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Radio War Nerd EP #617 — Drone Warfare in the Ukraine War (Year 4), feat. Samuel Bendett (Patreon)

Published:
2026-07-01 01:20:42
Imported:
2026-07
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Guest: Samuel Bendett, Researcher at The Center for Naval AnalysesRecorded: June 30, 2026

Samuel Bendett returns to the show to bring us up to speed about the latest developments in unmanned warfare in the Ukraine war. This is a hardware ep; we'll cover other aspects of the Ukraine war in a future episode. The War Nerd will be back later this week with an episode y'all will enjoy.

Follow Samuel's Twitter feed for the latest on Russia-Ukraine unmanned systems.Further listening with Samuel Bendett:*EP #523 - Drone Warfare in Ukraine (Year 3)*EP #398 - Drone Warfare in Ukraine (Year 2)*EP #351 - Drone Warfare in Ukraine (Year 1)

Total time: 1:05:56Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

*

Buy & review John Dolan's new book, They Should Have Been Hanged: War Nerd Essays on the U.S. Civil War

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

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Comments

HarshMalarkey

Why don't they simply hide from the drones?

Karl Childers

*chanting* hard-ware, hard-ware, HARD-WARE

Alec

“Gasoline war” I cannot stop thinking about Zoolander

Rahula Anoir

The luddites deserve an apology

Kyle Erickson

All we hear of drones is punitive; is there nothing celebratory and joyous? Or is query naive?

Michael Conlin-Elsen

The caricature of the scheming international Jew who finances both sides of a war finds himself confronted by the shifty oriental Chinaman selling both sides drone parts

CR

I would expect Ukrainian AI would be at a disadvantage since it’s just American AI and we already know that defaults to children as the primary targets

David Haigh

With that and our societal inability to Turn Left , we all become a little more Zoolander everyday

ploob

The Dronening

Miko

It is the early 20th century. There's a European war with a deadly no mans land and a grinding war of attrition, a gilded age is under way for the super rich, and a nascent fascist movement is on the march with ominous signs for the future. It is the early 21st century. There's a European war with a deadly no mans land and a grinding war of attrition, a gilded age is under way for the super rich, and a nascent fascist movement is on the march with ominous signs for the future.

Mungo Franczak

I was calling in predator missiles from reaper drones as a kid in MW2. Now kids will be piloting FPV drones into Merkava tanks in the newer CODs.

William

This show has the worst kinds of anniversaries

William

11:40 bro just described every fucking government on the planet, how is this significant

William

This is what no Marx does to a motherfucker. Oh, does concentrating your resources onto a few designs in a Fordist manner really help? No fucking way, dude. Also, would love to see some paperwork on that claim about “soviets benefiting from western designs.”

William

So annoying to listen to these two just D R O N E O N. am I right, folks? DRONE on

CR

Sifting through the Blob bullshit like reading golden age Pravda

William

The number of UGVs you’re pushing to deploy is inversely proportional to the number of soldiers you have. Of course uAF wants 50k UGVs

Terry Dunk

This guy seemingly only has canned platitudes about 'Putin's regime' that we've all heard a thousand times before, or, painfully obvious remarks like "If Russians no longer have access to gasoline, this is likely anger and upset them." Pretty useless interview. Also, why does he sound exactly like Michael Koffman? They really must make these guys in vats lol. Edit : some of the hardware talk was interesting but there was very little I didn't already know as a close casual observer of the war.

David Gyllenhaal

Best guess: 1. Cost effective hard-kill systems for countering low-flying drones (roughly the spectrum between FPVs to lancets) will degrade their current battlefield dominance within the next 15 years. The last 70 years of air defense revolved around countering things that go faster than before, higher than before, or have a lower radar signature than before. This makes developing hard counters to relatively low and slow drones more like planting a new technology tree than sprouting a fresh branch off existing air defense. It's not surprising that it's going slowly. But I don't see any hard physics or targeting constraints that rule it out. There's a reason quad-banks of 19th century machine guns on a truck bed are still relevant. Cheap rounds with good ballistics and automated targeting should be able to thin some of this stuff out. 2. The transparent battlefield is here to stay which means operational movement will remain way, way more difficult than it was in the latter half of the 20th century. It might get easier to put up an umbrella against FPV drones but I seriously doubt it'll get easier to prevent yourself getting seen by SOME kind of aerial drone and artillery stonked when you try to cross a river. Even insanely good and cheap TROPHY or lasers or whatever will not save us from the coming Rattenkrieg. The morlocks of future wars will coo sweet nothings to their entrenchment tools.

Eli Burnes

Western analysts love reading Russian military telegrams but never look at their Ukrainian counterparts, because otherwise they might see how hard things are for the Ukrainians. High key Events In Ukraine would make for a more insightful guest about drone warfare in Ukraine.

