The Chaser Report - Ukraine's Bluetooth Drones

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

Charles and Dom bring a groundbreaking update on Ukraine, and the unusual technology being used in the war over there. Plus, is Trump finally learning the truth about Putin?---Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] our caviar addiction: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Charles, I like to think of ourselves as the little underdogs that could, you know. We may not be a big media organisation, but we can punch above our weight, Charles. Yes, we do. We do. I mean, not in any discernible sense, but I like to think of us. No, like our downloads are good.

We do have good numbers, it's true. Yeah. And we've got a few late homework assignments from people who were clearly catching up on the weekend. Oh, a bit of feedback. And gave us feedback. One of them was, oh, I'd happily listen to half an hour rather than 15 minutes. Well, that's definitely not happening. No, we thought we might make longer ones, like once a month or so for subscribers. That was another idea that came through on the weekend.

I think that's a brilliant idea. Definitely true. We need to do more for paying subscribers. So we probably will do that. We'll probably have, I don't know, two tiers or something. But we'll work that out. In the meantime, though, Charles, the whole idea of a little tucker, you know, punching above their weight, a little engine that could.

That is Ukraine overnight with the headline here from The Herald. Ukraine destroys $11 billion worth of Russian bombers in surprise drone attacks. So it just goes to show you can be plucky little Ukraine and take on the might of one of the world's biggest armies and just knock shit out. And it's a fantastically inspiring story. until you think of what the same technology could do in the hands of terrorists. But let's not think about that. Let's praise Ukraine's efforts after this.

Yeah, because the other little tiny, tiny, tiny little, you know, problem with this whole attack, which, you know, don't get me wrong. I love all military hardware of any type of being destroyed. You know, like, I think that's a great use of Bluetooth, right? Like, it's the best use of Bluetooth that has ever been in. There's no Bluetooth involved. Shall we just explain it a bit more detail of what they did? Yeah, yeah.

No, no, but I just want to say, and maybe we can shelve this to later in the podcast, but I assume that Russia is going to actually respond in some way. So you sort of going, oh, yeah, this is great, but there must be, like, I would be a little bit fearful about, you know, awakening the tiger. I mean, they've got nukes, what could possibly go wrong? So what they've done, and looked at is a fair point. I'm not sure quite how they've worked out that strategic calculation. And also, presumably people died in those attacks.

So we should take a moment to pause. They may have, I'm not sure. Let's have a look. So Ukrainian Secret Service has destroyed billions of dollars' worth of war planes, as I said. There were explosive-laden drones that got snuck into Russia on trucks. So this was done by the Ukrainian domestic security agency, the SBU. They went to five air bases deep inside Russia all the way to Siberia, and they managed to take out all of these aircraft. 40. There's 40 aircraft.

Yeah, I think they may have been, yeah, parked. It's not clear to me that there was anyone actually in the plane. Well, the footage is incredible because they basically have footage of people driving past airfield. And all the planes are on fire. There's huge balls of smoke. It's just stunning. There is enough little detail here in the news story. Just a paragraph in this tale of Ukrainian triumph.

I'll just quote, at around the same time, Moscow launched one of its longest drone and missile attacks. against Kyiv, including on a military training facility where 12 soldiers were killed. So, yeah, there were deaths, although it's not clear that anyone died in Russia. So they brought the drones in and then they hid them in the roofs of wooden sheds. Yes, and apparently Russia has claimed that they've tracked down some of the people who helped with the hiding and stuff like that. I'm not sure I would want to be one of those people. No, I don't think it would go well for them. So this was called Operation Spider's Web.

personally overseen apparently by Vladimir Zelensky. Yes, which I'm sure Zelensky is very keen on being seen as personally overseeing any successful military operation at the moment. He's also personally overseeing Ukraine for the past, you know, three years, which hasn't been quite successful. But, you know, I've always said, Charles, I've always said this, if you want something done, get a comedian to do it. That's what needs to happen.

Ukraine is sort of the chaser of Europe, isn't it? And Zelensky's the Craig Rookcastle of the chaser. Well, he isn't with this operation. Don't, let's not mention Craig. Instead of a war on waste, it's a war on... It's an actual war. Yeah, it's an actual war. Yeah, it's a non-metaphorical war.

