In an interview with Russia’s state news agency TASS on Tuesday, Oct. 27 the commander of Moscow’s Akhmat special forces unit, Lt. Gen. Apti Alaudinov complained that NATO nations were using the war in Ukraine to test drone technology in combat against Russia.
He commented that large numbers of Western manufactured unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) were being encountered: “We see that drones manufactured in all these countries, which are members of the NATO alliance, are being tested against us on the line of engagement.”
Alaudinov claimed that these included drones of every type, capability and operational ranges. According to him, this not only included first-person view (FPV) drones used to attack Russian forces and equipment on the front line but also included long-range UAVs that were being used to carry out deep strikes against towns, cities and infrastructure inside Russia.
At a [Chinese] People’s Liberation Army (PLA) center that runs trials pitting drone swarms against counter-drone defenses, one participant explained the logic to state media: “The errors we make in trials are detours the troops will not have to take.” China is running the most systematic effort by any outside power to convert the Ukraine war’s lessons into military advantage, absorbing the errors of both sides. Chinese analysts are explicit about the value of Russia’s war against Ukraine. They describe the conflict as a living textbook and call 2024 “year one of world drone war,” when the two sides fielded enough drones to show the contours of the new mechanized battlefield ...
