Ukraine Is Sweeping Roads With Lasers To Fry Russian Fiber-Optic Drones

In the constant, on-going battle for drone dominance, Ukraine has yet another devastating new innovation. 

With the growing use of ambush or 'waiter' drones, which lurk by the side of roads or on top of buildings, waiting for an unsuspecting target, Ukraine has developed a counter-technology which locates the presence of the lurker through light scanning recognition of the ambush drone's shape. It then destroys that waiting drone. So far, no effective counter to the counter has emerged. JL

David Hambling reports in Forbes:

 

Both sides use FPV ambush drones, called 'waiters.' The drones waits for a target, then strike. They are often uses to hit vehicles on supply routes to the front. Ambush drones are controlled by fiber optic cable spooled from the FPV, which are hard to cut. This has led to lasers. In drone piloting, "smoking the ESC" is burning out the Electronic Speed Controller which controls the motor. Excessive current causes the components burn out. But this latest development may be more advanced technology. A structured light scanner which analyses the distortion of the projected pattern to map the shape of objects below in 3D. An automated recognition system could pick up the shape of a parked drone. The drone is "fried" and inoperable.

Putin's Power Suffers From Ukraine Failure, Perception He's Powerless To Save Iran

There have been lots of articles in the past week claiming Putin is the primary beneficiary of the US-Israeli attack on Iran. But most of these arguments focus on the current rise in oil prices. 

The harsher reality is that this financial impact is temporary. What is permanent is that for the third time in recent months the leader of a major Russian ally - Syria, Venezuela and now, Iran - has fallen (with Cuba probably to follow) and Putin has been powerless to save them. This perception of weakness is corrosive. And while he can still project a threat to Europe, he would be unlikely to win were he foolish enough to think he could win a war. And the proof is that he still can't beat Ukraine, which was weaker than several of Europe's individual nations, let alone the alliance together. JL

Bob Seely reports in The Telegraph:

Oil prices have temporarily skyrocketed, helping replenish Russia's emptying coffers, but Putin's dreams of building an alliance to counter the West are being dismantled, one dictatorship at a time, by Donald Trump. Trump's and Putin's telephone call doesn’t change the fundamentals: the loss of allies damages Putin, but also the perception he’s powerless to save them. Putin has invested so much in co-opting Trump over Ukraine that he cannot treat the US as an enemy on Iran - or Syria, Venezuela, Cuba. The Kremlin wanted US-Ukraine negotiations to gain what Russian soldiers failed to win on the battlefield; it hasn’t. Putin knows his fake superpower status would be swept aside if he uses what little force Russia could muster to support Iran. He loved to boast Russia was one of the “sovereign” powers on earth. In reality, it is metamorphosing into a raw-material colony for China.

Continuous Ukraine 'Toll-Gate' Kill-Zone Extorts Huge 'Price' On Russian Troops

Ukraine has created what it is calling a continuous kill zone along crucial sectors of the front which are intentionally designed to act as a figurative 'toll gate' which extracts an 'extortionate' price from Russia in terms of casualties as well as destroyed weapons and vehicles.

While the aerial and land drone wall is a new Ukrainian innovation, the physical barriers of tank traps, mine fields, barbed wire entanglements etc are, ironically, based on the Russian 'Surovikin Line' which thwarted Ukraine's 2023 counteroffensive. Having learned that hard lesson, the Ukrainians are now turning their hard-won knowledge against the Russians to even greater effect as this year's disastrous Russian offensive attempts have demonstrated. JL

  
Decimus reports in Daily Kos:

Pokrovsk, Dobropiliya, Huliaipole and Kostiantynivka are exacting extortionately expensive tolls on the Russians in personnel and materiél. The Ukrainians have kept the toll gate at Pokrovsk-Myrnohrad up for more than a year and a half now.  And still make huge daily collections from the Russians. Ukrainian commanders are focusing on constraining Russian maneuverability rather than clinging to ruined towns. A new continuous kill-zone system aims to stop rapid Russian assaults through layered trenches, wider fire lanes, and anti-vehicle obstacles. This is what modern trench warfare looks like.

Yann LeCun, Fei-Fei Li Each Raised $1 Billion Separately For Non-LLM/Chatbot AI

In the space of one month, two of the acknowledged leaders in AI thinking and development - Yann LeCun and former Google AI head Fei-Fei Li - each raised $1 billion separately for new startups to explore alternative routes for AI which are contrary to the LLM/chatbot frenzy over which Silicon Valley has been obsessing for the past year or so. And the rosters of investors these two insider apostates have convinced to invest are among the elite in corporate and tech leadership as well as wealth. 

