 Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Rehana Noshirbani. I'm a research associate here at the Freeman Air and Space Institute, and I'll be chairing this session today. A little bit about Freeman based out of King's College London School of Security Studies, the Freeman Air and Space Institute, or FASI as we sometimes call it, provides independent and original research and analysis on air and space power issues with the objective to inform scholarly policy and doctrinal debates in a rapidly evolving strategic environment. To learn more about our work and keep abreast of upcoming events and publications, please sign on to our mailing list. Additionally, please save the date for our summer event taking place at King's College on the evening of June 22nd. We will be sending out details to everyone on our mailing list. So again, if you have not already do sign up via our website or the link posted in this events chat box by my colleague Orla. A little bit, a little introduction to today's event and our panelists this afternoon, we will be discussing our, how states address shortcomings in air and air power and air domain capabilities and times of crisis with a general focus on Ukraine and Russia. The discussion will take approximately an hour. Please feel free to ask questions at any point during the presentation using the Q&A pod or the chat box. We will reserve time at the end of the hour to answer your questions. Today's discussion will be led by our distinguished panelists and recent FASI contributors, Dr. Julia Morowska and Dr. Daniel Salisbury. Julia is an independent defense analyst with 13 years of experience leading research in the fields of defense industry policy and technology applications. Until late 2022 she was a research leader in defense and security at Rand Europe. Her most recent publication for FASI is entitled drones and defense innovation in Ukraine, consolidating wartime ingenuity. Dr. Daniel Salisbury is a Ukrainian civilian and military led innovations that have enabled the effectiveness of unmanned aerial vehicles on the battlefield. Dr. Daniel Salisbury is a senior research fellow at the Center for Science and Security Studies and the Department of War Studies here at KCL. Dr. Daniel Salisbury undertaking a three year research project on arms embargoes as part of a liver room trust early career fellowship. Daniel is also an associate fellow at the Royal United Service Institute and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Her most recent publication for FASI is entitled Clipped Wings, question mark, the impact of arms embargoes on Russian air power in Ukraine and beyond. It examines the challenges posed by arms embargoes on Russia's air power and the coping strategies and tactics and may use to mitigate their impact. I'd like to extend my gratitude to both of our panelists for joining us today. And with that I will hand it over to Julia. Thank you very much Rehana. I just have a few slides to accompany my brief presentation to start us off. Another that serving as kind of a sort of end to end lecture or slide deck they will just present some of the material that I have used to formulate my arguments and to kind of start to examine this pretty complex and and vibrant area of defense innovation in Ukraine. I will just pause because you know I know that these things happen and Rehana can you confirm that you can see my slide that says Ukraine gaining advantage. Okay, excellent. Right, so I would like to start by confessing that even though this is an air power focused forum, my motivation for writing my short piece for FASI that Rehana mentioned as at the start and for looking at this topic. She said more to do with understanding this kind of, you know, multi layered space of innovation in battlefield technologies that is happening in Ukraine. And then with examining the nature or future of air power in Russia's war against Ukraine and beyond, although of course these two fields are very closely related and kind of one has led to many discussions of of the other. I thought that UAVs were a perfect case study or lens through which to look at this topic, because not only are they particularly, you know prominent feature of the war. But they also raise a number of questions that I mentioned about the future warfare in general, and the nature and extent of technological advantage on the battlefield. And also more practically, there was just a lot more information that I could access that had to do with UAVs and UAS unmanned aerial systems in Ukraine than than in other areas. Before I will focus my presentation on the creativity and ingenuity, which whole sections of Ukrainian civil society, as well as the military have displayed in adopting commercial and consumer drones for military purposes in developing bespoke UAVs and UAS for the armed forces and also in collaborating very closely and very dynamically with the so called end users, armed forces on the frontline in adjusting and improving their designs and ways of operating them. I will also touch on how the government has responded to this adaptation innovation so how it has also adapted in its own way. And hopefully we can have a discussion as well about why it is important for Ukraine's partners to support and nurture this innovation. So I will start just by outlining that even though some or many of you may have seen various Ukrainian volunteer groups crowdfunding for commercial drones for the Ukrainian armed forces, or perhaps you have read the press coverage of civilian volunteers getting together to experiment with arming consumer drones with grenades to then drop on Russian targets. This is actually a story that goes back to 2014. And this is when we have seen the first kind of tech-minded volunteer drone enthusiast groups, as I have started calling them, form in Ukraine in order to resist Russia's initial invasion and Russian-backed separatism in the Donbass region. And you can also kind of see this reflected in my selection of press articles from that time. These groups started using crowdfunding to purchase more complex UAV systems, as well as to adapt commercial drones, and to then deliver them to the Ukrainian armed forces, which at the time were, I think it is fair to say, underprepared for Russia fomenting separatism and also under-equipped. They also started themselves developing unmanned aerial systems, UAS, starting with small so-called DIY quadcopters and training Ukrainian soldiers to use them. These UAVs were chiefly used for ISR purposes, so for intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance, and this essentially means that they were used to observe and watch enemy targets and movements. What is interesting is that a small number of these groups actually evolved into established companies that are supplying the armed forces of Ukraine today, and I will actually touch on this later in my presentation as well. So what do we have today? And I have already kind of referred to this at the start of my presentation. Well, I think the first kind of phenomenon or development that I have started paying attention to when I was looking at this in Ukraine is just how multilayered, vibrant and kind of complex the UAV innovation landscape is in Ukraine. Within weeks of Russia's full-scale invasion a year ago, Ukrainian civilians, kind of with techie know-how or engineering backgrounds, started to self-organize to set up drone workshops or drone labs across the country. I have illustrated just a couple of examples here, some of which I also mentioned in my paper that I wrote for FASI. And it is important to note that these are civilian and volunteer groups, but they're also civilian military hybrid organizations like IroRozvitka, which means aerial reconnaissance in Ukrainian. And they're usually crowdfunded and they work or they tend to work very closely and directly with military units. Another example of kind of their creative activities is finding ingenious ways to adapt commercial drones, parts and materials for military use. So this for example includes equipping grenades to be carried by consumer delivery drones and then dropping them on Russian targets with enough precision and enough strike power to hit individual trenches and armored vehicles. It might seem relatively simple when I'm describing it, but those of you who have tinkered with consumer drones will know that it is far from simple, far from straightforward. For instance, developing an effective DIY strike drone required coming up with a suitable detonator. In this case, this particular drone workshop, I think used a nail and play-doh and a fixing 3D printed aerodynamic fins with glue amongst other challenges. I also think I read a news article in Ukrainian media about dismantling e-cigarettes for batteries, but I will need to follow up on that. But that is just to show kind of the level of creativity and the extent of variation, I think, as well as the really technical know-how in this area. In addition to these various volunteer groups and civic organizations, there is also a range of, well, fully fledged companies producing UAS and supplying the armed forces of Ukraine, which I mentioned earlier in my talk. This is not an exhaustive list. And I should also say like none of the slides kind of present exhaustive lists of what I'm trying to bring to your attention, but it's more an indication of what is out there, kind of a representative selection. For example, here you see Ukrabaronprom, which is a state-controlled defense conglomerate, and it has been developing a long-range strike UAV. So, you know, as far as Ukrainian defense industry, I mean, this is as big as it gets. A number of these companies, such as Ukraspets Systems and Atlan Avia, have actually grown out of the volunteer groups of 2014-2015 that I talked about in the beginning, where they have their roots in these early developments. And