Pete Hegseth, the Battle for Troy and Remote Drone Operations
I recently watched Pete Hegseth’s viral video in which he announces a Pentagon memo designed to accelerate the military’s adoption of drones. Although he stumbles through the delivery, the video is worth a watch, not least for its odd fusion of news anchor showmanship with government process.
It got me thinking about the future of drone warfare. That, in turn, got me thinking about the history of the Royal Air Force.
In 1918 the United Kingdom was the first country in the world to create an independent air force. The RAF was born at the end of the First World War as rapid technological progress, iterated in the skies above the battlefield, turned a civilian curiosity into a devastating military capability. Air superiority would go on to be a decisive factor in all subsequent conflicts.
In June 2024 Ukraine created the Unmanned Systems Force (USF), a new and entirely separate branch of the armed forces. Hegseth’s video is a nod to the realisation that the Ukrainians had a year ago – we are on the cusp of a new technological era.
But if we wind the clock forwards, what does such an era look like? The remote drone operations recently executed by Ukraine and Israel could be a window into that future.
The missions were carried out deep inside enemy territory using drones remotely controlled from thousands of miles away. In both cases, fleets of drones were concealed inside modified trucks before being activated and piloted to their targets - latter day Trojan Horses.
The Trojan template
The Trojan Horse is perhaps the paragon of defence tech innovation. After a decade of failed attempts to breach Troy’s defences, the Greeks changed their strategy. They constructed a giant wooden horse, hollowed out to hold a small group of elite soldiers, then appeared to retreat.
Believing the war was over, the Trojans brought the horse inside the city as a trophy. That night the hidden soldiers emerged, opened the city gates for the secretly returned Greek army, and sacked the city. It was not brute strength that ended the war, but deception and creativity.
What Ukraine and Israel demonstrated last month was a contemporary version of the same logic. But to understand why only they could do it, we need to examine how they fight and how they build.
Institutionalising experimentation
The ancient Greeks had a culture of military innovation which enabled them to experiment and invent. They famously developed the torsion catapult; a first of its kind, long-range precision weapon. They also designed the trireme; a new type of highly manoeuvrable ship designed for ramming attacks.
Both Ukraine and Israel have embedded similar experimentation directly into their military frameworks. In Ukraine, this is driven by battlefield necessity. In Israel, it is a matter of long-term strategic culture.
Ukraine has been fighting Russia for more than three years. Throughout that time it has contended with inferior resources and limited access to conventional firepower. Rather than match Russia gun for gun, it chose to innovate its way around the problem.
Instead of dedicating itself to increased production of artillery munitions, it invested heavily in unmanned systems. The country built a domestic drone industry almost from scratch, producing 300,000 drones in 2023, then 2.2 million in 2024. It aims to produce 4.5 million in 2025.
Israel, by contrast, is not constrained by limited resources but driven by its unique security environment. It has existential threats on multiple fronts and a longstanding doctrine of pre-emption. Its defence and technology ecosystems are tightly intertwined. Programs like Talpiot and Unit 8200 recruit young people with exceptional technical ability and give them both academic education and military responsibility.
These programs serve not only to develop military technologies but also to seed entire industries. Israel’s ability to carry out next generation drone operations is supported by a continuous supply of top-drawer technical talent that can quickly build and operationalise capabilities.
Conflict begets innovation
The Greeks only considered the Trojan Horse after ten years of frustration. It was desperation that gave rise to the strategy that finally ended the war.
The same can be said for Ukraine. Facing a resource-rich enemy, Ukrainians have become exceptionally creative. Amongst other achievements, they have developed unmanned surface vessels (USVs) which have been so successful at sinking enemy ships that the Russian Black Sea fleet is now effectively confined to port. The war has created a proclivity to experiment that would be difficult to replicate in peacetime.
Israel faces a different kind of pressure. It has been in open conflict with Iranian-backed groups since 7th October 2023 and has lived with the threat of annihilation since its creation in 1948. Surrounded by potential enemies, it has maintained advantage through technological advancement. Its Iron Dome, for example, was a breakthrough capability and is now the template for Trump’s Golden Dome. For decades, it has approached conflict as a testing ground for new technologies.
The lessons we can learn in the West
In Ukraine and Israel there is a tight feedback loop between battlefield experience and technical execution. If a new system works, it is used. If it fails, it is replaced. Success is measured in battlefield victories, not project management green ticks.
In the West we won’t be planning Trojan Horse-style operations anytime soon. That is fine - we don’t need to. But we are rightly aspiring to that velocity of innovation.
At the moment Western procurement cycles last longer than some wars. Our militaries have the technical capability to build Trojan Horses but they lack the institutional flexibility to deploy them in time to matter. Meanwhile, Ukrainian and Israeli militaries are designed to adapt quickly and deliver results.
The ancient Greeks knew that the willingness to act on a new idea is just as important as the idea itself - something that Pete Hegseth seems to have understood.