Gordon Chang

So if a unit wants to, they know they have a certain type of operation coming up, they know they need certain types of weapons for that operation, they can work to get those weapons as quickly as possible.

But as I mentioned, the technology race on the battlefield gets sometimes a span of a couple weeks.

So something that might have worked at the beginning of the month might not work the beginning of the next month because the Russians have developed a countermeasure, right?

So this requires a really flexible, a really pliable defense industrial base.

And that's a lesson that Ukraine is really internalized and one that I think the West could really learn from them.

And then in contrast, right, we have the Russian defense industrial base, just about the total opposite, very rigid, not flexible, very top down, very few players controlling this defense industrial base.

Now, there are advantages to the Russian system, and that is that they're really good at scaling up a few select products.

So that's why we see less variety on the Russian side in terms of the types of drones they're using, but they are able to massively produce them pretty quickly.

So very different approaches here.

Again, both have pros and cons.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, the Shahed drones I'll use as an example that the Russians are launching at Ukraine.

Obviously, when the debris falls, the Ukrainians find the debris, they dissect it.

They're increasingly filled with Chinese components.

They're also still filled a lot with Western components.

So the Russians are still very successfully evading sanctions and finding third parties to be able to import these Western components from really major countries.

companies all over Europe and the United States.

And so we definitely are seeing a lot of sanctions evasion and, again, continued deepening partnership with China.

But you're absolutely right.

There definitely still are parts from China that Ukrainians need as well.