Trump Drags Feet, Costs Lives on Drone Tech
Tuesday, June 16, 2026
Ukraine, whose efforts at self-defense have repeatedly been stymied by President Trump, has developed a drone capability superior to an American rocket system it was consequently having trouble procuring:
Spring, identified only by her call sign for security purposes, flies a newer type of winged drone that enables Ukraine to consistently strike Russia's rear areas -- a capability previously only provided by Western artillery and munitions, such as the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System.As the article makes evident, the new drones incorporate abilities (like using AI) lacking in the older rocket technology, avoid the strings attached to the U.S.-supplied rockets (like limits on target selection), and cost much less to produce.
Mid-range HIMARS strikes were key to undermining Russia's attack style early in the war, but Russia was able to curb that threat after the first year, analysts told Business Insider. Now, they said, the new drones are bringing that strike effect back in a way Western arms have not been able to do at scale.
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The use of these drones has risen in the last two months, and Russia has been losing more ground than it has gained, marking a reversal of a yearslong trend in which Ukraine had been slowly bleeding territory.
Despite the President siding with Russia throughout its invasion of this friendly nation, Ukraine has offered to work with our military on drone development, only for Trump to drag his feet:
[E]ven with senior Pentagon officials -- including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll -- lauding Kyiv's drone abilities, the Trump administration is still biding its time on taking full advantage of the Ukrainian capabilities, a delay that experts say is potentially kneecapping the U.S. military.Each article notes different consequences of Trump's asinine hostility toward Ukraine, with Business Insider noting our country's loss of influence:
"I don't know what the hang-up would be in denying ourselves the ability to take advantage of that. I don't think there's any good reason," Rebeccah Heinrichs, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank, said of Ukraine's drone capabilities.
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One former official who spoke to The Hill on the condition of anonymity made a more blunt assessment, calling the hold-up "lethargy" on the part of the Trump administration and "a certain amount of hostility towards Ukraine coming from the very top."
"We can't be certain that we can rely on the US," Bielieskov said. "92 kilometers, GPS-guided is not enough, it can be spoofed. So we have the incentive to develop something of a bigger range, more reliable, and with a bigger warhead." [bold added]One needn't advocate America being the world's policeman to appreciate how damning it is to hear such words coming from a country whose interests align with our own.
And, speaking of our own country's interests, The Hill has this to say:
"The U.S. is putting its own troops in danger by not working as closely as possible with the Ukrainians on drone development," Phillips O'Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, wrote on social media. "To stay close to Putin, Trump is showing once again how little he cares about US soldiers." [bold added]Donald Trump's actions regarding Ukraine are costing our nation goodwill and the lives of our soldiers abroad, and for no good purpose anyone can discern.
-- CAV
3 comments:
The inter-war years provide some insight into this. Between the World Wars some people pushed for a greater emphasis on aviation. WWI used dedicated fighters and bombers, but largely they were relegated to support roles and even spotting for artillery. Some people had the vision to realize that a plane with enough explosives could take out a battleship, either by itself or via strafing runs. This was considered heresy at the time, as battleships were considered the ultimate in military hardware, able to be destroyed only by other battleships. It wasn't util WWII clearly demonstrated that air superiority was a vital tactical and strategic necessity that some of the old, fossilized military institutions realized their error. American ingenuity and grit allowed us to catch up and surpass our foes, but we started off on the back foot.
I wonder if something similar is going on here. Drones are cheap, easy to build, and flown by nerds who spent their youths playing video games. This all is in direct contrast to the current administration's emphasis on "manliness"--raw power, both in terms of weapons and people. Something cheap, easy to build, and which emphasizes skills considered "beta" and inferior is going to have a hard time gaining traction in this administration. But the reality is that cheap weapons that can saturate the battle space are what's winning the war right now. Expensive weapons systems are just targets, and it doesn't matter how many pushups you can do when the enemy is dropping grenades like hailstones on your position.
I said during Trump's first administration that he was a middle-of-the-road Republican circa 1980/85. Now he's a senile version of that, and has had his ego stroked so hard he's incapable of recognizing when he errs. Such a person isn't going to face the reality that war has changed significantly in just the past five years.
It's funny that you mention the battle ship: Trump is a fan of those.
Your analysis is spot-on and applies doubly given Trump's preexisting hostility to the messenger, Ukraine. We're on the back foot AND predisposing ourselves not to correct for it, given our terrible Commander-in-Chief.
The battleship is, of course, obsolete, and I'm not sure the proposed "Trump-class battleship" won't be, either. And I'm wondering about other platforms, as well.
imagine what might happen if that idiot orders an invasion of Greenland and Europe, aided by Ukrainian drone tech grows a spine. Might we learn the hard way, through, say, the loss of an aircraft carrier to a drone swarm, that we're getting left behind?
I don't know how plausible that would be now, but I don't see it being implausible now if we close our eyes an put fingers in our ears for much longer.
s/implausible now/implausible for long
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