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Sophie O'Sullivan
The telegraph.
Peter Lee
How is it that Iran, a heavily sanctioned country, is able to produce these? Because it is a heavily sanctioned country, because it could not get the high technology, the advanced technology it was using, whatever it could get. So engines are really cheap, really easy to make.
Mykola Beliskov
A short time ago, the United States military began making major combat operations in Iran.
Sophie O'Sullivan
Today, President Trump says Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in the attacks.
Peter Lee
The Pentagon is weighing a takeover of that island as a way to force the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran begged for this ceasefire and we all know it. Does anyone really think that someone can
Sophie O'Sullivan
tell President Trump what to do?
Mykola Beliskov
Come on.
Sophie O'Sullivan
I'm Sophie O' Sullivan and this is the latest. It's Friday the 5th of June, 2026. It's the 98th day of the war and the 58th day of the ceasefire. Both Roland and Venetia are off today, so I'm stepping in to help. And I've got a great Friday special episode for you. I'm going to be doing a deep dive into Iran's shahed drone. How did it evolve? Why is it so effective and what's the best way to fight it? I'm going to be joined by two experts. A Ukrainian military analyst who has seen the impact of shaheds up close in his country's four year war with Russia, and a British academic who has studied drones for 15 years. I normally work on our sister podcast Ukraine the latest. So this brutal weapon is one I know very well from Russia's prolific use of them. But first, a quick look at the latest news from the Middle east to day. Yesterday we brought you a few lines from the leader of Hezbollah's speech which was happening as we were recording. Now we can bring you a bit more information plus his reaction. Hezbollah have officially rejected the new US Brokered ceasefire agreed between Israel and Lebanon on Wednesday, describing it as Satan's dream. This ceasefire would renew the fragile truce between Israel and Lebanon by agreeing to create a number of pilot security zones inside Lebanon, which Hezbol militants would be banned from and eventually be disbanded. But the leader of Hezbollah has rejected the agreement, saying negotiations with Israel was shameless and claiming that the removal of Hezbollah from Lebanon would risk destabilization. In reaction yesterday, Hezbollah fired at Israeli troops in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military said the Iran backed group launched several rockets towards IDF soldiers, one of which was intercepted. No injuries were reported. Meanwhile, Hezbollah has said it struck down an Israeli tank near the strategic Beaufort Castle in Lebanon and targeted a newly established Israeli army logistical support centre near the castle. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also been under internal criticism from his own government ministers for accepting the ceasefire deal, with his security minister labelling it as a serious mistake. In other news, Trump has insisted that the US should have control of whatever enriched nuclear material or nuclear dust, as he likes to call in Iran. Iran has uranium that is enriched up to 60% purity, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. This is only a short technical step away from weapons grade levels of 90%, but Tehran is refusing to give it up despite the Trump administration repeatedly laying it as a key factor in the conflict. Trump said last night, we could get it right now. I don't think they could stop us if we wanted to, but there's no reason to. It's entombed. Meanwhile, the UN nuclear watchdog has said it is concerned about Iran's nuclear proliferation and called on Tehran to resume nuclear inspections. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the iaea said in a report that it is indispensable and urgent to implement the Non Proliferation Treaty Safeguard Agreement. The agency has not had access to some key nuclear facilities in Iran since Israel and the US launched a 12 day conflict in June 2025 that saw strikes on nuclear sites. In other news, Israel secretly deployed elite military and intelligence units to Azerbaijan during the Iran war, according to cnn. The report suggests the move was part of a network of COVID sites across the region so Israel could facilitate operations against Iran, sources familiar with the matter said. Two sources said Israel's forces operated out of multiple locations in southern Azerbaijan adjacent to Iran's northern border. The COVID deployment was one of several military locations Israel had during the conflict, with sources saying others included Iraq, the UAE and Somaliland. As our listeners will know, Israel also ran at least two secret bases in Iraq, which have caused diplomatic tensions since they were publicly revealed last month. That's all the news updates as of midday Friday. Coming up, how Iran came up with the world's most effective low cost drone and why even America is copying them.
