Editor’s Be aware: 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 conflict in Ukraine, The Cipher Transient is publishing this uncooked and unfiltered private account of as we speak’s conflict by way of the eyes of a former U.S. Particular Forces operator, who’s combating alongside Ukrainian troopers. Now we have granted his request for anonymity for private safety causes. You possibly can 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 area of two and a half hours, after midnight, and after having not executed any writing in years; and thus, I will be forgiven, I hope, for my idiosyncrasies and informality. I am a soldier.
I am going by the callsign ‘Xen’ and I at present work underneath a Ukrainian Particular Operations Forces (SOF or “SSO” in Ukraine) regiment. My workforce 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. army 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 principally spun my wheels my first yr in Ukraine – it was extra Jarhead than Band of Brothers. I’m now actively collaborating in fight operations – specifically, rotary and stuck wing drone strike operations. We practice (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, previously two years, it has develop into clear that Russia is just not 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 good innovation, Ukraine is dropping floor at an unsustainable charge, and morale is dropping. Whereas it might nonetheless take fairly a couple of years on paper for Russia to realize its conflict targets, the very fact is that collapse on the entrance could also be imminent.
What does this conflict appear like now?
A 20-year-old soldier sits in his bunker with a small workforce, on a mission he deliberate himself, flying $500 drones that have been assembled by volunteers in some basement in line with a consistently up to date distributed protocol. Refinements to the drones are made at his battalion’s casual drone lab, the place some elements are 3D-printed and others are crowdfunded. The younger soldier screens 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 workforce is at all times making small changes and making an attempt new issues with their drones, floor stations, and antennas, though most of them had zero engineering expertise earlier than discovering themselves right here. It is 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 in opposition to 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 proportion will go by way of the big 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 complete 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 go on his kill footage to attain “factors” for his command to obtain extra official funding.
Sadly, this younger soldier’s service is reduce brief 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 probably now – an autonomous terminal assault munition.
Regardless of the weapon, it was finally deployed in opposition to him by a highly-skilled Russian drone workforce, hiding 5 or twenty kilometers behind the meat protect of infantry. By a mix of sheer evolutionary strain, the vestiges of a command-economy, and assistance from international 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 in a different way. He drives to conflict 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 programs, and air protection programs. When he’s executed together 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 manner again to a safehouse.
The enemy would love nothing greater than to search out the place he sleeps or works and ship aerial bombs or midrange drones his manner. He’s additionally a younger soldier with little understanding of intelligence company fieldcraft, however he nonetheless diligently swaps SIM playing cards or locations gadgets in Faraday luggage as greatest he is aware of how, hoping it’s sufficient to masks his digital signature. When a neighboring workforce is focused, it’s tough to say simply what they did flawed or how they have been pinpointed, or if it was actually, only a random strike.
And what concerning the troopers who perform deep strike operations, launching drones from 50 or 100 kilometers or extra from the entrance, putting 500 kilometers or extra deep in opposition to logistics and business? Ought to they even trouble sporting uniforms after they hop out of a van for a pair hours to launch their pre-programmed drones, only for a traitorous native to simply establish them and textual content their location to the enemy?
And with how rapidly the short- to mid- to deep-strike ranges have elevated in only a couple years of recent conflict, 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 manner? Why not merely have the businesses launch the drones on their very own?
In truth, Subject Service Representatives already typically ride-along with drone groups, to point out methods to 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 programs from throughout the globe, in idea.
Listed here are some related societal forces or technological developments which can be driving the big warfare revolution that’s taking place in Ukraine: digitization, democratization, automation, miniaturization (Moore’s legislation), deflationary part prices, crowdfunding, cryptocurrency, social media, networked gadgets, 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 plain impetus of open conflict, needed to be prepared forward of time to cope with an adversary (similar to China) who has been steadily innovating in parallel, what can they do?
The sum impact of the above elements is that this: if a top-down resolution 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 an enormous acceleration of the army and industrial OODA (observe, orient, determine, act) loop with respect to tech employment (when it comes to 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 concerning the army industrial complicated, our personal American model of corruption, our slow-moving congressional approvals course of, our fascination with extremely costly flagship applications, and so on.
