Few know more about drone warfare than Brett Velicovich. During the Iraq war, the former Delta Force intelligence analyst lived in a “black box” in the Iraqi desert using Reaper and Predator drones to pinpoint and track high-value terrorists – before sending in Tier 1 special forces teams, or a Hellfire missile, to end their lives. Most notable among the scalps he claimed were ISIS founder Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq Abu Ayyub al-Masri.
“I feel like there’s going to be another 9/11, but this time without the martyrs because you don’t need humans anymore to cause sensational damage”
Velicovich’s days in the “black box” were some of the last that America could control the skies with drones. The US has since been overtaken by Ukraine, Russia, China and Iran, who have all extracted cutting-edge drone technology and expertise from the war in Ukraine.
But What preoccupies Velicovich now is not a potential conflict with China (which has the US over a barrel with its dominance of drone supply chains), or the Iran war (although he believes it’s shown the US military to be “cocky” in estimations of its own abilities). It’s the prospect of a terror attack here on US soil – specifically, one this summer with the US playing host to both the World Cup and the Olympics.
“I feel like there’s going to be another 9/11, but this time without the martyrs because you don’t need humans anymore to cause sensational damage,” Velicovich said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if there was a drone attack on America by somebody who had some sort of training either in Russia or Ukraine. There just has to be the will to do it.
“We’ve got the World Cup and Olympics coming up and there’s hardly any protection. I speak to DHS officials who flat out tell me we’re not prepared. They say there are too many agencies involved, the FAA handcuffs them and says they can’t test things in certain areas. Or that they have to get the FBI or the FCC involved. There’s too many cooks in the counter drone world in the US. Most police officers not only do not know how to shoot a drone down, but they’re not authorized to in a lot of cases – that’s a big problem.”
The warning may seem far-fetched, but at the outbreak of the Iran war the FBI warned police departments in California that Iran could retaliate by launching suicide drones at the West Coast. The small, inexpensive and mass-produced drones that Velicovich envisages might be used in such a terrorist attack are also exactly what the US military needs. “Future wars are not going to be won by the countries that have the biggest army. They are going to be won by the countries that can innovate fast enough.”
The US is now on the verge of signing a major defense deal with Ukraine to make US military drones competitive again by opening up Ukraine’s military tech market to US defense firms. Ukraine is finally lifting arms export restrictions that were put in place at the start of the war to ensure all military resources were targeted at Russia. Velicovich’s drone firm – Powerus – will be one of the first to extract that technology for the US when the deal is finalized.
The agreement will give US firms direct access to the Ukrainian R&D loop – the lightning-fast feedback chain that means when a battlefield soldier experiences a technology problem, an engineer will immediately try to solve it. So when Russians work out how to jam a drone, for instance, the engineer works out how to cloak it again. US firms will now be able to acquire Ukrainian drone firms and with them the R&D cycle.
“It’s not that the US couldn’t build all of these things that the Ukrainians have built, it’s that they don’t have the time to. We’ve got these really smart Ukrainian product engineers and products and we need to fill the gap very, very quickly to catch up to China and Russia. Our acquisition strategy speeds up the timeline for the US to be able to get the proper technology without having to go through all these new R&D cycles.”
Perhaps the most critical area where America lags behind is the drone supply chain, which is almost wholly controlled by China. Most Ukrainian drones are in fact Chinese drones. Many of the parts inside are Chinese – from the batteries, to the propulsion systems, optics, communication and navigation systems, processors, carbon fiber frames and fiber optic spools used by FPV drones. If China wanted to shut the supply chain down, it could.
The Department of War’s Drone Dominance program – a $1 billion initiative aimed at rapidly fielding hundreds of thousands of low-cost, expendable First Person View (FPV) attack drones – is funding a new homegrown supply chain in America. “There are smart people within the Department of War, they’re going to pay $5,000 per drone – but everyone knows the drones cost maybe $1,000 to make. The reason they’re paying $5,000 is to add extra money so companies can use that margin to build out their supply chains. We would convert those parts inside the drones to American-made in our factories.”
And while those factories will be built in the US, they will also supply Ukraine. Under the plan, extracting Ukrainian technology and expertise will strengthen the war effort, not undermine it. “Something that’s on the top of my mind is long-range one-way attack drones that can fly over a thousand kilometers and strike a target. Ukraine has a lot of companies that do that really well, very cheap. What in the US would cost $5 million per missile, they’re doing for $20,000.
“So in an ideal situation, once the legal framework is worked out and we are authorized to do it, we would either acquire one of the companies or we would license their technology and they would come build it and we would set up a manufacturing site in America. Maybe 20 percent of that build supports the war effort in Ukraine and the other 80 percent goes to support the US government.”
The Ukraine war was a rude awakening for the US defense industry that thought its drones were the best in the world. It has been scrambling to catch up ever since. Velicovich saw it firsthand. He was on the ground in Ukraine in the first few days of the war, rescuing stranded Americans, handing out medical supplies and, naturally, supplying drones bought by US donors. He stayed for two years to help the war effort and learn how drone warfare was evolving.
“Our big defense primes failed us because we’ve lost the stranglehold that we had on drone technology. When I had Reapers and Predators at my fingertips for the targeted operations, we controlled the air. I think we got a little bit arrogant as a country.
“I saw a lot of our big name defense contractors bring drones out to Ukraine. They thought the Ukrainians were going to love their stuff but they ended up hating it. I would see them flying $200 Chinese drones around $300,000 US counter-drone systems. I think Anduril is a beautiful example. The company was very much fake it ‘til you make it. Now they’ve made it. But everyone knows that their stuff was not working.”
American arrogance has also been exposed in the Gulf with Iranian drones penetrating US military bases and killing soldiers. “That’s a great example of how the Department of War got a bit cocky. A week after the war started, there were government officials admitting that it’s unsustainable math to use a Patriot missile for an Iranian drone when they’re producing thousands of these things per month.”
Powerus aims to fill that gap in capability. It has hired former US presidential envoy to Ukraine General Keith Kellogg and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Charles Brown as advisers. Eric Trump and Don Jr. have invested in the firm – and the President himself thanked Velicovich for his work and said he “really knows his stuff.”
But critics have raised the potential conflict of interest that the investment in Powerus by the Trump sons poses. Richard Painter, a former chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, said: “Countries are under enormous pressure to buy from the sons of the President so he will do what they want. This is going to be the first family of a president to make a lot of money off war.”
Velicovich dismisses the argument. “I think it’s preposterous. The drone threat doesn’t care who’s in the White House and soldiers don’t care who’s on an investor list. They need the technology now and they need technology that works.”
And while he praises the President for getting to grips with the drone issue, he is reserving judgment until the job is complete. “I’ve never seen an administration that understands the problem of how far behind we are. But understanding there’s a problem and then moving forward with the steps necessary to fix it are two different things.”
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