Benjamin Reed
When I went to military police One Station Unit Training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, in the summer of 2006, I remember my drill instructor looking at a training schedule; we were supposed to learn how to dig foxholes. He waved it off and said, “We’ll skip this. If you ever find yourself needing to dig a foxhole or a trench, something is seriously wrong.” He wasn’t wrong; for that era, doctrine didn’t prioritise field fortifications. That lack of training, combined with herniated discs, left me struggling when I had to dig trenches in the southern Donbas. Learning early 20th-century infantry operations became a baptism by fire. I managed to earn my stripes as a proper grunt nonetheless; this being my third war after Iraq and Afghanistan.
Much of the combat I experienced in Ukraine occurred during the static phase of 2022, where neither side launched significant offensives in the areas where I was deployed. I often felt futile in my role, reduced to praying artillery wouldn’t reduce us to pink mist. So I decided to enhance my capabilities. I started working with the local drone team of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army before transitioning to the International Legion, where I served as both a rifleman and drone operator.
There was no dedicated drone unit at the time; my duties were ad hoc. Still, having ISR drone capabilities at the squad level was a game-changer. But it came with new responsibilities: I had to become a field technician. Hobbyist drones malfunction, and support was limited. This added stress contributed to my burnout, and I left in August 2022. But being a war junkie, I came back a year later. The war had evolved. FPV drones were everywhere.
I enrolled in a Ukrainian suicide FPV drone course outside Kyiv to learn a new skill set. Again, with this skill came technical troubleshooting duties. But I never got to apply them operationally; during training, I jumped from a Humvee, and my back and knee flared up. An MRI revealed I needed a knee replacement, along with four herniated discs. That effectively ended my ability to continue. Since then, FPV proliferation has only increased. These drones now account for as much, if not more, lethality than artillery, traditionally responsible for 70% of battlefield deaths.
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