Professor Michael C. Horowitz

I mean, Ukraine, I think, produces more drones than every other democracy in the world combined.

But there are a couple of really important lessons here.

One...

Ukraine didn't have this drone industry in 2022.

What this shows is that whether you're Australia, whether you're a European country increasing your defense budget, whether you're the United States, these kinds of precise mass capabilities, these low cost, more attributable capabilities can be built pretty quickly actually by countries.

So for democracies looking for ways to rearm themselves and thinking about those $2 million Tomahawk missiles or $4 million Patriot missile interceptors,

precise mass drone capabilities offer a way to generate a lot of capacity faster because they're based more in commercial manufacturing techniques.

This also means, though, that because Ukraine is producing so much, they have an opportunity potentially to become an arms exporter, although Zelensky has been very clear that he will only do that very strategically when Ukraine gets back other capabilities that it needs to be able to fight against Russia.

I don't think, unfortunately, this war is going to end until Vladimir Putin has had enough.

He views his legacy at this point as tied up in the conquest of Ukraine and seems unwilling to really think about war.

concessions or even a stalemate that could settle into some kind of cold peace along a line of control.

As long as Putin has these maximalist aims and as long as Russia has the capacity to keep fighting with the millions of drones that it's producing and firing at Ukraine and importing from countries like Iran, this will generate a continuing battlefield and it's hard to see how it gets resolved soon.

It's horrible and it's unlikely to change.

This is one of the most devastating wars anywhere in the world since World War II, in addition to being the first major land war in Europe since World War II.

And there's no sign that it's going to let up.