by Raw Egg Nationalist
It’s only a matter of time before we see the use of the latest drone technology against targets in the United States.
An unjammable fiber-optic kamikaze drone—a drone you fly directly into a target to kill it—was recently discovered in a cartel compound, 500 miles from the U.S. border. You probably won’t have heard about this, but it’s big news. Or it should be.
It’s yet another indication of how closely drug gangs are coming to resemble state or quasi-state actors, not just in the territories they control and administer but also in the threat they pose to real states, including the United States. The classic definition of the state, derived from sociologist Max Weber, is an entity that monopolizes violence within a set of given borders. And while the cartels have been using military-grade equipment like .50-caliber machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades for some time, their determined attempts to acquire the latest drone capabilities reveal a greater ambition: to achieve technological and tactical parity with second- and maybe even first-tier nations.
The kamikaze drone in question was discovered by accident when the Mexican military searched a property in Dolores del Río. The authorities had been alerted to possible criminal activity at the address, and when they arrived, they discovered the usual paraphernalia—bombs, guns, ammunition—associated with cartel violence. But they also discovered a weapon that, until now, has been entirely confined to warzones and to one warzone in particular.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that South American drug cartels and paramilitaries have been paying close attention to Ukraine, where drones are revolutionizing warfare in a way that even a hobbyist with a 3D printer and a chip on his shoulder can replicate. Cheap, mass-producible weapons can be used to destroy tanks and other equipment worth tens of millions of dollars; to eliminate entire squads of soldiers single-handedly, on the battlefield or before they even arrive on it, as they sit huddled in the back of an armored personnel carrier; to assassinate important military and civilian leaders; or to strike deep behind enemy lines, crippling vital military, energy, and communications infrastructure.
We see evidence of the brutal effectiveness of drones, often from their direct perspective (“FPV” or “first-person view”), in videos on social media every day. As much as anything else, these videos serve as propaganda and statements of intent: to show Ukraine is still very much in the fight and that nobody and nowhere is safe from a technology that continues to evolve at a frightening pace.
In the early stages of the war, which began in the spring of 2022, drones weren’t that important, but as the war has progressed—it’s now been going on for longer than World War I—the drone has become its signature weapon and especially that of the battered but unbowed underdog.
Ukraine is producing millions of drones annually. The target for 2026 is between 5 million and 7 million. It’s estimated that around 9,000 are deployed a day for short-range missions over the battlefield zone but also, increasingly, for long-range strikes far beyond Russia’s western borders. New one-way drones—drones that aren’t intended to return to sender—can travel up to 2,000 kilometers, which puts targets in Siberia, including air bases that house Russia’s nuclear bombers, well within their range. In June of 2026, drones conducted close to 2,400 deep-strike missions in Russia.
President Zelenskyy’s latest “influence operation” to bring Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table within 40 days is built on targeted drone strikes against critical infrastructure that previously were off-limits, either for fear of escalation or because Ukraine lacked the ability to hit them.
The strategy appears to be working. There are fuel shortages in Russia and widespread popular anger as Russians discover that their strongman leader can no longer do what every strongman leader must: keep his own people safe.
In the crucible of war—perhaps the ultimate testing ground and incubator of rapid innovation—the drone continues to adapt. Wireless technology, for example, has given way to wiring—miles and miles of fiber-optic cable in a spool on the back of the drone—so that it can’t be jammed by electronic countermeasures. The Ukrainians are also integrating AI targeting, allowing drones greater autonomy on the battlefield and deploying them in massed “swarms” that are almost impossible to eliminate before they hit their target.
The cartels haven’t just been watching from afar, mouths agape, like you or I. In July 2025, it was reported that cartel soldiers were being sent to Ukraine to join the “international brigades” of foreign volunteers specifically so they could learn the very latest techniques in drone warfare. Ukraine may very well be the only country whose military offers a comprehensive training curriculum in every aspect of drone warfare, from their deployment to piloting and “real-time battlefield coordination.”
Website Defense News reported:
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) launched a joint investigation with military intelligence after Mexico’s National Intelligence Center warned in early summer that Mexican volunteers had joined Ukraine’s foreign fighter units specifically to acquire first-person view drone capabilities. The probe has since expanded to include Colombian nationals, raising concerns about Ukraine’s inadvertent role as a training ground for transnational criminal organizations…
The investigation centers on several Spanish-speaking units within the International Legion, particularly the tactical group ‘Ethos,’ operating in the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions. Ukrainian investigators reportedly suspect that some Mexican and Colombian volunteers intentionally sought placement in drone operator units to later use this training in the service of foreign criminal organizations.
One noteworthy case is that of a Mexican national operating under the alias ‘Águila-7,’ who registered in March 2024 using fraudulent Salvadoran documentation. Posing as a humanitarian volunteer, he completed comprehensive drone training in Lviv while demonstrating exceptional technical expertise that eventually had instructors suspicious.
