LATIF NASSER: Hey, it's Latif. One quick thing I wanted to say before we get going today: despite everything that has been in the news, despite the fact that what's happening in Israel-Palestine is on everyone's mind, including everyone on our staff, our episode today is not about that. But we did want to do one thing: we just wanted to shout out at the top that in situations like this one where things are changing so quickly, when emotions are so heated, when good information is so hard to come by, the podcast we listen to is On the Media. They put out an episode last week called "The Fog of War." It's really solid journalism. For those who want to hear more about what's happening, take a listen there. That's it. That's all we wanted to say. And let's get on with the show.

[RADIOLAB INTRO]

LATIF: Hey, I'm Latif Nasser. This is Radiolab. Today we're gonna talk about war—and not the one that is front and center in the news right now, the, you know, horrible things that have been happening in Israel and Palestine. Instead, we're gonna talk about the other war that has been in the headlines. This story comes to us from producer Simon Adler.

SIMON ADLER: Yeah. So I want to talk about the war in Ukraine.

LATIF: Okay. And quick note: this story contains audio of combat that may not be suitable for our younger or more sensitive listeners.

SIMON: Have you—like, have you been following it very closely?

LATIF: I feel like I was at the beginning, and then I kind of—I mean, not so closely lately.

SIMON: Right. And I don't think you're alone.

LATIF: Right.

SIMON: But it is still obviously, you know, a live conflict, one that has been going on for over a year and a half now. Which I don't think anyone really expected.

ERIK B. VILLARD: I mean, by all paper statistics, the Russians should have just walked over the Ukrainians in a few days or maybe a few weeks.

SIMON: But people like Erik B. Villard here ...

ERIK B. VILLARD: Digital military historian for the US Army Center of Military History here in Washington, DC.

SIMON: ... have been watching the war in Ukraine super closely. And he says well, the startling thing is that unlike any war in human history, you can literally watch this one play out step by step almost in real time.

ERIK B. VILLARD: Yes. You know, honestly, a lot of it really is YouTube.

SIMON: YouTube?

ERIK B. VILLARD: Mm-hmm.

SIMON: Okay.

ERIK B. VILLARD: You know, there's—there's probably two dozen channels that I subscribe to and watch on a regular basis, but just, you know, 20 minutes of watching, you know, will really kind of blow your mind because ...

SIMON: These videos are raw footage. In most cases shot ...

ERIK B. VILLARD: By a GoPro on a Ukrainian soldier.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: Ukrainian soldiers speaking]

SIMON: First-person views of things like ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: Ukrainian soldiers speaking]

ERIK B. VILLARD: Infantries advancing through, you know, miles and miles of trenches.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: Ukrainian soldiers speaking]

ERIK B. VILLARD: And, you know, drone attacks.

SIMON: A lot of these are actually made by the Ukrainian army, some of them have millions of views.

LATIF: Really?

SIMON: And there's no way around it. Like, they are disturbing to watch.

ERIK B. VILLARD: Yeah. I mean, people are getting killed. Let's not be coy about that.

SIMON: I'm gonna play you some of these videos.

LATIF: Oof!

SIMON: And while the corpses in them are blurred out, they're awful. They're disturbing. They capture the war. But Erik says, you know, that's why they're so important, that's why they're so powerful, because they are this crazy window into how Ukraine is reshaping both the tactical and emotional reality of how we wage war.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Anna Kaliuzhna: [speaking Ukrainian]]

SIMON: So this is a video reported from the front line by Ukrainian war correspondent Anna Kaliuzhna. It opens up with her standing in what looks like sort of an old school's basement—it's a makeshift bunker. And she says, looking at the camera ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Anna Kaliuzhna: [speaking Ukrainian]]

SIMON: "We'll be watching the battle from here." At which point, camera cuts to these three jankily hooked up flatscreen TVs, each showing a different live feed from a different drone. And now, like, I think when we say "drone," what comes to mind is like a Predator drone, the one that's like ...

