A Russian drone attack on Dnipro, Ukraine, killed ten people and injured 49 more in a single night. Fletcher and Octavio explore how drones transformed modern warfare, who builds them, and what it means for the future.
Un ataque de drones rusos sobre Dnipro, Ucrania, mató a diez personas e hirió a 49 más en una sola noche. Fletcher y Octavio exploran cómo los drones transformaron la guerra moderna, quién los fabrica, y qué significa esto para el futuro.
8 essential B1-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| dron | drone | Los rusos usaron muchos drones para atacar la ciudad. |
| teledirigido | remote-controlled | El avión teledirigido puede volar sin un piloto dentro. |
| a distancia | remotely / from a distance | Muchas personas trabajan a distancia desde su casa. |
| fabricar | to manufacture / to build | Irán fabrica drones y los vende a otros países. |
| preciso | precise / accurate | Los drones caros son más precisos que los drones baratos. |
| bloquear | to block / to jam | El sistema de defensa bloqueó la señal del dron enemigo. |
| responsable | responsible | No saben quién es responsable cuando el dron mata a personas equivocadas. |
| herido | injured / wounded | Cuarenta y nueve personas resultaron heridas en el ataque. |
There's a number from this week I haven't been able to shake.
Ten people killed in Dnipro, Ukraine, overnight.
Not from artillery, not from a missile barrage in the traditional sense.
From drones.
And 49 more injured.
And it made me want to step back and actually ask: how did we get here?
Sí, y la verdad es que Dnipro no es una novedad en este conflicto.
Yes, and honestly Dnipro is nothing new in this conflict.
Los rusos atacaron esa ciudad muchas veces antes.
The Russians have attacked that city many times before.
Pero lo que cambió en los últimos dos años es el tipo de arma que usan.
But what changed in the last two years is the type of weapon they use.
Right, and that's exactly the thread I want to pull.
Because there were also RSF drone strikes in Sudan this week, killing at least seven people in El-Obeid.
And Malian rebel forces shot down a government helicopter near Gao.
All in the same 24-hour news cycle.
Drones are everywhere now.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y eso es lo que me parece fascinante, Fletcher.
And that's what I find fascinating, Fletcher.
Antes, para atacar una ciudad enemiga, necesitabas un ejército grande, aviones de guerra muy caros, o muchos soldados.
Before, to attack an enemy city, you needed a large army, very expensive warplanes, or many soldiers.
Ahora, un grupo pequeño puede comprar o fabricar un dron y hacer daño enorme.
Now, a small group can buy or build a drone and cause enormous damage.
It's a democratization of destructive power, which is a genuinely terrifying phrase when you think it through.
And the cost gap is staggering.
A Patriot missile interceptor costs somewhere north of three million dollars.
The Shahed drone it's sometimes used to shoot down costs maybe twenty thousand.
Russia has been exploiting that math relentlessly.
Y los Shahed no son drones rusos.
And the Shaheds aren't Russian drones.
Son iraníes.
They're Iranian.
Irán los fabrica y los vende a Rusia.
Iran manufactures them and sells them to Russia.
Esto es importante porque muestra que la guerra en Ucrania no es solo entre Rusia y Ucrania.
This matters because it shows that the war in Ukraine isn't just between Russia and Ukraine.
Hay otros países que participan con tecnología.
Other countries participate through technology.
Which is a whole geopolitical knot on its own, especially given that Iran is simultaneously in the middle of a war and nuclear negotiations this week.
But let's go back a bit further.
Because drones as a concept aren't new.
The U.S.
was flying Predator drones over Afghanistan when I was there in the early 2000s.
What changed?
Muchas cosas cambiaron.
Many things changed.
Primero, el precio.
First, the price.
En los años 2000, un dron militar costaba millones de dólares.
In the 2000s, a military drone cost millions of dollars.
Ahora, los drones que usan en Ucrania a veces cuestan cien dólares.
Now, the drones used in Ukraine sometimes cost a hundred dollars.
Son casi iguales a los drones que compras en una tienda de juguetes.
They're almost identical to the drones you buy in a toy store.
The DJI Mavic.
Consumer drone.
You can buy one on Amazon.
