El dron perdido: cómo Ucrania cambió la guerra moderna

What Ukraine figured out, almost by necessity, is how to industrialize that equation.

La verdad es que fue por necesidad, tienes razón.

The truth is it was out of necessity, you're right.

Ucrania no tenía suficientes tanques, no tenía suficientes misiles.

Ukraine didn't have enough tanks, didn't have enough missiles.

Entonces buscaron otras soluciones.

So they looked for other solutions.

Y encontraron los drones.

And they found drones.

Es un ejemplo de innovación bajo presión extrema.

It's an example of innovation under extreme pressure.

Look, there's a historical parallel here that I keep thinking about.

In the Second World War, the British used cheap, improvised weapons when they were desperate after Dunkirk.

Necessity pushing innovation.

Ukraine is the modern version of that story.

Mira, es una comparación interesante.

Look, it's an interesting comparison.

Pero hay una diferencia importante.

But there's an important difference.

En la Segunda Guerra Mundial, las armas improvisadas eran simples, mecánicas.

In the Second World War, improvised weapons were simple, mechanical.

Los drones ucranianos son sofisticados, usan inteligencia artificial para navegar y encontrar objetivos.

Ukrainian drones are sophisticated, they use artificial intelligence to navigate and find targets.

The extraordinary thing is that some of these drones use facial recognition and machine vision to identify targets autonomously.

Which opens a completely different conversation about the ethics of warfare.

But let's hold that for a second and stay with the Finland situation.

Sí.

Yes.

Finlandia detectó varios drones no identificados en el sureste del país ese día.

Finland detected several unidentified drones in the southeast of the country that day.

Uno cayó cerca de Kouvola.

One crashed near Kouvola.

Las autoridades finlandesas investigaron inmediatamente y confirmaron que era ucraniano.

Finnish authorities investigated immediately and confirmed it was Ukrainian.

And the Finnish response was calm, professional, almost understated.

Which tells you something about the Nordic political culture.

They confirmed it, noted it, and didn't escalate.

But the question nobody is answering publicly is: how many times has something like this happened that we don't know about?

Bueno, esta es una pregunta muy importante.

Well, this is a very important question.

Los drones pequeños son difíciles de detectar con los sistemas de radar tradicionales.

Small drones are hard to detect with traditional radar systems.

Son lentos, vuelan bajo, y a veces los radares no los ven.

They're slow, they fly low, and sometimes radars don't see them.

Es posible que muchos drones cruzaron fronteras sin que nadie lo supo.

It's possible many drones crossed borders without anyone knowing.

Right, so there's this surreal situation where the skies over Eastern Europe are essentially shared, and not always voluntarily.

Romanian airspace, Polish airspace, now Finnish airspace.

The war doesn't respect borders in the way wars traditionally did.

Es que la tecnología cambió esto completamente.

The thing is, technology changed this completely.

Un misil balístico es grande, rápido, y los radares lo detectan fácilmente.

A ballistic missile is big, fast, and radars detect it easily.

Pero un dron pequeño, que vuela a cien metros de altura a ochenta kilómetros por hora, es muy difícil de ver y de interceptar.

But a small drone, flying at a hundred meters altitude at eighty kilometers per hour, is very hard to see and intercept.

Which brings me to something I find genuinely fascinating about the Russian electronic warfare response.

The GPS jamming that probably sent this drone off course over Finland is the same system that's been disrupting civilian aircraft navigation around the Baltic.

Commercial pilots have been reporting navigation errors for two years.

Sí, esto es muy serio.

Yes, this is very serious.

Los pilotos de aviones comerciales en el Báltico y cerca de los países del este de Europa reportaron problemas con la navegación GPS desde hace años.

Commercial airline pilots near the Baltic and Eastern European countries reported GPS navigation problems years ago.

El sistema de guerra electrónica rusa no discrimina entre objetivos militares y civiles.

Russia's electronic warfare system doesn't discriminate between military and civilian targets.

No, you're absolutely right about that.