Charles, let's please not mention Craig again because we're going to have to have him come and have his right of reply again. Did you see what they did for the ratings? The ratings. Oh, God. Yeah. This is actually really good news to Ukraine, not just because it's good news,

but also because I think that at the moment, the whole Ukraine battle is a little bit of a battle of confidence as well. Yeah. Like Zelensky, you know, has sort of managed to get the US back on side, but he really needs Europe to step up. And so anything that can sort of prove like, oh, we're not just backing a loser who'll definitely just end up in a quagmire and in three years time, Russia will, you know, have half the territory.

If there's some sort of sense of, no, no, no, Russia's really, you know, on the back foot a little bit like that. Like, there's actually a calculation where, hey, maybe it makes sense to actually draw a line under this and do a bit of a truce or something like that. Well, if you're talking about having just confidence, even regardless of the odds being potentially stacked against you, that's where you need Craig again, just while walking in. Anyway, all right, but the fascinating thing, too, is that Trump, it's so hard to know about Trump and Putin.

I mean, certainly the whole hypothesis that he either has a weird man crush on Putin or that Putin has something compromise on him. Who knows? But there's little evidence to disprove the theory that Trump will not, for whatever reason, criticise Putin. But he's come as close as we've seen him in recent times. I mean, there's an article in the Atlantic is Trump falling out of love with Putin, acknowledging that he has been in love with Putin for him.

It's fucking weird. And the thing that you've got to realize is most agents, the spy agents, like assets of a different country, don't know that they're assets. Like you don't go around. This is why it was so fascinating because Russia used to go or the Soviet Union used to go and essentially compromise the sort of far left leaders of the Labor Party in Britain, right? Yeah. There were whole politicians who were essentially owned by Russia and very much, you know, followed

the talking points of Russia. But at no point did you ever get the sense that those politicians were aware. We're aware that they just thought that Russia was great. Yeah. And that the beautiful Russian. a lady that they were having sex with, just like them for them. Yes, exactly. So I think, and that's always been the most plausible explanation for Trump.

Like, I think the more you see of Trump, the more you go, this guy is a stone cold cretan, right? Like, he really doesn't know that much about the world. Like, you sort of feel like he's catching up in real time on whatever thing he's having. Like, I think he's getting a lesson in what tariffs actually are in real time. It's not that he's having an economics lesson at the expense. of the world. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think same with geo-politics. It's sort of like, oh, right, so actually Russia doesn't have America's best interests. But it is kind of weird. Like,

the Atlantic article about this begins as all these things do with the historical tweet. And so this is from 2013. Trump was sponsoring a beauty pageant in Moscow. And he tweets, you know, will Putin come? And if he does, will he become my new best friend? And I suspect the FSB or whatever they're called, the Russian security agencies were like, oh, I think, I think a Patsy, right. I'd have just identified themselves. But, no, it's very clear that he's very upset. And, you know, like with Putin now. His politics are aligned with Putin.

Like, he likes the idea of a strong man who fixes everything. With an army. And so, no, I mean, Trump now, having boasted, he was going to sort the whole thing out in 24 hours, is starting to think that perhaps the reason he hasn't managed to sort it out so far might actually be that Putin doesn't want it to sort it out. Which does also beg the question, what the hell does that guy want? So, what does Trump want? Putin want.

Like, what's his Trump, Putin one? He wants Ukraine. But does he want all of Ukraine? What's actually trying to do? I mean, he's trying to be Peter the Great. He wants to be Peter the Great. He wants to go down as one of the great SARS of Russia. Yeah, Matt Bevan had a good podcast on the sort of spheres of influence thing

where he wants to basically dominate the east to the extent that America dominates the West, really. And to him, Ukraine's always been part of Russia or greater Russia and it's part of his sphere of influence. But I think the other fascinating part about this is, the incredible revolution that's going on in Ukraine in terms of becoming a military manufacturing superpower. So let's just take a moment to just reflect on some products and services before you speak more about that. Here we go.