This should be telling the rest of us something, primarily, that the current approaches to AI, while not necessarily 'wrong,' are not the only answer and may not even be the optimal solutions in the long run. As we should know from the history of technology invention and adoption, it is still relatively early in the adaptation cycle and, hype aside, there will be changes ahead because tech always eats its elders. This is also further evidence that the AI investment pull-back or pause is based on more than just 'not getting it,' but on real-world concerns about the efficacy of the LLM/chatbot business model. JL

Shannon Carroll reports in Quartz:

Turing Award winner and former Meta AI chief Yann LeCun just raised $1.03 billion for a startup to prove machine intelligence doesn’t run through ever-larger chatbots (with ever-bigger spending). He has spent years arguing Silicon Valley’s favorite AI are impressive party tricks. He called the idea that LLMs will scale their way to human intelligence "complete nonsense." He wants to build AI systems that understand the world, reason through it, staying controllable and safe while doing it, not just predict the next word in a sentence. That means a bigger emphasis on reasoning, planning, spatial understanding, and learning from real-world data. AMI’s investors include Nvidia, Samsung, Toyota, Jeff Bezos, Mark Cuban, Marcel Dassault, Eric Schmidt and Tim Berners-Lee. AMI is being (seen) as an infrastructure layer for physical-world AI. Chatbots made the market but LeCun is betting machines that can model reality will matter more.

Slew Of Ukrainian Frontline Successes Due To Weapons, Tactics, Strategy

For the first time in several years, Ukraine has anticipated and then thwarted Russia's winter offensive plans. Not only have the Ukrainians stopped the Russians and advanced themselves, they have done so while reducing their own casualties even as they increase those inflicted on the Kremlin troops.

What is particularly interesting about the Ukrainian successes is that they are based on a systematic evaluation of lessons learned and what works then translated into organizational and tactical plans. Their deployment of drone technology, both land and aerial, reflects this analytical approach to reducing their vulnerabilities while enhancing their advantages. JL

Kostiantyn Khudov and David Stern report in the Washington Post:

Ukrainian special forces have halted a Russian advance in the Zaporizhzhia region, the latest military success in recent weeks. Kyiv’s troops have recaptured 200 square miles since the beginning of the year, while Moscow is losing up to 35,000 soldiers a month to deaths and injuries. Ukrainian forces are clawing back territory. “With precise drone and artillery strikes, military intelligence operatives systematically limit the capabilities of the Russians — due to a lack of supplies, the occupiers are increasingly abandoning assaults.”

Kyiv's 2026 Research Priorities Reveal How Tech Is Driving War's Future

Ukraine's research priorities for this year reflect the next stage of the technological revolution, exemplified by drone dominance. 

Faster scaling of new technologies, organizational design changes necessitated by the need to deploy more technology, including drones, faster and deeper, and the implementation of AI to assist with targeting, Russian drone and missile interception all reflect the realities of the battlefield. What is interesting, especially to business executives, is that the need for new technology has been largely supplanted by the demand for better institutional adaptation and scaling in order to optimize the impact of these victory-driving innovations. JL

Mick Ryan reports in Futura Doctrina:

The Ukrainian Armed Forces released its research priorities for the coming year. The main change from 2025 is the transition from chaotic developments to a holistic state system…Last year, the Armed Forces of Ukraine completed the formation of a holistic system that allows them to respond instantly to the challenges of war. The key principle is feedback. The focus is on four strategic areas: improvement of innovation management, scaling, AI implementation, integration of unmanned systems into all branches of the service. 

Ukraine Has Liberated Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Advances In Kupiansk, Zaporizhzhia

Ukrainian forces' advance in the southern theater of war continues unabated. Dnipropetrovsk has been almost completely liberated of Russian occupying units, Kupiansk is being cleared as new Ukrainian assaults take additional ground and in Zaporizhzhia, the Russian winter offensive has not only been stopped with heavy casualties, but Ukrainian troops are advancing there as well. 

The effects of the Russians' offensive and defensive failures have cascaded as one affects the other. The Kremlin's plans for this year have been disrupted, if not wholly eliminated, and reflect a broader war-wide operational failing. JL

Benjamin Murdoch and Maria Tril report in Euromaidan Press:

Ukrainian forces have liberated nearly all Russian-occupied areas of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Ukrainian troops had pushed Russian forces back during ongoing operations on the Oleksandrivsk axis near the border of Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, where Russian troops had attempted to push earlier. Ukrainian troops have already recaptured more than 400 square kilometers. Additional areas have undergone follow-up sweeps to eliminate small groups of Russian infiltrators. In the Kupiansk area, Ukrainians advanced east of the city, where Russian forces were shelling a newly occupied Ukrainian position - itself an indicator of the advance - as Ukrainian forces counterattacked within Kupiansk itself. The stalled southern drive reflects a broader Russian operational failure, as Ukrainian counterattacks disrupted Russian forces. Their inability to hold newly captured ground has deprived the Russians of the starting offensive positions from which they intended to launch a summer offensive. The effects are cascading across the theater.