Former US Navy SEAL officer and founder of private military contractor Blackwater, Erik Prince, has claimed how "infinitely smart" Russia has become in countering the US weapons after the Ukraine war. He also rubbished Western assertions that Russian forces had been significantly weakened by the war.
Speaking at Hillsdale College on Saturday, Prince, who established Blackwater in 1997 and sold the firm in 2010, also suggested how good Russians were at electronic warfare that it managed to make American weaponry, including Javelin missiles, HIMARS and Copperhead guided artillery shells, ineffective. "The thing that the Russians are very good at is electronic warfare. It works for a week or two, and the Russians figure out how to jam the navigation or the command link, and the stuff goes blind," Prince said.
He rejects the claims that the Russian military has been significantly weakened by the war, adding that they have had "rapid improvements in counter-artillery capabilities". "First of all, don’t listen to the idiot politicians that say, yeah, we’ve degraded the Russian army. No, we have chewed up a lot of material. The Russian army has gotten infinitely smarter," Prince said.
Founder of the largest American PMC Blackwater Erik Prince on Russian military capability. "Don't believe the idiot US politicians" pic.twitter.com/HBhjGlHnlj
— Joe Quinn (@SeosQuinn) March 15, 2025
The response time has vastly improved between early 2022 and now. "If you shot at a Russian, with artillery in March or April of 2022, it would take them an hour and a half to shoot back accurately. Now, about two minutes, which means if you shoot at them, you better be in your vehicle and hauling ass because they’re going to get you otherwise," Prince added.
Though HIMARS and Javelins were considered game-changers initially, Russian troops soon managed to hammer them, releasing videos showing Russian high-precision ground and air-based armament destroyed them.
Earlier, there were also reports about Prince's purported $10 billion plan to create a private army in Ukraine. According to a TIME report, he planned to hire Ukraine’s combat veterans into a private military company and eyed Ukraine’s military-industrial complex, including factories that make engines for fighter jets and helicopters. His ultimate aim was to create a "vertically integrated aviation defence consortium" that could bring $10 billion in revenues and investment.