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Ukraine has far outstripped its personal outlays for drone manufacturing, creating an business from nothing to supply tens of millions of drones. These drones are sometimes already partly autonomous (typically absolutely 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 conflict have typically shocked folks, however looking back, have appeared conservative. My prediction right here is that the overwhelming majority of drones utilized in Ukraine which can be produced for lower than $2000 will probably be absolutely 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. army brazenly refers to them as our adversary. So long as empires emerge (nonetheless veiled is their type), 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 flawed. We’re the Athenian “empire”, with our allies preferring to suckle off us reasonably than develop robust militaries of their very own, and we in flip shrink 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 power that we will’t actually perceive till it has touched us. If impartial or allied nations watch us enable Ukraine or Taiwan to fall, they’ll roll over to the axis arrayed in opposition to us. (Sue me should you do not like Peloponnesian Conflict metaphors.)
From historic empires to the Napoleonic Wars to the buildup to WW2, we must always perceive {that a} nation which achieves complete victory over one other nation, removed from being exhausted, can typically simply springboard to additional conquests, influencing or urgent the defeated populace into swelling their forces and sources. 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 army and largest geographical footprint.
The Chinese language are making ready for conflict at breakneck velocity and are participating in growing saber-rattling. They’re supplying either side of the conflict in Ukraine with elements – thereby scaling their very own business for conflict – however they’re principally lending support to the Russians. They’re studying far quicker than the West, already making steps for the mixing of drones right down to the bottom ranges of their army construction. They’re most likely properly forward of the Russians and Ukrainians by now when it comes to swarming and autonomous drone applied sciences.
Within the USA, we could retain an edge when it comes to the farthest reaches of our technical developments, however when it comes to integration, scaling, and institutional data, we fall brief.
We’re fortunate if a regiment has a drone platoon. We arrogantly assume that digital warfare and strategic airpower will avail us in opposition to 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 service battle group can defend itself in opposition to ten or 100 thousand absolutely 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 will probably be of little use in opposition to 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 power in opposition to UAVs, do we actually suppose these will probably 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?
Individuals who can not fathom such an assault are naïve. In my earlier profession, mates 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 obtained sensible to it and began monitoring them.
Additionally, Chinese language nationals within the U.S. are infamous for penetration-testing U.S. army amenities, for instance merely making an attempt to drive vans straight by way of gate guard posts. Presumably these aren’t elite spies doing this, however reasonably scared people who find themselves underneath coercion, not wanting hurt to befall their households throughout the ocean. It is a problem for the American thoughts to understand however is actuality.
Individuals additionally suppose our lifestyle won’t ever go away so long as now we have this or that, such because the Second Modification – “A rifle behind each blade of grass”. But when we lose our dominant standing on this planet – our “empire” of types – with its huge management over the worldwide monetary system, that lifestyle will disappear essentially.
Our dominance is a strategic deterrence in opposition to 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 regularly dropping first monetary dominance after which the power to cohesively defend ourselves. To not point out, if you need your iPhone, you higher be capable to defend worldwide delivery and funds. It might appear an amoral tackle worldwide affairs, however don’t overlook within the international locations that will 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 should you’ve learn all the above. Cease hand-wringing concerning the dominos which will fall if Russia collapses on account of dropping to Ukraine. Overtly and absolutely assist Ukraine, give them what they should win this conflict. Now we have a key window of alternative earlier than mass-produced low-cost autonomous drones are unleashed, throughout which American financial strain and strategic putting energy may collapse a fragile Russia in a single day or nearly in a single day. Subsequent, companion with Ukraine and use their institutional data to coach, advise, and help our personal army and business in revamping and scaling.
From the very best ranges of energy, whether or not within the non-public or public sector, somebody who’s a “true believer” must order work to be executed. A top-down restructuring of the army and procurement course of would work. Or a whole lot of billions in non-public funding to create the drones, prepared to be used when the general public sector will get sensible, 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.
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