Former US Army Secretary calls it “humiliating” that Ukraine, with a smaller budget, turned out to be better armed for modern warfare

Former Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said he was “humbling” to watch how Ukraine, with a much smaller budget, was able to quickly transform its armed forces and develop better weapons.

He stated this in an interview with Rolling Stone.

“In a way, it was humbling to see how quickly a country can change when it needs to. When you saw how small Ukraine’s budget was compared to ours, and yet they had better weapons to wage war with, it was a wake-up call,” Driscoll said.

According to him, the Ukrainian experience has shown that the American army is not adapting quickly enough to the requirements of modern warfare. In particular, this concerns the use of drones and electronic warfare equipment.

"When youʼre an American soldier, you go to work every day and youʼre actually going back 20 or 30 years in technology," Driscoll said.

According to his assessment, at the beginning of Donald Trumpʼs second term, the US armed forces were very poorly prepared for modern combat operations.

So in May 2025, Driscoll created an experimental battalion of 600 soldiers that operated on the principle of “drones first”. The unit was based in Italy, had its own drone laboratories, practiced electronic warfare tactics, and cooperated with Ukrainian military advisors.

However, on September 1, Driscoll resigned. The American media cited his strained relationship with Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth as the reason for this. And the unit he initiated was reformatted and returned to its “primary mission” — performing airborne infantry tasks.

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