I'm John Batchel with my good colleague Bill Rajo and our good colleague John Hardy of the Foundation for Defense of Democracy.

Looking at the battlefield in Ukraine does not entirely describe what's happened these last nearly four years of war.

John, it has been described to me metaphorically as Ukraine as the Silicon Valley of drone warfare.

Mr. Rajo has advanced the idea.

It's more of Las Alibas proving ground.

But in any event, what we're looking at is something that was not apparent to me when the war started, which is drone warfare.

At what point did drones take over the battlefield for Ukraine and level the playing field?

Can you recall what part of the four years that became evident?

And long range strikes, when did that become something that Ukraine was good at?

Again, leveling the battlefield and damaging Russia's ability to

win this war easily?

Yeah.

So this question is, I think, worthy of its own podcast.

I'll just kind of quickly say that, I think, to anyone following this war, even casually,

it's obvious that drones have played a big role.

I think sometimes their importance can be kind of overstated or misstated, maybe a better way to put it.

But certainly, they've been very important.

If you look back at the very beginning of the full-scale war, I think kind of ISR drones, the TB2, the Turkish remotely piloted aircraft, Ukraine, it was

kind of effective for Ukraine during the war's first few days or weeks. Those became less

effective as Ukrainians, excuse me, as the Russians kind of got their act together

with air defense. Later on in the war, FPV drones became much more important, especially in

2023 onward. That kind of supplemented the kind of bomber drones,

...