From the Crows' Nest

Ken Miller [00:00:09]:
Welcome to From the Crows' Nest, a podcast on electromagnetic spectrum operations, or EMSO. I'm your host, Ken Miller, Director of Advocacy and Outreach for the Association of Old Crows. You can follow me on LinkedIn or you can email me directly at host@fromthecrowsnest.org thanks for listening. I hope everyone is having a great start to their summer. We have a great show for you today. Before I introduce my guest, I just wanted to say happy birthday to the U.S. army for celebrating its 250th year this past weekend. The U.S.

Ken Miller [00:00:40]:
Army, of course, was originally chartered as the Continental army back on June 14, 1775, of course, to protect the colonists and fight the Revolutionary War. And the Continental army became the US army officially in 1784 with the adoption of the Constitution. So, like many others, I watched the parade on tv. It was really well done. I was impressed. It was cool to see the commemoration of how the Army's evolved over the years and of course the honor and tribute paid to the many men and women who have sacrificed their lives for our country and our freedom. Depending on estimates is well over a million people have been killed in action in the in the army since its founding. So just a quick word to say thank you to the US army and congratulations on your birthday.

Ken Miller [00:01:27]:
Also, just one housekeeping item if you are a subscriber or an AOC member, we will not be having a special subscriber episode next week, the last week of June. We're taking one week off over the summer. So if you're looking for that episode to come out as scheduled, you will not see it and but we will be back on our regular schedule in July. Okay. At this time I want to introduce my guest for Today's episode, Jack de Santis. Jack is a Croatian born volunteer in the Ukrainian military. I met Jack over at AOC Europe in Rome. He was a guest of friend and colleague Jeff Fischer, who is also has also joined us for this conversation.

Ken Miller [00:02:04]:
Jack's story is tremendous. He's Croatian born, has seen the pain and suffering of the civilian population in Ukraine due to Russian aggression over the years. He felt he needed to do something and as an amateur drone pilot he decided to give his talents to the Ukrainian military and volunteer in the military. Just a tremendous story in terms of what he's seen in the battlefield and you know, the role that volunteers play and humans play in this. Even when we're talking drone swarms and drone attacks. You know his insight into that, of course, especially in light of the recent Ukrainian operation, Operation Spiderweb. So really great story. Just wanted to have him on the show to share his thoughts and feelings on it.

Ken Miller [00:02:48]:
He has since become an entrepreneur, starting up his own small defense technology company. Just a really great guy, and I hope you enjoy it. So at this time, let's listen in to my conversation with Jack de Santis along with Jeff Fischer. All right. I am very pleased to be here with my guest, Jack de Santis and Jeff Fischer. Of course, our listeners already are very well familiar with Fish. It's always good to have him in the studio. Jack, it's great to have you on the show.

Ken Miller [00:03:16]:
Thanks for joining me here on From the Crows' Nest.

Jack de Santis [00:03:18]:
Hello all. And yeah, nice to be here.

Ken Miller [00:03:21]:
So we had the opportunity, Jack and Fish and I, we met over in aoc, Europe, over in Rome, Italy, a few weeks ago. Really great conversation. And Jack, your story and the path you're on is extremely interesting. I wanted to have you on the show to kind of talk a little bit about because it spans so much of what we do here and we talk about from the Crow's Nest, from your operational experience with the armed forces of Ukraine to, you know, you're starting up your own business, MIRA Systems, I think it is. So to help our, our listeners kind of get familiar, tell, tell us a little bit about yourself and then we'll dive into some of your experience.

Jack de Santis [00:03:56]:
Thanks for the introduction. And yeah, I was born in Croatia, so having lived through the war as a child, it left me with a very strong feeling of, I'm not gonna let anybody else do this again. So in 2022, when the war broke out in Ukraine, I really saw, I like a lot of similarities behind the mot, how it was all playing out compared to what I lived through as a child. So I said to myself, I'm really not gonna just sit down and just watch it unfold in the news. I went to Ukraine and I said, I'm just gonna figure out a way to be helpful. I had no prior military experience, but my background is in computer hardware and low level software engineering, and I've been flying drones as a hobby ever since I was a teenager. I've always loved being an engineer, and flying drones as a hobby turns out to be a very useful combo. And the Ukrainians found me very useful very, very quickly.

Ken Miller [00:05:01]:
And now you're no longer with the Armed forces of Ukraine, you're starting your own company. How long ago did you leave the service?

Jack de Santis [00:05:11]:
So the thing about Ukraine, compared to pretty much any other military in the world, it's that paperwork and enlistment papers are basically non exist. And also, when exactly did you leave? It's very intricate questions because I still talk with them daily. They still call me every time they have a radio engineering issue. They have some questions. And then after I started Omira, I still went back and did some operations with the guys on the front when Omira was already in progress. But we can say I did like two years in Ukraine with the military.

Ken Miller [00:05:53]:
And so you're now starting Omira Systems, kind of building on your experience of, you know, what you learned over Russia, Ukraine. What is Omira Systems? What is the service that you're providing with that?

