Troy Smothers
US Marine Corps veteran Troy Smothers was deployed to Ukraine
“We have to make this work.” A U.S. Marine veteran deployed to Ukraine in 2005 to train Ukrainian infantry to NATO standards explains the mindset behind Ukrainian troops’ resilience in combat.
The veteran Troy Smothers was a regular infantry corporal in the United States Navy when he was deployed to Odessa, Ukraine, in 2005.
His unit, made up of around 100 soldiers, had a clear role: teach infantry tacticssuch as alternating movements of advance and cover and requests for artillery support, in accordance with NATO doctrine at the time.
20 years ago, Smothers tells , Ukrainians were indoctrinated by Soviet tacticswho simply threw people at the enemy like human waves of cannon fodder.
The roles are now somewhat reversedsays Smothers. Now it is the West that is try to learn how do Ukrainians fight, and how transformed what little they had into formidable weapons.
Even two decades ago, Smothers noticed the same mentality which he considers has been the key to Ukraine’s strength in the ongoing war.
Smothers was only in Ukraine for about three weeks in 2005, but the time he spent training with soldiers left a strong impression on him.
The US military knew that Ukraine’s military budget was, let’s say, “underfunded”: all they had was Soviet-era equipment, comparable to material the US had decommissioned 20 years earlier.
Sometimes, Smothers says, USCM soldiers would wonder what they were doing sitting in old Russian-made Ukrainian helicopters.
Helicopters typically lose hydraulic fluid. However, when the military boarded the Ukrainian helicopters, there were pools of fluid in the cracks in the aircraft floor. Definitely, no one smoked close to those things, he says.
Most of the Ukrainians’ equipment was old, but it was a testament to How they worked with what they had. His motto, Smothers says, was simple: “We’re going to make this work.”
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Smothers has been in Ukraine during months in a rowproviding training on new fiber optic rolls to drone manufacturers so they can build and improve drones that are impossible to block.
According to the ex-Marine, still seen today in Ukraine this same determination to “this is all we haveso we’re going to make this work.” The Ukrainians are receiving excellent equipment from Europe and the US, but clearly still not enough to win.
Out of sheer necessity, the Ukrainians caught toy drones and turned us into cutting edge military equipment.
That’s not how Americans fight, says Smothers. If something breaks down, normally order a piece spare or return the equipment. In Ukraine, they open the part and repair it.
Furthermore, the Ukrainian salaries are much lowerso people are more accustomed to repairing on their own your electronic equipment or appliances. If a cell phone breaks down, they open it up and start soldering.
This reality has led to Ukrainian forces having a larger contingent of military personnel with knowledge of electronicswhich allowed them to have immediate solutions during the war.
Smothers gives an example of this homegrown creativity: Ukrainians have a device called a “mustache” on your drones first-person view, which is essentially made up of two rigid copper wires that project in front of the drone
When the drone flies towards its target, these wires touch each other and send a signal to the detonator on the attached explosive, something like turning on a light switch, to trigger the detonation. THE Mustache safety device is a simple pin 3D printed that is removed when launching the drone.
Smothers purchased and used dozens of these systems while developing fiber-optic drones, and a mustache only costs 12 to 15 dollars. In the US, to obtain a similar piece of equipment, it would cost 400 to 500 dollarseven on a large scale.
Most of these Ukrainians they were just ordinary people living their lives until they are forced by the invasion to start killing Russians. But they had a incredible advantage when finding solutionssometimes because the uncle or a friend had a repair or electronics business.
Americans were in Ukraine 20 years ago to raise the Ukrainian military to NATO standards. Today, Smothers can see how much Ukrainians can teach him about innovation. It’s humiliatinghe concludes.
