Shadowing Practice: A $2,000 Cardboard Drone Hit Russian Fighter Jets. Now Every Military Wants One - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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Hey, check this out.
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Hey, check this out.
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Ukraine's Aussie-made cardboard drones are re-writing warfare.
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And Japan just noticed.
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Japan's defense minister just posed for a photo with a drone made out of cardboard. $2,000,
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flat-packed like Ikea, assembled in five minutes.
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Ukraine already used a nearly identical design to destroy Russian fighter jets on Russian soil.
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Now, the Russians denied it until the satellite imagery disagreed.
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So every now and then,
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And a story comes along that I know I have to cover because it quietly rewrites how we think about modern warfare.
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Two years ago that story was Ukraine using wax cardboard drones to blow up Su-30s at a Russian airfield.
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Today, Japan is building its own version.
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South Korea already has one,
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North Korea showed off theirs in Pyongyang,
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and the Australian original is still flying combat missions as we speak.
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So let's talk about what this technology actually is,
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where it's proven in combat,
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and why Japan's entry into the cardboard arms race tells us something genuinely important about where conventional warfare is heading.
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Hey friends, Wes here, Army and Air Force veteran,
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defense journalist, and my neighbor just decided now would be the best time to mow his lawn,
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so this should be fun.
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What is a cardboard attack drone?
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Well the original is the Corvo Precision Palo Delivery System or the PPDS,
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built by Melbourne based Cypac Systems.
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Crikey!
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That's right, the corrugated aerospace community was invented down under.
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The airframe is waxed foam board,
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cardboard adjacent, waxed to survive the rain,
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shipped flat packed with tape,
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rubber bands and glue already in the box.
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Assembly takes about an hour.
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weighs 2.4 kilograms empty carries 3 kilograms of payload has a range of 120 kilometers
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and costs between 670 and 3 000 depending on the version
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that is extremely cheap for an attack drone although it still
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feels somehow expensive for cardboard i have a whole garage full of cardboard i'll send it over to ukraine
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if it'll help now the navigation system is the clever part
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a ruggedized android tablet connects to the drone through a cable
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before launch you enter gps waypoints upload the flight plan disconnect it
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and send it once airborne the corvo flies its entire route
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autonomously no data link no radio emissions no signal for enemy
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electronic warfare to grab onto it will navigate by dead reckoning
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if gps is jammed because the flight plan is already on board The encrypted root data means even if it's captured,
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the launch location can't be traced.
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Now, does the cardboard make it basically a budget stealth aircraft?
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Now, I used to work on the E3 Sentry AWACS.
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A lot of you already know that.
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And the question is, could radar detect a cardboard drone?
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Well, yes, it's dramatically harder to detect than a conventional drone of the same size.
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The waxed foam board gives it a tiny radar cross-section compared to anything with an aluminum structure.
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It's slow, it's small, it's lightweight, and it's mostly non-metallic.
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That's a nasty little radar problem for whoever's defending.
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But hard to detect is not invisible.
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The motor, the wiring, the battery,
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the servos, and the payload all reflect radar energy.
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The real headache for defenders isn't seeing something, it's classifying something.
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Seeing a return on radar is one thing.
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Determining that it's a Corvo PPDES and not a bird,
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a quadcopter, debris, or whatever else is floating at low altitude near the horizon,
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well, that's where the Russian operator earns their vodka ration.
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Really, bro?
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A large air defense radar is optimized for fast jets and ballistic missiles,
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but it will genuinely struggle with a slow cardboard drone flying at low altitude.
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Now a short-range counter UAS radar has a better shot.
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Think of something like the SeaWiz or the FAMILIX because it's designed for small, low, slow targets.
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But even then detection range is limited and by the time classification happens the drone may already be inside its attack profile.
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So what did Ukraine do with it?
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Well Cypac originally designed the Corvo as a logistics resupply drone
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built to deliver blood bags to remote medical posts way back in the 2018 Australian Army Innovation Challenge.
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Ukraine received the first shipments in March of 2023
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and within months had converted it into a kamikaze strike platform because of course they did.
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The headline moment came on the night of August 26, 2023.
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The security service of Ukraine struck a Russian Air
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and Space Force's base targeting four Su-30s and one MiG-29 aircraft with Corvo PPD-S kamikaze drones,
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and also destroying an S-300 radar and two Pantsir S-1 air defense systems.
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16 drones were used, three were shot down,
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the other 13 got through.
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Russia denied it happened, but commercial satellite imagery later confirmed it had,
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exactly as Ukraine described.
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Now I can tell you that a slow,
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low, non-metallic emission, silent aircraft is genuinely difficult to build a kill chain around,
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especially when your sensor-to-shooter loop was designed for supersonic threats.
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I'm talking about a defensive kill chain here.
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The Corvo isn't evading radar through its exotic materials or active jamming.
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It's evading through irrelevance.
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It simply doesn't look like what the system was built to find.
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So SIPAC has been delivering 100 Corvo units per month to Ukraine since March of 2023.
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By mid-2025, that's well over 2,000 airframes through this program alone.
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The field innovation coming out of Ukraine has been remarkable.
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Operators cut holes in the fuselage floor and mounted GoPro cameras on a 10-second timer set to fire at the pre-programmed waypoint.
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The camera captures what it sees,
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the drone returns, and the entire ISR mission happens in complete radio silence.
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No data link to jam,
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nothing to intercept, nothing to trace.
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Some Corvo units have survived more than 60 flights in Ukraine,
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patched between sorties with scavenged cardboard from the surrounding environment.
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A drone, designed to be expendable,
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has, in practice, become reusable.