Jack de Santis [00:06:06]:
So we are building counter electronic warfare technology. So a new concept of how to do radio broadcasting that exploits the fundamental limitations of our adversaries, electronic attack technology and allows us to keep our comms working when they are trying to jam us. And yeah, doing this based on lessons learned and what I saw firsthand in Ukraine. I was like sitting there watching my drone just drift away, unable to do anything about it. And I said, we should do better than this.

Ken Miller [00:06:40]:
So I want to bring in Fish. Fish, it's great to see you again. It was great seeing you back in Rome. Obviously, listeners already know you all too well. You keep us honest over in terms of what's going on in, in Russia, Ukraine and Europe, keeping us up to speed. Tell us a little bit how you met Jack and just kind of that effort that you've been on over the last few weeks to kind of introduce him to our community.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:07:03]:
Sure, yeah. So I was the guy who actually hosted Jack into AOC Europe because I thought his story was amazing. And I got to know him for, for a few months. Anyway, it was, it was quite interesting. Right. I'm in a chat group over here in Europe of a bunch of former military attaches, defense attaches, NODCs, guys who've decided to stay and drop roots in Europe. And one of them spoke up and said, hey, I got this guy from who's flying drones in Ukraine. He says he's developed an EP technique, an electronic protect technique of a radio system that can't be jammed.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:07:36]:
And of course, for an electronic warfare officer that sends a hackles up on the back of your neck because there's no such thing as a signal that can't be jammed. And I get very frustrated when I see industry or someone come forward. Like when I was a captain and someone told me, you know, GPS was, was non jammable. And here we are, you know, 2025 right now, GPS is jammed on a daily basis So I said, yeah, link me up with him. I'd. I got some questions. So, so anyway, I, I linked up with Jack and, and in linking up with him, you know, he kind of, he kind of talked through what his, his idea was. And to be fair, I started off as extremely skeptical, and by the end, he, he'd kind of convinced me, like, his idea.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:08:15]:
Right. His concept was quite, quite fascinating. It's something that, as a, as a trained electronic Warhol, I would have never come up with. It's something that, because, you know, whether it's the US DoD or any other electronic warfare organization company in a military, you're trained a certain way. And since Jack never had that training, he's kind of tackled the spectrum from a very unique way. And I kind of chuckled earlier when you asked Jack what Omira Systems was, and he's like, well, yeah, yeah, we have this, we have this idea for a radio that kind of goes against and defeats some j. And I'm like. And he doesn't use any of the terminology, of course, that we would use.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:08:55]:
Like it's an electronic protect system that, that actually mitigates jamming. And he, he doesn't even know the terms. Right. He, he just, he doesn't know him.

Ken Miller [00:09:02]:
And Jack, don't get bogged down with the terms because then you'd be chasing terms the rest of your career and instead of actually doing. Solving problems.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:09:10]:
So, yeah, so anyway, we, you know, we talked a little bit and, and, and again, I was fascinated. I said I wanted to see a video his buddies in Ukraine. And he's built a, a concept of operations system that he took into Ukraine. He drove in Ukraine and sent me a video of him flying a drone with this radio system with a jammer, someone standing just, you know, you know, meters away from him, pointing the jammer right at the, at the drone. And it worked. And, and, and I, of course, I have to go on good faith that, that the jammer was turned on and was working. But, but by the same token. Right.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:09:42]:
I don't think, I don't think he'd lie. So I, I, again, I found it fascinating. We, we brought him into AOC Europe. He, he got to share a little bit of, and how he learned about electronic warfare and how he learned about challenges in the spectrum domain. Right. You and I call it a domain. And the challenges he's faced in Ukraine are some that I've never seen in a battle space before. They're fascinating stories.

Ken Miller [00:10:05]:
They are. And so I want to kind of unpack a little Bit about, you know, a little bit about your story. Jack, we've talked a lot about the Russia, Ukraine war here. I'm from the crow's nest, always from the observer perspective. You're the first guest we've had on who's actually been in the field and has fought. And I really appreciate you taking the time because it's a tremendous story and I think it's one that we oftentimes don't pay enough attention to in terms of the toll that the war is taking on people in, and not just in Ukraine, but around, around Europe, Eastern Europe there in general. Because you mentioned something very interesting. You didn't want to sit back and let it happen again because there's that sense that it's going to keep happening if we keep letting it.

Ken Miller [00:10:48]:
So I wanted to talk a little bit about your experience and you grew up in Croatia. Obviously when Russia invaded Crimea, that, that was. Talk a little bit about, you know, when that war started. What did that mean to you as a. I don't know how old you were as a teenager in terms of kind of the instability that that caused to you, your family, communities around that area.

Jack de Santis [00:11:14]:
So just to be clear, when Crimea and the Donbas were invaded, I was not in Croatia anymore. I left Croatia very early as a child. I was already living in Germany when the invasion of Crimea happened. And at the time I followed it in the news and I saw they captured those two territories, but then things kind of stopped there and the conflict ended up freezing pretty quickly. I watched some documentaries about the Maidan revolution and those protests and how they ousted their previous president and I was kind of familiar with the topic, but let's say it was not. I wasn't involved nearly as much as I am now. Yeah, it was really like in 2022 when the full scale invasion started, that I looked at it and I looked at what's happening and those like horrific images from the first days and weeks of the war. And I thought that the Ukrainians were fighting back and they weren't just folding almost like they did in 2014 when Crimea was taken without a single shot fired.

