Latest / FDD Morning Brief / Can the IDF stop Hezbollah's FPV drones? | feat. Ryan Brobst

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Can the IDF stop Hezbollah's FPV drones? | feat. Ryan Brobst · FDD Morning Brief

• 0:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: All right, good morning.
• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's Wednesday, May 20th.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: The multi-front war of the Middle East is now 956 days old on your host, Jonathan Shanzer.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to the FTD Morning Brief.
• 0:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, we're back to war.
• 0:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Almost.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: The president almost launched an attack and the Iranian regime almost got hammered again.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Almost, but then the president turned the plings around in an hour before they almost hit a rhyme.
• 0:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Bottom line, we have been almost at war, since the ceasefire took effect.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: It has been almost peaceful, except for when it has in.
• 0:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if that makes sense to you, it this early in the morning, well, I tip my hat because I'm not sure which way this thing is going, and I continue to, well, scratch my head.
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: The New York Times has some wild news about a regime change plan that failed, according to the Great Lady.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: The government of Israel wanted to install former Iranian president, Ma'amud Ahmadina Wakjab.
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, Ahmadina John, as the interim leader of the Islamic Republic, after the first strikes that killed some of the regime's top leaders.
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is Ahmadinejad a strange choice?
• 1:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's an understatement.
• 1:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: The guy is a Holocaust denying Jewator that threatened to wipe Israel off the map.
• 1:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: He stole a second term with regulations that sparked a massive protest movement that kind of movement these rallies had hoped to foment with this war.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm obviously not happy to read about a failed plan for regime change, but I gotta say this.
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: This plan was probably not a good one.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: actually let me put it this way.
• 1:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was bad.
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: But here's the good part.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: The regime is still on its back foot.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: The military strikes did a lot of damage.
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: The economic war is taking its toll.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: The people of Iran are still saving and it might not take too much additional effort for the regime to reach its tipping point.
• 1:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody seems to know where Ahmadine Ahmadinejad is right now.
• 1:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's okay by me.
• 1:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was not the man for the moment.
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is someone else out there though
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Iranian Nelson Bandela, somebody that can bring real change.
• 2:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know where this person is folks, but I hope the U.S. and Israel don't stop looking that people of Iran are still hungry for liberation.
• 2:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now for your headlines, headline one, some more sanctions hit the books this week.
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Trump administration rolled out another batch of Iran sanctions as well as a second package targeting foreign individuals associated with Palestinian terror groups and the Gaza flotilla that has now been disrupted.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Two are leaders of the popular conference for Palestinians abroad or PCPA as their own.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: and two are affiliated with an organization called Sammy Dune.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Both groups are friends for Palestinian terror groups.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ter, uh, treasury also slap sanctions on Muslim brotherhood networks that support Hamas, including multiple individuals who've worked with a brotherhood offshoot based in Egypt called Hassam.
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know me, I like some sanctions.
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Keep them coming, but let's not pretend that any of this brings down the regime or its proxies.
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: More work is needed, but I'll take incremental progress any day of the week.
• 3:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: headline two, it's official Hamas has a new leader in Gaza.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: His name is Muhammad Odeh and he previously served as Hamas's intelligence chief.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's kind of a, I don't know, oxymoron.
• 3:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, Odeh is replacing the short-tenured Isidine al-Hadad who was killed in his really air strike last week.
• 3:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Odeh is a name known to many of us Hamas watchers, but let me also just add that the terror group is scraping the bottom of the barrel here.
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: This guy has about
• 3:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're thinking about making a bet about how long he stays at the home in Gaza, here's my advice.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Take the under.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Headline 3, the world's largest cable lane company suspended work in the Persian Gulf after a run demanded that the company obtained permits and pay fees to continue repairing subsea cables.
• 3:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: The shake down continues with the regime violating international law in multiple ways while tries to project power in which should be an international waterway
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: at what point will America's western allies begin to grasp that the Islamic Republic is a threat to them too.
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Time to join the fight foes, and if you ask me, it's time to finish it.
