Editor’s Notice: As President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin discuss assembly face-to-face in Alaska later this week to debate an finish to the battle in Ukraine, The Cipher Temporary is publishing this uncooked and unfiltered private account of at the moment’s battle by way of the eyes of a former U.S. Particular Forces operator, who’s preventing alongside Ukrainian troopers. We’ve granted his request for anonymity for private safety causes. You’ll be able to learn extra from the creator on his X account.
OPINION / EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — I wrote this report on the night time of Twenty second-Twenty third July 2025 within the house of two and a half hours, after midnight, and after having not accomplished any writing in years; and thus, I will be forgiven, I hope, for my idiosyncrasies and informality. I am a soldier.
I’m going by the callsign ‘Xen’ and I at the moment work beneath a Ukrainian Particular Operations Forces (SOF or “SSO” in Ukraine) regiment. My group chief and I are each former U.S. Particular Operations personnel. With out losing time on the main points, I’ll say that we’re “true believers” who supported Ukraine lengthy earlier than we left the U.S. navy and lengthy earlier than the full-scale Russian invasion.
My causes for coming to Ukraine as a soldier-volunteer have been so intensely private. I used to be motivated by ethnicity, historical past, philosophy, and a deep instinct of the place all indicators in my life have been pointing.
I largely spun my wheels my first 12 months in Ukraine – it was extra Jarhead than Band of Brothers. I’m now actively taking part in fight operations – specifically, rotary and glued wing drone strike operations. We prepare (and as of late are educated by…), advise, help, accompany, and allow Ukrainian SOF; and in such capability, have near-total freedom of motion, granting us a breadth and depth of understanding throughout the battle.
Everybody is aware of how badly Ukraine upset the notion of Russian invincibility in 2022. Sadly, prior to now two years, it has develop into clear that Russia isn’t such a joke in spite of everything, which ought to come as no shock to college students of historical past.
Regardless of fierce resistance and sensible innovation, Ukraine is shedding floor at an unsustainable fee, and morale is dropping. Whereas it will nonetheless take fairly a couple of years on paper for Russia to realize its battle objectives, the very fact is that collapse on the entrance could also be imminent.
What does this battle seem like now?
A 20-year-old soldier sits in his bunker with a small group, on a mission he deliberate himself, flying $500 drones that have been assembled by volunteers in some basement in response to a consistently up to date distributed protocol. Refinements to the drones are made at his battalion’s casual drone lab, the place some components are 3D-printed and others are crowdfunded. The younger soldier displays through Starlink a consistently rotating livestream of quadcopter or fixed-wing expendable drone ISR platforms, both freely asking to kill or ready to be directed by an obligation officer to take action. His group is at all times making small changes and attempting new issues with their drones, floor stations, and antennas, although most of them had zero engineering expertise earlier than discovering themselves right here. This can be a far cry from the duties of a U.S. Marine infantry lance corporal.
From his place a couple of kilometers from the entrance, our drone soldier will fly his drones towards infantry only one to 10 kilometers deep into enemy territory. The infantry they hunt stroll relentlessly ahead, across the clock, like zombies, singly or in pairs (or small groups) by way of rubble, tree strains, and even open fields. They’ve little alternative however to take a rifle and press ahead for a fast demise – what waits behind them is worse. Some experience motorbikes simply to hurry the method.
Even when 95% of them are killed of their march, a small share will move by way of the massive gaps within the porous, skinny Ukrainian defenses, and will shock and gun down the unsung Ukrainian infantry or mortar groups. Some could even make it far sufficient to slaughter drone groups of their hides. In the event that they take even one tree line a day throughout a entrance, it’s greater than sufficient.
This entire drama unfolds each in entrance of officers in conventional Tactical Operations Facilities, and more and more, in entrance of splintered command groups and people watching from safehouses through livestream. On the finish of the mission, the soldier will go house and move on his kill footage to attain “factors” for his command to obtain extra official funding.
Sadly, this younger soldier’s service is minimize quick when he was wounded whereas being pushed to his subsequent place in a Humvee. Maybe it was a fiber optic FPV drone, or a remotely laid mine, or a loitering munition guided by an expendable ISR drone, or a radio-guided FPV drone indifferent from its mothership-repeater platform, or – more and more doubtless now – an autonomous terminal assault munition.
Regardless of the weapon, it was finally deployed towards him by a highly-skilled Russian drone group, hiding 5 or twenty kilometers behind the meat defend of infantry. By a mix of sheer evolutionary strain, the vestiges of a command-economy, and the help of overseas powers (China specifically), Russia has of late, managed to largely out-innovate and out-scale Ukraine.
His good friend at one other unit continues the combat fairly otherwise. He drives to battle in an unmarked van or truck, flying midrange (30-80 km) drone missions from 10-20 kilometers from the entrance, destroying exquisitely costly Russian rocket artillery, digital warfare methods, and air protection methods. When he’s accomplished along with his mission, he drives from his bunker to a village simply a number of kilometers away and stops for a espresso, melting into the inhabitants earlier than rigorously making his method again to a safehouse.
