Latest Breaking News

The Russians have been relying more on drones produced by a conventional model - centralized from a limited number of state sources, very reliant on technology from other countries, including China - and their troops have been complaining about how flatfooted they seem compared to developments in the Ukrainian campaign, where benign competition between developers constantly produces innovations.

The types of drones the Ukrainians have been deploying range from very cheap reinforced cardboard models developed in Australia to modified light aircraft capable of striking many hundreds of miles into Russian territory.

What's being played out in Ukraine and Russia is a much-accelerated Darwinian process of measure and countermeasure. There have been significant developments in electronic countermeasures against radio-controlled drones, followed by counter-countermeasures. The later advances on the Ukrainian side have involved building AI into drones so that if necessary, they can complete a final attack without need for contact with their bases. The major innovation the Russians developed before the Ukrainians was fibre-optic control, but the Ukrainians have quickly caught up. Drones can also have low-cost vulnerabilities, some being taken down by primitive and cheap means like a simple shotgun.

Now other countries are supplying Ukraine with ready-made drones in great numbers to supplement those it can produce itself, leading to the massive swarm attacks that have been swamping Russian air defences in recent months. In what could be interpreted as a feint, Ukraine has forced the Russians to concentrate their air defences around Moscow in the run-up to Putin's grand celebration, leaving other military targets relatively defenceless. Since the Ukrainians focus on military targets rather than population centres - the Russians have even been using/wasting drones in disputed territory to terrorize and kill individual civilians - they've been able to pick off some significant key locations in Russia's military infrastructure.