most of them predate the full-scale invasion, as do many of their solutions. However, it is important to know that currently Ukrainian firms make up only a minority of the drones that are required by the armed forces to try to approach decisive military victory. And a lot of systems come kind of from abroad as well by Ukraine's partners. What is also interesting and has gained a fair amount of media attention is that there has been a lot of startup activity in this space, which, you know, you might expect. And you can see here in my selection of kind of recent startups that have gained funding or, you know, have been able to exploit their innovations. And you can see that they have been active and kind of their solutions have been developed after or completed after the start of the full-scale invasion, which I think, you know, is revelatory in its own right, given the, you know, the uncertainty, the risk, the myriad of disruptions. In addition to this, I didn't put this on the slide, but, you know, I also kind of noted that there are a number of hobby groups and collectives, such as the Ukrainian Association of Drone Owners, which developed a counter-detection solution for UAVs and the NEPRO Regional Federation of Aeromodelling Sport, which actually developed a pretty lethal UAV, which is now being used by the armed forces. And reportedly it's particularly robust against enemy electronic warfare threats. I think it's important also to kind of underline that this ethos of experimentation and embrace of technology as a way, by the way, I should underline to, you know, to gain advantage against a numerically and quantitatively superior enemy in the face of Russia and also superior in terms of artillery power. This ethos of experimentation extends to Ukraine's armed forces as well. So, for example, there are a number of individual units that operate their own workshops dedicated to UAV innovation and to explosives for drones. And, you know, it is the one that I included on the slide is not at all a unique example or an isolated example. There's an ongoing and very active quest to develop the perfect drone grenade, for example, that could be light enough to be carried by and dropped by a consumer drone worth, you know, several thousand US dollars, but powerful enough to damage a Russian main battle tank, which is worth up to half a million dollars. You know, other units and even at the brigade level have set up their internal it or innovation hubs to solve kind of thorny issues through technology around logistics and communications. In addition to UAVs and, you know, counter UAV solutions. I think it's important to kind of appreciate that what has made a lot of this work is, I mean, there are a number of, I think, trends within kind of broader trends within Ukrainian society that permeate to the military that we can, you know, talk about later but I think kind of most relevant to this point is that there's an autonomy of, you know, decision making, a spirit of experimentation and kind of the startup approach amongst the, you know, the lower level commanders, as well as instant communication network communication with with other units. I will, you know, I haven't continued with the slides but I just have kind of another, you know, another point to make before, before I finish my presentation for today. So far, I have focused on the supply side, so to speak, of of innovation, but it's important to note that the demand side, so the government and the Ministry of Defense have also been adapting and responding to it. You know, firstly, there is a greatly simplified, well, I will call it a procurement procedure, but then I will kind of explain what it is and I think you will see, you know, the ingenuity of it. There is a greatly simplified procurement procedure for existing UVs and also kind of acquisition methods for UVs and other innovations that are still in development. So essentially there's a dedicated website and an email address created for kind of producers and developers to apply for exploitation of their technologies by the armed forces of Ukraine. So I will open the door to purchase of these demonstrators and eventually inclusion in the inventory of the armed forces. And, you know, during one month in late 2022, the Ministry of Defense announced that it has accepted seven types, types of domestic UVs for exploitation. And, you know, this is compared to kind of one to UV types per year during during the pre-war period. In December of last year of 2022, there were also 19 more applications from Ukrainian producers that were being reviewed. In addition to this, the Ministry of Digital Transformation in Ukraine has also been active in this area. So you, some of you might have heard of the drone army initiative, which is a joint initiative of the general staff of the Armed Forces Ministry of Digital Transformation and United, the United 24, the official fundraising platform United 24 of the Ukrainian government to kind of build up Ukraine's drone arsenal. There is help for defense startups in general and obviously this includes some UV startups, they are in fact a prominent feature of the startup landscaping Ukraine. So the Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine announced plans to help domestic drone manufacturers kind of solve components supply problems by creating supply hubs. And the Ministry of Digital Affairs actually has reoriented the Ukrainian startup fund to specifically fund military technologies and effectively distributes grants to two startups. So as you can see, it really is a, you know, it's a complex space, it's a vibrant space. I think, you know, there are a lot of themes that we can take from this, you know, one side kind of has to do with with defense innovation. And in general in UAVs of course specifically but also in general and kind of what the Ukrainian experience reveals, such as you know how important and how difficult to achieve actually two way communication between volunteers and end users is or developers and end users. How essential that kind of, you know, continued feedback is to iterative improvement. You know the potential I guess but also the limitations of consumer technologies kind of consumer of the shelf technologies, the engagement of civil society in this effort, what it takes you know to kind of set up and run these drone workshops or these drone labs that I talked about. And of course, you know what the soul means right what this means for Ukraine's defense of its territory for any counter offensive that may happen for Ukrainian victory, but also more conceptually for the future of air power or, you know, the future of warfare. You know, we've seen kind of a debate about whether or not the tank is obsolete whether the next war will be a war of drones. I mean I have. I imagine I'm going to go ahead and call myself as a general skeptic about these types of pronouncements but of course you know we do see some important changes taking place. And I hope we can pick up some of these themes in the discussion. I will, I will conclude now and look forward to to talking with you and also to dance presentation. Thank you. Thanks Julia. I'm just going to share my screen. Now, hopefully this works. So yeah thanks for that was really interesting. I'm seeing some nodding which is which is positive. My presentation I guess is a little bit more of a kind of a full presentation based on the paper that I wrote, and the contents of it. You know apologies for that. But I promise there's at least some some good pictures in there as well. So I thought it begin just just to give you a sense of what I'm going to talk about quite a little introduction to the paper, the question that I was addressing a little bit of historical context of embargoes and airpower and in in past past cases. And then I'll try and explain the lessons and the kinds of insights that I derived by looking at historical embargoes developed a little bit of a framework in that respect. And then I will try and say what I think this means for Russia and Russia's war in Ukraine. So just a little bit about myself and my background. I kind of started off as a bit of an accidental nuclear historian in a way looking at the British nuclear case. But a lot of my work has been on export controls and illicit networks and, and the ways that states get hold of technology that others are trying to prevent them from getting hold of. And I've always had an interest in aircraft and aviation. And I think it is really one of the places where arms embargoes can, can kind of most visibly cut through in because of a number of reasons that I'll talk about. So now I kind of think I've gone a bit from being an accident as a historian to being a little bit of an air power tourist. So, you know, any softball questions on air power are gratefully received. So the paper is about arms embargoes. But I also think it is about adaptation and essentially state responses to arms embargoes and obviously it involves humans working with technology and the aviation space. So I think it does talk to Julius working in some ways as well. So obviously I don't need to provide too much context about Russia's illegal war in Ukraine. But, you know, Russia has been subjected to various arms embargoes over the years, you know, throughout the Cold War. It was cut off from a lot of technology from the West through through things like COCOM. Before 2022 when the full-scale invasion attempt occurred, you know, there were various embargoes in place. I think the EU put in place an arms embargo after the Crimea seizure in 2014. But since the full-scale invasion in February 2022, we've seen, you know, a massive kind of tightening of these, these kinds of things. These kinds of restrictions moving from arms increasingly to kind of different areas of dual use technology of used to defence, but also other commercial industrial sectors. We've