• 4:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Headline 4 is really troops reportedly found that Document and Gaza last year indicating that Hamas spent the January to March 2025 ceasefire, training new recruits, the Document outlines a seven-day training course involving combat, first aid training, anti-tank tactics,
• 4:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: 116 out of 121 recruits, purportedly completed the course, 12 of them with high marks.
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what that means really, but anyway, if I'm not mistaken, the majority of them were all under the age of 18, they blow up so fast.
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And a couple of late breaking nuggets before we go to our interview, Jordan shot down a drone in its airspace as the Iranian threatened war beyond the region if the fighting resumes the United States Senate meanwhile is inching toward a measure that might try to curb Trump's war powers.
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure how much teeth that has, but it's worse monitoring as all this drama plays out.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Alright, it's time to press play on a pre-recorded interview that I did with Ryan Broves.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: He is deputy director of FPD's Center on Military and Political Power CMPP as we call it.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ryan focuses on U.S. defense strategy, military posture, and security cooperation across the Middle East, Europe, and East Asia.
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: We caught a recently to talk about drones.
• 5:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: You could say we'd drone on and on about how they are reshaping modern warfare, while they're so hard to stop and what's in store for us next.
• 5:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, have a listen.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the FTD Morning Brief Ryan Brosd.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me.
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good to have you back, repeat a fender, and all that.
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want to talk about drone warfare.
• 5:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And well, I want to drone on and on.
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want to maybe just start with if you could help frame this for us.
• 6:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean,
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: We watched really with these railways and I guess the Germans that really pioneered this back in the 1970s They started using drones in ways that no one else had they were basically miniature airplanes back in the day We have evolved enormously over the last half century here.
• 6:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: So Where are we right now with the use of drones?
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: It seems like everybody's got this technology and it's getting more dangerous
• 6:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: as things evolve.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
• 6:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's a couple of trends in drone warfare, one of which you identified is that a lot more people have them.
• 6:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's been a huge proliferation of drones throughout the world and recent years, particularly stemming from a conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
• 6:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: But there's another trend as well, in it drones are getting smaller and smaller.
• 7:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you were to hear the word drone, you know, and maybe 2005, you'd think of an airplane-sized reaper drone flying over Afghanistan.
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then we get a little bit smaller.
• 7:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: We get two things like the Shahed 136, that's, you know, maybe 400 pounds.
• 7:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now we're getting into the proliferation of millions of FPV drones, which are just a couple pounds, a few hundred dollars, it can be used to very lethal effect.
• 7:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so let's, maybe we'll start with Russia and Ukraine.
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: That has been a massive battleground for drone warfare since the 2022 conflict, right?
• 7:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: So tell us a little bit about what's happening in that arena.
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, drones have been used in the conflict in Ukraine for even preceding the 2022 invasion after Russia seized Crimea in 2014.
• 7:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: But really, they come to prominence in about 2023.
• 7:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: You see Chinese DJI Mavix being used to drop grenades, basically taking commercial systems and modifying them for military use.
• 8:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is since greatly expanded, there's hundreds of companies manufacturing FPV drones specifically for military use and a new development largely centered around fall 2024 with the Curse defensive is a rise of fiber optic drones.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: So instead of being controlled through a radio, they have a fiber optic cord that trails behind them.
• 8:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: The advantageous gives us that they're completely unjamable by electronic warfare, which is a huge advantage.
• 8:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And as we get to in a little bit, this is what Hezboa is now using at scale against Israel.
• 8:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Alright, so, and this is just, you don't have to forgive my ignorance.
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: This fiber optic cable is just like hundreds or thousands of yards connected to some remote control joystick, is that what's going on?
• 9:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, when you say that it's not radio-frequency, does this mean that it's actually tethered to something?
• 9:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it is Heather to something, you can think of it like a very long Ethernet cable, but these fiber optics are a very thin and lightweight, so you can have go large distances with them.
• 9:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are reports from Russian and Ukraine that there are ones that go to 50 kilometers.
