March 15 — Day 1115 — The Day of the Drone, Kursk Reality Check, Still Don’t Believe in the Euro?
Hi All!
If you want a read-out on the “peace process” this week, bottom section. I am more convinced than ever the best way to monitor developments on that front is to pay as little attention to the messaging, noise, fake news and posturing as possible. They want to waste my time and energy, I won’t let them.
As always, I think the most important thing is paying attention to battlefield lethality. Which brings me very neatly to the first section.
The Ukrainian Drone Has Landed
On Friday Ukrainian media started kicking around a report: A local manufacturer had just completed a 1,000 FPV drone batch, and, for the first time ever, assembled completely out of made-in-Ukraine components. This wasn’t a one-off stunt, it was the first lot from a mass-production line. Image.
The company is called Vriy Drone and the order came from a government program called Army of Drones (Армія Дронов). Bookmark that because I’ll come back to it in a bit. Most of you know this but just for the record, an FPV drone is a remote-controlled helicopter about the size of a dinner plate, with four rotors, that can carry a payload equivalent to an 82mm mortar round or an RPG-type armor-piercing projectile. If this little weapon gets a decent hit, it can kill or wound usually 1–5 men, or take out a tank worth two million dollars.
Generic FPV drones cost about $350–500. The drones in the picture cost about $700 because they have a basic thermal camera attached, meaning it can hunt down targets at night.
On the one hand, this development was predictable and not so surprising. The Ukrainians have been energetically developing and assembling attack drones for years. The government and civil society are 100 percent behind the effort. Probably tens of thousands of artificers, supply chain dudes, donations dunners and operators are involved. Ukrainian drones blowing up Russian troops and equpment are pretty much unavoidable on Ukrainian media. It was kind of inevitable that a pure-bred Ukrainian attack drone would appear. So that’s interesting, but I would not call that big news (Helper nerd’s note: The processors on the drones are probably not native as Ukraine doesn’t have a chip foundry yet).
What I would call, however, hugely significant for the progress of the war, are these data points:
- Ukrainian FPV drones are now cheaper to manufacture than any FPV drone anywhere
- Ukraine already is manufacturing more drones than any nation, including the People’s Republic of China
- Ukrainian drone-manufacturing is about as on track as any industry can be to expand geometrically, because in Ukraine more FPV drones = Wartime national security
Every drone operator I have talked to has told me that a day is coming when the entire line of contact will be a 20 km.-wide dead zone in which anything that moves will be spotted and hunted down by drones. The main physical limit on that future coming to pass, is quantities of FPV drones available. What just happened, is that at minimum theoretically, that limitation just evaporated into thin air.
Ukraine is at war, FPV drones are by a major margin the most effective weapon on the battlefield, massed drone production and massed drones on the front line are top national security priorities.
The Russians can’t really influence how many drones the Ukrainians choose to build. The Americans certainly can’t. What sanctions or arms deliveries the Americans choose to give or withhold from Ukraine are absolutely irrelevant to the number of FPV drones Ukraine can fly to the battlefield.
There are factors like scale, materials sourcing, workforce training etc. — but the day is coming. At some point, the ZSU will always have as many FPV drones as it needs, wherever it needs, and operators will be able to expend them like hand grenades or machine gun bursts.
That future won’t arrive overnight but from where I sit it looks as inevitable as a freight tain. While the Russians and Americans talk about how Ukraine is defeated and how capitulation is Ukraine’s only option, I think it’s worth bearing in mind, because of the drones, that’s absolutely not how it looks to the Ukrainians actually fighting the war. From the President Zelensky’s office throughout the ZSU and down to the operators and the volunteers and, if I may so bold, even to the civilians and the journalists, it’s screamingly obvious.
Every day of war that passes, ZSU pilots are going to have more drones. As time advances, the ZSU is going to become more not less lethal.
Robert Brovdi put out some monthly stats for a drone battalion operating in Pokrovsk sector. A Russian soldier, military vehicle or target like a bunker or an ammo dump, was hit. Not attacked and possibly missed. Attacked, and hit and got a verified result like damage or a kill. Every. Nine. Minutes. 24/7, day after day after day, good weather or bad, against the crappiest militia and the most elite spetsnaz of the Russian Federation. The ZSU drones are a buzz saw. I estimate there are probably 50 drone battalions or their equivalent on the front line right now. Maybe more.
For the record, the Ukrainian government, which is not exactly rolling in cash, last figures I saw, allocated about $2.6 billion, yes billion, towards drone production this year. Армія Дронов is one of the recipients. The target figure is 4.5 million drones in 2025. In 2024 it was about 1.8 million drones. The lynchpin of that objective is massed production.
