Patrick Bury

And they could use cluster munitions to make sure that something got through irrespective of what the Patriot missile targeted.

How is that evolving the approach to war, all of that?

Well, obviously, it's about asymmetry of costs.

So, therefore, the strategic level, it's difficult to sustain if you're firing, as you said, 3 million on the cheaper side of a Patriot missile and up to much higher for like a THAAD system.

So, but the crucial thing there is basically the Iranians developed it with, you know, they adjusted their tactics with Russian help and probably open source Chinese equipment.

satellite imagery as well.

So this is a learning curve which was enabled by the Russians and what they've been doing in Ukraine and then very quickly bolted on, you know, basically lessons learned and instigated into the Iranian attack packages.

And yeah, they're very smart the way they did it.

You know, they took out numerous of the radars on these incredibly expensive and rare US systems.

The US has had to ship

backups into the region.

But for example, as a THAAD system, there's only eight.

They're the highest level interceptors that should be used against the most dangerous ballistic missiles.

There's only eight of those in the world, and it looks like they've definitely taken out radar on one, potentially up to three.

So, yeah, there's a complete asymmetry here.

And basically, you know, for kind of wider defenses, well, how do we move to defending against drones?

And can we use drones, which you're seeing as well, potentially as interceptors against missiles?

So that's where the technological leap is at at the moment.

And it has interesting implications for how Ireland, for example, set configures itself.

Yeah, well, we saw Santa Martin talking on behalf of the EU that we must learn from Ukraine or defence money will be wasted, Santa Martin said.