Driscoll touts Ukraine’s military innovation in first public appearance since resigning as Army Secretary

Former Army Secretary Dan Driscoll appeared for the first time since his resignation in August from the role, discussing Ukraine’s military innovations at the Yalta European Strategy forum – an annual conference in Ukraine about challenges facing the country.

Driscoll appeared on a panel alongside former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and lauded Kyiv’s wartime technologies, according to CBS News .

Driscoll mentioned “DELTA” specifically, a situational awareness tool that allows for manual information input or integration with various sensors, trackers, radars, and satellite providers. He noted this technology surpasses anything the U.S. military currently possesses.

The pair discussed Driscoll’s telling Schmidt during the Iran war that the military needed defense against Iranian Shahed drones. Schimidt’s company supplied the military two different kinds of drones – “Merops” and “Bumblebee” which were already used in Ukraine.

“He literally called me and I said, of course, yes,” Schmidt said. “The question is, could the government have had a multi-year plan to anticipate this?”

Driscoll responded that it’s necessary “to internalize these lessons that what you’re doing here [in Ukraine] in a very scrappy, fast, iterative nature.”

His visit to Ukraine also comes after trilateral talks concluded between Kyiv, Moscow and U.S. special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Witkoff indicated last week that the U.S. is confident that trilateral talks will result in a “good resolution” to the Ukraine war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for Europe’s leaders to join “the third part of our negotiations,” saying he and the U.S. envoys “agreed that Ukraine, Europe and the United States will meet in the near future.”

A Ukrainian source familiar with the discussions in Kyiv, said they “were productive, some new ideas were discussed, and the goal is to end the war by the winter.”