Jack de Santis [00:12:22]:
And seeing their resistance and seeing them fighting back really inspired me to go and join them.

Ken Miller [00:12:28]:
So when you made the decision, just for timeline purposes, you had already were an engineer in engineering education. Talk to us a little bit about that decision process to say, hey, I want to be a part of this. You know, it's obviously it was a war where there was a. At the beginning it was assumed that it would be quicker than it actually turned out to be, and obviously the resistance by Ukrainian people showed that they're going to go, they're going to fight to the, to the end to protect their land. That has to be very troubling to kind of just see the destruction. So when you're an outside observer, you grew up near, near there, you're seeing this happen. Obviously the support of the international community was kind of waxing and waning a little bit at the beginning. It was, it was, took a while for it to come together.

Ken Miller [00:13:20]:
It's a really just, I can't even fathom the decision making process necessary to say, hey, I'm going to, I've seen enough, I need to go help. And you did that. You, you went in there, they needed, they needed anybody they could get. So talk to a little bit about like you went to Ukraine, say, hey, how can I help? And that, that process of being able, like to be put on, you know, into operations, be utilized that way. And, and kind of what did you see in terms of, was it what you expected based on what you were observing in the news or talk a little bit about that, that awareness of oh my gosh, I'm now here in Ukraine fighting this cause?

Jack de Santis [00:13:58]:
I'd say at the beginning in 2022, it wasn't just the international community that was still figuring out things. It was myself included and even the Ukrainians themselves were still figuring out things. And I started first supporting a couple of military units who were fundraising online on social media. And that's how I got to know the guys. I was sending them suitcases of donations every week or every second week. And then the first time I went to Ukraine was in September 22nd because I felt like I was sending them a lot of aid. I think in that first year I sent upwards of a hundred K euro worth of aid. But I just wanted to do more.

Jack de Santis [00:14:43]:
Like I said, they didn't want to just sit here and just like send them checks and equipment. So I went there, took a bus from Berlin to Kiev. And I remember arriving in Kiev, it was around 2:30 in the morning. They have the curfew during the night. So if you are a civilian, you couldn't enter the city or move around if you were in the city. So the Ukrainian major, Persin came to meet me at the checkpoint and he picked me up with his car. And I will never forget arriving there at this checkpoint at the edge of Kyiv and there were a group of Ukrainian soldiers. They had the fire in our oil barrel and they had the BTR Car parked there and they were checking everybody going in and out of the city, which was really very, very few people.

Jack de Santis [00:15:36]:
The major greeted me there, jumped in the car with him and I remember driving through Kiev with him at 2:30 in the morning and because of the curfew the city was completely deserted. There wasn't a single soul around, not even a stray dog on the streets. So you are going through this city that it's like multi million people city and you don't see a single car moving, A single person.

Ken Miller [00:16:00]:
Has to be so eerie.

Jack de Santis [00:16:02]:
Yeah. And right at that moment as we are driving towards his place, the air raid siren goes off. So like you said, it was so eerie. And now add on top of that that, that starts echoing across the entire city. Bombardment incoming. And that was my first experience, the first time I arrived there. But I remember when that air raid siren went off and the major floored the car to arrive faster to their destination. What I felt in that moment was just like I'm home.

Jack de Santis [00:16:39]:
This is where I should be.

Ken Miller [00:16:41]:
That's a really interesting conclusion to draw because I'm sitting here thinking and it has to be eerie and this realization like okay, it was a cause and now you are in the fight and that transition and, and to. I'm amazed by what you just said that you instead of being scared or instead of having doubts or anything, you felt home. And I think that that's just a tremendous image and emotion to convey to that, you know, that sense of you're doing what you were meant to be doing. And I just really applaud you for, for this a huge, I mean it. To be able to put yourself into that situation when you didn't have to. I think it speaks very highly. So I really appreciate you. So when I want to go back, you mentioned something about the, you know, soldiers at the checkpoints using a barrel at for fire, for heat and warmth and light.

Ken Miller [00:17:34]:
What was the condition was, did it surprise you? What was your media observations in terms of the, the readiness and just the where the Ukrainian military was at the time in terms of its morale and ability to fight.

Jack de Santis [00:17:51]:
Like I said, I had no prior military experience before going to Ukraine, so I can't really compare to the conventional military. But a couple of things that surprised me from my expectations of what military life would be like was number one, the total informality of everything amongst the soldiers. You would have like a private talking with a major like they are true friends. There was no saluting, there was none of this like strong formality that you would expect or that you maybe see like military movies or that. And the second thing in 2022, how just like ad hoc everything was organized and how improvised it was and how I felt like there wasn't really like a high up central command coordinating things. Instead it was just like groups of soldiers up to like battalion. I would say that we're just like improvising and doing whatever they could in their own little area. Often it was down to like single unit to just like, you see Russians over there, you just go and you do whatever you can to stop them or at least give them a bad day.

