Our colleague Heather Somerville covers national security.

And after the war between Israel and Hamas broke out, she started hearing about some urgent requests coming out of Israel.

People there wanted drones.

Within 12 hours of Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7th, there were requests that were just flooding

in from Israel to U.S. company executives, drone deal makers, all sorts of people in the U.S. drone industry asking for help and they wanted

drones. As many as possible, as quickly as possible.

Drones. What kind of drones are we talking about?

I mean, what we're talking about are commercial drones to be clear.

These are not the big old honkin military lethal drones.

These are drones that have traditionally been used for other reasons.

Like the drones you could buy a best buyer target

that I can fly around with the camera on top. Exactly. Yeah. Yep. You can get them on Amazon.com. You can get them wherever.

The requests were coming from the Israeli government, military officials, and even from everyday civilians over

what's-app. They were asking anyone they knew to help get them drones.

We don't want one or two drones. We want hundreds of them. We want them as quickly as possible, you know,

the specifications. We don't care so much right now. Just get them over here.

Why? Why did they want drones so bad?

I think that there was a realization very quickly of the landscape where this war would take place in Gaza, this dense urban environment, tall buildings, very crowded,

these small drones that can fly a few hundred feet off the ground can be very effective.

And so the adoption of small inexpensive drones in modern warfare can't really be understated.

Welcome to the Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knutzen.

It's Tuesday, November 21st.

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