And Ukrainian soldiers were using them to spot Russian tank positions in 2022.
Sometimes with a grenade duct-taped to the bottom.
That's how quickly this technology got repurposed.
Sí, pero también hay algo importante aquí.
Yes, but there's also something important here.
Los ucranianos no solo usaron drones para atacar.
The Ukrainians didn't only use drones to attack.
Los usaron para ver.
They used them to see.
Para observar.
To observe.
La información que un dron puede dar en una guerra es muy valiosa.
The information a drone can provide in a war is very valuable.
Puedes ver al enemigo antes de que él te vea a ti.
You can see the enemy before they see you.
Intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance.
The classic ISR mission.
Militaries have wanted that capability forever.
In World War One they used observation balloons.
Now a twenty-year-old with a tablet and a hundred-dollar quadcopter can do something that used to require a reconnaissance aircraft and a trained pilot.
Y esto creó un problema nuevo para los militares grandes.
And this created a new problem for large militaries.
Porque los ejércitos del mundo estaban preparados para luchar contra otros ejércitos grandes.
Because the world's armies were prepared to fight other large armies.
No estaban preparados para miles de drones pequeños y baratos.
They weren't prepared for thousands of small, cheap drones.
This is something I keep coming back to when I think about the doctrinal crisis this creates.
The entire architecture of modern air defense was designed around fast-moving aircraft and ballistic missiles.
A slow, low-flying, cheap drone is a completely different problem.
Radar systems either can't see them or aren't optimized to track them.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y los rusos aprendieron esto muy rápido.
And the Russians learned this very quickly.
Al principio de la guerra, Ucrania tenía una buena defensa contra misiles.
At the beginning of the war, Ukraine had good missile defense.
Entonces Rusia empezó a mandar muchos drones baratos al mismo tiempo, para cansar y confundir la defensa ucraniana.
Then Russia started sending many cheap drones at the same time, to exhaust and confuse the Ukrainian defense.
Saturation tactics.
You flood the sky with so many cheap threats that the defense runs out of expensive interceptors trying to swat them down.
It's economically brutal.
And the people paying the price are civilians in cities like Dnipro.
Y Dnipro es una ciudad importante.
And Dnipro is an important city.
No es una ciudad pequeña.
It's not a small city.
Tiene más de un millón de habitantes.
It has more than a million inhabitants.
Es una ciudad industrial, con fábricas, hospitales, escuelas.
It's an industrial city, with factories, hospitals, schools.
Cuando un dron ataca en la noche, nadie sabe dónde va a caer.
When a drone attacks at night, nobody knows where it's going to fall.
And this is where technology and ethics collide in a way that I think we still haven't fully grappled with.
Because drone warfare was initially sold, at least in the American context, as more precise.
Fewer civilian casualties than carpet bombing.
Targeted strikes on specific people.
That was the pitch.
Sí, pero eso fue con los drones americanos grandes, los Predator y los Reaper.
Yes, but that was with the large American drones, the Predators and Reapers.
Esos drones tienen cámaras muy buenas y pueden esperar muchas horas antes de atacar.
Those drones have very good cameras and can wait many hours before attacking.
Los drones baratos que usan ahora en Ucrania o en Sudán son diferentes.
The cheap drones used now in Ukraine or Sudan are different.
Son menos precisos.
They're less precise.
The Reaper costs about thirty million dollars per unit and requires a crew of trained operators sitting in Nevada, sometimes.
The Shahed-136 that hit Dnipro last night is essentially a motorized glider packed with explosives and guided by GPS.
That's a fundamentally different weapon, even if we use the same word for both.
Y aquí hay algo que me parece muy importante para entender.
And here's something I think is very important to understand.
Irán no solo vende estos drones a Rusia.
Iran doesn't only sell these drones to Russia.
También los vende a grupos como Hezbolá.
It also sells them to groups like Hezbollah.
Y otros países, como Turquía, también fabrican drones militares y los venden a muchos países del mundo.
And other countries, like Turkey, also manufacture military drones and sell them to many countries around the world.
Turkey's Bayraktar TB2.
That drone had a moment early in this war.