Jack de Santis [00:19:08]:
And now I don't want to skip too far forward, but.

Ken Miller [00:19:14]:
I do want to bring Fish back in here in a minute because I want to actually pull the thread on this, on that notion that you didn't have the same formalities in the structure that you maybe expected or you've seen in other contexts. But as a drone operator, you know, we, we think of, you know, experience. You, you mentioned it's a hobby there, there's a lot of people who are involved in that realm that, you know, have a lot of gaming experience. You know, you're, you're, you're sitting somewhere and you're controlling something at a distance. So talk to us a little bit about how being a drone operator works in the Ukrainian military from a standpoint of the, the mission, just generally speaking, because I, there's specific missions I want to talk about, but just from a bird's eye view, how is that structure in terms of your connection to your mission and to the other people depending upon you executing your mission as a drone operator, how, how does that work? If you can create kind of a picture for us of how that kind of lays out.

Jack de Santis [00:20:18]:
Like I said, I knew how to fly drones as a civilian since I was a teenager, so I had quite a bit of experience with that. But when I arrived and I was picked up at the checkpoint by Major Yehor Pershing, he was the commander of the group called White Ghost. And White Ghost, they were actually training other Ukrainian soldiers to become drone pilots. They had their drone school in Kiev. And I started talking with Yehor about what is the situation, what are their challenges? Right away from my first day there, I saw their training site, I saw how they were training other soldiers. There were a lot of people there who had never flew a drone, never even saw a drone in person before in their life, who now had to really learn everything from Zero. So we had our training site in Kiev where we would teach the soldiers how to fly and then also how to use drones tactically. Again, this was 2022.

Jack de Santis [00:21:22]:
Things were very, very different back then than they are now. This drone warfare has evolved massively, even from the Ukrainian side. Yeah, we were just like teaching guys from different battalions and different brigades. Their commanders would send them to us and we would do like two weeks course and then give them a certificate. At the time we were like at capacity. We were literally like had more people who needed to be trained in drone warfare than we had the instructors and time available on our side. But this was also where I started to learn about jamming. And I still do like the challenges that that posed back then.

Jack de Santis [00:22:07]:
We didn't really have anything to counter it. We didn't have fiber optic drones or anything like that.

Ken Miller [00:22:12]:
What was that like? You know, obviously as a, as a hobbyist, you know, you would never encounter need to think about jamming or any sort of interference when you've first, you know, went either, you know, going through school or teaching at the school. And obviously the whole war from the very beginning was an EW war. So you're, you're seeing this execution take place where in the spectrum that can jam and confuse and otherwise just make life very difficult for drones. Anything happening in the spectrum, what was that like to observe that for basically the first time in an operational context where it's like, oh, crap, you know, it's one thing to do this for fun, it's another thing to try to do this when someone's actively trying to keep you from doing it. What was that kind of like from an operational perspective?

Jack de Santis [00:23:00]:
Like I said, we didn't really have any really good countermeasures in the first year of the conflict. So what we would do is just try to rely on the zoom of a camera for reconnaissance and try to stay far away from the jamming source enough and try to see ahead. Because you don't jam the zoom of a camera, it depends where the drone is physically. So this was really like the only protection that we would have, or if it was possible, we would try to use terrain at our advantage if we had an approximate idea of where the jammer is located. If you stand behind the hill or behind a tall building, it can kind of shield you from the jamming noise that the jammer is broadcasting. But one thing we started developing very quickly, very easy to do, was external antennas for the controllers. So DJI drones were really prevalent at the beginning of the war. We didn't even have FPV drones yet.

Jack de Santis [00:24:02]:
It was, I would say like 95% DJI drones in the first year. So we started drilling into the controller housing, disconnecting the antennas, plugging in other cables, and having, like, an external antenna, which gave us a significantly stronger signal, because at the end, jamming, it's all about how strong your signal is versus the adversary. So those were some of the things that we were doing in the beginning. And it was helping to a degree I cannot say. But it was really not what I would say, like a proper solution.

Ken Miller [00:24:39]:
So how is your interaction or integration, then, as a drone operator with the military on the ground operationally, you know, in terms you're obviously communicating to them positions and ways that they can attack? Obviously, when you get jammed, that affects your ability to relay any information or communicate. What types of operations or how did you integrate then with the fighting force in terms of being able to help execute a military operation then?

Jack de Santis [00:25:10]:
So this is something that has evolved quite a lot over the three years of the conflict. And there's still isn't really, like a standardized handbook of how to do this, and different battalions do it differently. But my first experience, how I ended up on the front line the first time after working with the White Ghost guys, It was early January 23rd. I was in Kiev, and I was hanging out with a Major Pershing, and a lot of soldiers would, like, come and go to the base where we were staying there. So I was meeting a lot of guys, and I met this group of British foreign fighters that called the Dark Angels, and they were led by Daniel Burke. They had just come back from the front. They had taken some pretty bad losses as they were fighting in the Kherson region. So I just clicked, and I got pretty close with Dan very quickly.