LATIF: Yeah, that's the one I'm thinking of.

SIMON: Big. Like, costs millions of dollars, rain Hellfire missiles down.

LATIF: That's right.

SIMON: Controlled from thousands of miles away.

LATIF: Yeah. Like, somebody in a basement in Las Vegas or something. Yeah, yeah.

SIMON: Right. Right.

LATIF: Yeah.

SIMON: Those are not the drones that we're talking about here in Ukraine.

ERIK B. VILLARD: No, no. Not at all.

SIMON: These drones, he says, are ...

ERIK B. VILLARD: Cheap. Costs just like a couple hundred dollars, used for, you know, commercial photography.

LATIF: Oh, toy drones.

SIMON: Yeah, basically. But at this point in the war, Ukraine is sending ...

ERIK B. VILLARD: At least 10,000 of these drones ...

SIMON: Up into the sky ...

ERIK B. VILLARD: ... each month.

SIMON: [laughs] Jesus!

ERIK B. VILLARD: Right? So this is the scale of what we're talking about.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: All right. Those individuals are now over by where that IED is suspected.]

SIMON: And while, you know, Predator drones fly up at like 30,000 feet and are controlled from thousands of miles away, tracking down and sending back grainy video of squiggly little heat signatures on black and white monitors, these commercial drones, they hover at just like 200 feet, providing Ukrainian soldiers a steady, high-definition view of the battle lines right in front of them—sometimes just a hundred yards away.

ERIK B. VILLARD: And some of these drones are literally—they will fit in the palm in your hand. So you can just, you know, bring this out of your pocket, throw it up in the air ...

SIMON: And there's suddenly this little personal periscope floating above your head.

ANNA KALIUZHNA: [speaking Ukrainian]

YULIA TARISUK: "And by this, our commanders are able to see if something changes."

ANNA KALIUZHNA: [speaking Ukrainian]

SIMON: That's Anna Kaliuzhna, the war correspondent who made that video, talking to me with the help of interpreter Yulia.

YULIA TARISUK: Yulia Tarisuk.

ANNA KALIUZHNA: [speaking Ukrainian]

SIMON: And in this video of hers, you can see what these drones allow the Ukrainians to do.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: Ukrainian soldiers speaking]

SIMON: Maybe three minutes in, out of nowhere the guys in the bunker start squawking over the radio.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: Ukrainian soldiers speaking]

SIMON: And one of the drone cams starts zooming in on this treeline. And there you see these hidden advancing Russian troops.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: Ukrainian soldiers speaking]

SIMON: And one of the soldiers in the bunker radios to the troops in the field, saying ...

ERIK B. VILLARD: "I see where the Russians are."

SIMON: "They're advancing on you. Take up your position now."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: Ukrainian soldiers speaking]

SIMON: And then just a moment later ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: Ukrainian soldiers speaking]

SIMON: ... they can see on the screen and hear on the radio a firefight break out.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: Ukrainian soldiers speaking]

SIMON: And everything gets very tense.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: Ukrainian soldiers speaking]

SIMON: Now the Ukrainian soldiers start to get pinned down, but because the guys in the bunker have such a crystal-clear picture of what's going on, they start ...

ERIK B. VILLARD: Radioing in exact coordinates to a Ukrainian artillery position, you know, somewhere in the rear ...

SIMON: You know, the guys with the big, big guns.

ERIK B. VILLARD: ... saying "Who wants—who wants it?" And then, "All right. That's mine. Roger. You know, I got it."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: Ukrainian soldiers speaking]

ERIK B. VILLARD: And it's locked in.

SIMON: And the screen starts lighting up with these ...

ERIK B. VILLARD: Little puffs of white smoke. Poom, poom, poom, poom.

SIMON: As the artillery hits.

ERIK B. VILLARD: Throwing shrapnel.

SIMON: But the artillery's a little bit off target. And so ...

