemingly harmless chunk of plastic, and BOOM, their lives change.

These things really suck.

Another factor that makes Ukraine a living hell has been the extensive use of old-fashioned artillery, which is no longer old-fashioned. The stocks of 155 and 152 shells worldwide have been draining toward Ukraine like a funnel, and both sides still need more and more. I remember when we destroyed the massive stocks of shells the Iraqi Army had early in the war. I’ll bet the Pentagon wishes they hadn’t been so hasty in that regard. But hey, those numbskulls screwed up so much over there that that oversight is small potatoes.

But finally, the shittiest thing about the Ukraine War is the pervasive feeling of utter nakedness among the guys up front. It’s the endless clouds of cheap kid’s drones put to lethal use.

It’s bad enough as it is, sitting in a position and knowing that someone could be sighting in on your head at any time.

It’s even worse when you know that ducking behind a tree or into a hole doesn’t help one lousy bit.

Welcome, welcome everybody, to modern warfare. Where you can’t even take a crap without some f’d up Chinese drone coming to pay you a visit. The damn things are everywhere over there. Frontline reports are chock-full of tales in regards to drones, and it’s the stuff of nightmares for both sides.

Hate to say it, but I told you so on this site years ago. Go back through my archives if you don’t believe me.

Drones spotting for artillery. Drones carrying grenades. Drones working with sniper teams. Drones taking out all kinds of very expensive equipment. Drones plowing into apartment blocks. The list goes on.

Oh, and drones delivering serious hits to the Black Sea Fleet and infrastructure in the Crimea. Word has it that Ukraine had a really big hit planned against the Russian fleet at Sevastopol, but General Musk, a paid US defense contractor, unilaterally called it off mid-operation by denying Starlink coverage for the operation. Seriously, Elon, lay off the ketamine. You’ve been doing some really dumb stuff lately.

But back to drones, and eventually AI, which is a separate subject and also one I’ve written about in my books.

Right now, drones are making life very difficult for the combatants in Ukraine. Uncomfortable is actually an inappropriate word that does not capture the horror of the threat from the sky. It’s bordering on the unsurvivable. This will not get better as time goes on; this war, while massive and deadly, is not a global conflagration between peers. That type of war, which will happen eventually, will be a horror show of drone swarms and cutting-edge tech.

When, and not if, this happens, watch out USN and USAF. You folks, with your billion-dollar white elephants, will get seriously messed up by 1500-dollar drones.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. The time is NOW to defend against these threats.

The Ukrainians are doing us favors. There’s that whole defend Europe thing, which is real. If the Ukrainians had folded, can anyone cast creditable doubt that Russia would be threatening NATO right now? Also, they remind us again that words cannot stop aggression. Their courage was an example for the entire world when we had blithely assumed valor was a thing of the past. Their example also shows us the folly of anti-mine treaties that are only honored in the breach by bad actors. What use are such agreements when the very people most likely to use them laugh at such accords? Mines have, and will have, a distasteful place in our arsenals. Like nerve gas or nukes, if only to discourage the enemy from reaching for such tools first. Finally, the Ukraine War has shown us in living color that we need to develop defenses immediately for drone swarms and eventual AI threats, and the sooner, the better.

Do you want to see the Gerald Ford go down like the Moskva?

It’s coming. Flag rank officers of the United States, do your fucking jobs. Politicians, do yours.

Quit wasting money on bullshit politically favored pork projects and put the tools our people need on the line. Yesterday.

Among other things, I’d suggest an armored fighting suit, augmented by AI, and not designed by Microsoft or Lockheed Martin.

It does feel as if I’m pissing into the wind because I don’t think reimagining our defense posture will happen. Non-trust fund poor boys like me will die in droves in the next war, their boondoggle war machines scattered across the landscape or resting at the bottom of the sea.

Count on it.