Conversation with John Hardy of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies about the upgrading and transformation of the battlefield in Ukraine into a drone war, not just on the immediate target area of the opposition, but also long range into Russia, striking at the energy supply chain, so much so that it is reversing and negating the benefit

that Russia thought it was gaining the windfall from the Middle Eastern shutdown of oil coming

out, therefore Russia was counting on being able to sell more oil through the shadow fleet

to customers where they didn't need to discount the oil.

But now the strikes are so effective, Russia's supply chain is snapped or near two, and the money's

not coming in.

John Hardy on what kind of drones, long range?

A lot of technical language here.

It's the new day for drone warfare.

John Hardy.

So if you look at long range Ukrainian strike drones,

Ukrainians, I think since, you know, for a couple of years now,

have been using kind of AI-enabled guidance, basically terrain matching, so that when you're in an

environment that's GPS jammed, you can not rely on GPS.

You can use this other terrain matching system for guidance.

A lot of Ukrainian companies kind of on the more tactical side have also developed solutions for kind of guidance, especially terminal guidance and target recognition for kind of FPV drones and other short range tactical drones.

The Russians are doing the same.

You know, since 2023, they've been using pixel lock technology for their Lancet loader ammunition.

So you can have a range of different areas in which AI is being used.

And of course, that's not factoring in kind of the more backend intelligence and data target processing side,

which is a little more opaque but certainly very, very important.