seen a lot of the efforts to tighten this over time. And we've got some data on the challenges and responses to these embargoes here, but a lot of it's fairly limited. And in the aviation context, obviously, you know, Russia is trying to fight a war. And with this comes a lot of other stresses and pressures on a wartime air force. So the question really I wanted to ask is, you know, given we have some insights into what's going on in the Russian aerospace forces, you know, are there any lessons that we can learn from historical cases here about how states cope. And embargoes and air forces, you know, I'm taking a really kind of broad definition here. I'm not just looking at cases where states have declared an embargo. I'm also kind of talking about embargoes that are not a name through through export controls and other technology restrictions. You know, we've seen these used against air forces and air power from the earliest days. A couple of examples here, you know, I was looking into the development of the open air force in the 1920s and 1930s and there was a lot of restriction there on technology provided by the sort of European powers. And the Versailles Treaty on the restrictions on German rearmament after the First World War did also create kind of a lot of pressures and a lot of inventive ways of getting around them, including these glider clubs. Air power is challenging, you know, we're getting very much higher barriers to entry now than in these cases, you know, it's all about very complex systems of systems. And, you know, a lot of great, great stresses and pressures, you know, physically on the materials involved. You know, in my mind, this makes air power kind of a really interesting place to look at the impact of embargoes and ask really is this where arms embargoes can bite. So what I did was I looked at some historical cases and I tried to kind of put together a framework which is, you know, in the paper on the left here that you can find on the Farsi website. And my main kind of framework is on the right here. And what I tried to do is to sort of think, okay, how have states historically responded over time? Are there kind of similarities between the ways that different states responded? You know, what really shaped those responses? And I guess the meat of this really is what I kind of termed coping strategies and tactics. And two main strategies here are kind of dependency strategies. So that's where a state isn't really able to produce a lot of this stuff domestically, you know, as we're limits on capability there. So it's having to do things like stockpile, cannibalize older airframes and also try and get around the embargo in terms of procurement. And then self-sufficiency, you know, states have a larger domestic industrial capability. They might be able to produce their own airframes, produce their own spare parts and even go as far as innovating. I looked at the time frame, so stockpiling, for example, is a pre embargo strategy, whereas the others are something that you can do during the embargo. And also, yeah, the biggest factor, I guess, in some sense is the technological capability of the states from very basic to sophisticated. So just to kind of really straighten this a little bit, a couple of the cases that I looked at that I thought could be kind of interesting to share. So Iran is kind of a nice, a nice case, you know, bargained after the 1979 Revolution. And before that, under the Shah's regime rule, they procured a vast number of US origin combat aircraft and about 95% of the of the Iranian Imperial Air Force at that time was imported from the US and this included F4s and F5s, so you see all over the world, you know, very easy to get spare parts for those on the black market, but also the Tomcat F14, which Iran was the only operator outside of the US Navy. So the 1979 Revolution saw spare parts cut off, but also a lot of support as well. I think there are about 800 or more Grumman technicians in country working on Tomcat that all left. And immediately, the Iranian Air Force had to start cannibalizing its airframes, a lot of kind of elaborate efforts to buy very spare parts on black markets. And also sort to kind of procure complete aircraft from other supplies when it was available to, that was able to, so a good example there is the large amount of aircraft that left Iraq on the eve of the Gulf War. And I've got a couple of documents here that the CIA kind of crest, freedom of information reading room is really interesting here. You can find kind of their assessments of where the Air Force was so a lot there in 1980 talking about the F14 and the kind of critical questions about how to obtain desperately needed spare parts and technical assistance and another example of 1984, which talks about two thirds of Iran's invention, eventually being non operational and, and you got to remember they were also fighting the Iran-Iraq war at the time. So also under sort of similar pressures. There have been more some more recent efforts to for self-sufficiency in the case but a lot of these machines look quite similar to things like the F5. And actually Iran was under an arms embargo in some form as a result of the nuclear standoff and from 2010 to 2020 and we're talking, people are talking about a deal by Russia to sell attack aircraft to them now and then. So this embargo and its effects really have endured a lot over time. A second example that I want to talk through a little bit with South African, I think this falls a little bit more on, on moving towards self-sufficiency. You know I was lucky enough to be in South Africa a few weeks ago and was able to go and see some of these systems in various museums and on kind of crowded hangers on air bases and that kind of thing. And here I think we had more attempts to maintain and but and also to sort of move towards replication or innovation. And I guess more obviously developed a huge industrial base at a time under embargo. And a lot of this capability in the aviation space came, I think from licensed production arrangements and in the 1960s that were were transferred before the embargo. And I guess one of the most famous examples was the Atlas cheetah which was an upgraded version of the Mirage Street that it obtained from France and then and was able to upgrade with Israeli support so that nice picture there on the top right. But but a variety of other domestic projects to and I think, you know, by the time that it's out the apartheid regime collapsed and you know South Africa really was moving towards, you know, self-sufficiency in some ways and the denial of a helicopter, for example, is something that is fairly unique, indigenously designed capability and there was talk as well of a fourth generation fighter jet that was canceled in the early 90s to and arms corp obviously continues to exist, you know, in South Africa I guess has almost an oversized defense industry, I guess as a result of its time under embargo. So where does Russia fit in with this. I mean, it's a little bit different from some of the cases that I explore in the paper. You know, I explore everything from Rhodesia to South Africa to Iran to Iraq to North Korea. And Russia really, you know, it has a large and advanced defense industrial base, you know, unlike many of these other cases. As a fast jet manufacturer since the late 1940s in some sense and it hasn't been directly dependent on other states industrial capabilities in terms of design and manufacture of aircraft. But we do have evidence that there is still some dependency there for constituent technologies. So particularly talking about things like electronic components and various manufacturing technologies. So I guess Russian in this way is is is kind of going to use some strategies that are based on dependency and some of the based on self sufficiency if you go back to my to my framework that I presented earlier. Just to kind of talk a little bit about this history of dependency. So obviously, you know, throughout the Cold War there were massive efforts by the Soviets to gain access to Western technology. And I think the time that we really learned a lot more about this was in the early 80s. So the gentleman on the on the right there Vladimir Vitrov was a Soviet kind of intelligence officer and he had been involved in what was known as the line X program which was to to procure Western technology using almost any means available. And so in 1981 he betrayed his country and he handed over 1000s of line X documents to the French intelligence services, which were then passed over to the to the US and circulated amongst allies, and and and led to the kind of Western intelligence assessment of a massive well organized campaign by the Soviet Union to acquire Western technology illegally and legally for its weapons and military equipment projects. And some of the projects that they mentioned in these documents included fighter aircraft to ground attack aircraft and also transport aircraft. So I think this is, you know, something that seemed quite quite far away in a sense but you know after looking at some of the wreckage that was taken off the the battlefields of Ukraine, you know, maybe not so so far in the past. Another example that I found that kind of betrays at least some dependency is is the transfers of French technology before and after 2014. It's included things like navigation systems cockpit display screens viewfinders for various different aircraft and it caused a bit of a political scandal. And I've heard as well that that some of the some of the systems and then kind of operating systems on these aircraft also use kind of similar patterns of logic to to the these French systems. So, you know, what are we seeing from Ukraine, you know, the so the Soviet Union or well now Russia has has taken a lot of course expanded a lot of effort to try and indigenize production of