• 9:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Most are going to be significantly shorter than that, maybe 10 to 20 kilometers, but that's still a very considerable distance.
• 9:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: and how do they make sure that like you don't have knots and I mean that that seems I mean it's like a simple question maybe just ignorant but I mean how do these things not get tangled up in trees or birds or I mean there's all sorts of things that you could imagine happening when you've got something tethered to a joystick back home.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so they certainly, that is a problem, and people were pretty skeptical of their effectiveness early on, but with specific kind of flying techniques, you can largely avoid those problems.
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Fiber optic is, you know, the actual cable itself is probably a little bit tougher than you might think, so at the right combination of tactics and materials, they can still be quite effective.
• 10:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: interesting.
• 10:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
• 10:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want to back up now to what's going on inside the Iran arena.
• 10:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: You just talked about Russia.
• 10:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there we've seen these shaheds.
• 10:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, we talk about Iran is being a drone superpower, or at least some people call it that.
• 10:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the Israelis are also waging drone warfare.
• 10:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, when I think about the opening salvos, the 2025 conflict, it was in Israeli drone base that actually became active and all the sudden drones are attacking all over the Islamic republic hitting their targets.
• 10:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: The U.S. is flying some drones.
• 11:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I believe this is the first time we've really seen significant drone warfare on the part of the U.S. as part of one way attack drones.
• 11:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I'm not getting all this right, but I mean, this is a pretty crowded airspace for drones.
• 11:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Am I getting that part right?
• 11:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, you certainly are.
• 11:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's, you know, as we said, there's been a large proliferation of drones with convergence on several, you know, different designs.
• 11:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: So they should head 136 is pretty similar to the Israeli Harap, which is pretty similar to a previous West German design from the 1970s.
• 11:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: you know, FPVs, they're, you know, a foot-wide quadcopter, there's hundreds of different designs of them out there.
• 11:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what we're kind of seeing is that
• 11:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: countries who are adopting these facets and utilizing them perhaps the most effectively are the ones that aren't significant conventional military powers such as Iran and Ukraine.
• 12:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of these middle powers that are at the leading edge of drawn innovation to make up for their deficiencies in other areas.
• 12:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what we're hearing right now is that the Ukrainians are now also the leaders in counter drone tactics right after the war broke out the 40 days of fighting between Iran and I don't know if anybody expected this but the Iranians obviously started attacking all the Gulf states.
• 12:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even though they were not directly involved in the conflict, drones hating all over the place and so you have the UAE and Saudi and other countries bringing in the Ukrainians to help them counter the drone strike.
• 12:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what did the Ukrainians have?
• 12:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like what's their special sauce that makes them adept at countering drones other than having a bunch of years more experience than these guys?
• 12:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, what are they doing to actually counter what?
• 13:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: the Russians have been doing in drone warfare.
• 13:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to break this into two different parts.
• 13:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: One is detection and the other is interception or countering the drones.
• 13:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: So as far as the detection goes, you need radar to detect them, but also the command and control abilities to actually
• 13:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: to the area, because if you're using long range systems to intercept the drones like Patriot, that's $4 million a shot and you really don't want to be doing that.
• 13:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: So if the Ukrainians have done, it's also developed a lot of other much more inexpensive systems to counter them, and some of these are pretty similar to FPB drones, they're small interceptors, a few pounds,
• 13:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, in the low hundreds of miles per hour, and can intercept the shaheads, and these shaheads aren't armored, so pretty much any damage them is going to make them fall.
• 14:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the Ukrainians have is, you know, the experience seeing the drones, sending the interceptors to the correct area, and then actually hitting them, and they have a lot of battle proven systems I give them their experience.
• 14:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: countering tens of thousands of the Russian variant of the Shah had won 36.
• 14:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I guess from a strategic perspective, I mean, I was pleased to see Zelensky visiting some of these Middle Eastern states, this idea that we're kind of unifying
• 14:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: fronts, if he will, that, you know, now the sudden you've got the Gulf States along with the Ukrainians and maybe these rallies and certainly the United States and I can imagine at some point Taiwan probably gets drawn into this, but, you know, we talk a lot about the access of aggressors here at FDD.
