Soldier of Fortune Magazine The Journal of Professional Adventurers
Drones began as a battlefield curiosity, and have become a staple of modern warfare. Here at Soldier of Fortune, we have spent years pushing past the headlines to bring readers deeper into what’s happening on the ground.
What follows is a look at some of our findings, from the history behind the platform to how predators study battlefield developments, up through the problem of how to repel a swarm.
It Didn’t Start in Ukraine: The Surprisingly Long History of Drones in Warfare
Drone warfare stretches back farther than the deserts of the Middle East or the trenches of eastern Ukraine. This piece pulls back the curtain, tracing the military’s long, uneven relationship with unmanned vehicles. It’s a context that reframes everything else in this collection. The drones swarming the skies now are not some sudden leap forward, but the latest chapter in a much older story.
War Predators in Ukraine: They Come to Study the Killing Fields
Ukraine has become more than a battlefield — it’s become a proving ground. Foreign actors, deploying cut-outs and deniable assets under the cover of aid work, journalism, or contracting, are using the war to gather real-time data on how drones perform against live targets, according to intelligence sources who spoke with Soldier of Fortune.
This piece digs into who’s really watching from the shadows, and why China and other foreign powers are drawn to the wreckage of Shahed UAVs and the battlefield data pouring out of the conflict.
Russia’s New Fibre-Optic Drones Evade Jamming in Ukraine
Electronic warfare was supposed to be the great equalizer against cheap drones — jam the signal, and the threat drops out of the sky. Russia’s answer to that has been to trail a physical fiber-optic cable behind the drone rather than rely on radio at all. No signal to jam means no way to stop it with the tools that have worked until now.
‘You Will Wind Up Dead’: Inside a Combat Drone School in Russia
Behind every drone strike is an operator, and that operator had to learn somewhere. This piece goes inside one of the training pipelines turning out Russia’s FPV pilots, where the instruction is blunt, the stakes are made explicit from day one, and washing out isn’t really an option once you’re at the front.
Hedgehog Armor: The Spiked Shield to Stop Drones From Turning Tanks Into Fireballs
Cheap FPV drones can turn a multimillion-dollar armored vehicle into scrap metal. Crews in the field have responded with armor that looks more like something welded together in a scrapyard than a defense ministry blueprint.
This piece examines the rise of “hedgehog armor” and the broader cottage industry of field-expedient protection that has emerged in response to the drone threat.
Threatening Skies: Countering the Drone Swarm Apocalypse
A single drone is a manageable threat. A swarm of them, coordinated and overwhelming in number, is a different problem entirely. This piece looks at where the technology and doctrine stand for countering mass drone attacks, from directed-energy weapons to networked detection systems.
It’s a fitting closer to this collection. After tracing where drones came from, who is studying their battlefield evolution, and how soldiers and armies are adapting to them, one question remains: Can anyone actually stop them once they come in numbers?
