Gordon Chang

They've turned them into FPV drones.

They're very good at precision strikes.

They've got different engines.

They've got different antennas on them.

So again, the threat is just, it's a little bit different.

But again, the Ukrainians have the expertise that no one else in the world has.

I think the Ukrainian domestic drone industry is actually definitely one of their successes.

They've been working for a couple of years now to make the Ukrainian defense industrial base really self-sufficient.

And what that required initially and still today to a bit was Western investment, Western supplies and Western help in other areas.

But now the drone production really is just about entirely Ukrainian homegrown, if not entirely homegrown.

So this has been a big success story for the Ukrainians.

That being said, the Ukrainians are very understanding that these drone production sites are high value targets for the Russians.

So that's why we're seeing a lot of agreements being formed between European states and Ukrainians to build some of those production sites outside of Ukrainian territory.

But these are still going to be Ukrainian drones just made in partnership with the Europeans.

Yeah, so I think there's actually a lot to unpack in these statements and questions.

So first, to kind of look at the Ukrainian drone industry.

So the Ukrainian drone industry absolutely was kind of born out of necessity.

I think another bit of experience and expertise that the Ukrainians have that really no other country in the world probably has is how to have...

a defense industrial base that responds so quickly to a battlefield where the technology is sometimes changing in a matter of weeks right um the u.s defense industrial base is pretty slow moving there's a lot of red tape a lot of bureaucracy a lot of really big players involved whereas if you look at the ukrainian um format that they've really developed it's a lot of smaller companies are allowed to participate in this kind of defense industrial production but they're working really closely with the unit sometimes on the battlefield directly

So they're not only getting feedback on the products they send to them, but they're getting requests specifically.