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I'm also curious about, to what degree does the geopolitical context of the war in Ukraine limit the, let's say, lessons for a Taiwan crisis? So for example, you mentioned this on a previous podcast, it's key to understand a dynamic in Ukraine is that NATO is trying to avoid a conflict with Russia. Russia is trying to avoid a conflict with NATO. If we're talking about a conflict in the Indo-Pacific, at this point, a conflict has already started. Therefore, that limiting factor isn't going to exist, and you're going to see a need to go further and harder in the first place. So is there a possibility that in a world where there isn't such a very specific constraint on actions, the role of the drone would be different, would exceed what it's looking like? How should we think about the different contexts?

I think the role of the drone would be different in that you would find a lot of the space capabilities that enable drones, like Starlink, for example, which is the backbone of Ukrainian communications and enabling it to fly a lot of the drones, not all of them, might not be available all of the time. So if you have a more active war in space, and the Russians have been trying to jam Starlink and to spoof it and to mess with it in different ways, and they haven't been successful. But they also haven't tried anything actually on orbit or into orbit. And that might not be a constraint in a direct war with US-China War or US-Russia War for that matter. So that could be a huge factor that would impact the ability to use drones, especially those that rely, the long-range runs that rely on satellite communications and GPS. More broadly, not just that sort of geopolitical constraint that has sort of placed a ceiling on escalation, I think, in Ukraine, But the geography of the Indo-Pacific is just so different. And because you wouldn't be fighting simply a land war the same way, I think that jamming would play out. The EW war would be very different because you can't sort of concentrate effects the same way that you have in Ukraine. And a lot of what you've seen there is that, and Mike Kaufman has a really good report on Russian adaptation that just came out from Carnegie recently, but jamming has proliferated. It's not just the big military systems. They're trench jammers, they're handheld jammers. That sort of stuff isn't going to play in the same way in an Indo-Pacific scenario where the distances are so much bigger. One of the things that you see with the deep war between Ukraine and Russia, with the Ukrainian strikes into Russia proper, is that how hard it is to stop them entirely. And this is Russia that has invested in a very big and very sophisticated and quite good integrated air and missile defense system. The Ukrainians can figure out how to route their drones in, perhaps with Western assistance, to avoid the defenses and to get through. CNN actually had a really cool video about a week ago with one of the intel units that was looking at this. So I think in the Pacific, the distances are going to mean that some of the effects that have limit the efficacy of drones might not be as intense everywhere.

Something I'm curious about, you focus a lot in the report with your colleagues on how there's a lot of bias in the way we actually perceive drones. So for example, everyone has seen, depending where they spend their time on Twitter, videos of individual drones dropping grenades on wounded soldiers, or you've seen cases where you have a tank getting hit by a kamikaze drone. But, and this is what you all point out in the report, those are selected. That's a part of information war in of itself. I also think this dynamic then plays out into the revolution versus evolution debate, which is that there's sort of this... I spent a lot of time with defense investors, there's this urge to sort of extrapolate what we see and then you 10X it. So you say, okay, so if this drone is killing one soldier, what would it look like if there were a thousand drones doing a thousand different things when that's not quite what we see given those limitations? But I'd love you just to reflect on this dynamic because it really seems to be that we could be over imaginative in this case when it comes to encountering these situations. Yeah,

it's a really interesting dynamic where in many ways we're closer to the war. Everyone can be just on social media looking through these little soda straw views and assume that that is actually an accurate representation of the larger battlefield or that the video that you're seeing is actually accurate and true, which it may not be. There is a lot of propaganda out there on both sides. And there's also like the Ukrainians are making tremendous use of decoys. So some of the videos you might see of an FPV going into a tank are actually just a decoy, which is exactly the purpose of the system. And what they're trying to do is they're trying to attract a more expensive missile than an FPV, maybe a Lancet or something. I do think that having visibility into the war is distorting it and does lead to the exaggerated claims that you're talking about, for sure. It also is important to be mindful that the tactical effects don't necessarily translate into operational outcomes, like who wins the battles, let alone the strategic and political outcomes that you want. And the war in Ukraine is really this massive war of attrition. And each sides have suffered a lot of losses, and it hasn't dissuaded either from continuing to fight right now. There's also a lot you just don't see online. I just returned from Kiev. I wasn't on the front lines. I was just in the capital last week. And there are some of the best drone units are very specialized. Some of them work with the National Guard, some in different areas, and they don't put the videos online because they don't need to. They have their own resources. So we're definitely seeing a biased picture and not a fully accurate one.