Jack de Santis [00:26:11]:
We went along really well, the two of us. And I met the other guys from the Dark Angels who were still there. They told me a lot of the stories, a lot about how they were fighting during summer in the Kherson, in Zaporizhzhia front. And at one point, just like out of the blue, Dan says, well, we don't have a drone person on our team on the Dark Angels, and we are expected to go to Bakhmut tomorrow. When I come with us, we could really use. That was it. That's how I ended up on the front line. I just.

Jack de Santis [00:26:45]:
He just asked me, I want to come with us to Mahmoud tomorrow. I just said, yeah, let's go.

Ken Miller [00:26:49]:
That's amazing how almost informal those types of plans would come together. You know, we talk a lot on. On military circles. You have, you know, centralized planning Decentralized execution, which is kind of the, the way, you know, a lot of the west want to fight. And then of course, you know, Russia and China, they have the centralized planning and centralized execution. And that causes. Has its own challenges. But this is a level of informality that probably has not.

Ken Miller [00:27:16]:
Well, I, I shouldn't say it's probably a way that most wars are actually fault when the bullets start to fly, so to speak, as the saying goes. But it's really fascinating how it could be that quickly put together. You mentioned that you were. You joined them then as a drone, as their drone operator. Now was that this is a stupid question, I apologize, but I'm not a drone operator. I'm not a hobbyist in any way, so. So you're a drone operator. Do you have a collection of drones that you're able to control at one time, multiple points, or are you.

Ken Miller [00:27:49]:
Do you have other people with you that you brought in as the kind of the lead drone operator? You had colleagues that were also. Explain how that maps out, because I'm not familiar with. When you say you're a drone operator, how are you tied in with others for that particular mission?

Jack de Santis [00:28:04]:
So with the Dark Angels, how it worked is it was just me. I was the only drone and tech guy in that group and we had to fundraise for our own drones. So the government was not supplying us with drones. And if you recall, probably seen on social media like a million and one fundraisers from Ukrainian soldiers. So none of the kit was supplied by the military. I was given some equipment by Dan when I joined him in the Dark Angels, but. And I had the drone which I brought with me that was being used with the White Ghost group for training. And then I took it with me to the front line and this was the only drone that we had.

Jack de Santis [00:28:50]:
It was just this one Mavic. And if you lose it now, good luck finding another one. Go back on social media and fundraise and maybe you will raise the funds to buy another drone.

Ken Miller [00:29:02]:
If you have a mission depending upon the availability of drone support, that's not the process you want to. You can't follow that process like that. That's crazy.

Jack de Santis [00:29:11]:
Yeah. And I mean, a lot of the missions, you can still do it without the drone. It's just a lot harder and a lot more riskier. If you don't have an eye in the sky keeping an overwatch over you and seeing potential incoming Russian units and everything, you can still complete the mission. It just gets a lot riskier and a lot harder. I remember Going into Batt Mahmoud with Dan, I would literally be like, right there with him with a group of guys and just walking around with them. And just like every time we were to go around the corner, I would like fly the drone in front of us and have a look what is there before we expose ourselves. And it was really like house to house, street to street, very slow advancing.

Jack de Santis [00:29:59]:
And then we were doing also medevac, a lot of evacuation of Ukrainian soldiers who were wounded in the battle for Bakhmut. So sometimes it wasn't really clear where they. The Ukrainians that we had to pick up to Medivac. So we would send a drone and like, try to find this because it was a lot faster to like, scan a lot of terrain and a lot of safer than for us to just try to walk around back and forth in like a frontline combat area to find the guys who need the mediwac.

Ken Miller [00:30:34]:
And. And so you experienced the. The effects of jamming and the ability to. Or. Or the inability then to continue supporting in the way that you want to. Because obviously when the drone is jammed, you have to rely, as you said, on other resources that you have. Tell us a little bit about what it's like to experience the jamming, the EW techniques. As a drone pilot, you're there supporting a mission, and then you.

Ken Miller [00:31:00]:
You encounter jamming. What, what goes on, what do you observe, how do you respond? And what was the effect in terms of the mission when you. When you do get jammed with DJI drones?

Jack de Santis [00:31:11]:
Specifically, in the beginning, they worked on common WI fi frequencies, SO 2.4 and 5.8 GHz, and the video would come back from the drone to you on the controller over 5.8 GHz. But the controls would go from the controller to the drone on 2.4 GHz and 2.4 would usually get jammed way before 5.8. So you would still keep receiving the video feed from the drone, but you would simply be unable to control it or unable to do anything. And then the drone would either hover in place or like, slowly drift away until it crashed into something or it ran out of battery. It was more frustrating that you would still get the video feed instead of completely losing the drone, because now you're sitting there and watching it completely helpless, and you try to like, get out of your position, point the controller towards the drone, exposing yourself, trying to get a bit stronger signal to try to get the drone to come back towards you or go up higher, away from the source or whatever it's jamming it. But most of the time at that point when you see it just drifting and did not respond into controls, you knew that was it, that the drone is gone.

Ken Miller [00:32:27]:
So then what happens to the mission then? You know, you, obviously, they're relying on it. They, they, they know you're getting jammed because you're communicating via other channels. Say, hey, we, I, I can't support you like this. I'm getting jammed. What happens then? I mean, does, does that mission get pulled back or what? How do they then respond when, what countermeasure or technique do they use then to change the course of the mission without the support of the drone?