Mungo Franczak

Shoutout Boston listeners on episode 617

William

No John? Sounds like radio ONE nerd, if you ask me

Matt McCartney

That's why I put all my Trump Coin into shovel futures. The future is holes young man. Go down!

HarshMalarkey

Who you calling young? I been goin down holes since before you were born.

Sex With Ted Cruz

He makes it sound like Ukraines entire economy and industry is not entirely out sourced and on dialysis. They have no economy, their industry is houses with 3d printers. Boris Pistorius announced, in Kiev, that German industry would be producing drones for Ukraine. They aren’t hiding it.

Sex With Ted Cruz

Same. The western Atlanticist and commissioner officer “center for institute of war studies institute strategic democracy” or whatever the fuck cannot comprehend that Russia can even tie their shoes without copying the west

Terry Dunk

Given the demographic situation in Eastern Ukraine I think that doesn't pose too much of a problem

Horse Badorties

1,001 history books, some of them legitimate. An Indian friend learned computers on a 'Minsk-2' aka a copy of the PDP-8. Ford shipped factories to the Soviets in the '30s. The Soviets executed heavy industry well but did rip off a lot of IP.

Horse Badorties

Theremin's gulag cellmate built out the Soviet space program from US designs. A story worth studying.

Horse Badorties

Haven't listened but the comments sound like it's Condi Rice prating about the Rooskies when she only knows 80's Sovietology from the Hoover Institute.

Horse Badorties

Because the US proxy war started with leftist buy-in it has been so funny listening to leftist podcasters tongue-tied about Ukraine. TBF Ukraine is the modern world's first mercenary nation and so there's no shorthand for it.

William

I don’t see an ounce of fucking paperwork for any of these claims. Funny that you call them “US designs” did you mean “Nazi designs”?

William

Wtf does this comment against “leftists” even mean

Andrew Diener

Shouldn't the hostilities be called the First NATO-Russia War?

Andrew Diener

War profiteering in Russia? Mr Bendett, Russians are amateurs. US defense contractors are the masters of war profiteering.

burrito bronson

They do good work for. Agriculture but otherwise probably gonna be negative

CR

Don't worry. The capitalists have their fascist allies/agents under control this time.

Sam

Lol the Russian economy and energy supply has not been vitally impacted in any way by the recent penetration of Ukrainian drones. It’s not going to make the Russian population rise up and overthrow Putin, it doesn’t mean Ukraine is “winning,” and it doesn’t mean their capacity has “surpassed” Russia in drone tech. This is all the same shit that every western military and intelligence “analyst” who does media appearances has been saying for years. It’s tired. It’s old. It’s dumb. It’s not accurate. I don’t know why anyone would feel compelled to listen to the opinions of anyone who parrots this crap. If what Russia has done to Ukraine in the last four years hasn’t been enough to totally collapse that state, why in God’s name would anyone assume that a couple of Heits on oil refineries and a building in Moscow is going to do anything to destabilize the third most powerful country on the planet? I’m just so tired of listening to these people. GET A REAL JOB!

Schaeffer Mallory

I feel like the story of LLM's, in America at least, is going to be that it has almost no impact on any meaningful sector of the economy except weapons

Sam

Horse is saying that a notable number of left wing podcasters more or less were sympathetic to, if not outright enthusiastic about backing Ukraine to the hilt and more or less regurgitating blob NYT, WSJ, WAPO bullshit. I would agree with that assessment fwiw. I was kind of shocked at how lazy some of the reaction was. It seemed like people were embarrassed that they had the initial invasion wrong by thinking it was just some made up, Nat Sec bullshit. And then compensated by regurgitating nearly word for word NYT/WAPO/WSJ analysis of the war

DominusCaveaVulpes

That and/or there's no powerful force on the non-liberal left to frighten them into "letting loose" their slimy curs . . . .

Doug Cartel

It sounds like Ukraine is doing the thing that Americans and Brits did in world war 2 - if we terrorize the citizenry then they get mad at their government and demand peace Which has never worked, but there's always a first time I guess I don't think this TRADOC alum knows though Usually when you bomb someone they get mad at the bomber and not the target

Doug Cartel

"as you can see on social media, Russia is losing the war" ok yeah this is annoying to listen to Fascism is when aesthetics become politics and ukrainians love big showy attacks that make them feel good for a week

Doug Cartel

"now Russians know how ukrainians feel!" Bitch stop pretending America put you up to this and you gleefully signed the dotted line You put your whole country in the furnace for the chance to kill a couple "neo-bolsheviks", stop whining

CR

Who needs a reason? There is no "Why" here.