a lot of these types of technologies. They try and domestically produce some of these electronic components and stuff and kind of proof itself against sanctions and embargoes. But, you know, since the invasion, a lot of the wreckage and thing, things that have been taken off the battlefield analyzed by various people has shown, you know, vast amounts of Western components in these systems. These as well are kind of household names and electronics that we all know. There has been less evidence for granted aircraft. I think they've been much fewer losses in this area. You're talking about 60 to 70 fast jets that have been lost were compared to, I think I read it the other day over 1000 T 72 tanks. We have to have a kind of a growing data set in this regard and an example here that I took from from Twitter of an SU 24 and that was part of the wreckage was also full of these Western components. So, I think, you know, we will almost certainly seeing Russia stockpiling and cannibalizing your stockpiling before the embargo came into place and a degree of this is normal. But obviously stockpiling with intent. One worrying I guess about future contingencies when the future sanctions come into place is slightly different from from stockpiling for other reasons and you're going to see cannibalization to to a higher degree. We haven't seen a huge amount of evidence in the military space with kind of cannibalization. But it's something that we definitely are seeing a lot of talk of civilian aerospace sector where a lot of aircraft are Boeing and Airbus. In terms of illicit procurement. We're seeing a lot of evidence of illicit procurement networks in action. Some of this relates to aircraft and procurement of aviation technology. And I just provide one example here from October 2022, which was a kind of interesting mixed network where five Russian nationals and two oil traders were were indicted. They were procuring sensitive military and Jewish technologies from US manufacturers including advanced semiconductors microprocessors using fighter aircraft missile systems and other things and they're also involved in the trade in Venezuela and oil which is kind of an interesting mixed aspect of this network. Obviously at the same time you've got a lot of wartime stresses and pressures and then also corruption that are feeding into this. I think when once once you enter wartime a lot of the standard maintenance checks and you know, I guess general general maintenance that you do on airframes kind of goes either out of the window or is on very much reduced schedules. And also the general risk appetite of these organizations has to change in some way. We are seeing I think some signs of this. There have been increasing number of, of airframes lost outside of combat. And Justin Bronke recently put together a great report on the kind of state of current aviation and in the war. And he said, you know, each each one may be individually explained by Buzz strikes pilot error or technical failures. However, collectively they suggest that eight months of work taken a toll in terms of accumulated airframe and air crew fatigue. There's a lot about the impacts of corruption and seen a lot of that kind of stuff on social media. A lot of this I think related to expendable items where the accounting systems are a little bit easier to trick. We've seen other other kind of technical fixes like the the sat nav that's G clamped to the, to the instrument panel down in that picture, although I, you know, speaking to some of former Air Force officers they said that the Brits did this in Kosovo as well and it's not just purely about corruption, you know, there are the other kind of morale connected things to do with this perhaps and I think it is really difficult in some sense to differentiate between the impacts of the embargo other wartime pressures and stresses and also just general organizational issues. So, as far as, as I'm aware, and from digging through some Russian language sources, Russia is still producing SU 35s, some new frames were handed over last year. So production hasn't completely stopped. And you know maybe this is an effect of the stock piling strategy. From my understanding the biggest impacts of the embargo will be be in the medium to the longer term. And also on on some of the next generation projects that are already already stretched and already kind of failing to produce in the plant timeframes. And I guess this is probably because they rely on more advanced foreign and imported technologies, especially in the areas of electronics and manufacturing equipment. And I guess this does does lead to some questions about the future of Russian air power and the future relevance of the Russian airspace forces. So Russia is obviously struggling to compete with NATO's air power now. And one of the questions that came up in discussions for this paper was really, you know, what does an embargo do there's those 10 years of embargo set you back 10 years or does it potentially sent you back 20 years or more. So I'm hoping the embargo to bite and this is kind of why I do a lot of my, you know, separate to my work on on Russia's air forces and aviation. A lot of more resources has gone into kind of enforcing these export controls and sanctions, you know, huge challenges here and engaging the private sector. And I think a lot of this relates to the to the nature of the electronics industry, the dual use issue. The way that distributors are so prominent in the supply chains and some of them are are, you know, distributing millions of different unique products. There's obviously prominent role for certain hubs for electronic procurement say Hong Kong and China stick out in these supply chains. And also that there's the challenge that many states either either don't care about the sanctions or they have reasons that they don't want to kind of get involved and join the the Western sanctions coalition. And I wrote a piece a little more focused on on the role of the private sector here at a UC blog last last summer so so if you're interested in this point you in that direction. But just to conclude, you know, I think one of the biggest factors here in terms of the future. In terms of the outcome of the war in Ukraine and in terms of the future state of the Russian airspace forces is really the China factor. China so far has supplied some Jewish technologies. We've seen new stories that are based on trade data that show that some of these Jewish technologies are flying from China to Russia. You know, China, as well as being a producer is obviously one of these key nodes in these types of supply chains. And one of these stories did talk specifically about $1.2 million worth of parts for SQ 35 that were transferred from a major Chinese state and enterprise. But China so far has stopped short of supplying complete weapons systems into the into the conflict zone into Russia. You know, I guess there's a discussion and kind of noise in the media about what future transfers can include and drones or I don't like the term but kind of kamikaze drones or suicide drones. The types that we've been or similar to the type that we've been seen transferred by Iran was something talked about as a potential transfer from China. Obviously, Xi Jinping and Putin met in February 2022 just before the war started and talked about an limits partnership and I think there is discussion of a future future meeting in the next month or so between the two leaders so a big question here is where does China want to position itself and what are the impacts going to be. So to conclude with some thoughts on an adaptation that maybe talk a little bit to Julia's presentation. You know, obviously wielding air power is based on humans and organizations and networks as much as it is based around technology and the ability to adapt is also hugely important. So thinking, you know, adaptation actually is really important at all levels when you're in a situation under great pressure to deliver, you know, issues with supply chains, issues with getting technology through not being able to do things in the normal way that you would in peacetime. So the ability of effort leadership effort structures and offices to adapt technicians and mechanics, whether this is how they adapt their programs or even even just finding short term fixes to small small problems and in the frames and then in the tech itself, and then also procurement organizations and networks, you know how it is adapting. So the concept of resilience is kind of used in the business world as the ability to bounce back from from various types of shocks. But I guess embargo is also just one source of these kinds of shocks, alongside all these other things that we discussed with the wartime pressures and losses, economic and political pressures, issues to do with corruption all that kind of stuff. But I guess at the end of the day, a really healthy organization is a strong organizational culture are key to being able to to be resilient. And it was interesting in Julia's presentation when she's talking about some of these new structures that have been having like really big effects with with some of the drone technology. And that's one of the questions that will be quite interesting is is our, our traditional, you know, larger hierarchical organizations as good as dealing with these these kinds of issues as some of the smaller ones. So I think that's, that's me. