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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
The former U.S. Army secretary after leaving office arrived in Kyiv and urged adopting Ukrainian war experience.
During his first public appearance since leaving the Trump administration, former U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll warned of a “breakthrough moment in warfare,” saying that the world’s largest armies have not adopted the speed and innovation they need. This was reported by CBS News.
Driscoll, wearing a tie with a traditional Ukrainian ornament, spoke alongside Eric Schmidt — former Google CEO who now leads Perennial Autonomy, an American defense company operating in Ukraine.
The discussion was moderated by CNN host Fareed Zakaria. It took place on the second day of the Yalta European Strategy forum (YES) — an annual conference organized by the Viktor Pinchuk Foundation to discuss Ukraine’s future in the Western security architecture.
Driscoll and Schmidt highly praised Ukrainian military innovations, especially DELTA — the Ukrainian software platform that gives military command a fuller picture of the battlefield by integrating data from radars, sensors, and the armed forces.
According to Driscoll, this platform surpasses any similar technologies currently in the hands of the American military.
He stated that as Ukraine gains more computing power and expands its artificial intelligence capabilities, a “tremendous opportunity” will open up for it.
“Your country will have an incredible opportunity to get ahead of the Russians, out-innovate them in partnerships, so you can defeat them,” Driscoll said.
Driscoll is a Iraq War veteran and former venture investor. He is a longtime friend of U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, whom he met while studying at Yale Law School. As secretary of the Army, he also participated in the administration’s efforts to negotiate an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine.
His resignation was announced 31 in August amid reports of clashes with Defense Secretary Pete Ghesset over the removal of senior officers and approaches to modernization. The White House did not explain the reasons for Driscoll’s resignation.
The United States tried to adopt Ukrainian experience.
During 18 months as Army secretary, Driscoll urged American troops to apply lessons from the war in Ukraine.
In January the U.S. Army began implementing a procurement reform aimed at faster delivering new types of weapons to soldiers.
The war with Iran further demonstrated the urgency of such changes. When Driscoll realized that the U.S. lacked the necessary means to defend against Iranian Shahed drones, aid came not from the largest American defense contractors, but from Schmidt’s company Perennial Autonomy.
The company promptly delivered 13 thousand intercept drones Merops and 10 thousand reconnaissance-strike drones Bumblebee — both types widely used in Ukraine.
“He literally called me, and I said: of course, yes,” Schmidt recalled. “The question is whether the government could have a multi-year plan to anticipate this.”
Driscoll said that a key to responding to such challenges should be learning from what Ukraine does “very inventively, quickly, and iteratively.”
These words resonated with ministers, generals, and lawmakers from Ukraine, Europe, and the United States at the forum.
When moderator Fareed Zakaria drew attention to the huge difference between roughly 300 thousand drones the U.S. is likely to buy this year, and 7 million drones that Ukraine plans to produce, former CIA director David Petraeus shouted from the floor that Ukraine’s forecast is actually closer to 10 million drones.
The United States steps away from studying Ukrainian experience.
However in recent months the United States has apparently begun to abandon parts of the people and structures that studied the lessons of Ukraine’s war.
In August the U.S. Army reorganized a drone unit tasked with studying Ukrainian war experience using drones.
Two well-known supporters of this unit — former Army Chief of Staff General Randy George and former commander of U.S. Army in Europe and Africa General Christopher Donahue — were fired or forced to retire early this year.
Driscoll did not comment on their removal.
At the same time he defended the Trump administration’s approach to Ukraine, though he acknowledged that the level of American support did not meet Kyiv’s expectations.
“I believe that the United States’ relationship with your country has remained — perhaps not as strong as you would like — but, in my view, the drive for your success has remained unwavering,” he said.
Driscoll himself, however, decided that he could be more useful outside the government.
“I decided that the best and most useful thing I can do to make the world a little safer in this very frightening time is to work outside the system,” said the former secretary.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Українська DELTA перевершує все, що має армія США — Дрісколл". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: ZN.ua.