When we use the, I think, valuable from a framework perspective phrases like cheap and attributable, I think what we miss though, and you point this out in your report, is actually how staffed up and how complicated this all is. So once again, from a mental model, we're like, okay, it's cheap, it's attributable, insert drones, XYZ equals win conflict. But talk about how actually complicated, even with cheap, off-the commercial drones, kamikaze drones, et cetera, this actually is.

It is tremendously complicated. And as one of the folks that I met with in Ukraine said, a couple of guys with an FPV can't have any effect right now on the battle. Maybe about a year and a half ago, they might've been able to do something useful.

What was happening a year and a half ago that made more of an effect? Just

the FPVs were new. But right now when you see these units, it sounds like Ukraine has really, really ramped up the FPV kamikaze drone production, but not all of the drones are the same. And this was one of the points that they drove home. So the kamikaze drones, FPVs that come from the MOD or a big contract are produced in huge numbers and they called them hamburger drones. They said that they were just these mass produced things that were virtually useless. And I don't think they're entirely useless, that they could be used to reach out like a kilometer or two across the front line and strike and be effective against an undefended soldier. But they're not actually able to go farther or to be able to take out more heavily defended targets. So what they're doing is they sort of have a just-in order of drones. And what this customized drone order does is that it allows them to undertake particular missions and to tune the drones to be prepared to survive and operate in the environment that they're going to face. So the geography, how the forces are arrayed, the electromagnetic environment, what frequencies are being jammed, which ones aren't, how do you position the antennas to be orthogonal to the jammers, all the things that are pretty small details, but really make a difference. And so they'll have these drone units go out and it's not just the FPV units. They'll have a fixed-wing drone that's out there to identify the high-value targets, something larger like a FlyAI, a Lilika. Then they'll have some of the quadcopters. So you're talking probably 10 or so people. then the FPV units, oh, you also have something like a DJI Matrice, which is a bigger commercial drone that carries a repeater to extend the signal. And those customized FPVs that have been tailored to that environment then might have the capability to go out as far as about 19 to 20 kilometers and hit something. And these are the most skilled operators that are not just the run-of infantry man in the Ukrainian army. And they go out and they try to take out high-value Russian targets, whether that be an air defense or just a artillery unit or a tank. But the FPVs still only carry about, think it's like five kilograms. So it's a very small payload. You referenced

that there's a need to translate this from just an academic debate to a practicality perspective. So if the conclusion is this is an evolution, not a revolution, is this good news or bad news for the United States and our allies? In the sense that, for example, the revolution on military affairs, 80s, 90s, the case studies from the Falcon Islands to the Yom Kippur War, that's good news for us. And we see it in the good news sense when it comes to Desert Storm. What do you think the implications are then for, let's say, our adversaries' abilities to use this technology against us?

Unlike the last revolution of military affairs, which relied on very high-ended technologies that were not readily available, the fact that this one is based on commercial tech is a problem for the United States. And it's a problem for two reasons. One means our adversaries can access it. And this has been one of the Ukrainian issues is that they've figured out some innovative, smart way to use drones or new tech, but the Russians can eventually emulate it because it is commercially based. They can access the technology and they just copy them. Quick

follow-up before we get to the last section. When you talk about the Pentagon's inability to integrate commercial systems into its actual operations. I think even that's more positive than what the status quo looks like, because that suggests an image of, we have all these companies, we all have this tech, and just the bureaucrats of the Pentagon just can't change the way they do business. But notably, the American drone commercial industry has struggled in and of itself. So it's not as if we have a situation where there's all this stuff that we just need to flip a switch on. Could you talk about the state of the American commercial drone industry in the first place? That