And it's a reminder that military technology almost never stays contained.

It bleeds into civilian life, into civilian infrastructure.

The spectrum is shared.

And once you start jamming it, everyone suffers.

A ver, quiero hablar de algo más.

Look, I want to talk about something more.

Ucrania no solo usa drones para atacar.

Ukraine doesn't just use drones to attack.

También los usa para observar, para buscar posiciones enemigas, para guiar la artillería.

It also uses them to observe, to find enemy positions, to guide artillery.

En los dos o tres últimos años, los drones cambiaron completamente cómo funciona la guerra en el campo de batalla.

In the last two or three years, drones completely changed how war works on the battlefield.

This is the part that military historians are going to be studying for decades.

The combination of cheap reconnaissance drones and precision artillery has essentially eliminated the possibility of massing troops.

You can't hide ten thousand soldiers in a field anymore.

Someone will see you from above.

Exacto.

Exactly.

Y esto es nuevo en la historia de la guerra.

And this is new in the history of war.

Antes, era posible moverse con un ejército grande sin que el enemigo te viera todo el tiempo.

Before, it was possible to move with a large army without the enemy seeing you all the time.

Ahora, en Ucrania, los soldados saben que siempre hay un dron cerca.

Now, in Ukraine, soldiers know there's always a drone nearby.

Vivir así es psicológicamente muy difícil.

Living like that is psychologically very difficult.

I've spoken to soldiers who came back from eastern Ukraine and the word they kept using was exhaustion.

Not just physical.

The constant surveillance, the sense that the sky is always watching.

That's a new kind of psychological pressure that no army has ever had to train for.

Mira, y ahora todas las guerras futuras van a ser así.

Look, and now all future wars will be like this.

Cualquier país que quiera tener un ejército moderno necesita pensar en los drones, en la guerra electrónica, en cómo defenderse de ellos.

Any country that wants a modern army needs to think about drones, electronic warfare, how to defend against them.

Es la nueva realidad militar.

It's the new military reality.

So let's talk about the defense side, because that's equally fascinating.

NATO countries have been scrambling to develop anti-drone systems.

And the challenge is almost comically asymmetric.

You're firing a hundred-thousand-dollar missile to shoot down a four-hundred-dollar drone.

La verdad es que este es uno de los problemas más grandes para los militares modernos.

The truth is this is one of the biggest problems for modern militaries.

Los sistemas tradicionales de defensa aérea son muy caros para usar contra drones baratos.

Traditional air defense systems are too expensive to use against cheap drones.

Por eso, muchos países buscan soluciones nuevas, como láseres o sistemas de jamming defensivo.

That's why many countries are looking for new solutions, like lasers or defensive jamming systems.

The laser option is genuinely interesting.

Several countries, including the UK and the US, have tested high-energy laser systems that can burn a drone out of the sky for literally a few dollars per shot.

If they can scale that, the economics of the whole equation flip.

Bueno, pero estos sistemas láser todavía tienen problemas.

Well, but these laser systems still have problems.

Necesitan mucha energía, y funcionan mal en condiciones de lluvia o niebla.

They need a lot of energy, and they work poorly in rain or fog.

No son perfectos todavía.

They're not perfect yet.

Estamos en el principio de una nueva carrera armamentística tecnológica.

We're at the beginning of a new technological arms race.

And that arms race is now global.

Because here's what worries a lot of people in the defense community: the knowledge of how to build effective combat drones is spreading very fast.

Ukraine's innovations aren't secret.

They're documented, analyzed, copied.

Es que esto es un peligro real.

The thing is, this is a real danger.

Cuando una tecnología militar se hace barata y fácil de producir, no solo la usan los ejércitos grandes.

When military technology becomes cheap and easy to produce, it's not only used by large armies.

También la usan grupos más pequeños, milicias, organizaciones terroristas.

It's also used by smaller groups, militias, terrorist organizations.

Ya vimos esto con los drones de bajo costo en Siria y en Yemen.

