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Radio War Nerd Episode #351 — Drone Warfare in Ukraine, feat. Samuel Bendett (Patreon)

Published:
2022-10-23 22:25:27
Edited:
2026-07-01 01:07:41
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

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

Check out the Radio War Nerd Merch store here!

Total time: 1:15:15

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here  

Files

Comments

Yairo Martis

Audio drops out for a bit after 1:02:36

NYCM&AHole

I remember pulling an all nighter and waiting from 3am to be guaranteed a spot for the German office for residency in Berlin.

NYCM&AHole

Of course, Frankfurt is civilized and you can get an advance appointment

NYCM&AHole

For a bit or entirely?

Ossi Tapio

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?

Ed carron

Yeah for about 45 seconds

David Andrews

Ahem... Obama and Clinton were both great politicians even if one didn't like their policies (which I do not).

xnfec

That was interesting. The thinking behind the use of cheap drones seems to be the same as that behind spam mail.

Doug Cartel

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)

Doug Cartel

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.

Demented Avenger

This whole war is like watching The Godfather 2, except Fredo runs the Corleone family, and Hyman Roth's son Fredo runs his empire.

Atique Virani

Is this the first RWN guest who's an active employee of the DOD?

a clash of purple

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.

a clash of purple

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.

Doug Cartel

Meh, I'm just spitballing.

a clash of purple

Decision making doesn't require cognition, and cognition is not the same thing as decision making. The main reason for the failure of self-driving vehicles is legal, because the owner of the vehicle is still liable for its actions, so you still need a driver for insurance reasons, so the self-driving feature doesn't actually save you any money. Warfare is considerably simpler. All the drone has to be programmed to do is locate targets of value (which can be identified ahead of time, like "this bridge" or "that power plant" or even a particular model of armored vehicle, the drone doesn't have to figure that out on its own any more than a human soldier does), navigate its way towards them, and blow them up. Even computer game AI can manage that much. Consider something like a drone that is deployed and loiters over an area, providing surveillance, and when forces on the ground need air support they paint a target with an infrared laser and signal the drone to drop a bomb or fire a missile at that target. You don't need Skynet or HAL-9000 to manage something like that, and it doesn't require human pilots or operators, but it fulfills the same function as close air support. That could be a realistic example of a fully autonomous system.

etienne

gamers rise up

William

I think it's more absurd to have thought it would be different - the US military is fucked in terms of organization, it just compensates for it with buckets of dollars. Really, there's a lot of mythology and whitewashing we all have to get past with the institutions that run our lives - these organizations are just as shitty as any of the businesses in any major city

a clash of purple

I think as far as the U.S. military goes, it's the other way around. The Armed Forces are utterly fucked up because of how much money is sloshing around, free for the taking, with effectively no oversight. Their performance would probably improve significantly if you slashed their budgets by like 90% or so (and fired or executed everyone over the rank of colonel).

Hugh

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?

Xander Udo

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.

Jacques Robespierre

Man, mark keeps extolling Michael Kofman, but I follow him too and the dude seems to be wrong an awful lot.