Nate Vance (J.D. Vance’s Cousin) Fought in Ukraine: Article Summary
-At the Warsaw Security Forum (National Security Journal attended the talk), Nate Vance—former Marine, Da Vinci Wolves veteran, and cousin to Vice President JD Vance—offered a raw briefing from Ukraine’s front.
Su-34 Fullback. Creator: Vitaly V. Kuzmin. Credit: Vitaly V. Kuzmin
Aerial drone image of Bradley Fighting Vehicle crews from the 1st Armor Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, conducting Table XII gunnery at Fort Stewart, Ga. December 7, 2016.
-He fought at Kupiansk, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Pokrovsk, leaving service before his cousin’s inauguration to avoid putting his unit at risk.
-After a two-and-a-half-hour West Wing meeting, he says Washington’s picture of the war still lags reality.
-His critique: the U.S. isn’t harvesting lessons from frontline veterans, lags badly in drones, and “sucks at producing things”—a liability against Russia now and China later. The capacity exists, he argues; the shame is not using it to arm Ukraine faster.
What a Famous Ukraine War Vet Can Tell Us about the Conflict
Nate Vance, the cousin of U.S. Vice President J. D. Vance, was a special guest speaker at the Sept. 29-30 Warsaw Security Forum. He provided an in-depth perspective of how he sees the Ukraine War. Vance, a former U.S. Marine, fought for three years in Ukraine with the Da Vinci Wolves battalion.
Vance participated in battles for the Ukrainian cities of Kupiansk, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Pokrovsk before leaving military service in early January. He departed shortly before his cousin was inaugurated as vice president.
Vance explained during a presentation on Tuesday that he realized, with his cousin in office, his unit would become a unique target for the Russians; his presence thus could endanger the people around him.
Vance has since met with his cousin in the West Wing. The two spent roughly two and a half hours speaking on the occasion.
It was supposed to be a short meeting, he told the audience here at the WSF, but it ended up being far longer. “When I finally left the vice president’s office the hallway outside was full of people annoyed with the fact that the scheduled time slots for their meetings had elapsed long ago,” he recalled.
Part of the reason for the meeting was that the former Marine had generated headlines in the U.S. in March, when he publicly criticized the Trump administration’s approach to Ukraine. Nate told the French daily Le Figaro: “Donald Trump and my cousin apparently believe they can appease Vladimir Putin. They are wrong.”
What The Upper Ranks Are Not Hearing or Learning
If there is a theme to what Nate Vance says about the war in Ukraine, it is that what he hears from former generals and ministers at forums such as the WSF differs with what he has witnessed personally.
Russian T-72 Tank Ukraine War. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
“Bridging what I know from my own experiences to what more senior people are saying about what is happening with the war in Ukraine is becoming a long – and increasingly longer – bridge,” he said.
Speaking of his cousin, Nate told the forum, “he is not a dumb guy – he is receiving a lot of data [about the Ukraine war] and lately the rhetoric is changing.”
Nate is not alone in stating that outside observers have an inaccurate picture of reality on the frontline. During a separate session earlier in the day, National Security Journal attended, U.S. Special Envoy for Ukraine Gen. Keith Kellogg said:
“We in the West do not understand what the Ukrainians are doing, because we have not taken the time to study it. Ukrainians have changed the dynamic in the war and have raised the pain level for the Russians.”
Self-Inflicted Weaknesses
According to Nate Vance, this lack of accurate knowledge about what is happening in Ukraine is a self-inflicted weakness that is a consequence of the U.S. government’s own short-sightedness.
“I love pointing out things that we suck at,” said Vance. “When I hear people talking about what it is like on the frontline it sounds to me like some kind of a fever dream.
“There are numerous people out there with my set of experiences, but no one has reached out to me from the U.S. government for lessons learned from the Ukraine conflict. As far as I know they are not reaching out to anyone,” he said.
Another item on his list of failing efforts is defense industrial output.
“We suck at producing things,” he said. “This will be a huge problem if we get into a war with China.”
One area in which the U.S. lags behind the Ukrainians is in drone design and production, Vance added.
Rather than being looked at as introducing a new kind of warfare, Vance said, in many instances “drones are just ordnance delivery. Drones are essentially a longer range of artillery.”
Like many others, Nate Vance sees shortcomings in U.S. military production as tragic for Ukraine, as well as for America itself. Yet what has been provided to Ukraine thus far is a small portion of combined U.S. and European defense production capacity, and it is shameful that more has not been sent to the Ukrainians. This is a sentiment that he shares with many others close to the issue.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
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Swamplaw Yankee
October 3, 2025 at 5:05 am
Wow. Is this some sort of return to real journalism? Stop this right now!
So, No-one has reached out from their secure, well-paid positions in the secluded empire of the Y. Doddle. You go figure!
And, this situation is self-inflicted weakness. Must be some sort of outsider speaking here.
Wow. A bit of reality in words just showed up. The last time any front trench fighting for Yankees showed up was in Iowa Jima. That was real fighting and even a big brass was popped.
The recommendation here is that all USA Congressional members spend at least 72 hours in downtown Kherson Ukraine outwitting the orc Human Safari hunters sent there by tsarling Putin. Each member should take at least one general or admiral with them. Maybe even bring along a shotgun for some drone shooting. Once they outwit the ruuzzkie human hunters, the reality of d/m warfare might be much more tangible.
Sadly, this real hero is already deflected, ignored by the MSM of the WEST. Why is the social studies question of the last 11 years.
Even the threat on the stability of the 5 nuclear reactor hub brings a bored ho-hum to the MSM.
As the PRC CCP Xi regime perfects its industrial capability to sustain a high rate of production for an extended time period of drones/ missiles to a 1X level for their vassal Putin, NATO snores away.
Xi can command Putin to strike anywhere and the MSM of the WEST would refuse to confirm Xi was even involved remotely. Today, the West refuses to be touched by the fact Xi has over 1oo,000 of his Cabal armed and wandering around Ukraine.
Nate Vance references much of that which other op-ed touch upon. This op-ed certainly is a welcome contribution to understanding the re-start in 2014 of the evil 1000 year old ruuzzkie ethnic Genocide of Ukrainian families . -30-