is problematic. I think it would be for the United States as well. And you're already seeing this play out globally where the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas, non-state actors are using drones fairly effectively. Countries that don't have the same means are using drones like Iran. They're helping each other now, Iran and Russia. China is helping to supply a lot of the subcomponents that are needed in the military and certainly the commercial drones. So I don't think this is a good news story for the United States because it is right now a cost competition and we win on the high-end systems, but they're really, really expensive and we don't have enough of them, whether it's air defense missiles or offensive systems. Like firing tea lambs at Houthi trucks is not a very cost effective solution. So we need to find a way, the United States military needs to find a way to have more affordable options that complement some of the exquisite systems that it has. It can't just rely on them all the time. I also think it's a problem for the US because the Pentagon has just really, really struggled with effectively using and bringing in commercial technology. CNAS just released a report that Andrew Metrick, Mike Brown, Ellen Lord, and Bob Work authored on called Integrated Innovation, I think, that is really looking at using authorities we have today. How does DOD go fast? And it happens, but it happens by exception and only when senior leaders are super involved, put all their weight behind it and assemble the right teams of people to go about it. So the Pentagon really needs to figure out better ways to bring in and use commercial technologies that will drive the cost down. And there are affordable solutions. This was sort of one of the things that was really impressive that I took from my trip to Kiev was you're seeing Ukrainian companies develop really interesting subcomponents to drones. It's not the drone itself. It's like the navigation system or the last mile autonomous guidance that allows them to hit their target even if the control link is jammed that are super cheap and are battlefield proven. And the US needs to be able to do some of that. So it does have a lot of cheap systems as well as it's really amazing, exquisite technologies. The US drone industry commercially is not robust, is a nice way to put it. I mean, DGI, a Chinese company, really just got a hold of the market in the last decade or so and excelled and then was able to scale. And they're producing really cheap, quite effective drones, and they dominate the global market and the US market. And there are signs that this is going to change. There's a bill under consideration right now on the Hill that would prohibit US law enforcement and civil organizations from purchasing new Chinese-made drones. And if they do, there would be a tax, and that tax would help to subsidize the American drone industry. Right now, the US companies are very small and they just can't achieve the economies of scale that China does. And so right now they're producing more expensive drones that don't perform as well and they can't produce many of them. So this is one of those areas, given where the market is today, I think the US as a nation is going to have to make some investments in it to help it to get on its feet, and then it'll be fine. But it's not going to happen just due to market forces by itself. So

for the last section, we can pivot to Taiwan. What's interesting about the Taiwan situation is when it comes to the effectiveness of drones, there's deterrence and there's actually winning a conflict. So what role could, let's say we get at least a B plus to an A minus on the next sets of policy recommendations? What role do you think drones could play in deterring a conflict in the first place? I

think the biggest role that they would play in deterring a conflict is if Taiwan actually built up or acquired large numbers of drones itself. where Taiwan makes itself hard to attack by using anti-ship cruise missiles and targeted by drones or drones that serve as missiles along with mobile air defenses. Can you imagine trying to land Marines or soldiers on a beach that has limited terrain and is pretty geographically confined and have like FPV drones harassing you as you're trying to reassemble. It's already disorganized enough. Having other ISR drones that target ground-based fires, artillery, things like that, I think it could be huge. Taiwan's drone industry is in a worse state than the American one, though. And this is where it seems like there could be potential partnerships where Ukraine can export some of the dual-use capabilities it's creating, but maybe in the future could partner with countries like Taiwan, sell them things that they're building. But they have to wean themselves off Chinese drones and Chinese components to make sure that they're secure. For the U. perspective, I think drones could also help with deterrence. There are lots of things that would go into defeating a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The first task and the one that is the least controversial is stopping the invasion fleet, sinking ships. US submarines are critical to that, attack submarines, but there's only so many that can fit in the Taiwan Strait and we're not producing them very quickly. And if we did, you still have to move them in and out. So relying on long-range cruise missiles is another avenue delivered by bombers or like fourth-generation aircraft. That helps, but things like El Razum, which is an anti-ship cruise missile, the US doesn't buy enough of it, and it's pretty expensive. So if you had autonomous kamikaze drones, and I think autonomy is more realistic and safer as an anti-ship capability, like there's less clutter, it's easier to tell what is a big warship and to distinguish that from other types of vessels than to pick out vehicles on the ground, for example. That could help to saturate the air defenses of the Chinese Navy and make the attacks of El Razum and other anti-ship cruise missiles more effective and help to attrit that invasion fleet. The other piece of having autonomous drones is unlike cruise missiles that would need or would benefit significantly from additional targeting updates in flight. If it's autonomous, it doesn't have that tether that is vulnerable to being severed by attacks on space

capabilities.