Águila-7 demonstrated “extensive technical knowledge,” including familiarity with “electronic warfare countermeasures and thermal detection avoidance.” Background checks suggested he had been a member of Mexico’s Cuerpo de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE) special forces, many of whom end up working for the cartels, which offer much better pay and regular bloody work.
Members of Colombia’s Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) guerrillas were also discovered among the international brigades. They had apparently traveled to Ukraine with forged Panamanian and Venezuelan papers. Further investigation revealed a sophisticated pan-Latin American operation, where private security firms obtained fake papers and coordinated the “placement,” via front companies, of cartel and guerrilla operatives in Ukraine.
An SBU official is quoted as saying:
We welcome volunteers in good faith. But we must now recognize that Ukraine has become a platform for the global dissemination of FPV tactics. Some come here to learn how to kill with a $400 drone, then sell this knowledge elsewhere to the highest bidder.
Cartels are using drones against their enemies on an almost daily basis. In 2023, there were at least 260 attacks with explosive drones, and their sophistication has been increasing. A year later, the cartels used explosive drones to launch an ambush that was followed by a traditional infantry-style attack in a remote part of the country. Soldiers and police, as well as other cartels, are now regular targets for drones. A recent attack in Chihuahua saw two soldiers and a policeman sent to the hospital.
The United States is only slowly waking up to the danger right on its border. In 2024, Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot testified that over 1,000 drones cross into the United States from Mexico every month.
“I don’t know the actual number—I don’t think anybody does—but it’s in the thousands,” Guillot told lawmakers.
“We… probably have over 1,000 a month.”
Sen. Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been a dependable voice of alarm. He spoke to CBS at the end of last year and warned that the threat from drones to military sites and civilian events is “severe and growing.” He cited hundreds of unauthorized drone flights over military installations and data that showed over 27,000 drones were detected within 500 meters of the U.S. southern border in the last six months of 2024.
Rules and regulations are a key problem, Sen. Cotton noted, with military installations lacking the authorization to deploy anti-drone countermeasures. Perhaps as few as half of all military installations in the United States are allowed to intercept drones. Civil authorities are in a much worse position. They generally can’t do anything to detect, track, or intercept drones flying close to stadiums and even airports.
It’s only a matter of time, I think, before we see the use of the latest drone technology against targets in the United States, either on the border or deeper inside the country. President Trump has made no secret of his desire to destroy the Mexican cartels, a promise he made on the campaign trail in 2024. Since returning to office, Trump has designated six Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations; applied sanctions and financial pressure to them; used the threat of tariffs to push Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum—who has faced credible accusations, like her predecessor AMLO, of being in the cartels’ pocket—to take action against them, which included the recent killing of cartel bigwig “El Mencho”; and militarized the entire southern border with tens of thousands of troops and heavy equipment. President Trump has also threatened military action across the border, which would obviously be a huge escalation, but it’s entirely possible we could see a “Sicario”-type situation involving special forces in the near future. There are few red-blooded Americans who wouldn’t like to see that happen.
What President Trump has done has already caused the cartels great discomfort. Just the impact on the profits of human trafficking, as important to the cartels as their traditional powdered offerings, is difficult to overstate. In the Biden boom days, bringing people across the southern border was worth as much as $13 billion a year to the cartels. Now it’s worth nothing, or might as well be.
The threat of violence is no reason not to take on groups whose raison d’être is violence and misery. But we’ve seen, with Israel’s latest incursion into Lebanon, what it looks like for a powerful military to ignore the lessons of Ukraine when confronting a determined, well-armed paramilitary group that has been paying attention. It’s not pretty. The cartels are every bit as powerful as Hamas, every bit as well-equipped and battle-hardened. It may not be long before we get a drone’s-eye view, visible from the homepage of X, on a new battlefield very much closer to home.
Photo: CENTRAL, UKRAINE - JULY 7: The P1-SUN Long Interceptor Drone is seen flying during a live demonstration on July 7, 2026 in Central Ukraine. Ukrainian defense technology company SkyFall has launched the P1-SUN Long Interceptor Drone, which uses an AI module to autonomously detect, track, and pursue drones, such as the Shaheed-type UAV. According to the company, the First-Person View (FPV) drone interceptor has already allowed Ukrainian Defense Forces to destroy Russian drones, extending the range of an earlier model from 15-23 km to a maximum range of 33 km. (Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)
Raw Egg Nationalist is Dr. Charles Cornish-Dale, an Oxford- and Cambridge-educated historian
and anthropologist. He rose to prominence as “Raw Egg Nationalist.” He has a
large social media following, is a bestselling author, has appeared on
national television, and has influenced debates on health, fitness,
politics, and culture. His latest book is 'The Last Men: Liberalism and
the Death of Masculinity.'
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/07/15/drones-eye-view-the-spread-of-the-latest-ukrainian-tech-to-the-mexican-cartels-needs-to-be-taken-seriously/
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