We already saw this with low-cost drones in Syria and Yemen.

The Yemen case is important.

The Houthis built or acquired drones that flew hundreds of kilometers and hit oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia.

Drones have already reshaped conflicts far beyond Ukraine.

And the technology keeps getting cheaper, and more accessible.

A ver, y hay otro aspecto.

Look, and there's another aspect.

Los componentes de los drones militares ucranianos vienen de muchos países.

The components of Ukrainian military drones come from many countries.

Microchips de Taiwan y de China, motores de varios lugares.

Microchips from Taiwan and China, motors from various places.

Esto muestra cómo la economía global conecta las industrias civiles y la producción militar.

This shows how the global economy connects civilian industries and military production.

Which is one of the reasons why export controls on semiconductors became such a central issue in this war.

The US, the EU, Japan, all trying to limit Russia's access to the chips it needs for its own missiles and drones.

Technology is now a front line, as much as any trench.

Sí, y Rusia encontró formas de evitar estas restricciones.

Yes, and Russia found ways to get around these restrictions.

Compró componentes a través de países intermediarios, de empresas falsas en otros países.

It bought components through intermediary countries, through shell companies in other countries.

La guerra tecnológica también tiene sus contrabandistas y sus redes ilegales.

The technological war also has its smugglers and illegal networks.

So when I look at this drone in Finland, I don't just see a navigation error.

I see the whole story.

The Ukrainian innovation, the Russian electronic warfare, the semiconductor supply chains, the NATO border anxiety.

It's all compressed into this one object lying in a Finnish forest.

Bueno, eso es una descripción muy buena, Fletcher.

Well, that's a very good description, Fletcher.

La verdad es que este dron perdido es como un símbolo de la guerra moderna.

The truth is this lost drone is like a symbol of modern war.

Pequeño, barato, autónomo, y con consecuencias muy grandes cuando cae en el lugar equivocado.

Small, cheap, autonomous, and with very large consequences when it falls in the wrong place.

And the implications for the next twenty years are real.

Every military in the world is now restructuring around drone warfare.

The F-35, the aircraft carrier, these Cold War prestige projects may not be where the future of conflict actually lives.

Mira, esto es verdad.

Look, this is true.

China y los Estados Unidos también invierten mucho en drones autónomos militares.

China and the United States also invest a lot in autonomous military drones.

Hay proyectos de drones que trabajan en grupos, que se coordinan entre ellos sin intervención humana.

There are projects for drones that work in groups, that coordinate with each other without human intervention.

Esto es el futuro próximo, no ciencia ficción.

This is the near future, not science fiction.

And that's where I find myself genuinely uncomfortable.

Swarms of autonomous drones making targeting decisions without a human in the loop.

That's a line that most ethicists and a lot of military lawyers think we shouldn't cross.

But the technology doesn't care about lines.

La verdad es que la tecnología avanza más rápido que las leyes internacionales.

The truth is technology advances faster than international law.

No existe todavía un tratado internacional que regula los drones autónomos militares de forma clara.

There isn't yet an international treaty that clearly regulates autonomous military drones.

Y esto es peligroso.

And this is dangerous.

Un dron perdido en Finlandia es un problema menor comparado con esto.

A lost drone in Finland is a minor problem compared to this.

That's the right place to end, actually.

One drone in a Finnish forest is almost nothing.

But it points to questions that humanity genuinely hasn't figured out yet.

How do you regulate a weapon that costs less than a television, that anyone can build, and that crosses borders invisibly?

That's the conversation we're not having loudly enough.

Bueno, y mientras los políticos y los juristas buscan respuestas, los ingenieros en Kiev, en Moscú, en Beijing y en muchos otros lugares ya construyen la siguiente generación.

Well, and while politicians and lawyers look for answers, engineers in Kyiv, Moscow, Beijing and many other places are already building the next generation.

El mundo cambió.

The world changed.

Y un pequeño dron cerca de Kouvola nos lo recordó esta semana.

And a small drone near Kouvola reminded us of that this week.