Jack de Santis [00:32:53]:
In the beginning, I was right there with the guys. I was not sitting back at a separate position for drone pilots. So drone. I'll just like be able to tell the guys face to face right there, hey, no, we don't have the drone anymore. And then the mission will continue. We wouldn't like completely abort it, but we would have to be a lot slower in our movements, a lot more careful, taking a lot more risk. And sometimes we would also, like, decide, okay, we don't have the drone, so maybe we are not going to attempt to cross all this open terrain over here, and we are going to go this other way around. So we kind of like limit the mission a bit.

Ken Miller [00:33:35]:
It's interesting to me that, like, when the drone is jammed, the image you're receiving is still there.

Jack de Santis [00:33:40]:
Yeah.

Ken Miller [00:33:41]:
So you can actually see what's happening without the drone support, but yet you can't communicate it. I do have a technical question that I want to get to on that because I don't quite understand why that works because you're still transmitting. But, you know, from being able to observe, I, I can imagine that when drones are jammed, when your air support is jammed, it leaves it. Obviously it increases the risk of the mission. You and your colleagues from that position have probably seen the ugly side of war and what happens to soldiers when they don't have the support they need out in the field. What was that like to witness, if you can talk to that.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:34:25]:
Yeah, I think actually this is probably a good chance for, you know, you and I talked a little bit, Ken. You know, Jack, maybe you could elaborate on what was the worst day you had with jamming? Like, what was what, what happened, you know, when you. No kidding, literally was the worst day or jamming, what effect did that have on your unit?

Jack de Santis [00:34:45]:
What I would say was probably like the worst. Today was about a year after this time. I was talking about with Dark Angels. And this was with the Norman Brigade with Commander Horse and Commander Hirv. There was an operation where the Ukrainians prepared quite a significant force, and they were going to advance and try to take a Russian position along the contact line. This was in the southeast of the country, just outside of Zaporizhzhia. And ever since the start of the war, up until today, we have always been very limited in equipment and very limited in, like, the weapons that we had available and everything. So we always had to, like, figure out how to make do with what we have.

Jack de Santis [00:35:35]:
And this time, what we had was a lot of infantry with their own rifles and machine guns and sniper rifles, and then we had a lot of drones, but we were very limited on artillery or any other type of weapons. So the idea was that the infantry would advance, and then we would support them with drones, both with FPV kamikazes and with reconnaissance drones to oversee the battlefield and direct to the movements of the infantry and the fire from the FPV drones. But the Russians must have somehow found out about those plants, because this was in preparation for, like, a week or two. And they brought some very powerful electronic warfare system to the area. I don't know which one exactly, but the Russians knew exactly when and where we were going to attack. So they waited for our infantry to advance as they went forward first. And as the infantry got into the range of Russian weapons and systems, they turned on their electronic attack system. And basically all the drones that were already in the air doing recon were lost.

Jack de Santis [00:36:55]:
And all the drones that we had prepared on the ground that were supposed to, like, support the infantry against bigger and heavier targets and provide cover and direction, they wouldn't even take off. The jamming was that powerful. Drone was on the ground right in front of you, like, 2 meters. You wouldn't even be able to, like, get a signal to that drone to get it to, like, take off. So the radios, handheld communication was also not working. That was also jammed. And the infantry found themselves completely blind into this kill zone. And the Russians just pounded them with artillery for an entire day.

Jack de Santis [00:37:39]:
They didn't know where to go. They couldn't even communicate with us. They couldn't call in for a medevac, and we also couldn't get even close to them. We couldn't really send reinforcement in that area because it was just a rain of artillery over the entire battle space. And there is nothing that can really survive a direct hit from an artillery, even an M1 Abrams. It's going to be taken out if it takes a direct hit from a 155 with the drone, try to like fly, staying at a distance again away from the jamming and try to use the zoom to see what is happening. But you are very much limited with how much you can see in such situation. And you are just sitting there the entire day watching your friends getting killed one by one and there's just nothing you can do.

Jack de Santis [00:38:28]:
You can support them, can help them, can fly an FPV to try to take out that artillery, can't dual medevac, can't even talk to them, tell them where to move or what to do. Visibility from them, from the ground was very limited. So the guys just like dug in into improvised foxholes that were not more than two feet deep and just lie there for an entire day while artillery is pounding you. And all you can do, it's hope it doesn't hit you, pray for some luck and that's all you can do.

Ken Miller [00:39:00]:
That has to be. It's heartbreaking to just feel helpless at that stage. And we were talking at the beginning, you mentioned this desire to do something to help and that led you down this path. And a year later you find yourself in an operation and you're helpless at that moment. What, what was going through your mind in terms of where you've come, what you've seen, and what did that experience mean for you from that day on?