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Both of you. There was a fascinating presentation. I actually personally have a couple questions, but then I'll go to the audience. If that's okay. So, I'll just present both my questions, if that's okay. So for Julia, in your presentation you've implied that Ukraine's international partners and NATO and beyond should support the defense innovation and currently taking place in Ukraine. The West is already supporting Ukraine with weapons and training can you explain what the value would be in doing this. And then just, if you can put a pin in that for Dan, there's been a lot of discussion recently about new technology controls in on China in this is this also part of an attempt to constrain our power and will we see any new multilateral control arrangements in this regard can you also kind of comment on what happened recently. The Financial Times. It was last week, it's at the US just issued sanctions on Chinese companies for supplying parts to Iranian drones. Julia, do you want to. Yeah, no thanks Ray those are really, really fascinating questions and. Yes, it's, it's not a. Well, yes, is everything about the situation it's a bit of a complex answer I guess. You understand why the West or Ukraine's, you know, allies and NATO and beyond should support defense innovation Ukraine in UAVs in robotics and beyond you really have to kind of segment it a little bit so. I think, firstly, if you talk about the immediate operational need or the immediate operational requirement of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. I mean, you know, UAVs, you know, drones, whatever you want to call them loitering munitions have been really essential to to Ukraine's defense to the counter offensives, particularly in the ISR capacity. You know, they obviously reduce the need to go beyond enemy lines for instance to gather intelligence. You can, from, you know, like an individual unit position you can spot a potential convoy of Russian armored vehicles approaching approaching your positions so they're really kind of the eyes of the armed forces they direct and correct artillery strikes of Ukraine, you know, if you've been following the news which I'm sure everyone on here has been. You know, you know that Ukraine is facing a major artillery constraints are really cannot afford to waste any strikes and strike accuracy is important. I think the most important thing is that Ukraine, the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense is very focused on preserving life. You cannot see Russia have this constraint right and preserving life of the of its armed forces and and due to, you know, still the technical limitations of many drones, the operators have have to actually be quite close to the frontline so they're very, very exposed. And of course, the drones are not alone in the airspace right it's a very contested airspace there are a lot of vulnerabilities that they face there are a lot of Russian drones as well. I mean, recently the economist had an article about while a dogfight between a Ukrainian and, you know, and a Russian drone so currently you actually see drones trying to strike each other. So, that's to say that the, you know, the average life of a drone, especially these kind of adopted commercial drones on the frontline is two to three weeks and basically the point is that Ukraine needs a lot of them. And, you know, a number of kind of sophisticated complex military drones have been supplied by the West but simply it's just not enough for all of the operational need. So, I think you have seen from my presentation that while a lot of systems that Ukrainian industries developing do have quite long lead times you know they're already others that are in that are operationally ready, or that have been developed relatively are being exploited. So, you know, you have kind of if you if you can actually accelerate that and help that and help the Ukrainian development community and the Ukrainian industry to fill that operational need. Then of course that's a huge short term benefit. But in addition to that there are medium term and long term benefits, I think to the West as well as to Ukraine. So, defense innovation is essential to a, you know, a sustainable and a healthy defense industry that can actually fulfill the requirements of the armed forces and you know, ultimately prevent a war of aggression such as we see Russia waging. So, in terms of, you know, building Ukraine's post war long term security and future a robust defense industrial base is absolutely essential and I think if we have seen anything it's that Ukraine cannot really rely on supplies of weapons systems from from abroad you know when it needs to have the type that it needs to in the quantity that it needs to in the time period that it needs to. So defense innovation is a way of, of achieving that. And lastly, you know, I think Ukraine actually has a lot to, I think, to share with the West in terms of lessons. I have been working on defense innovation for a long time. And, you know, time after time it's very similar issues right it's kind of stove piped organizations within, you know, within the defense ecosystem that actually make absorption and adoption adoption of new technologies really complicated you know and that kind of that kind of gap that exists between all of the innovation we see in the commercial space and the defense space is really wide. And that's an issue for everyone and Ukraine in the West I mean Ukraine has been quite effectively closing that gap overcoming that gap. So I think there is a lot that Ukraine can share, you know, in addition to obviously testing a lot of this technology in the field, you know, I mean flying a drone in the US desert is not the same as having an enemy trying to you know, interdict it or trying to shoot it down and that's, you know, that's experience that Ukraine can share with the West. That's amazing. That's fascinating. Sorry for the long winded answer I feel strongly about some of these things. Dan, did you want to comment on that or can you actually answer the, you can also just answer the question I asked earlier do you want me to repeat that though. It was about China. Yeah, yeah. So, here's another long winded answer. China in this is I think really, really fascinating. You know obviously it's just kind of a key strategic competitor emerging as a key strategic competitor with the with the US. Obviously, I guess it has some interesting keeping other other US allies tied down in Europe and other allies defense expenditure tied down in Europe. It's a power on the rise where as I get the sense that Russia is really declining and declining, you know, more rapidly by the day. But also the role that it has in markets, you know, it's the huge, huge market for exports from all over the place and just generally in supply chains as well. Just just due to its sheer size and the way that its economy is developing and, and it's increasingly a technology producer as well so there's a whole range of different kind of roles that it plays in this, in this picture. Obviously, the West and the US are very concerned about China's military progress and trying to constrain that as well. But, but as well they're also probably worried about the possible supply of arms and Jewish technology to Russia. And so, you know China China I feel like the defense industry is still greatly dependent on on advanced electronic components as well in a similar way to how Russia is and so you know Biden's new semiconductor controls on semiconductors. It relates I guess to all range of defense related projects including including aviation projects. And these, these controls on semiconductors and the US has really tried to start to multilateralize these, but given the nature of these kinds of supply chains and the immense importance of a small number of countries, like Japan and the Netherlands and elsewhere. You know the efforts to multilateralize these controls has been quite kind of focused at the moment. I guess people, maybe wondering whether we might see some kind of new cocom like arrangement emerging. And so cocom was the multilateral export control arrangement between kind of NATO countries in Japan and I think possibly Australia during during the Cold War. It was a real kind of informal operation right out of Paris where if states wanted to export stuff that was on the list to to the Soviet Union or Warsaw Pact they would they would you know seek the approval of the other other members. And I think coming up with something like this that is overarching is even more challenging in this climate. And it was challenging during the Cold War because the position between between the US and the Eastern Bloc and the Europeans in the Eastern Bloc was very different. You know the Europeans, due to geography and other factors had a lot more connections with Russia and it was quite difficult to to kind of get get them to refuse to send stuff sometimes and I think China's got an even more kind of central position in these in these global supply chains and markets and that kind of thing. So I think it's going to be really difficult. The Iranian drones. So this was sanctions on entities in China. Yeah, so on the Iranian drones, I've seen increasing efforts by the US and partners to really to try and hit Iran's industry. In this regard we've seen a lot of sanctions and designations and export controls and other other tools as well. It isn't really that surprising that this has all gone back to China. And a lot of this technology that's in these Iranian trains especially the Shahads 136 and 131 is pretty basic technology. You know it only has to really work once a lot of the engines because the propeller based engines are actually manufactured by I think a company that makes motorcycles, motorcycle engines. So technology is is kind of off the shelf technology as well, but that's easily purchased from from places like China say. I'm not surprised that the US is kind of acting in this way, but also is a really challenging space to actually have any impact in because of the sort of ubiquity of this of this technology. Yeah. No, that's true. It's fascinating. So Julia, I'm just going to the Q&A box here so I'm sorry if we're like jumping from topic to topic. But that's the way to keep it fresh right. Make sure