The enemy would love nothing greater than to seek out the place he sleeps or works and ship aerial bombs or midrange drones his method. He’s additionally a younger soldier with little understanding of intelligence company fieldcraft, however he nonetheless diligently swaps SIM playing cards or locations units in Faraday luggage as finest he is aware of how, hoping it’s sufficient to masks his digital signature. When a neighboring group is focused, it’s troublesome to say simply what they did improper or how they have been pinpointed, or if it was the truth is, only a random strike.
And what in regards to the troopers who perform deep strike operations, launching drones from 50 or 100 kilometers or extra from the entrance, hanging 500 kilometers or extra deep towards logistics and trade? Ought to they even trouble sporting uniforms once they hop out of a van for a pair hours to launch their pre-programmed drones, only for a traitorous native to simply determine them and textual content their location to the enemy?
And with how shortly the short- to mid- to deep-strike ranges have elevated in only a couple years of contemporary battle, and the way quickly people are being taken out of the loop, and with how a lot engineering the common drone soldier is being requested to know and carry out – how for much longer will it even make sense for educated troopers to combat this fashion? Why not merely have the businesses launch the drones on their very own?
In actual fact, Area Service Representatives already usually ride-along with drone groups, to point out how one can accurately make use of their platforms. I’m not even speaking right here of the very fact somebody may remotely make use of unmanned weapons methods from throughout the globe, in idea.
Listed below are some related societal forces or technological developments which are driving the big warfare revolution that’s taking place in Ukraine: digitization, democratization, automation, miniaturization (Moore’s regulation), deflationary part prices, crowdfunding, cryptocurrency, social media, networked units, open supply / open protocol, decentralization, distribution, crowd engineering, soldier as engineer, engineer as soldier, 3D printing (broadly outlined), AI (broadly outlined), sensor fusion, and on and on.
“Necessity is the mom of invention”, and Ukraine has had a couple of years now to invent. The answer has largely been compartmentalized and decentralized, coming from the underside up. But when an observer nation, with out the apparent impetus of open battle, needed to be prepared forward of time to take care of an adversary (reminiscent of China) who has been steadily innovating in parallel, what can they do?
The sum impact of the above components is that this: if a top-down answer within the West is to compete with both the previous backside up strategy seen in Ukraine or the authoritarian top-down strategy of Russia and China, there have to be a large acceleration of the navy and industrial OODA (observe, orient, resolve, act) loop with respect to tech employment (by way of technique, doctrine, TTPs, organizational construction, funding, and scaling). Our present decrepit establishments within the West can not obtain this and require radical restructuring. Hopefully, that is self evident and I don’t have to launch right into a monologue in regards to the navy industrial complicated, our personal American model of corruption, our slow-moving congressional approvals course of, our fascination with extremely costly flagship packages, and so forth.
The Cipher Temporary brings expert-level context to nationwide and international safety tales. It’s by no means been extra vital to know what’s taking place on the earth. Improve your entry to unique content material by changing into a subscriber.
Ukraine has far outstripped its personal outlays for drone manufacturing, creating an trade from nothing to supply tens of millions of drones. These drones are sometimes already partly autonomous (usually totally autonomous within the case of deep strike) and have gotten extra so each week. Moreover, autonomy is coming to cheaper and cheaper drones.
My private predictions for the tempo of growth and course of the battle have usually shocked folks, however looking back, have appeared conservative. My prediction right here is that the overwhelming majority of drones utilized in Ukraine which are produced for lower than $2000 might be totally or near-fully autonomous (as desired) inside two years, and that decrease expert troopers will use them as shorter vary fire-and-forget weapons whereas elite groups will command drones in a swarming capability, like in a method sport. We already management single drones and drone motherships through top-down perspective and point-and-click instructions. If that is doable in Ukraine, what precisely are China’s capabilities?
I’ll depart it to suppose tanks and historians to determine linkages between the spreading fires of worldwide battle. What I do know is that battle is certainly spreading and the first adversaries are fairly clear. The Chinese language know we’re their enemy. The U.S. navy overtly refers to them as our adversary. So long as empires emerge (nonetheless veiled is their kind), and so long as they concern and debase fiat foreign money and debt, my idea holds that world wars will proceed.
I’m not right here to evaluate proper or improper. We’re the Athenian “empire”, with our allies preferring to suckle off us slightly than develop robust militaries of their very own, and we in flip draw back from making good on our guarantees. Our enemy – the Russians and Chinese language (the Spartan “empire”) could seem backwards to us now, however can summon a conquering, jealous vitality that we are able to’t actually perceive till it has touched us. If impartial or allied nations watch us permit Ukraine or Taiwan to fall, they are going to roll over to the axis arrayed towards us. (Sue me in case you do not like Peloponnesian Conflict metaphors.)