Jack de Santis [00:39:40]:
I mean, in that moment, you are not really thinking about the big picture of things or philosophical questions. You are just thinking, okay, what can I do now? You keep trying different things. You keep trying to get closer to the guys with the drone from different angles and different, different approaches. You try to use the terrain. But also like the other infantry guys were also thinking, okay, what can we do? How do we support them where we go? You try to like triangulate the artillery and locate it to see if you have something that could destroy the enemy artillery so that it stops firing. And that's what's going through your mind. And you're racing through those options and thoughts in the moment. But later on when you have time to decompress it, when the mission, it's over, my thoughts was, yeah, of course there will be many situation where as a drone pilot you will be helpless.

Jack de Santis [00:40:37]:
And this was not the only one. But I didn't go there expecting that I was going to make a huge difference or that I was going to pull off. I don't know what. But what really motivated me is to understand that we need better technology, we need better tools. To do the job. We cannot allow ourselves to be in such a situation again. So the way to solve this, I saw it, is through technology. And that day was probably what set the foundations for Omira Systems and for what exists today.

Ken Miller [00:41:14]:
First of all, thank you for everything that you shared. And I think it gives us a, a perspective that we need to hear more of because, like I say, you know, it's so easy to get caught up in, you know, you mentioned philosophical perspectives and questions, and that's utterly unhelpful in the moment. And we don't often think about, you know, what's going on the ground. So really, just, just thank you for what you did and how, you know, how you approached it. In the time we have remaining, I want to talk a little bit about what that all that, like you mentioned, led to this idea of, of getting better technology and you started Omira Systems. So the, the story you told, I guess, was what, 20. In 20. 20? Late 2023.

Ken Miller [00:41:57]:
Early 2024. Ish. Around that time, yeah. And so, you know, you started Omira, kind of tell us a little bit about what your specifically, you know, your, your goal is for, for Omira Systems in terms of changing the, improving the technology that we have.

Jack de Santis [00:42:17]:
Well, the end goal would be that for our war, war fighters, when they are out there, when they're in the middle of the battle and the heat of it, and they press the button to talk on their radio to make sure that it works and to make sure that their message gets true, to make sure that we don't have any more casualties just because somebody was unable to call for a medevac and it could have totally been prevented and things like that, and that it's on the small and intimate scale to call it like that, but then on the large scale, I understand that from a NATO point of view, our doctrine relies on combined arms warfare quite heavily. Much more than the Ukrainians. They are learning. But it's not their main way of doing warfare. But what this means for us, it's like combined arms warfare. It's really a lot more than the training of our officers and the knowledge of our commanders. We need to look at, like, what is the infrastructure that enables us to do combined arms warfare, and that is to be able to communicate and to coordinate with each other. And if that layer is taken away and if that layer falls apart, and we know our adversaries are investing quite heavily in electronic attack systems to do just that, then we're going to have a bad time on the battlefield.

Ken Miller [00:43:41]:
I know that you visited the United States here last week, I guess it was. Obviously you're getting the word out, you know, kind of looking forward in, in the short term, kind of. Where are you focusing your energy, no pun intended. Where are you focusing your efforts on, you know, building out Omira Systems, kind of your short term goals with that.

Jack de Santis [00:44:02]:
That we just finalized a pretty incredible deal with IAI and the Israelis, so super proud of that. So now it's about us finish fundraising, the remaining amount that we need to deliver this technology to the war fighter. But I would say in a bit, in the longer run from a United States and NATO perspective, in general, what we really need before we go into the next war from a spectrum perspective, it's to rewrite the rules about radio spectrum usage for the military during wartime. Because one big lesson learned I took away from Ukraine. It's not just about technology and drone warfare and communication. It's also about the spectrum, which is like highly regulated in the west, in every country, and even the military, it's limited in terms of what it can do with the spectrum and what frequencies and bands it's allowed to use and all of that. And we really can't go into the next war with those handcuffs on our hands. Because one thing, when Kyiv was semi encircled, the beginning of the war, the Russians didn't follow any radio spectrum rules.

Jack de Santis [00:45:15]:
They didn't respect anything. So we could not have been able to fight back had we followed rules about the spectrum. And so all the radio regulations about frequencies and priorities and everything went out the window basically in the first 24 hours of the war in Ukraine.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:45:32]:
It was pretty funny when I talked to Jack the first few times, right, and he was explaining to me that constantly up for the, the, the jam proof, if you will, radio, he was like, yeah. And then we, you know, we operate on this frequency and you know, we have this frequency and I, I, I would immediately go, well you, you, you can't, that you can't be on that frequency. You know, the fc, the FCC or whatever the EU equivalent says you can't do that. He's like, yeah, we, we don't care about that very much in Ukraine right now. He goes, and you know, and, and finally he just said, look, he goes, if the United States thinks there's going to be an FCC after they lose the war, they're crazy. There's got to be, there's got to be some kind of expectation that the spectrum becomes unbridled in combat. And if someone has their feelings hurt that their commercial band or CB radio isn't working while they're driving their truck. The bracket, the bragging just have to get over it.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:46:22]:
But one of the other things that I did want to touch on is because I think it's really important when we talk about, you know, some of the stuff that Jack did. Not only was he a drone pilot, and hopefully maybe we can, we can touch on this a little bit, but he was also given his backgr background as an engineer and being in Bakmut and being on the front lines whenever Russian stuff was captured. Right. He was one of the first people to actually look at it and do basically field forensics on what Russian jammer systems or Russian EP systems or even Russian drones are and how they operate. And I was kind of. One of the things I found fascinating is that the informalities of the Ukraine military don't just. Just stop between officers and enlisted. Like, Jack didn't sign any NDAs.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:47:05]:
He's like, what do you want to know? Right. So he would just kind of say, yeah, I found this stuff and here's kind of what I found out. And of course we can ask him questions, but more importantly, when he's designing these communication systems for Omir or for whatever he does in the future, I.