• 14:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's these, we're talking about the allies here now coming together and sharing this tech.
• 15:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is this, is this also being democratized in much the
• 15:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I certainly hope it is and hope it gets even more democratized.
• 15:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: The drone threat, particularly from FPVs, is very difficult.
• 15:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, Mike Tyson, we always say everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
• 15:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, in this case, the punch is FPVs.
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you're seeing a lot of militaries who think that they've done a lot of work to prepare for this threat.
• 15:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they actually face it.
• 15:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're not doing so well.
• 15:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: This happened to a lot of NATO countries doing exercises with the Ukrainians and running into a lot of difficulties.
• 15:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that also seems to be happening with Israel right now.
• 15:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's very important that the United States tries to coordinate information sharing between all these different countries, including ourselves, so that we can better defend against adversary use of drones.
• 15:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: make sense.
• 15:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: All right, let's talk about the FPV thing because this is what his ball is deploying right now against the Israelis.
• 16:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: You got Israeli forces that are kind of sitting on the border.
• 16:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're not really dynamic targets, right?
• 16:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're pretty sedentary, which I guess makes them pretty attractive for these FPV strikes.
• 16:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tell us about what's going on there and is there in Israeli counter to what's going on.
• 16:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so Hezboa has relatively recently in the past two months started releasing footage of FPV attacks against Israeli forces, showing attacks against infantry vehicles, and there was even one against a helicopter that was on the ground, fortunately that missed, but that was a very dangerous incident.
• 16:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a report that came out in May 11th, saying over 80 FPVs had been launched.
• 16:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: which I've told four soldiers in a civilian injured more.
• 16:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's certainly been more since then, we're probably in the low hundreds, but this threat is expected to grow.
• 17:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: For reference, Russia and Ukraine use millions of these drones each year.
• 17:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not tens of thousands, not hundreds, thousands, millions.
• 17:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is where the very early stages of this.
• 17:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are a couple of things that Israel can do.
• 17:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Israel is doing and can do better.
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: So kind of pre-launch targeting the supply chain of these drones is one counter or targeting the operators before they can launch your drones is almost certainly something the Israeli Air Force is trying to do.
• 17:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: During the flight of the drone, you can use electronic warfare to try to jam them.
• 17:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Although this doesn't work against fibroctics, the trophy systems on tanks.
• 17:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think a little turret that shoots an interceptor incoming RPGs has been modified to try to go out for FPVs as well, although the effectiveness of this is kind of unclear, and then you can use fire control systems on rifles or other anti-occurred weapons to try to shoot them down.
• 18:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then in mitigation, one thing that the Ukrainians can really help with is awareness, this requires small radars as well as radio monitoring equipment to kind of detect when the drones are headed your way.
• 18:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can also, you know, sit in armor.
• 18:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: like tanks, they are relatively survivable against FPVs, although multiple hits can certainly damage or destroy them, as well as nets and cages.
• 18:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I think the number one thing that the IDF can improve on is concealment and dispersion.
• 18:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're seeing these videos IDF soldiers standing out in the open, not kind of underground or in cover.
• 18:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's a prime target for Hezbollah
• 18:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: stop grouping up and start baking.
• 18:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hmm.
• 18:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is definitely, I mean, you get a sense, you know, for years we've been watching this, this sort of cat and mouse game, you know, we're, you know, groups like Hamas, and we're carrying out suicide bombings, so they create the fence, right?
• 19:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: They create this barrier, and then you begin to see the rockets, and then these really create I and dumb, and then,
• 19:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: they create the tunnels and then these really create the counter tunnel system.
• 19:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so now, you know, you get this sense with his balla, same sort of thing.
• 19:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: They've created this new attack method.
• 19:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the Israelis, I'm sure, are scrambling right now to figure out how to stop that.
• 19:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: But they haven't been, I mean, the Israelis have done pretty well in shooting down a lot of the drones that have gone longer distances.
