Lawfare Daily: Drone Wars in Ukraine
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 4 June 2026
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
"Jackie" is the call signal of an American Army veteran who volunteered in 2022 with the Ukrainian military and has been fighting the Russians ever since. He's become a significant figure in the storied Third Army Corps, which is one of the elite units of the Ukrainian military and has pioneered major advances in drone warfare. He joins Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes at the Goat Rodeo studio to talk about how he came to serve in the Ukrainian army, the changes in drone warfare that have taken place over the course of the war, and how things are suddenly looking up for the Ukrainian side in a conflict that was looking bleak only a few months ago.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you're a drone pilot in position today, then you're aware of the current state of drone warfare. |
| 0:08.4 | And if you're in your safe house and you were on position seven days ago, you're about seven days behind what's going on in drone warfare in Ukraine. |
| 0:17.8 | It moves really fast. |
| 0:20.0 | It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare, with Jackie. |
| 0:26.9 | Jackie is the call signal of an American army veteran who has spent the last several years |
| 0:33.3 | in active duty in the Ukrainian military. |
| 0:37.2 | Where we're fighting in Ukraine today is actually we're something like stage 4.4, maybe. |
| 0:42.1 | So we've got maybe a year or two until we get to the end of stage 4. |
| 0:46.5 | But we have weapons now where they are self-guiding, they are self-targeting, they are self-driving or self-flying. |
| 0:56.4 | We're talking drones. Drone warfare on the ground, drone warfare in the air, how it has |
| 1:03.8 | changed, how it is changing, and how much it is going to change in the future. So Jackie, I want to start with who the heck you are. |
| 1:16.1 | Most people don't know that there are American soldiers in the Ukrainian military. First of all, |
| 1:23.4 | what can you tell us about yourself? And how did you end up with the third assault brigade |
| 1:28.1 | or the third army corps as it's now called? |
| 1:31.1 | And there are no American soldiers in the Ukrainian army as far as official status goes. |
| 1:39.1 | So if you're an active duty American soldier, you're definitely in the American army. |
| 1:43.3 | At the moment, I'm a active duty |
| 1:45.5 | volunteer soldier to the Ukrainian armed forces. I'm an American veteran, so that's the distinction |
| 1:51.5 | is I got out of the military in 2014. And then when the invasion started in 2022, I was pretty aware of it. I was watching how well the Ukrainians were |
| 2:04.0 | doing in their defensive Kiev in particular and really impressed with them pushing back against |
| 2:09.8 | the Russians. So I decided that I would go join the Ukrainian military and I left in March of 2022. |
| 2:20.5 | This was part of the Ukrainian program called the International Legion initially. That's where I started. So I worked there for about |
... |
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