Jack de Santis [00:47:21]:
Don'T know where he's going to go.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:47:22]:
His knowledge and understanding of Russian electronic attack in designing systems that are going to go against it is just, it's really fascinating. He's a wonderful guy to sit down.

Ken Miller [00:47:32]:
And talk to in, in the time we have remaining. I actually, I, you know, Jack, I probably need to have you on again in the, in the future to kind of. We could talk the Russian perspective, the side of this, you know, in terms of their technology for a long time. Unfortunately, we. We have limited time. But just to kind of wrap up, build on Jeff's statement, I don't want to get into too much specificity, but we talk a lot from our end about how advanced Russian systems are. What did you learn that really kind of kept you up at night in terms of their capability and what they could do or how they designed their systems? Was there anything like eye opening, like, oh, this is beyond what we even thought, or was it just a matter of how they used it? Kind of talk to us about what you learned on that front.

Jack de Santis [00:48:21]:
Generally speaking, I would say the two big surprises for me was just like the sheer scale of electronic attack systems in the Russian military. Even today, three and a half years into the war, they far outnumber the Ukrainians and they definitely far outnumber The United States, where electronic attack and electronic warfare, I feel like, has always been like a niche thing with like very high tech, with a very small number of like airborne platforms. While in Russia, basically every soldier has a gem then just like how low tech all of it was, which is like the opposite of the US Air Force electronic warfare platform. So I remember in the first year of the war, the large jammer systems that the Russians had, they didn't even have digital signal generation, it was analog. So if their jammers wanted to switch frequencies, they had to literally shut down the machine, physically swap the coils that generate the frequency and then power it back on. And depending on how good the crew was at doing this, what would take them like eight to 10 minutes. So we had this window of time where we could attack them and destroy their system. And a lot of them have been destroyed this way.

Jack de Santis [00:49:41]:
They have since upgraded to software defined radios for frequency generation. So now the frequency switching, it's basically instant. But yeah, it was. It really gives you an idea of just how low tech it all was and how low tech it all is today. Still, the vast majority of jammers out there are nothing more than a frequency generation and an amplifier. But at the same time, it's also like extremely effective on the battlefield. It very much gets the job done and we should still take it very, very seriously.

Ken Miller [00:50:17]:
Jack, thank you so much for taking time to join me. Unfortunately, that's all the time we have. There are a number of questions I'd like to build upon, but. But we're out of time. But I'll just have to invite you back onto from the Crow's Nest again in the future. I really want to follow how you are doing with Omira Systems. You mentioned fundraising for that. Any of our listeners hearing about that.

Ken Miller [00:50:40]:
Is there anything that if they are interested in helping the fundraising effort or helping you, is there any way to get in contact with Omira Systems to follow through?

Jack de Santis [00:50:51]:
Yeah. So I believe the majority of our listener would already know. You can. And Colonel Fischer, so they can reach out to either one of you and you can then put them in touch with me directly.

Ken Miller [00:51:04]:
Sounds good. Well, and. And Fish, thanks so much for joining us from Vienna, Austria. This is. This has been a fun conversation because I'm in West coast, our producers in the east coast you're in. Jack, I don't know where you're at. I think you're in Portugal right now. And.

Ken Miller [00:51:20]:
And Fish, you're in Vienna. Like technology is amazing in this regard. So we're all over the world here talking, but really appreciate everyone taking time and Fish is always, it's always good to hear from you. Any final words before we sign off?

Jeffrey Fischer [00:51:33]:
First of all, thanks again for having me and, and welcoming Jack in. Like I said, I think his story is amazing and I hopefully it resonates with you and the listeners. As a board member for aoc, one of the things I'm, I'm trying to do is potentially get Jack to come out to, to AOC this December and, and maybe maybe share his story on a in a sidebar or I'll do a Q and A with other people because I think there's an appetite for what he knows from industry. So we'll see.

Ken Miller [00:51:55]:
Absolutely. And looking forward to helping you with that.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:51:57]:
Okay, sounds good.

Ken Miller [00:51:58]:
Thank you, gentlemen, for joining me. And that is all for today, but appreciate you and hoping to talk with you again soon. That's it for today. Thanks.

Jack de Santis [00:52:05]:
Likewise. Thanks for having me and have a nice day.

Ken Miller [00:52:08]:
Thank you. That will conclude this episode From the Crows' Nest. I'd like to thank my guests Jack de Santis and Jeff Fischer for joining me on the show. Also, please take a moment to review, share, and subscribe to this podcast. We always enjoy hearing from our listeners, so please take a moment to let us know how we're doing. That's it for today. Thanks for listening.