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SIPAC has now released the PPDS-HL for heavy lift variant,
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which doubles the payload to 6 kilograms and adds external hard points for in-flight payload drops,
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turning the same airframe into a platform that can function as a precision strike weapon,
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an ISR asset, a communications relay node,
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or a decoy, depending on what you mount that morning.
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But the most tactically significant development from the Kursk strike wasn't the warheads,
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it was the mix.
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Ukrainian forces deliberately seeded the swarm with unarmed corvos alongside the armed ones.
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Defenders couldn't distinguish threats from decoys in real time.
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Every drone had to be treated as lethal.
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The response was saturated.
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The arm units got through.
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That's intelligent warfare.
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And here's where this gets genuinely novel.
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Japan is now building doctrine around that lesson.
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The cardboard-based Air Kamoi-150 is a swarm platform explicitly positioned for mass deployment in contested island chain geography.
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Now, Japan is responsible for defending over 6,800 islands,
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including the Senkaku Islands at the center of an active territorial dispute with China
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and a southwestern island chain close enough to Taiwan that any conflict there immediately becomes Japan's problem.
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A Pantsir S-1 carries 12 surface-to-air missiles.
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A Phalanx Sea Whiz fires 4,500 rounds per minute but has a finite magazine and requires reacquisition time between engagements.
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Neither system was designed to handle 200 cardboard Japanese drones arriving from multiple vectors simultaneously,
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half of them unarmed, all of them flying pre-programmed routes with zero radio emission.
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At $2,000 to $3,000 per unit,
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an adversary could field 500 Air Kamoi drones for roughly the cost of a single standard missile six used to intercept them.
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Japan's fiscal 2026 defense budget allocates 312.8 billion yen to unmanned systems,
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triple the prior year.
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South Korea has already adopted its own cardboard platform.
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Even North Korea showcased a rubber band wing cardboard drone at a Pyongyang Defense Expo.
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The proof of concept Ukraine validated over Kursk in 2023,
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thanks to Australia, has now been absorbed by three Asian militaries simultaneously.
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For any weapons technology, that's fast adoption.
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For one made out of cardboard,
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it's almost insulting to every defense contractor that spent a decade billing $800 for a coffee cup.
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But there is an honest caveat here,
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and that is we don't yet have solid public reporting
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on how the Corvo has performed and sustained Ukrainian operations beyond that curse strike.
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The feedback loop between Saipak and Ukraine is tight by design,
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which also means a lot of it is deliberately quiet.
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What we do know is that production has continued,
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adaptation has accelerated, and no one has canceled the program.
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That's usually a good sign.
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So, over two years ago when I wrote that Ukraine was proving wars of the future would be fought with cheap,
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expendable, nearly invisible weapons and that the US and its allies needed to be paying attention?
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Well, Japan was paying attention,
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South Korea was paying attention,
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and apparently North Korea was too.
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The cardboard drone was never a novelty.
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It was a proof of concept.
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It passed and now it's a doctrine.
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The Air Kamoi 150 didn't come from nowhere.
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It came from Kursk.
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It came from Ukraine.
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Okay, that is it for today, my friends.
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Subscribing is the best free way to support my channel.
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If you want deeper analysis on the weapons and the geopolitics shaping the next decade,
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check out the substack for deeper dives.
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I write there five times a week.
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I know, four videos a week and five articles is kind of insane,
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but this is my full-time job now.
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And as always, glory to Ukraine, glory to the heroes.
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Crimea is Ukraine.
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Hey my friends, I am just fixing my hair before the video.
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This is where I look into the monitor and here we go.
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Why practice speaking with this video?
Utilizing the video titled "A $2,000 Cardboard Drone Hit Russian Fighter Jets. Now Every Military Wants One," provides a unique context for practicing English speaking skills. The discussion revolves around innovative military technology, offering rich vocabulary and engaging content that can enhance your listening and speaking fluency. By adopting the shadowing technique, learners are encouraged to repeat what they hear, enhancing their comprehension and pronunciation simultaneously. This engaging subject matter captivates attention, making it easier to absorb complex ideas, grasp contextual language, and ultimately, improve one's English communication skills.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
Within the transcript, several key grammatical structures and expressions can be highlighted:
- Passive voice: Phrases like "were used" show how the passive voice can highlight the action or the object rather than the subject. This is common in formal contexts and enhances comprehension of reports and analysis.
- Conditional statements: The speaker utilizes conditional phrases, for example, "if GPS is jammed." These structures help convey hypothetical situations, essential for discussing possibilities and implications.
- Comparative language: The use of comparisons, such as "dramatically harder to detect," helps express ideas with clarity. This can improve descriptive skills in both written and spoken contexts.
- Technical vocabulary: Terms like "navigation system," "payload," and "radar cross-section" enrich vocabulary. Engaging with this specific lexicon can significantly benefit learners in specialized fields, such as technology or military studies.
Common Pronunciation Traps
As you engage in practice with this video, pay attention to the following pronunciation challenges:
- Words with silent letters: For instance, "whisper" contains a silent 'h' that can trip up speakers if they overemphasize the initial sound.
- Compound words: The phrase "flat-packed" emphasizes the need to blend sounds smoothly to maintain fluency, as the pronunciation can become choppy if not practiced sufficiently.
- Technical jargon: Terms like "autonomously" and "encrypted" may be challenging due to their length and complexity. Breaking them down into syllables and repeating them can enhance retention and improve English pronunciation.
By focusing on these elements, learners can effectively utilize the shadowspeaks method to reinforce learning, overcome pronunciation barriers, and enhance their overall communication skills in English.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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