The Ukrainians need no one to achieve this goal. No getting jerked around by the Americans about maybe antagonizing Russia. No German handkerchief twisting about a German “panzer” actually getting its treads dirty in Ukrainian mud. No EU games about no manufacturing is possible because everyone wants the new factory in their country.
It’s on the Ukrainians. They’ve allocated the money, they have the tech to do it, they’ve demonstrated the tech works, they just have to organize it at scale. This is war and nothing is guaranteed and things go wrong. But it’s an autonomous task that depends only on them. Everything that we have seen for the past three years, argues that the Ukrainians will succeed.
Russia can mobilize at best about 20–30,000 men a month. The ZSU is launching 200–300,000 FPV drones a month. The drone number is going to go up.
The Retreat From Kursk
For the record, no, no Ukrainians were surrounded, there aren’t 1,000s of Ukrainians encircled by the Russian army. The US President made it up. I am absolutely sure of what I am saying. I am in country and I speak the languages and I’ll put my education up against Donald J. Trump’s any day of the week. But for sure he has a lot more money than me. Also more wives and criminal convictions. But I digress.
OK, rant out of the way, what happened at Kursk, really?
For the record, the Ukrainian Army has been quite clear that they conducted a withdrawal and that they have set up in new defensive positions still inside the Russian Federation, but outside the town of Sudzha. Official reports are the Russians are stopped. Following Trump’s followed by Putin’s declaration that the Ukrainian army was trapped at Kursk, in sequence, the ZSU headquarters, General Syrsky, and Joint Forces North all put out official statements saying the Ukrainians surrounded strory was, and is, hogwash.
From what I can see, Ukrainian forces appear to have lost a few (10–20?) prisoners of war and about a dozen vehicles including tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery pieces. That apparently includes a CV-90, a pair of Leopard 2s, and assorted lighter vehicles. Attached is an image of a Ukrainian T-64 “captured” by Russian forces advancing in Sudzha, Kursk region.
My impression, the Ukrainians either were defeated and forced to retreat at some haste, or got orders to retreat under pressure, but either way this week they evacuated out of a pocket they had held inside Russia for six months. As they retreated the Ukrainians ran a gauntlet of drones and artillery and lost vehicles not just to fire but to busted bridges, rivers etc. There are confirmed reports of guys walking 10–20 kilometers to make it back to friendly lines.
Aside from Kremlin-controlled news feeds, I am seeing zero, and I mean none at all, or evidence of a Ukrainian collapse. No accusations that the generals in Kyiv sold the front line guys out. No dire warnings of the entire front folding shortly. No calls on volunteer networks for blood donations, or medical supplies, or emergency transport of wounded to hospital. Guys I talk to by phone or text, same thing, fighting has stopped, lines are stable.
The only video the Russians could come up with of massed POWs, dates back to April 2022 and Mariupol. The only “evidence” of cut-off/isolated Ukrainians that I have found, is by Russian mil-bloggers. Russian local information feeds say the fighting stopped. We have seen serious Ukrainian defeats before and the indicators are pretty well known. For practical purposes, I have seen zero indications the Ukrainian lines came apart. This is consistent with reports from front-line units.
Further, I know of three powerful brigades that were in the Kursk sector and that now are in reserve positions behind the lines. Judging by unit information feeds, morale is fine and the brigade is going about standard rear area activities like rest, awards ceremonies, meetings with the big brass from Kyiv, and so on. I’ve confirmed at least two big drone battalions backing the Ukrainian line in that sector.
Finally, this morning’s daily SitRep by the Ukrainian army general staff reported a stable line and 20 engagements, total, in the Liman and Kursk sectors combined. If you are on the line, that translates to “basically quiet, but not completely without shooting”.
Affaires Françaises, Adios Amis and Endhaltestelle Deutschland
This section is all about European money for weapons. First thing, early this week French Parliament adopted a resolution calling for arrest of Russian assets in French banks, and the direction of those confiscated funds to European defense. 288 in favor 54 against, non-binding, but it’s a signal to the Macron government — which is nervous about the idea on rule of law grounds — that the French citizenry thinks investing Russian money in defense projects against Russia is une sacrée idée.
I would be remiss if I did not attach of picture of a Russian Imperial railroad bond sold in France in the early 20th century as a, the advertising said at the time, reliable investment vehicle for Frenchmen wanting to help Russia move towards European civilization. The Communists came to power and declared billions and billions of hard-earned Francs (with interest) confiscated by the Proletariat.