that we're listening right. So I'd be interested to hear Julia elaborate on her comments about trends or aspects of Ukrainian society that make the population more open to embracing innovation in the defense area. Yeah, sure. I'll be trying to be brief on this one. I think these trends are probably demographic societal kind of labor market related, and I guess historical. So, the first thing to say is that Ukraine has a very vibrant and very active civil society, which has a really large propensity for kind of self organizing right so that's why you saw a lot of these groups kind of emerging and a lot of that what you would, what you would think our state functions have actually been done in a grass roots way, including, you know, getting some of pretty sophisticated kit for the Ukrainian Armed Forces without the involvement of the Ukrainian government. But in addition to that Ukraine has a very high level of education attainment. It is, it has a very strong history of, you know, stem education and kind of stem focus within education. And more on the defense industrial side, it has obviously still a very strong legacy of Soviet defense industrial production, you know, including in some really sophisticated areas such as complex weapons or missiles. And I think, you know, more recently, kind of after, you know, obviously the fall of the Soviet Union but also with the emergence of of it and the Internet. Ukraine has actually really emerged as like an IT powerhouse of of Europe with, you know, really kind of strong engineering backbone. That also happened in Russia, I do have to say the key difference there though is that while you know the Russian market was large enough to basically sustain a lot of these newly minted, you know, highly paid for the local labor market. So a lot of the IT specialists, Ukraine, you know, didn't have that luxury so a lot of the Ukrainian kind of developers and IT specialists, and those just you know with engineering software skills had to, while a learn English, you know, to put it very simply and be to get jobs for international companies so you know you see kind of you saw a lot of people work for international enterprises and then kind of like bring all of that experience back to join the war effort and obviously that really helped. Contacts as well that they were leveraging and coupled with that, you know, Ukraine and Ukrainians have, I think it's fair to say demonstrated that they have a very strong and keen sense of independence and sovereignty, and that was hugely kind of accelerated in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and the Russian back separatism in in Donbas so I think all of that kind of coupled together, plus, you know, they're the Ukrainian government has actually especially with the Zelensky administration has a pretty high risk appetite for, you know, trying digital solutions. So, you know, the way like the life, I guess, of the average Ukrainian is a lot more digital and digitalized when it comes to interaction with, you know, any kind of state function or local government function than of the average, you know, bridge based on my own experience. So I think it's really kind of conglomeration of all of these trends. No, that's great. Dan, in terms of export substitution how quickly do you think Russia may be able to address this in terms of defense and defense aerospace. That's like, I guess the million dollar question isn't it. And I, you know, I sort of hesitate to give an authoritative answer, specifically because I'm not, you know, if I had more of a background in electronic engineering or, you know, kind of thing. You know, one thing that I've observed is that it's efforts in this area have been going for a very long time. And a lot of, you know, there's a lot of communications about this in state media and that kind of thing that they're talking up what Russia has managed to achieve in this area. I think it is quite possible that there has been some level of success. But then also you see leaked reports and I think I said a couple of examples in my paper, where actually a lot of the components and even even some of the sort of systems that Russia has been producing a long long time are still of Western origin. And I guess one of the questions that relates to this really is it comes up a lot in relation to sanctions and arms embargoes is, okay, obviously sanctions make life more difficult, you know, having technology cut off makes life more difficult for states. But does actually the act of having it cut off and having technology refused. Does that actually drive progress towards sort of indigenization and domestic industry. I think in this case, you know sanctions really won't help. And a part of this I think is because I imagine that the Russian defense industrial complex is, is quite dependent on Western manufacturing technology as well as as components. Obviously, during wartime industry is focused on on many other things, rather than than kind of indigenization although the sanctions are going to mean that it is going to have to think about that kind of thing more. So, another part of the equation is that a list of procurement is actually not that difficult. And obviously it's going to become more difficult as the controls get tightened and you get a bit more enforcement and states become a bit more aware, but Russia's been well, well practiced at this. And one of the things that I found as well that's quite interesting is looking at other cases of things like North Korea is that actually when you open up North Korean missile wreckage. You find Western components in there but not necessarily stuff that's complex to produce. It's actually these Western components that are some of the easier things that they could probably do themselves. But maybe they are more interested in the Western components for the same reason that everyone else isn't under sanctions is interested, you know, maybe their higher quality. Easy to procure is cheaper to buy from someone who does this as a specialism. So yeah, really good question. I'm sorry that's another rambling answer with that without a real kind of, you know, X number of years. Sorry, I was just going to say I am surprised when you say that illicit procurement is easy because I don't know somebody who like studies defense procurement right. Honestly, it doesn't seem that easy to I suppose if you're not if you're not abiding by laws it kind of reduces a lot of bureaucracy in some senses as well. I mean, maybe I don't know if there's like a lot of questions in the box but I want to ask a couple questions myself later but that said, um, so for Julia, have, sorry, have you seen any signs that either Luch or Eugenia? For your neighbors. Design Bureau, Design Bureau have shown any interest in UAV development. Good question. Yeah, thanks Ray for that. Yeah, those are those are kind of, you know, pre war and fairly well established Ukrainian. Well, defense outfits really. I have been specifically looking out for Luch. So in, I want to say 2020 Luch unveiled a completely, you know, 100% Ukrainian developed designed and produced strike UAV called the so kill 300 which is Falcon 300, which has been called like a Ukrainian model or Ukrainian, you know, version of Bayraktar TV to. I mean you can debate whether that's accurate or not but that's that you know that's kind of how it has been dubbed it was presented at the, I think 2021 IDEX kind of Defense Expo in in the UAE. And you know you would, this would really be like, I think a huge asset to the Ukrainian effort in this war. You have, you know, I'm sure everyone who's who's still here at this on this webinar will probably have followed it's like the impact that Bayraktar has had, especially the beginning of the war and kind of the initial you know defense against the invasion. What I have been able to to find kind of in the Ukrainian media is that it's still undergoing kind of final, you know, trials and tests, it's still not fielded. But apparently the armed forces are, you know, waiting with baited breath because it's a it's a real sort of prospect. And I think this is an example, right, of some of the themes I was talking about like number one, that traditional, well, yeah I guess you could call them traditional, but kind of sophisticated, relatively sophisticated complex strike drones right that can actually meaningfully strike and not just carry kind of handmade or carry grenades in a handmade way. Do take a long time to develop, they are quite important it also has ISR capability, but yeah from here you know unfortunately I haven't been able to kind of go to Ukraine and do this field research from here it looks like it's still in in kind of undergoing final testing. I'm kind of consolidating two questions here for Julia, can you provide some examples of ways allies can support UAV innovation and to kind of on the tail end of that. Have you noted any sort of acceleration in EU and particularly German support for Ukraine in this area perhaps or more generally particularly after the tank debacle. Yes, the tank debacle yes although can I just say that like after that tank debacle has been addressed by Germany. We have not seen the some of the countries who are you know we're speaking the loudest against Germany follow suit and actually make good on their commitment to to take well we can we can leave that I think for later. No but I think. Yes, in terms of what the West can do I think. Well, firstly, there are a number of frameworks and kind of industries or instruments that exist to facilitate defense innovation, you know, in what including in reviews and obviously robotics. One of them is Diana it's defense, I want to say industrial accelerator but it's essentially a startup accelerator under the NATO auspices. And Ukraine, so Ukrainian startups don't currently have access to it, but it's you know for me it's an easy when