The Chaser Report, now with extra whispers. So at the beginning of the war, Ukraine's military manufacturing sector was about $1 billion per year. Yeah, that was... arguably more than I would have expected. But I guess there would have been some that was hung over from the Soviet days. Well, and remember, Ukraine has always been a bit of a tech powerhouse. Like a lot of great technical companies originally come from there

or at least source all their programmers from there. Right. It is now a $45 billion a year industry and is rapidly growing. And not only that, the types of arms that it's using are stuff that people from around the world are wanting to source, right? It's all the new drone technology. They've made absolute leaps and bounds in how to sort of militarise really cheap products and then get them across the line. Because they were initially buying kind of domestic drones, sort of DJI drones or whatever.

There's not sort of drones that are used for cameras and for basically fart-dassing around. So you're saying they're now actually making their own drones. They're actually making their own drones and they've got like in the electronics that sort of help you evade, you know, like the domestic. drones, the really cheap ones, very easy to sort of identify and shoot down. I'm glad to hear that, frankly. But also, the knowledge transfer has started going in the other direction. So I read this fascinating report where it was like, at the beginning of the war, Ukraine was sending their troops over to England and training them up on essentially

conventional military tactics, right? And then there was a point not that long ago, about sort of 18 months ago, where where the training started going in the other direction. So England is now sending its troops to the Ukraine, to Keev, to train them up in these new forms of urban drone-based warfare. Yes, exactly. And apparently the whole tactics that the West were advising Ukraine to use was a sort of almost Iraq-style insurgency thing

where, you know, you just sort of hide out in your... Yeah, sneak in, blow shit up, get out. Yeah. And instead, it's been a far more confident posture that the Ukraine has had, which is that they actually go in and attack the front line of the Russians forces. Yeah, I mean, this is deep, this is the weird thing, deep within Russia. And you've got to remember this sheer enormity of Russia. So at the point where Ukraine's sending this sort of stuff into Siberia, yes. It's pretty major. And now, I am genuinely terrified by the ease with which drones are able to be used for terror. I mean, it's not Ukraine's fault. But this,

It's a pretty terrifying thing to have, given the ubiquity of drones. And we'll get to the point where things buzz in the sky and you wonder exactly what they are and whether they've got your interested heart. But hey, in this case, it's quite great for the sort of asynchronous style. I mean, it's almost sort of Viet Cong style imbalance where the smaller players going out. One of the fascinating things is one of the main floors of drone technology, right, is the radio waves, right? So, you know, for the first 18 months of the war,

oh, no, yeah, about 18 months of the war, most of the drones were just radio-controlled, right? Just literally like a remote control. The problem with that was that the radio way is very easily identifiable. You can pinpoint the drones and easily shoot them down. Because the whole point about drones is they don't move as fast as missiles. They're really slow. You can just shoot them down, right?

Ukraine started experimenting with radio-less drones. drones, right? Which is just basically using AI to go, okay, we want to go and hit that sort of thing. Now, we're not going to contact you, but just go and do that thing, right? It's putting a lot of faith in your AI at that point. And apparently... Take this explosive payload and, you know, choose the right place to blow it up, please. Yes, and not great.

Like, it just sort of, it was, it was all right, but it didn't work very well. And it was sort of like, what we'd actually really like to do is still be in contact with the drones. but without radio waves. So guess what they're doing? Are they using Starlink? No, no, no, no, no, no, because that's radio waves, right? Oh, you're including internet in that. Okay, sure, yeah.

No, no. They're now getting really long, like, fibre optic cables. Like, we're talking 15 kilometres long, right? Plugging them in. And they plug them in, and then they send them off, because remember, this is at the front line. Yeah, yeah. And they, and so you can have a totally, really fast connection direct to the drive. Australians probably wouldn't know what a fibre optic cable is.

Can you imagine an NBN cable being used? Can you imagine the Australian military would suggest using a fibre optic? And Telstra would be like, no, we've got this great copper. Copper network. Pug the copper wire out of some old house and just plug it in. And so the point is that they can go in with full control by a human being. They can go as low as they like. Yeah.

And then kill Russians at the front. It's so counterintuitive that this sort of flying autonomous thing can go in any direction as a cable. Let's plug them in. Let's go wire, you know. But Charles, surely no one understands this better than us as the people behind welcome to the future, the world's leading podcast dealing with the shittness of wireless technology. I mean, it makes total sense.