Ukraine was using them against Russian armor in 2022, and there was almost a mythological quality to the coverage of it.
There was a folk song written about it in Ukraine.
An actual folk song.
[chuckle] Sí, lo sé.
Yes, I know.
Pero la historia del Bayraktar es también la historia de cómo un país como Turquía, que no es una superpotencia, puede convertirse en un exportador importante de tecnología militar.
But the story of the Bayraktar is also the story of how a country like Turkey, which isn't a superpower, can become an important exporter of military technology.
Antes eso solo lo podían hacer Estados Unidos, Rusia, o Francia.
Before, only the United States, Russia, or France could do that.
And that proliferation is really the core of what's changed.
The barrier to entry for drone manufacturing has collapsed.
You need electronic components, mostly off-the-shelf.
You need engineers who understand navigation systems.
You need investment.
But you don't need a full aerospace industrial base anymore.
Ethiopia built its own armed drones.
Ethiopia.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y Sudán, el país que mencionaste antes, también tiene problemas con drones.
And Sudan, the country you mentioned earlier, also has drone problems.
Las RSF, que son las Fuerzas de Apoyo Rápido, usaron drones esta semana para atacar civiles en El-Obeid.
The RSF, the Rapid Support Forces, used drones this week to attack civilians in El-Obeid.
Esto es una guerra civil, no un conflicto entre dos países ricos.
This is a civil war, not a conflict between two rich countries.
And that's a story that deserves more attention than it gets.
The RSF is essentially a paramilitary force that grew out of the Janjaweed, which was responsible for atrocities in Darfur.
And now they have drones.
The technology doesn't care about your human rights record.
No, y esto es el problema más grande.
No, and this is the bigger problem.
Antes, para matar a mucha gente, necesitabas muchos soldados.
Before, to kill many people, you needed many soldiers.
Los soldados tienen miedo, tienen familias, pueden resistir las órdenes crueles.
Soldiers are afraid, they have families, they can resist cruel orders.
Un dron no tiene miedo.
A drone isn't afraid.
Un dron no piensa.
A drone doesn't think.
Solo obedece.
It only obeys.
There's a philosopher at Oxford, Luciano Floridi, who writes about this: the idea that when you remove the human from the loop in lethal decisions, you also remove the moral friction.
The hesitation.
The soldier who couldn't pull the trigger.
An autonomous system doesn't hesitate.
Sí, y hay una pregunta muy difícil aquí.
Yes, and there's a very difficult question here.
¿Quién es responsable cuando un dron mata a personas equivocadas?
Who is responsible when a drone kills the wrong people?
¿El soldado que lo programó?
The soldier who programmed it?
¿El general que ordenó el ataque?
The general who ordered the attack?
¿La empresa que fabricó el dron?
The company that manufactured the drone?
No hay una respuesta clara todavía.
There's no clear answer yet.
International humanitarian law was written in a pre-drone world.
The Geneva Conventions talk about distinction, proportionality, precaution.
Those principles were designed with humans making judgment calls in real time.
Now you have algorithms.
And the law hasn't caught up.
Y mientras los países ricos discuten estas ideas filosóficas y legales, en Dnipro la gente muere.
And while rich countries debate these philosophical and legal ideas, in Dnipro people are dying.
En El-Obeid la gente muere.
In El-Obeid people are dying.
El debate teórico es importante, pero no es suficiente para proteger a los civiles hoy.
The theoretical debate is important, but it's not enough to protect civilians today.
That's a point I can't argue with.
And it connects to something I wanted to bring up, which is the counter-drone industry.
Because there's now an entire ecosystem of companies trying to solve the problem of how you stop these things.
And it's a genuine engineering challenge.
Sí, hay muchas soluciones diferentes.
Yes, there are many different solutions.
Algunos usan señales de radio para bloquear la comunicación del dron con el operador.
Some use radio signals to block the drone's communication with the operator.
Otros usan láseres para quemar el dron.
Others use lasers to burn the drone.
Y hay países que entrenan águilas para atrapar drones pequeños.
And some countries train eagles to catch small drones.
Los Países Bajos lo intentaron.
The Netherlands tried it.
The Dutch eagle program.