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Mykola Beliskov
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Sophie O'Sullivan
You're listening to Iran, the latest with me, Sophie o'. Sullivan. The Iran war has been shaped by the Shahed drone. Although much has been made of Tehran's missile capabilities, it's its UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles that have caused the most issues for Iran's neighbors. Once mocked by some Western commentators as a crude flying lawn mower, in the first week alone, Iran fired more than 2,000 drones at Gulf states, targeting everything from US military bases to oil infrastructure to hotels. A drone attack was responsible for the biggest US Loss of life in the war, an attack on an American base in Kuwait that killed six. It's a problem that Ukraine knows all too well. Russia has adopted the Shahed with gusto, renaming it the Guran and firing thousands at Ukraine every month. So how did heavily sanctioned Iran come up with such a deadly and effective weapon? What lessons can we learn from Ukraine about how to counter shaheds? And is anyone in the west close to developing a competitor? To discuss all of this, I'm joined by Mykola Beliskov, a research fellow at Ukraine's National Institute for Strategic Studies and senior analyst at the Ukrainian military NGO Come Back Alive. And Peter Lee, co director of the center for Defence Risk and Resilience at the University of Portsmouth, author of a book about the inside story of Britain's drone wars and a former RAF chaplain. So, Peter Mercola, thank you for joining us. Just to kick off, maybe you could both give me your top line assessment. Just how good, just how good is the Shahed compared to other drones?
Peter Lee
Frankly, it is not a very great drone. That's the whole point. It is cheap, mass produced, but very capable. And I think that's its secret. And then when it is used in mass numbers, that's what gives it its deadly nature. So it's actually not an impressive drone in itself, but the way it is used can be very, very disruptive and very hard to defend against.
Sophie O'Sullivan
And Mercola, you've experienced the impact of shahed drones. What's your perception of how good they are as a weapon?
Mykola Beliskov
Well, it's the first kind of one way strategic attack UAV because before it was mostly reconnaissance battlefield UAVs that most people have in mind. So the fact that Russia was able to introduce them at scale and employ them in combined attacks, unfortunately makes them quite capable and quite effective in a negative sense because they carry from 50 to 90 kg of TNT. And if properly programmed, if proper flight paths, unfortunately they can generate a lot of damage and a lot of headache and a lot of dilemmas for air defense. So this is the first of the UAV and unfortunately it proved to be very instrumental in a kind of war. Russia is waging and also Iran is waging.
Sophie O'Sullivan
Maybe we could just describe what the drone looks like, because as opposed to what some people might consider of a sort of commercial drone that you can buy in the shops, the Shahed drone is a very different machine. Describe for me, Peter, what the components of the Shahed drone are and how it works.
Peter Lee
Well, its size is about 3 to 3.5 meters in length from point to tail and that's about 3 meters wide. And if you're imagining a triangle sitting on top of a square, that's what the overall shape looks like. It can carry, as Makola, just saying, 50 to 90 kilos explosive at the front where it's weighted. And it has a two stroke basic propulsion engine that has what they call a push blade. So it is driving the drone forward through the air with a very simple two stroke engine which gives off a particular noise. And then inside the drone itself, it has various components for navigation, for guidance, depending on what quality of build it has. So the Russians are upgrading some of their drones to include aerials which they can use to update its targeting even when the drone is in the air and assist with anti electronic warfare. So those are the kind of basic implements. And one last thing which is getting more important, and that is the Russians are increasingly painting them black so they are harder to see and detect against the dark night sky.
Sophie O'Sullivan
An interesting bit of history about this drone is that it sort of clubbed together from imported parts, possibly stolen technology from various different countries outside Iran. It's been mocked by some Western commentators as a flying lawnmower. But how is it built? Where are they building these drones?
Mykola Beliskov
Well, first of all, some people have an idea that the design, the shape was stolen from Germany. There is a kind of reconnaissance UAV introduced in 1990s by Germany. It was stolen by Iran. Actually. The technology is not very sophisticated, not very demanding. So it's a Composite material. Again, it's combustive engine that is imported in case of Russia from China, basically. So it's not very demanding. The very fact that Iran pioneered this kind of technology was because of the sanctions. So they tried to find a model not to do a classic military building relying on jets on main battle tanks. So they mostly rely on missiles and UAVs. And this explains why Iran, which is very sanctioned country, underdeveloped country, was able to introduce this technology and give Russia to opportunity to employ them against Ukraine and also instruments for Iran itself. So it's not very demanding in terms of technology materials used in it. Right now Russia is almost self sufficient if you're talking about Russian production. So the war in the Middle east doesn't affect at all the supply of this kind of UAVs for Russia, Ukraine, war.