On Wednesday there were two big meetings in Paris. One was the ministry of defense chiefs of most European states and also heavy hitters like Australia and Japan, and the topic of discussion was co-operation and joint planning for national security. Generally, there was an agreement this is a good idea. The US wasn’t invited and didn’t participate.
The upshot of these talks was a EU-released white paper, the details of which were published by Poltico the next day, laying out plans to overhaul European defense industries. The really key bit is that is spelled out a big change in EU defense contracting — in the past it had to be EU-based producers, now EU-based producers are preferred. In simple terms, this means that if a European nation wanting to build a piece of military kit and Japan makes a better or cheaper critical component, no longer must the European nation source the component inside the EU at higher price, lower quality and slower delivery times.
The EU will spend $1.6 billion of its own money facilitating the process, but sourcing and contracting will be run, as before, by individual national defense ministries. Ukraine-related priorities include 1.5 million artillery shells, air defense systems, training of Ukrainian troops, placing orders in the Ukrainian defense industry, and development of EU mobility corridors (rail, road and air) up to and into Ukraine.
The other Paris meeting was with the defense ministers of UK, France, Germany, Italy and Poland — and Ukraine — to discuss planning and cooperation for the Ukrainian war effort. Air defense support to Ukraine given the unreliability of US deliveries of Patriot missiles was a big theme. Some of the practicalities of the peacekeeping contingent that people are pretending will soon be sent to Ukraine were discussed. The US wasn’t invited to those talks either.
A report from Friday said the EU “recommends” bloc members voluntarily provide Ukraine with €20–40 military support this year including 2 million munitions, for which a special fund will be created. Cleverly, as an EU fund payments from it can’t be vetoed the Trump/Putin buddy Hungary. First priority will be large-caliber ammunition for which €5 billion will be earmarked. Then the focus is air defense systems, missiles, drones, fighters, and combat unit training and support.
I know, it’s fashionable in America to laugh at the Europeans, “voluntary” is just how the Europeans say “we won’t do it”, right?
Na ja, weisst Du, nein. This week, as anticipated, Germany’s conservative Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz agreed with the Greens to spend hundreds of billions of euros for defense and infrastructure, it is Germany’s biggest armaments program since the Nazi period, and after the deal was signed Merz said, and I quote: “Germany is back.” Image of some famous Germans.
The fact the deal was agreed to so quickly is more evidence the third biggest economy on Earth — Germany — is going to gear up for war, or more exactly helping Ukraine and deterring Russia. Strategically, this is a disaster for the Kremlin not as bad maybe as deciding to invade Ukraine in the first place, but still some of the worst geo-political news in a decade.
Nuts and bolts, in Germany it is now OK to deficit spend past a constitutional limit if the spending is on defense. Germany has a terrific credit rating, so no one and I mean no one is questioning whether Germany will find the initial €500 billion to fill a special defense fund. I have seen speculation putting the final figure at a trillion Euros.
The agreement specifically includes German state spending in support of “countries unlawfully attacked under international law” in other words Ukraine. (I read this was a Green condition). Mertz said that the Bundestag will shortly sign off on a new €3 billion aid package for Ukraine. The very strong implication is this will not be the last.
For Ukraine and the war, events in Germany are like FPV drones. There was a limit on a key source of support, and this week that limit dissolved. Germany now is effectively not limited by money on what it might spend on Ukraine and defense, or more exactly, the limiting factor is not cash, it’s production capacity and political will to mobilize it.
So the question for the future is how quickly the Germans will choose to gear up, and with which priorities. This isn’t a done deal, but it is a critical step.
The next date to watch is March 18th, when the Bundestag will consider these proposals. For the defense package to advance two-thirds of the deputies in both houses need to support it.
continued…
It seems a close Ukraine relationship with Taiwan could be very beneficial for both countries. I say this having no clue how close they are now…. But, Taiwan has the worlds greatest chip fab capacity; perfect for Ukraine’s drone needs, and they are likely in the hunt for a new, reliable, defense partner, since the “best replace by date” is rapidly approaching for the one they’ve been relying on for a few decades. Being an island, worried about naval blockade by China, a few hundred sea baby drones could some day be much more reliable than a U.S. carrier commanded by whimsical Mr “what’s in it for me”.
For the nerds. German hero’s? Ok, but Ludwig VAN Beethoven was the grandson of an immigrant from Mechelen, Belgium. Hence VAN and not VON. His grandfather moved to Bonn at the age of 21 and was employed as a bass singer at the court of the Archbishop of Cologne. Those immigrants again, you find them everywhere.