According to Russian media reports, a surprising new situation has emerged on the front lines of the Russia-Ukraine conflict: a captured Ukrainian drone operator confessed that the Ukrainian military has only about 16 soldiers deployed at the front, whose mission is not direct combat, but rather to connect drone systems to a platform, while almost all strike missions are carried out by remote "players," describing the entire combat model as "global gamification."

It is claimed that the Ukrainian military, relying on the "Yellow Hornet World Remote Control System" developed by the local enterprise "Wild Hornet," has fully platformized and crowdsourced drone operations. Frontline soldiers are only responsible for connecting drones to the network system, while e-sports players, veterans, and even ordinary internet users worldwide, as long as they have a computer and access to the Starlink network, can remotely log in and participate in combat missions, executing strike operations like accepting orders.

Under this system, destroying tanks or shooting down drones is converted into points and reward mechanisms, directly "taskifying" and "outsourcing" war. This approach not only alleviates the shortage of frontline troops to some extent but also subjects battlefield opponents to extreme uncertainty, leaving Russian forces quite passive in their response.

What's more problematic is that this "cloud combat" model significantly undermines the effectiveness of traditional strike methods. Even if efforts are made to locate and strike the operators, they might be found in a Polish cafe or even North America, making them difficult to target; in terms of electronic jamming, due to reliance on satellite networks, conventional methods struggle to achieve effective suppression; and when facing low-cost drone swarms, using high-value air defense missiles for interception is extremely cost-ineffective, completely disrupting the logic of offense and defense.

The impact of this change goes beyond the tactical level; it alters people's basic understanding of war. In the past, the comparison was of troop strength and firepower; now it increasingly becomes about network capability and scale of remote participation. The threshold for participating in combat has been significantly lowered, the boundary between front and rear has been noticeably blurred, and the responsibility and methods of engagement in war have become more dispersed.

With the emergence of this new type of combat, traditional rules of war are being rewritten, and a new military form has surfaced, leaving no party able to stand aloof. $ETH