Sophie O'Sullivan
In terms of launching a shahed drone, how is it done? I've read that they can be launched from the back of trucks even, which makes it hard to find where they're being launched from ahead of time. Once it's launched, how is it controlled? What is its range for launch?
Peter Lee
Another term you'll hear is it's launched on rails, so it can be off the back of the truck or on the ground. It's certainly highly portable and initially what the drone needs is to get enough speed to maintain airborne flight. The small petrol engine that drives it does not give it that initial speed. So it needs a short burst of something like rocket fuel, something more explosive just to get it moving. Then once it's on an upward trajectory with the engine running, that is sufficient to keep it airborne. And because of its shape with, it's basically a very wide flying wing, it has a very large surface area for the air to compress underneath and continue with lift. So getting it going, it needs that bit of explosive start and then once it's going, it will fly quite slowly for an aircraft, maybe perhaps up to 180 kilometers an hour, but often maybe 150, 120. So they are quite slow. They are able to fly very slowly because of the wide lift surface without falling out of the sky. So that's really quite an advantage for them. It means that they don't need a tremendously powerful engine once they're flying and the engines that they've got are sufficient. Or to answer something you said in the introduction when you asked, how is it that Iran, a heavily sanctioned country, is able to produce these? Actually, you turn that on its head, as Mykola has done, and Said it produces these because it is a heavily sanctioned country, because it could not get the high technology, the advanced technology it was using, whatever it could get. So engines are really cheap, really easy to make. Any avionics. They come from China. China is always going to keep supplying Iran, regardless of international sanctions. And that's really the clever part is the guidance systems. So once they're guided, they're programmed. Usually the cheap ones are set in advance to follow a certain pattern to a certain area. But it's not like GPS guidance where you can with say a UK Reaper drone or Protector drone, they could fire a missile. And whatever building you are in, they are so accurate it can choose which window that missile is going to hit. The Shahed is not like that. It can head towards some reasonably accurate coordinates, but not exactly precise. And that's why it's very terrifying in the beginning because over Kyiv and other places the noise would be heard and people would not know where it's going to hit. So the Russians are putting more accurate guidance systems in, but that makes it more expensive each time it launches. So they have a trade off between more accuracy, costs, a lot more money and might still be intercepted. So it has got better capabilities for accuracy in hitting targets, but it is not an extremely precise weapon.
Sophie O'Sullivan
So unlike a first person drone, as you mentioned, the Shahed isn't controlled by somebody on the ground. It's pre programmed to its target. Does this mean it's easier to intercept because it can't change direction once it's on course? Or is that something that's built into its operation?
Mykola Beliskov
It's still quite a demanding task. It's not that easy. Yes, the fact that there is no human in the loop means inability to correct within the trajectory. Though some of models we intercepted has this ability unfortunately. But it was experimental and luckily not large scale phenomena. Not the common thing that you can adjust the trajectory. But it's still complicated because again Russia rely on the sheer mass. So right now, Ukraine, every single attack experience 600, 700. There are cases where it was over 1000 of both attack and decoy UAVs. So it's still demanding and it's still complicated because again the sheer number is great. And Ukraine is simply too big country. And there is, let us say, natural advantage of attacker because you never know the trajectory of the next attack and you need to do a guessing game. And there were patterns, for instance, when we strengthened our defense to the northeast of Kyiv in Chernihiv region. And then these UAVs were bypassing in numbers through central Ukraine, doing a huge hook. Basically it's a continuous game. So we introduce Interceptor UAVs and now this Interceptor UAV is responsible for 35, 40% of all UAVs of this kind destroyed. But it's not as easy as it might seem given the sheer number of systems employed and also the fact that it's always a guessing game. You always need to decide where to place your assets in terms of air defense. And sometimes you are lucky and sometimes you are not lucky. And given the range mentioned, these UAVs actually can go as far as central, even western Ukraine, and then come back basically to Kyiv and attack from the angle that was not predicted before and not expected before. So it's quite a demanding business. In terms of intercepting them in proper quality, though now interception rate is over 90%.
Peter Lee
Wow.
Sophie O'Sullivan
So as you mentioned there, it's not just about the fact that these drones are very cheap. The intercepting of them is much more expensive than it costs to make the drone itself. I think it's been estimated that for every drone that's launched, it costs 28 times as much to take it out. Let's talk about the best way to disable these drones. How do you do it, Peter?