From historical empires to the Napoleonic Wars to the buildup to WW2, we should always perceive {that a} nation which achieves whole victory over one other nation, removed from being exhausted, can usually simply springboard to additional conquests, influencing or urgent the defeated populace into swelling their forces and assets. It’s not unthinkable that Russia may steamroll over Europe in the event that they defeat Ukraine, which (exterior of Russia) has Europe’s largest navy and largest geographical footprint.
The Chinese language are making ready for battle at breakneck velocity and are participating in growing saber-rattling. They’re supplying either side of the battle in Ukraine with parts – thereby scaling their very own trade for battle – however they’re largely lending support to the Russians. They’re studying far sooner than the West, already making steps for the combination of drones right down to the bottom ranges of their navy construction. They’re in all probability nicely forward of the Russians and Ukrainians by now by way of swarming and autonomous drone applied sciences.
Within the USA, we could retain an edge by way of the farthest reaches of our technical developments, however by way of integration, scaling, and institutional information, we fall quick.
We’re fortunate if a regiment has a drone platoon. We arrogantly assume that digital warfare and strategic airpower will avail us towards the Chinese language. If handfuls of Ukrainian naval drones may defeat the Russian navy within the Black Sea, how precisely do we predict an American provider battle group can defend itself towards ten or 100 thousand totally autonomous Chinese language USVs and UAVs of varied lessons? Assuming the battle group may even monitor and interact the incoming swarm, it doesn’t have sufficient munitions to cease it, and digital warfare might be of little use towards an autonomous foe.
If we place our hopes on some protection (by no means thoughts that “the bomber at all times will get by way of”) innovation like directed vitality towards UAVs, do we actually suppose these might be fight prepared, scaled, built-in, and educated on so that each vessel has layered 360-degree protection with them – within the subsequent two years?
And if Ukraine’s Safety Service was in a position to cripple Russian strategic air energy with a handful of small quadcopters in Operation Spiderweb, what precisely can we count on the Chinese language to have ready for us? What’s to cease a number of civilian-flagged Chinese language tankers off the coast of the U.S. from opening a whole lot of delivery containers concurrently and launching hundreds of expendable (say, $20,000 every) autonomous deep-strike UAVs at our energy grid or different key targets?
People who can not fathom such an assault are naïve. In my earlier profession, pals at U.S. customs advised me that Chinese language nationals had been stockpiling rifles within the U.S. by coercing their trade college students learning in America to buy searching rifles through a loophole. The scholars, earlier than departing, would benefit from one other loophole to present the rifles to incoming trade college students, who would additionally purchase rifles, creating an ever-increasing stockpile. U.S. Customs and Border Safety finally acquired smart to it and began monitoring them.
Additionally, Chinese language nationals within the U.S. are infamous for penetration-testing U.S. navy services, for instance merely attempting to drive vans straight by way of gate guard posts. Presumably these aren’t elite spies doing this, however slightly scared people who find themselves beneath coercion, not wanting hurt to befall their households throughout the ocean. This can be a problem for the American thoughts to understand however is actuality.
People additionally suppose our lifestyle won’t ever go away so long as we have now this or that, such because the Second Modification – “A rifle behind each blade of grass”. But when we lose our dominant standing on the earth – our “empire” of kinds – with its huge management over the worldwide monetary system, that lifestyle will disappear essentially.
Our dominance is a strategic deterrence towards chemical, organic, and nuclear threats (Ukraine’s plight is instructive right here) originating exterior our borders. And over a era or two we may simply discover ourselves fractured and carved up after steadily shedding first monetary dominance after which the flexibility to cohesively defend ourselves. To not point out, in order for you your iPhone, you higher be capable to defend worldwide delivery and funds. It could appear an amoral tackle worldwide affairs, however don’t neglect within the international locations that might take our place as king, dissention is punished nearly universally by demise or disappearance. We nonetheless retain the ethical excessive floor, regardless of our flaws and misadventures.
So, what ought to the U.S. do now? It’s fairly apparent in case you’ve learn the entire above. Cease hand-wringing in regards to the dominos that will fall if Russia collapses on account of shedding to Ukraine. Overtly and totally assist Ukraine, give them what they should win this battle. We’ve a key window of alternative earlier than mass-produced low-cost autonomous drones are unleashed, throughout which American financial strain and strategic hanging energy may collapse a fragile Russia in a single day or nearly in a single day. Subsequent, companion with Ukraine and use their institutional information to coach, advise, and help our personal navy and trade in revamping and scaling.
From the best ranges of energy, whether or not within the personal or public sector, somebody who’s a “true believer” must order work to be accomplished. A top-down restructuring of the navy and procurement course of would work. Or a whole lot of billions in personal funding to create the drones, prepared to be used when the general public sector will get smart, would work too.
The above actions will function an actual and psychological deterrent to our different enemies, giving us respiratory room to organize for the inevitable.
Are you Subscribed to The Cipher Temporary’s Digital Channel on YouTube? There isn’t any higher place to get clear views from deeply skilled nationwide safety consultants.
Learn extra expert-driven nationwide safety insights, perspective and evaluation in The Cipher Temporary as a result of Nationwide Safety is Everybody’s Enterprise.