‘Drone guy’: The rising star who has become Trump’s man on Ukraine

London: When Volodymyr Zelensky was presented on Thursday with the US plan to end the Ukraine war, he met not US President Donald Trump’s secretary of war but a little-known 38-year-old considered the Pentagon’s rising star.

Dan Driscoll is now the most senior member of the Trump administration to visit Ukraine, a symbol of the growing status of the US secretary of the army.

Driscoll also found himself holding secret peace talks with the Russian delegation and Ukraine’s military intelligence chief in Abu Dhabi overnight and will now meet with Ukrainian officials as a next step in negotiations, as US special envoy Steve Witkoff heads to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin.

While the Pentagon under War Secretary Pete Hegseth has spent months mired in chaos and controversy, Driscoll has largely steered clear of the mudslinging. His stock appears to be rising as his boss’s sinks.

US Vice President JD Vance counts the army secretary as a friend.

Trump refers to him as his “drone guy”, owing to his push to modernise America’s forces with military tech and move away from heavy, outdated defence systems.

Driscoll, as head of the army, is leading the Pentagon’s counter-drone efforts.

He is also now viewed as the favourite to replace Hegseth as Pentagon chief should the position become available.

A former senior White House official told London’s Telegraph that Driscoll was the “workhorse” who was “exactly” what Trump was looking for, and could deliver where the war secretary had failed.

Driscoll had what he called a comfortable, middle-class childhood, “growing up in the mountains” of Boone, North Carolina. Most of it was spent outdoors, he said on a podcast.

His father was an infantryman in the Vietnam War, and his grandfather served in World War II.

Driscoll was 18 when he realised that he too could not miss out on “my generation’s war”. He started his basic training in September 2007 and was deployed to Iraq at the tail end of the troop surge.

“I do not want to be the kind of person [when] I’m 40, 50, 60 years old and they ask the veterans to stand at an event, and I stay seated,” he recalled.

After leaving Iraq, Driscoll joined Yale Law School in 2011 and graduated three years later. It was as a first-year student that he met a second-year who had served in the Marine Corps and took a group of veterans out for pizza to show them the “lay of the land”. His name was JD Vance.

“I know a lot of you guys are going to be self-conscious, you’ve been out of school for a while,” Driscoll recalled Vance saying.

“You’re going to feel like you’re less than and not smart enough to keep up. But if you can just give it a couple of months, you’ll get your bearings, and you’ll figure it out and you’ll find out that you belong here.”

The two men had a lot in common. They were of similar age and had their roots in Appalachia, although Driscoll had a more comfortable upbringing. Both had made their way to Yale Law via the army.

Now both have risen, in short order, to reach the top levels of the Trump administration.

Driscoll worked in venture capital and had a brief flirtation with politics in 2020 when he ran for a congressional seat in North Carolina, where he admits to getting his “ass kicked”.

Four years later, he was on a summer break in Zurich when Vance called and told him he had just been selected as Trump’s running mate.

That was on a Monday evening, when Driscoll was eating dinner with his wife, Cassie. The following morning, he boarded a plane and headed to the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin.

On the way, he bought a “super shitty-fitting suit, belt and tie” that he had to retire a month later when a figure close to Trump apparently told him he looked like an intern. By then, he was advising Vance.

The friendship with the vice president may have protected him after he became army secretary and took a job in a Pentagon that has been consumed by turmoil since Hegseth took the reins and dismissed dozens of generals, admirals and top aides.

Since the war secretary was narrowly confirmed in his job in January, his reputation has taken a hammering – notably in the Signalgate scandal, when he accidentally leaked US military plans to a journalist.

Externally, Driscoll has avoided sticking his head above the parapet. Instead, he has got stuck into acquisition reform and learning lessons from the Ukraine war, which the former venture capitalist calls “the Silicon Valley of warfare”.

Internally, he is determined to shake up the Pentagon, and has told members of Congress he is a “mixture of a southern Baptist preacher and a jihadist who’s going to pull the temple down on all of our heads”.

The White House has noticed. Driscoll was the figure selected to meet Zelensky on Thursday, presenting the 28-point plan Trump hopes will lead to peace between Russia and Ukraine, and prompting speculation that Driscoll could succeed Hegseth.

“Dan Driscoll is the opposite of Pete Hegseth – he’s serious, shrewd and has the confidence of the White House,” said a former senior White House official. “Dan’s a workhorse, not a show horse, and puts a lot of lead on target for the president in everything he does.

“After a year of endless drama at the Pentagon, Dan’s brand of quiet and effective leadership is exactly what President Trump is looking for to get his important reform agenda back on track.”

A source told Politico: “There’s not a lot of trust in Hegseth to deliver these messages to key leaders … there is more trust in Dan to do that right now.”

The Telegraph has previously reported friction between the Pentagon and White House, as Hegseth’s senior aides are said to be widely distrusted.

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles “doesn’t distrust Pete” but “questions his judgment”, another source told Politico. The administration has consistently denied tension between the two.

On Friday, CNN reported that Trump was preparing to reshuffle his cabinet after a year in office, although that report was denied by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Hegseth could come under renewed scrutiny once an internal report on his role in the Signalgate scandal is released.

Driscoll has been a soldier, law student, venture capitalist, congressional candidate, army secretary and Trump’s “drone guy”. Pentagon chief is looking increasingly likely to be his next move.

“This narrative is fake news. The [war] secretary has built an all-star team at the Department of War, and we are proud of our many accomplishments,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said.

The Telegraph, London

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