Ex-CIA director David Petraeus says U.S. needs to learn "whole new concept of warfare" from Ukraine [View all]

Source: CBS News

April 6, 2026 / 12:05 PM EDT


Former CIA director David Petraeus has traveled to Ukraine 10 times since Russia's invasion in 2022. During his most recent trip last week, he told CBS News that Russia "no longer has the upper hand.". "Over the last two months, the Ukrainians have actually made greater incremental gains than have the Russians," Petraeus, a retired U.S. Army general, said in an interview in Kyiv after visiting units near the frontlines.

Petraeus said that assessment might have seemed unlikely given Russia's advantages in manpower, firepower, and economic scale. But he argues that Ukraine has offset those disadvantages through its innovation in its unmanned systems. Ukraine's edge, he said, is not just the drones themselves, but the system built around them.

"What's the real genius is how they're pulling it all together," Petraeus said, pointing to an "overall command and control ecosystem" that integrates surveillance, targeting, and strike capabilities. At the center is Ukraine's Delta battle management platform, which serves as a sort of "military Google maps", displaying a digital map of positions, targets, and other relevant information, an engineer familiar with the technology told CBS News.

That integration allows Ukrainian forces to possess nearly absolute surveillance and strike capabilities, within roughly 20 miles of the frontline. Petraeus described watching a frontline engagement in which a Russian soldier was tracked continuously by rotating surveillance drones before attack drones were deployed.

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-cia-director-david-petraeus-us-ukraine-new-concept-warfare/