• 19:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: The stuff that's come from Iraq or Yemen or Iran, right?
• 19:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is just simple iron dome or shooting stuff done with precise munitions from F-16s or from helicopters, right?
• 19:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's been that simple up until now, give or take.
• 19:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's correct.
• 19:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Israel's done quite well in countering longer range drones.
• 20:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is because one, because it's coming from so much farther, you have a lot longer time to detect and intercept the threat, and then to there are a lot more visible on radar, whereas with FPVs, you know, it's short range, you don't have a lot of time, and the low-level airspace is pretty crowded, you know, think, uh, you know,
• 20:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: balloons or birds are about the same size and radar cross-section as these FPDs.
• 20:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it makes it very difficult to detect and intercept and before they impact.
• 20:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let me ask you, I mean, low tech stuff, right?
• 20:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm just imagining just, you know, just shooting a shotgun that has, you know, like hundreds of pellets could be the kind of thing that, you know, and will spray.
• 20:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, is that the kind of thing that will shoot this thing down or nets, things like that?
• 20:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I mean, are these the sorts of things that they are experimenting with right now to counter it?
• 20:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so some some practice that shooting clay pigeons might be helpful, but it is a little bit harder when the clay pigeon is coming at you on an unpredictable course at 80 miles per hour.
• 21:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there's certainly some success in 80 miles an hour on a tether that's that's incredible and and just to be clear, these are all things you can, I mean, I'm not saying you can buy them at Walmart, but you know, the equivalent they're oven the military world is, is that what we're talking about here.
• 21:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, if you're talking about the radio control ones, you probably literally could buy that at Walmart, as long as you have the explosives to add to it.
• 21:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: As far as the fiber optics, they're a little bit harder to get, and the price has increased substantially recently, just due to high demand, but we're still talking perhaps low thousands of dollars, which is just not much for modern necessities, or substantial terrorist organizations, like as well.
• 21:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
• 21:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: All right, well, this definitely looks like a growing threat.
• 22:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: When we look at drone and you look at drone warfare in general, so we've got these various sizes and the variants and some of them are quads and some of them are motor operated.
• 22:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what's the role of China in all of this?
• 22:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I have been reading a lot about Chinese parts, Chinese ships, Chinese motors.
• 22:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Are they the significant perveyor of the parts here?
• 22:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is this a supply chain thing that we can tackle if we just actually start to address this out of Beijing?
• 22:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, they are a very significant supplier of all sorts of components, whether we're talking about propellers, engines, ships.
• 22:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: The issue is that a lot of this does have commercial uses, which makes it harder to intercept.
• 22:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Also, both the Russians and Ukrainians are increasingly producing their own systems, further kind of expanding the market there, a lot of these still rely on Chinese parts for at least some certain components, but I think this is going to be a very difficult task to handle from the supply train side.
• 23:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's just kind of always another company making them.
• 23:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: All right, it's a brave new world.
• 23:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: We'll leave it there.
• 23:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Want to thank you, right?
• 23:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Brost for joining us today on the FTD Morning Brief.
• 23:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me.
• 23:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Fascinating conversation.
• 23:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Got to say a little one settling two to sum it up.
• 23:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone has a plan until they get FPV in the face.
• 23:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to need to make a t-shirt or not.
• 23:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Either way, we've got to cut the fiber up to cable on this episode, folks.
• 23:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're craving more think tanky analysis, you know what to do.
• 23:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just head on over to fd.org for the latest from our experts and stop doing scrolling.
• 23:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Instead, try some smart scrolling on FTD social media accounts.
• 24:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Finally, if you want to keep this humble thing tank in business, just do it, just make and test it optimal donation at FDD.org slash and best.
• 24:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's easy.
• 24:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: You'll see.
• 24:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: All right, we're back on Friday, folks.
• 24:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I'll see you in 48 hours for more news, more analysis, and more chaos.
• 24:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Be there or be square until then, I'm Jonathan Chancellor signing off for FDD.