Tag Archives: drones Ukraine

When Do You Know You Are a Clown? the case of Anduril

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Anduril Industries, a U.S. company, has promised to deliver hardware and software that will usher in a new era of autonomous warfare with the speed that only a startup can offer…But…As the U.S. Navy was attempting to launch 30 drone boats in May 2025, the boats rejected their inputs and automatically idled, making them “dead” in the water. The botched experiment quickly became a potential hazard to other vessels in the exercise. Military personnel scrambled overnight to clean up the mess, towing the boats to shore until 9 a.m. the next day. 

The drone boats were relying on autonomy software called Lattice made Anduril Industries. The Navy said the exercise was handled safely, but the incident alarmed Navy personnel, who said in a routine follow-up report that company representatives had misguided the military. In comments that were unusual for such a report, which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal, four sailors warned of “continuous operational security violations, safety violations, and contracting performer misguidances (Anduril Industries).” If the software configuration wasn’t immediately corrected and vetted, they wrote, there would be “extreme risk to force and potential for loss of life.”

Excerpt from Shelby Holliday et al., ‘We Do Fail … a Lot’: Defense Startup Anduril Hits Setbacks With Weapons Tech, WSJ, Nov. 27, 2025

Israel’s Killing Machine and the Enemies Within

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Israel stunned and hobbled Iran starting on June 13, 2025 when it pulled off an intelligence and military operation years in the making that struck high-level targets with precision. Guided by spies and artificial intelligence, the Israeli military unleashed a nighttime fusillade of warplanes and armed drones smuggled into Iran to quickly incapacitate many of its air defenses and missile systems. With greater freedom to fly over Iran, Israel bombarded key nuclear sites and killed top generals and scientists. By the time Iran mustered a response hours later, its ability to retaliate — already weakened by past Israeli strikes — was greatly diminished.

The Mossad and the military worked together for at least three years to lay the operational groundwork…To further diminish Iranian air defenses and missile systems, Mossad agents had smuggled precision weapons into Iran that were prepositioned to strike from close range…Those weapons included small, armed drones, which agents snuck into the country in vehicles…Mossad agents stationed weapons close to Iranian surface-to-air missile sites…To analyze information gathered from various sources, Israel used the latest artificial-intelligence…AI was used to help Israelis quickly sift through troves of data they had obtained….An investigation by The Associated Press conducted in early 2025 uncovered that the Israeli military uses U.S.-made AI models in war to sift through intelligence and intercept communications to learn the movements of its enemies. It’s been used in the wars with Hamas in Gaza and with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

In addition to AI, the Mossad relied on spies to identify top nuclear scientists and members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard… At least eight members of the Guard, including the head of its missile program, were killed in a single Israeli strike on an underground bunker.

Another facet of the attack was to strike Iranian vehicles used to transport and launch missiles. The strategy was similar to a Ukrainian operation earlier this month in Russia. In that operation, nearly a third of Moscow’s strategic bomber fleet was destroyed or damaged with cheaply made drones snuck into Russian territory…In an interview with Iranian state-run television, the country’s police chief, Gen. Ahmadreza Radan, said “several vehicles carrying mini-drones and some tactical drones have been discovered.” ….

In the 2000s, Iranian centrifuges used for enriching uranium were destroyed by the so-called Stuxnet computer virus, believed to be an Israeli and American creation….In 2018, Israel stole an archive of Iranian nuclear research that included tens of thousands of pages of records…In July 2024, Israel killed a senior leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, with a bomb in a bedroom of a government guesthouse in Tehran.

Excerpts from JULIA FRANKEL and SAM MEDNICK, How Israel used spies, smuggled drones and AI to stun and hobble Iran, AP, June 17, 2025

The Drone Experiment of Ukraine

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U.S. startups have spent billions of venture-capital dollars in hopes of developing the small drones that the Pentagon says it needs for future conflicts, but many have produced only expensive aircraft that don’t fly very well. Ukrainian drone makers, meanwhile, have mastered mass-producing drones despite limited resources and are looking for new customers and capital…

“No U.S. company is keeping up with Ukraine,” said CX2 co-founder Nathan Mintz. “You know their stuff works. They’ve got the ultimate high-stakes laboratory meant to battle-proof all this stuff.”

The U.S. has the capacity to build up to 100,000 drones a year, according to one Defense Department estimate. In 2024, Ukraine built more than two million drones. Some of the Ukraine-built drones that the Defense Department wants can fly hundreds of miles with explosives and have been used in attacks inside Russia…“Ukraine has made it pretty clear that they intend on being the drone capital of the planet once this war is over,” said Derek Whitley, co-founder of startup Vivum, which sells its AI software for autonomous systems to the Defense Department.

Ukrainian drones often sell for one-tenth the price of American options. They have proven on the battlefield that they can work when radio and satellite communication is blocked by electronic jamming…American startups are slower to build, deliver and update their drones, which also have often failed to weather severe electronic warfare. Many U.S. companies that brought their drones to Ukraine watched them fall out of the sky or fail to complete missions.

Excerpt from Heather Somerville, America Turns to Ukraine to Build Better Drones, WSJ, Mar. 11, 2025