Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto announced that Mykhailo Fedorov, the former Defense Minister of Ukraine, is now advisor to the Italian Defense Ministry. “I was visited by Mykhailo Fedorov,” Crosetto said in a statement Aug. 28, “who has significant experience in the field of digital innovation applied to public administration and defense. It was an opportunity to delve deeper, in particular, into the topics of drones, unmanned systems, and air defense, as well as to discuss the evolution of the technology ecosystem…. I am pleased that Mykhailo Fedorov has agreed to serve as my Advisor for Defense Innovation.”
A spokesman for Crosetto told the Financial Times that Fedorov will work pro bono from Kiev.
With the appointment of Mikhailo Fedorov, “Mr. Drone War,” as advisor to the Italian Defense Ministry, an historical circle is closed. Fedorov, in fact, is a current follower of utopian “Command of the Air” doctrines, formulated for the first time by the book with the same title, published in 1921 by Italian military official Giulio Douhet. Douhet was a proponent of strategic bombing which, he insisted, could almost alone win a war, with a secondary role played by armies and navies, including by breaking the morale of enemy populations. His theories were disproved in WWII, when strategic bombing provoked a high number of civilian casualties, but failed in achieving the intended results.
Dohuet’s theories were adopted in the famous novel by H.G.Wells, “The Shape of Things to Come” (1933) and in the film “Things to Come” (1936) by the same author, the blueprint for a modern form of anti-nation-state empire.