Every Bluetooth device I ever used makes me wish it was plugged in. Well, it makes me go, because I've got shit mobile reception. Yeah. I'm thinking, what if you had a phone that you actually plug into the wall? With a long bar optic cable. Yeah, that's brilliant. You could actually mount it on the wall, couldn't you? How would you dial it, Charles, would you want buttons or maybe some sort of rotary arrangement?

No, I reckon, yeah, like on the actual, there'd be physical buttons or rotary pads. Yeah, because touch screen is so much less reliable, aren't that? Yeah, exactly. You could call it a, I don't know, a Telstra touch phone. That'd work? Anyway, the fascinating thing is that they've been doing these fibre optic cables for a while, right, with great success. So they're the preferred method. That's so bizarre.

And what it means is that there's now, you can see photos. of these fields on the front in Russia or in Ukraine where there's just thousands of fibre optic cables draped over the field. Like there's just lines and lines of these thin cables. Is that because the drones exploded? Yeah, the drones exploded. But the cable's still there?

And the cable's still there. It's just fibre optics. It's very cheap. Can we buy that? Yes. We put that in... For our MBN. The IBM really needs that stuff.

I hate war. I think war's terrible. I think, but to the extent that this is David versus Goliath and David is winning, it is sort of remarkable. I mean, this is until you invent the fibroptic cable cutting drone. No, but I mean, look, the BBC reports this as the terrifying new weapon changing the war in Ukraine. I think they've got that wrong.

It's actually, it's admirable. Yes. And then the other interesting part of this is what is the consequence, right? So the bombings inside Russia are clearly a change. of posture, you know, from the West, right? Like, so when the war started, the US and Europe said to Ukraine, you're not, your missiles are not allowed to hit stuff inside Russia, right? Like, you're allowed to defend yourself,

but we're not going to supply you to actually attack Russia. Yeah, the sort of fig leaf of deniability of having World War III. And the US actually changed that posture about in November last year or something like that. Like, I think after Biden lost the election, he sort of quietly went, Okay, you can now start bombing inside Russia. But Europe had still been a bit skeptical about that. But just the last few weeks where Putin's been dilly-dallying around and not actually signing a ceasefire or whatever,

they've all said, okay, yep, you're allowed to go as far as Russia as you like. And I think that does change the equation for Putin, right? Like, he does have an internal, like even though he's a dictator. Yeah, there is obviously some opposition. Yeah. Yeah, well, and he's got to manage that. Like, if people start sort of feeling unsafe in the streets, it's not going to be, like, it was only two years ago that progosion,

or even less than two years ago, that progosion marched on Moscow. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Like, he's got to watch his back, Putin. I mean, I interviewed at the Writers' Festival recently, this fascinating guy called Marcel Diasus, who's written a book about tyranny,

how tyrants fall and how nations survive. And he says, yeah, look, I mean, tyrants constantly live in fear of being bumped off by their, you know, right hand person or whatever. And that's what happens. They just do not last. They go crazy and they get thrown over. Like, um,

overthrown. Putin's lasted longer than most. But yeah, I mean, this is likely to happen at some point. I'm just looking at the BBC article on the drones, Charles briefly. And just,

just to, it says Russia came up with it first. Oh, really? But Ukrainians have been doing it better. But it does note one way, and it has the Ukrainians joking about, um,

taking a giant pair of scissors out into the film. But they've noted one very effective way of making sure that a drone, one of these fiber optic drones, can't get to you. Is it Malcolm Turnbull? Just deploy Malcolm Turnbull and he goes, no, no. Copper. Put the copper in. No, no, Charles. It's a tree.

If there are trees, the remote control drones are not so effective. So all you've got to do is hang out in the Australian bush and you're completely safe. Yeah, see, this is where I just go, I feel like Australia, I mean, increasingly just feels like the best place in the world to live. Oh, yeah. Because our internet's so shit that the wireless drones won't work. We don't have any fibre optics, so the wired drones won't work. Yeah.

And we've got tons of trees. Well, you know what else would be fantastic. A wonderful place to be in an era of fibre optic-controlled drones, the middle of a wind farm. Like giant sides in the sky. That's the one place to be is underneath the wind farm. So if there's any property going, if anyone's got a house directly under a giant, windmill. Yes.

I think I'd like to go and live there. Yeah, from the Icona Class Network. Catch you next time. Sorry.