ANNA KALIUZHNA: [speaking Ukrainian]

YULIA TARISUK: "The drones help adjust our artillery ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: Ukrainian soldiers speaking]

SIMON: The guys in the bunker radio the artillery and say, "Ten meters to the right. Now 20." Until ...

[Ukrainians cheering]

SIMON: ... direct hit.

SIMON: Jesus!

ERIK B. VILLARD: I mean, the battlefield awareness is just unbelievable. Unbelievable.

SIMON: And I mean, this is Erik's whole point about why this war feels different, and why it's gone on longer than anybody expected.

ERIK B. VILLARD: Yes, one of the reasons Ukrainians have done so well is even though they've been outnumbered and outgunned for most of the war, their ability to know what the Russians were doing that's made all the difference.

SIMON: And oddly enough, this difference, it began with regular Ukrainian people, civilians. So back up to 2014, 2015 ...

SAMUEL BENDETT: Hold on a second.

SIMON: Mm-hmm.

SAMUEL BENDETT: [clears throat] Sorry about that.

SIMON: No problem.

SAMUEL BENDETT: One, two, three. So what happened in 2014, 2015, was basically Ukraine lost Crimea, Eastern Donbas and Luhansk regions.

SIMON: Russia, as we should recall, crashed across the Russia-Ukraine border ...

[NEWS CLIP: Armored Russian vehicles burst through the walls of Crimea's Belbek base today.]

SIMON: ... and just said, "This land is ours now. And there's nothing you can do about it."

SAMUEL BENDETT: So it became clear that the Ukrainian military wasn't quite ready, and it had capability gaps such as not enough aerial coverage.

SIMON: And so, according to military analyst Samuel Bendett there ...

SAMUEL BENDETT: Ukrainian private sector and Ukrainian volunteer technical communities stepped up. People started manufacturing short-range drones basically in their garages and their homes on their free time.

SIMON: Thinking ...

ERIK B. VILLARD: Here's a great resource that we can afford to keep an eye on the Russians.

SAMUEL BENDETT: And the Ukrainian government and its various ministries readily embraced this volunteer effort, holding meetups and competitions.

ERIK B. VILLARD: Just saying, you know, let a thousand flowers bloom. Just, like, go out, innovate, try stuff.

SIMON: More recently, these volunteers have been ...

SAMUEL BENDETT: Converting these commercial drones into essentially mini-bombers by 3D printing special equipment that allows soldiers to basically strap on a grenade.

SIMON: Yeah, they're like these little claws that when the operator clicks a button, opens up releasing the grenade.

ERIK B. VILLARD: So if the Russians leave the hatch of a vehicle open? Drop it right in there. So there's actual hunter killer drones roaming over the battlefield right now targeting individual Russians.

[NEWS CLIP: Ukraine says it's ramping up the home-grown production of drones.]

[NEWS CLIP: Carrying out attacks in Moscow, the Black Sea and on the battlefield ...]

[NEWS CLIP: The biggest drone attack yet inside Russia.]

ANNA KALIUZHNA: [speaking Ukrainian]

YULIA TARISUK: "It seems to me we were prevailing over the Russians with drones."

SIMON: Again, Anna Kaliuzhna.

ANNA KALIUZHNA: [speaking Ukrainian]

YULIA TARISUK: "I guess ..."

ANNA KALIUZHNA: [speaking Ukrainian]

YULIA TARISUK: "... I felt like our military found a way to outwit Russians."

ANNA KALIUZHNA: [speaking Ukrainian]

SIMON: But, Anna says ...

YULIA TARISUK: "And there is only one problem."

ANNA KALIUZHNA: [speaking Ukrainian]

[NEWS CLIP: Moscow is catching up in the drone race by building up arsenals of ...]

SIMON: Russia took note of this ...

[NEWS CLIP: Ukrainian forces say Moscow is ramping up its use of drones.]