it could be done, and I think it should be done. The other kind of aspect of it is helping kind of Ukraine work out its own defense innovation understanding and acquisition mechanism as well because I think you can have as vibrant of a supply side as you want right like I mean you can have these kind of super ingenious amazing examples but I think if, if there's no kind of systematic way that lasts beyond the war, you know, and is not kind of like this very creative stop gap measure of just coming up with an email address of acquiring that innovation and bringing it to scale and and you know bringing it to kind of exploitation by the armed forces, it's going to unfortunately with their way and die and the Ukraine allies and kind of NATO and beyond have a lot of experience with addressing these challenges. So I think helping you know you know helping Ukraine build a defense ecosystem that works for Ukraine would be another hugely important aspect. So German innovation and support right or support German support to Ukrainian defense innovation. I mean to be honest I haven't seen anything from Germany in, in particular, other than I think there is, you know, a pretty kind of interesting sexy German drone startup that has been supplying Ukraine. I think, again, I mean I'm not just because I'm not aware of it doesn't mean that it's not happening there are a lot of, I think, efforts happening at the bilateral level as well or initiatives you know they haven't yet emerged to the level of effort. And I think Germany has actually a lot of potential as well and could offer a lot of insight. So that's interesting. And it wouldn't be as you know as like hand wringing hand wringingly difficult as supplying tanks so it should really consider it. Yeah. Dan. Okay, here we go. Although it appears that Russian commercial aviation is struggling. Is there any information on Russia transitioning commercial air resources into the vks where there is transfer is feasible for example mechanics components, etc. Thanks. It's a really interesting question I hadn't really thought about. I haven't seen anything specifically. And I haven't seen much beyond the stories of a widespread kind of cannibalization and also, I think there was stories about putting together a system for certifying kind of cannibalized parts in the Russian press. And the point you obviously got some similar skills that I guess one of the questions would be how long it would take to kind of reorient some engineers and technicians skills to work more in a military context. And as well. If Russia has reduced air traffic if it's flying fewer civil aircrafts. And I think there are restrictions on flights in different different directions you get a kind of a lower demand from the civil sector. But then at the same time if if you're running short of supplies and you're having to kind of use cannibalized parts and stuff there's probably a higher demand for engineering and expertise to keep those few planes flying. And then also I wonder as well how many engineers and technicians and some kind of support that Russia had that was from Western companies has been withdrawn. You know I was thinking that the Tomcat case where it was 800 Grumman engineers left in really quick short time frame and they had to really struggle to adapt there. So yeah, it would definitely be interesting to see more data here. One thing that we have seen that's kind of interesting though and I wonder whether Russian civil operators are getting involved in this to support the military effort is we've seen cases where where Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, you know, civil civil body has been used as a kind of a procurement body or has been used as an excuse to procure dual use and complex technologies and I know Ross or Tom as well has said that it's been willing to sort of support the procurement mission as well as the state nuclear company. So I wouldn't really be surprised if civil aviation channels also aren't being used to obtain components and obviously a lot of the stuff that goes into civil liners is very high end electronics as well. Although maybe not military grade. And yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if it's being used even if it is also illegal in some way under the sanctions regime but thanks interesting question. Amazing. Sorry, I'm just trying to Julia. What is the state of counter UAV technology being used by either Russia or Ukraine in this conflict. Yeah, good rain promoting acquisition of these as much as UAV, as much as UAVs and lowering the initiatives. Yeah. Well, I will focus in Ukraine because you know I think there are enough people kind of looking at the Russian side. I have been. Yes, counter UAV solutions have been like a secondary almost focus well for me not necessarily for Ukraine. And, you know, in connection with looking at sort of what's happening in the, in the UAV space, it is I will say that it is a major focus right now. So a lot of the kind of startup activity that I described or, you know, the, the sort of drone experimentation activity has now shifted, or has shifted I would say probably from, I don't know, maybe September of 2022 sort of onwards to trying to come up with counter various counter UAV solutions. I think if I had to say like relative prioritization, you know, of acquisition by Ukraine or kind of development. I think it, as you might expect it has probably followed it. Right, so it is a major focus now. It's probably not yet as prominent in terms of, you know, kind of the one number one the media attention and therefore the research and everything that we have. And probably in terms of the battle ready solutions that the Ukrainian innovation space is producing but it is obviously something that Ukraine has repeatedly requested help on from from allies and partners. As I said it is, it is also, you know, it's no less vibrant space let's let's let's put it that way you know I think those same startups that I talked about are also working on. Counter UAV solutions. Amazing. Dan, Russia has relied on illicit procurement for many years. You spoke about some cases from the 1980s. What's new and what has changed. Thanks. That's another great question and it's one that I'm interested into the point where I'm basically working on a book on on that. I think there's a lot of kind of similar characteristics and themes and trends that are really, I mean illicit procurement has always been about deception and deceiving export controllers and intelligence agencies and industry. And sometimes, you know, not not deceiving so much. And then I guess you get into definition of what is illicit and what isn't and, you know, there's all kind of gray area there. But I think what I guess what we've seen, maybe is that you are seeing the same types of things and the same activities and acts just performed through different mediums. So all these always been demand driven networks. You know, quite a lot of the time they've been run by intelligence operatives or kind of people that stick between intelligence, you know, Russian and state intelligence and then kind of state commercial kind of purchasing organizations or just just business more generally. They extensively use kind of third country hubs or third countries so you know you base yourself somewhere that isn't Russia and you make it really difficult to work out that this, this country that you're sat in whether it's the UAE or Hong Kong or anywhere is, is, is, is, you know, not something that the exporter should be worried about. And then it's, I guess traditionally it's been a lot about falsifying paperwork, you know, adapting as necessary to avoid enforcement. And I guess the way that maybe that we've seen things change a little bit is, you know, now it's, it's all about email business to business websites, you know, Alibaba, you know, these online market places that provide huge opportunities as well as the sort of more traditional, you know, going to trade fairs and shopping and making business connections. And I guess the other, the other thing as well that maybe we've seen change a little bit is, is some different third countries, you know, third countries will become more or less appealing for these networks depending on the amount of enforcement activity that's going on there, the amount of interest that say US and Western intelligence are playing and having these in these kinds of activities, you know, different social and economic trends that you might get a certain economies becoming more developed so then it becomes easier to advance goods there because it seems like they might actually be used there rather than being transferred onto somewhere else. And I guess the social aspect as well that I like to talk about is that you get, you know, different social reasons that different groups of middle men and intermediaries or middle women and might want to use different jurisdictions is maybe that they know people there they have higher level political cover. There's a certain level of corruption and nepotism that allows them to operate without too many problems so I think that's, you know, there's a lot of stuff there that is the same and you know looking at documents from the 1950s. And finding that, you know, here's a here's a list of procurement modus operandi that really is the same as now, but then also new technologies and then general political trends as well mean that these networks do change a little bit over time. That's me. That's fascinating. Yeah. To what extent do you think tactical UAV use can replace traditional control of the air for Ukrainian armed forces. In a nutshell, they can't, because I think, you know, they do that's, you know, my view I am those capabilities do really, really quite different things. So, you know, tactical drones, of course, have been essential to kind of is our and scale have given Ukraine that that