That was real.
They eventually retired it because the eagles didn't reliably distinguish between training sessions and actual threats, and also the carbon fiber propellers on some drones were cutting their talons.
Technology solving a technology problem, met by a bird.
Which went badly.
Pobre águila.
Poor eagle.
Pero el punto es serio.
But the point is serious.
La defensa contra drones es un mercado enorme ahora.
Counter-drone defense is an enormous market now.
Empresas en Israel, en Estados Unidos, en Europa compiten para vender sistemas anti-drones.
Companies in Israel, in the United States, in Europe compete to sell anti-drone systems.
Es un negocio de miles de millones de dólares.
It's a business worth billions of dollars.
Which means there's an arms race baked into the economics.
You develop a cheap drone, someone develops a counter-system, you develop a drone that evades the counter-system.
The cycle funds itself.
And the civilians in Dnipro are living inside that cycle.
Y no olvidemos que los drones también tienen usos buenos, Fletcher.
And let's not forget that drones also have good uses, Fletcher.
En la medicina, los drones llevan sangre a hospitales en zonas remotas de África.
In medicine, drones deliver blood to hospitals in remote areas of Africa.
En la agricultura, los drones observan los campos y ayudan a los agricultores.
In agriculture, drones observe fields and help farmers.
La tecnología misma no es mala.
The technology itself isn't bad.
Zipline.
The company that does medical drone delivery in Rwanda and Ghana.
They've made millions of deliveries.
Saved real lives.
The same basic technology: a small aircraft guided remotely.
The difference is entirely in the payload and the intention.
Which is almost a philosophical problem in itself.
Sí.
Yes.
Y creo que esto es lo más importante de hoy.
And I think this is the most important point today.
Los drones llegaron para quedarse.
Drones are here to stay.
No podemos eliminar esta tecnología.
We can't eliminate this technology.
Lo que sí podemos hacer es decidir cómo regular su uso en la guerra, quién puede tenerlos, y qué pasa cuando matan a personas inocentes.
What we can do is decide how to regulate their use in war, who can have them, and what happens when they kill innocent people.
And we're not doing that well right now.
There have been UN discussions about autonomous lethal weapons systems for over a decade and almost nothing binding has emerged.
In the meantime, Dnipro.
Sudan.
Mali.
The gap between what we can build and what we've agreed not to do with it keeps widening.
Oye, Fletcher, antes de terminar, quiero preguntarte algo.
Hey, Fletcher, before we finish, I want to ask you something.
Usé la palabra "teledirigido" antes, cuando hablé de los drones.
I used the word 'teledirigido' earlier, when I talked about drones.
¿La entendiste?
Did you understand it?
I caught it but I assumed it was remote-controlled.
Which seemed right from context.
But break it down for me because I think there's something interesting in how that word is constructed.
Sí, exacto.
Yes, exactly.
"Tele" significa "a distancia", como en "televisión" o "teléfono".
'Tele' means 'from a distance', like in 'televisión' or 'teléfono'.
Y "dirigido" viene del verbo "dirigir", que significa "guiar" o "controlar".
And 'dirigido' comes from the verb 'dirigir', which means 'to guide' or 'to control'.
Entonces "teledirigido" es literalmente algo que diriges desde lejos.
So 'teledirigido' is literally something you direct from far away.
That's a really clean construction.
English does the same with "tele" but we tend to borrow from Greek for the remote-control concept.
"Remote" itself comes from Latin "remotus," which means pushed back, separated.
So we're doing the same thing through different roots.
Y en español también usamos "a distancia" muy a menudo.
And in Spanish we also use 'a distancia' very often.
Puedes decir "control a distancia" para el mando de la televisión, o "trabajar a distancia" para el trabajo remoto.
You can say 'control a distancia' for the TV remote, or 'trabajar a distancia' for remote work.
Es una expresión muy útil.
It's a very useful expression.
So if I wanted to say my daughter works remotely from Madrid, I'd say she works "a distancia" from her office.
Which, given the whole drones-attacking-from-a-distance theme of today, feels uncomfortably fitting.
Anyway.
Ten people died in Dnipro this week.
That's the number I'm going to carry.