SIMON: ... and adapted.

SAMUEL BENDETT: Today, Russia flies a large number of these drones ...

[NEWS CLIP: Kamikaze drones striking a residential area in Kiev on Monday.]

SAMUEL BENDETT: ... raining fire on Ukrainian civilian and military targets.

SIMON: And, you know, not one to be left out, the US has taken note as well.

ERIK B. VILLARD: One of the big early takeaways, which I know is resonating with the Army, is that even, you know, back in Iraq and Afghanistan, the command center is a bunch of tents where, you know, all the computers are and generators and radar rays.

SIMON: And these temporary stationary bases were where they directed the battles from. But now today ...

ERIK B. VILLARD: That's not gonna cut it. You cannot afford the luxury of being in one place and setting up your tents and stuff. No, you're just gonna get killed. So suddenly you have to figure out a way to be on the move while the battle's going.

SIMON: The US military has also indicated that it wants these drones in its arsenal. I mean, earlier this year, the Pentagon came out and said that they need to invest more money in equipment like this, in less expensive, easier-to-build stuff. And so it does appear that we're only going to be seeing more and more of these drones, more and more of this footage, and at, like, a closer and closer or more intimate level. I mean, Erik pointed me to this other video that shows you this first-person view of these Ukrainian guys just covered in mud, AK-47s in hand ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: Ukrainian soldiers speaking]

SIMON: ... fighting their way to this sharp turn in a trench.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: Ukrainian soldiers speaking]

SIMON: They're crouched down, leaning up against this black dirt wall that's maybe three feet high with their guns drawn. When suddenly ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: Ukrainian soldiers speaking]

SIMON: ... you hear this voice coming through a radio. And what it is is ...

ERIK B. VILLARD: A drone operator talking to the—to the Ukrainians in the trench.

SIMON: Because through the drone hovering just right above them, this operator he's looking around the corner, and he says ...

ERIK B. VILLARD: "There's a Russian sitting 20 meters in front of you."

SIMON: Jesus.

ERIK B. VILLARD: "In a hole."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: Ukrainian soldiers speaking]

SIMON: "Throw a grenade in that direction and I'll adjust you." So these hands pull out a grenade, pull the pin and huck it over the mud wall. Now because it landed way over the wall, the soldiers can't see the explosion, they don't know what's happened. But then almost immediately, drone operator radioes back down.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: Ukrainian soldiers speaking]

ERIK B. VILLARD: He says, "Okay, you threw it five meters too far. Throw it again."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: Ukrainian soldiers speaking]

ERIK B. VILLARD: Threw it again.

[explosion]

ERIK B. VILLARD: Got 'em.

SIMON: And the guys keep moving. Now in this case, we are watching from the soldiers' point of view.

LATIF: Right.

SIMON: But again what they've done is they've pixelated or fuzzed out the dead bodies. And so watching it, it feels both sanitized and brutal at the same time. But, you know, these drone operators and soldiers, like, obviously they're seeing the real thing. All the time in high definition, they can see their enemy and what's happening to them, often just around the corner or yeah, cowering in a trench. And in fact, one of the things Erik told me was that these drones, they are not just changing how war is fought, but they are changing how the folks fighting are experiencing it.

ERIK B. VILLARD: In previous wars, you rarely saw the enemy, you know, until sort of the moment of decision. And in the 20th century, as weapons became deadlier, you often didn't even see the enemy at all. Like, if you look at the footage, for example, that the Americans took in the Pacific in World War II, there are literally only two or three examples that I can think of where a combat cameraman actually caught sight of Japanese soldiers in action, right?

SIMON: Hmm.

SIMON: But, you know, this new kind of fighting, this kind of war where you can see so much of your enemy, Erik says, it's having this strange, unintended consequence.

LATIF: And we'll get to that right after a quick break.

LATIF: Hey, I'm Latif Nasser. This is Radiolab. We're back with Simon Adler, who's been telling the story of just how crystal clear everyone involved can see the battlefield in the war in Ukraine.