scale that it needs to mount those kinds of operations, you know, out of necessity, they've obviously been equipped with like DIY DIY strike capability but there is no substitute for kind of establishing control of of the airspace or, you know, kind of leveraging the air domain to win a war and kind of mount lethal force at scale, especially in the, in the case of of Ukraine and the current war if, you know, Russia becomes more kind of Russian Air Force becomes more risk, you know, risk happy with using its aircraft against Ukraine following any potential counter offensive by Ukraine, then, you know, tactical drones, Dan, to pick you off to piggyback off of your previous question with regards to illicit procurement, the sort of deepening relationship between Iran and Russia, do you think that this is a little bit selfish because I'm actually kind of writing about this but do you think that there are lessons that Russia can draw from Iran the Iranian experience. Yeah, so that's that's really interesting over a piece about this with the with a colleague at Roussi was published between Christmas and New Year really so probably everyone missed it. But but I guess in terms of the maybe direct lesson learning is difficult to prove. And I guess as well that Iran, you know, can provide, you know, 40 years I guess or more of experience in that in that space, you know, Russia can provide 70, 80, 90, 100 depends where you want to stop, stop counting like in this book project I'm actually starting to look even in the 1920s when really early days of, of kind of Soviet international trading organizations and infrastructure was was going to be put into place. You know, I think that there is, there's definitely scope for networks to be leveraged and you know there may be ways that Iran has found to get hold of certain things easily that that could help Russia. But then also I guess there could be a case of competing demand there as well and you know the listen networks I guess a smaller than kind of legitimate international trading networks as well so you have to be wary that in this kind of smaller space maybe there's more scope for competition too. So it's kind of a mixed messy picture and as always with these kinds of understanding these illicit networks that the data set is very limited. And yeah I think as a brand I'd say Iran is probably almost more tarnished than Russia is at the moment so you know if you're an industry and you receive suspicious inquiries originating in both places. I don't know which one you'd be less likely to want to pick. But it's something we can discuss more I think it is really interesting how that relationship is developing right now. Well, yeah, I mean, there has been some sort of overlap with like sanctioned circumstances, you know, circumventing sanctions. Yeah. And that's the only other thing I think is that sanctioned countries and sanctions economies tend to trade a lot with each other because they, you know, they don't have it is easy, you know, they don't have a lot of other options. I mean, there's a lot of other options also said this procurement it can be very easy. But, but, but I guess, you know, if you're if you're kind of in this in this kind of pariah zone together, then you might kind of at least try and benefit from what each other can can can offer. Oh God. Yes. Yeah, I'm just that there's there were questions in here so before I kind of get carried away with my own. Oh, what did I do with that question was sorry. Here we go. I asked that. Julia, did I ask this question can you provide some examples of ways allies can support UAV innovations and also what can you the Ukrainians do. Yes, you did. I would. Yeah, but I mean, no, no, no, not in that way I would quickly just add one thing. One thing that I think allies can do that's a relatively that I haven't mentioned that's a relatively, you know, easy win to be honest is to actually create a framework by which you know, Western or you know, NATO, whatever, however, whatever phrase you want to use defense innovators can actually collaborate with Ukrainian developers away as well in a structured way, you know, kind of going beyond this ad hoc, you know, let's try to find some guys on Twitter and LinkedIn and then talk to them and find out what they need a lot of it that's that's how it's happening right right now. Yeah. Dance moves. Is there anything Ukraine needs to do to improve and consolidate its defense innovation. Well, I think yeah I did hinted this. I think a lot of what I described you know this kind of like upstart activity I guess that's that's happening is by necessity quite ad hoc. And, you know, it is obviously driven by by the war so Ukraine really needs to embed and systematize it right and I think a huge chunk of it is actually understanding how defense innovation can and should be integrated into the the defense industrial base and kind of the capability cycle and the inventory eventually of of Ukraine and and you know even understanding the potential of technology how you acquire innovation how you differentiate between different technological solutions what the value of it is, and then of course work out the processes to to enable it. I think that that's going to be a major effort. Yeah. Dan, you've studied arms and logos across the board for a while. Where do you think they bite the most is an air power air forces airspace, rather than land and sea. So, I mean I think I think it really depends on a lot of factors I mean this is a typical academic response right, having studied it for a long time. But obviously, you know depends a lot on the states existing capability defense industrial base capability. You know who they're trying to compete with as well like a lot of the cases that I. I looked at sort of the Rhodesias and South Africa's of the of history. They were they were not really competing with other advanced air forces, you know they, a lot of the time, they had a high degree of our superiority to begin with. You know I think it depends a lot what you're trying to try to do what you're trying to achieve and. I think a power is always something that has been kind of inherently challenging. You know obviously involves higher end technologies, things like materials, developing engines very challenging advanced electronics avionics optics all that kind of stuff. But then there are also other other areas of defense you know if you're if you're building radars for marine kind of use. If you're building missiles, you know for other applications as well you're going to, you're going to be requiring some of the same sort of high end technologies as well so you know I think I think it is challenging for for power and aviation. And I think you better but also it can be challenging for other other applications as well and it's all very dependent on context. Yeah. So the historian and me really enjoys this question, some of the cases that you use are really old was the game. No, that's that's fair and I, I mean, in the paper, the cases aren't quite as old as in the presentation so I, you know, you're probably all grateful I didn't didn't go on to sort of ramble on on Ethiopian capabilities in the in the 90s. I hear if it happened in the last century it's not really history. Yeah. So yeah I think. Yeah it is it is difficult and in a way to generalize and I yeah the technology is very different right. So even if you go back to to say, Rhodesia I mean I really about Rhodesia they, they had a transport aircraft that was flying in 1979 before the country became Zimbabwe that actually had dropped power troopers on and bridge in 1944 I think it was. You know they're running hunters and campers which was like what the UK I guess was running in the 50s. You can't really compare that with with with Russia's trying to develop these next generation systems now and the aircraft and become so much more complicated and. And it's a really interesting work done on this that tries to kind of capture the changes in the complexity. But at the same time, you know I think there are some kind of similar challenges that you can talk about the responses over time are actually kind of weirdly similar as well and that's how I was able to kind of capture them in that framework I hope. And it's ultimately, you know, it's humans and it's technology and it's about how they, how they interact and it's it's about, you know, issues of technology absorption of technology. And so the literature on kind of technological diffusion really talks about that is absorb absorption capacity sorry missing, missing my words here now. It's really important, you know, as much as it is about kind of mastering the technology it's about the organizations and the culture and those kind of softer factors in how you can absorb the technology that determines how well it diffuses. No, that's fascinating. I'd love to continue. So it looks that unless there are any other questions I want to thank everyone who joined us today, particularly Dan and Julia. Thank you guys. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and insights. I think that at this point it's the secret that I find both of your work absolutely fascinating. I look forward to whatever you have coming up next and continuing the collaboration with Fasi, you know, as for our audience. Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed the event. And if you like this you will love what we have in store for you so please join our mailing list to keep abreast of our upcoming publications and events. Again, we will be hosting our summer events on the evening of June 22 at King's College will not be virtual. For more detail please join our mailing list via our website or the link in the chat box hosted by my colleague Orla who's the other star today. Thank you so much for helping setting this event up. Thank you again to everyone for joining and have a lovely rest of the day.