SIMON: Right. And just to pick things back up with Erik, he says it's not just the clarity or the intimacy, but the fact that these guys are watching each other day after day after day that's maybe most powerful here.

ERIK B. VILLARD: You know, these drone operators, you know, are going up so often, they, you know, get to the point where, you know, in some cases, they're able to distinguish between, oh, that's the guy who has the red boots, or that's the guy who leaves his trash outside of his dugout. So they're seeing the Russians as they're living. They're seeing them as they're cooking food and moving supplies and washing clothes and tending to wounded, and all of the other sort of pedestrian things that people still have to do in wartime.

SIMON: He says oddly, this new technology is almost making war like it used to be, like back in Revolutionary War days when you actually had to look your enemy in the eye.

ERIK B. VILLARD: Especially those operators who are dropping grenades and other devices on Russian soldiers. You know, these Russian soldiers, often they'll hear the sound of a drone, they'll—they will look up. So they will be looking up at the operator through the, you know, camera.

SIMON: Right.

ERIK B. VILLARD: So they can see, you know, the facial expressions of the Russian soldiers as the operator hits the button to drop the grenade on them. And it's giving them a perspective that few other soldiers I think have had.

SIMON: Now I asked Anna Kaliuzhna about all this ...

SIMON: I wonder if any of the soldiers you've spoken to ...

SIMON: ... about whether having to look at the enemy so often ...

SIMON: … if that has changed their perspective on the enemy.

ANNA KALIUZHNA: [speaking Ukrainian]

SIMON: And her response was emphatically ...

ANNA KALIUZHNA: Ni.

SIMON: ... no.

ANNA KALIUZHNA: [speaking Ukrainian]

YULIA TARISUK: She heard very few times when Ukrainians were sympathetic to Russians.

ANNA KALIUZHNA: [speaking Ukrainian]

YULIA TARISUK: And for one simple reason.

ANNA KALIUZHNA: [speaking Ukrainian]

YULIA TARISUK: If we allow ourselves to sympathize, Russians will kill all of us.

ANNA KALIUZHNA: [speaking Ukrainian]

ERIK B. VILLARD: You know, the Ukrainians absolutely hate these folks that they see, rightly, you know, as invaders who in some cases have committed atrocities and, you know, destroyed their homes. But that is not the whole story.

SIMON: Right. If I can jump in there.

ERIK B. VILLARD: Mm-hmm.

SIMON: It seems like your argument throughout all this has been these drones have given us this incredible level of visibility.

ERIK B. VILLARD: Right.

SIMON: And that has made it a lot easier to find people and therefore kill them.

ERIK B. VILLARD: Right.

SIMON: But that with more visibility, maybe more humanity comes through as well.

ERIK B. VILLARD: Right. Does seeing the war on a more human level coarsen people to the effects of war and think of it more like, "Oh well, it's just kind of like a video game," or maybe inspire more sympathy. That's an open question.

SIMON: And with that in mind, Erik said, he wanted to show me one final video.

SIMON: I've—I've pulled it up here.

ERIK B. VILLARD: Yeah, let me see here. Let me make sure that we've got—we're looking at the same thing. Yeah. Okay, here we go.

SIMON: You want to just set the scene a little bit? What is this video? Where is it from?

ERIK B. VILLARD: Yeah. This is a video from a Ukrainian position that the Russians had been trying to seize for weeks, if not months. And, you know, it's from the point of view of a Ukrainian drone up above watching all this, you know, unfold.

SIMON: As this video starts, the drone is sort of scanning the terrain below.

ERIK B. VILLARD: It's shell-pocked, bleak, you know, battle-blasted.

SIMON: And then it starts zooming in on this ...

ERIK B. VILLARD: Sort of narrow band of trees.

SIMON: And there you see ...

ERIK B. VILLARD: 12 or 15 Russian soldiers huddled down in this treeline.

SIMON: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

ERIK B. VILLARD: Now these Russian soldiers who are in the trees, some are huddled in holes, others are hugging up against trees. And they're in a whole bunch of trouble and don't know what to do about it because having seen the previous videos, you know what's coming. You know this drone is looking at these Russian soldiers, is radioing in their coordinates, and so basically it's only a matter of time before the big stuff, these 155 millimeter Howitzer rounds. So the anticipation is almost palpable because—and then, boom, there you go.

SIMON: Yeah, Jesus.

ERIK B. VILLARD: That's a 155 millimeter. It's a massive, massive explosion. White smoke, you know, covering 50-meter radius.

SIMON: And as the smoke slowly clears, it's carnage. In the video, you can see these pixelated blobs covering what are dead Russian soldiers. But you can also see that there's this one Russian guy still alive, still moving.

ERIK B. VILLARD: Yeah. The Russian soldier gets up, takes off his AK-47 rifle, puts it down or sort of throws it down, and he takes off his hat, or its covering—it's not even a helmet, it's just like a cap. And then he crosses himself multiple times. He's praying. He's praying over a dead comrade. And then he goes to this comrade ...

SIMON: Bends down and reaches into the guy's coat pocket.

ERIK B. VILLARD: Collecting personal effects. You know, possibly if it was a letter or a photo to send back. And then he looks at the sky. Did you see that?

SIMON: Yeah.

ERIK B. VILLARD: He—he took something from the body, he looks at the sky almost like he's screaming at God. Now the Ukrainians are seeing this. So he's dead to rights if the Ukrainians want to kill him. He's right in the blast zone, but yet they are holding their fire. They are letting this guy grieve for his comrade. And they do not shoot at him.

SIMON: One more thought before we go because, you know, the other question lurking here is, you know, how much longer will humans be the ones deciding to pull the trigger or not.

ERIK B. VILLARD: I was just talking with retired Major General Patrick Donahoe about this, and he's like, you know, the things that keep me up at night is imagining a swarm attack. Not just one drone flying around with a couple grenades but, like, you’ve seen this, like, in some places where they have these drone LED displays, right? Where the drones fly and create different creatures.

SIMON: Yeah, they're like drone firework shows.

ERIK B. VILLARD: Yeah, like drone firework shows. Well, now imagine that, and they're swarming on you like a bunch of angry hornets. And one step beyond that is, what about these things have AI on a cheap little, you know, memory stick inside, and has all the information they need? What then?

SIMON: Right. And how—how far out do you think that is, if you were a betting man?

SAMUEL BENDETT: Given how many AI tools were already used ...

SIMON: Once more, military analyst Samuel Bendett.

SAMUEL BENDETT: ... for data analysis, for image recognition, for speech recognition, for deciphering of communications to do target tracking, and given the fact that Ukrainians really want a drone advantage, we're probably gonna see some element, some iteration of that this year or maybe even next year if the war continues into 2024.

SIMON: In fact, there are now reports they've already been used.

SAMUEL BENDETT: So I think in the near future they will have a very, very significant impact on how all forces fight.

LATIF: This story was reported and produced by Simon Adler with original music throughout by Simon Adler. Additional sound design by Jeremy Bloom. Fact-checking by Natalie Middleton and edited by Becca Bressler.

LATIF: Special thanks to Anna Kaliuzhna and her team for capturing that footage, Yulia Tarisuk for all her help with anything related to the Ukrainian language. And thanks as well to Hanna Rose Shell for helping us understand the history of camouflage.

LATIF: And thank you to you for listening. Catch you next time.

[LISTENER: Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Ekedi Fausther-Keeys, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Alyssa Jeong Perry, Sarah Qari, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster, with help from Timmy Broderick. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton.]

[LISTENER: Hi, my name's Michael Smith. I'm calling from Pennington, New Jersey. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]

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