Peter Lee
Well, the defence system, air defence, Ukraine's or anyone else's, it needs to operate in a layered format. So at the high end, literally the highest altitude and the highest speed, you have ballistic missiles. So that's the highest quality of threat, if you like. And so in the current system, the American Patriot missile is probably the gold standard for, for intercepting those. And gold standard is the appropriate phrase because each missile costs about $4 million. So you really want to use a Patriot missile only for high speed ballistic missile attack and not use a patriot missile at $4 million for a 30, 40, 50 thousand dollar shahed drone or Guarantu drone. So that's at the top end. Then there are other missile systems supply by Germany, by the United Kingdom, by other countries, and then the systems that Ukraine is developing itself for medium altitude, medium speed. But again, those can still be very expensive at hundreds of thousands of dollars per missile and are for more advanced attack weapons below that, the real competition, the real challenge is to develop low cost, high success rate interceptor missiles and to go with the drones that have already been interceptor drones that have already been mentioned. And then the final line of defense is guns on the ground a few kilometers from whatever you're protecting. So you have all of these different layers of defensive system. Ultimately, whatever Russia Does. The more that Ukraine has to use high end, the most expensive, most capable defenses, the more it is costing Ukraine. And strategically that is advantageous to Russia. But now Ukraine is beginning to reverse that because the Ukraine attacks are becoming more effective deeper into Russia. And Russia now has to think about moving some of its air defenses and it now has the same cost to benefit ratio as it is defending Russian territory. So it's partly about explosive capability and it is partly about financial cost. And I think Ukraine is developing very well.
Sophie O'Sullivan
And just to bring that back to Iran as well, what are we seeing in Iran in terms of what's being used the most effectively in the Iran conflict? Can you use the same kind of deterrences in this different war zone? Or do you have to adapt differently
Peter Lee
in terms of the fundamental principles of air warfare? Control of the air is absolutely crucial. So you have control of the air, you have attack, you have logistics, if you like, moving things around. And so if you want to be able to attack your neighbour, you need to control as much of the airspace as you can. Your attack has got to be better than their defense. Now the advantage that Iran currently has is that it has been building up for this war for many years. It has been supplying Russia for many years. So it has a well proven technology and it knows how to use them. So mass attacks on uae, on Oman, on American infrastructure, the Iranians know how to use it, but these countries are not set up with the comprehensive air defense that Ukraine is so rapidly developing. So at the moment, Iran is having quite a lot of success. But inevitably the next step is for its neighbors to rapidly develop the kind of multilayered air defence systems that Ukraine is in the process of defending. So it is always shifting day to day, week to week. Iranians have had an advantage at this start and it's no coincidence that in the last weekend the Americans were attacking some centers of where the drones are controlled from. So the Iranians have had disadvantage to begin with, but over the coming months and years that advantage will reduce and reduce because its neighbors are not sanctioned. They can get better weapons, they can get more weapons. Iran, in a sense has invited the whole region to arm itself against Iran. And so any short term advantage will soon be wiped out.
Sophie O'Sullivan
So Mykola Zelensky has recently toured the Gulf, sending some 200 troops to showcase the Ukrainian drone interception technologies we've just been speaking about and has signed deals with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar. What exactly is Ukraine giving to the Gulf states? Is it knowledge, training, tactics or actual equipment?
Mykola Beliskov
Actually, all things you mentioned, they happened almost two months ago, it was end of March, beginning of April, back at the time. We try to demonstrate the capability, try to demonstrate the whole philosophy behind it because people first they equate interceptor with ability to shoot down specific UAVs, which is not, it's important, but it's also situation awareness. It's also specific short range radars for situation awareness and fusing the data so understanding what is going on. So this specific team, they were sent to demonstrate how it works, the mechanics behind it, and also these agreements that were signed, they stipulate some shipment, as far as I understand behind this Wagyu statements public one, some shipment of interceptors and related technology. But since the kinetic war at the scale we've seen ended at the beginning of April, thus it's impossible to say to what extent Ukraine was able to supply the states with interceptors because now it's not not an active exchange of strikes. Yes, there are some strikes which involve us, some strikes which involve Iran, but it's not the same scale of UAV attacks as it was in March, basically. So now a lot of people are doing a guessing game. So they say yes, you declared some ambition, but to what extent you were able to implement it's difficult to prove. But I think since now Ukraine military defense complex private entities are able to produce over 7,000 interceptors a month. So we can meet the needs both of Ukraine under constant attacks and also Middle east countries. So I think now these countries are making themselves familiar, they are learning how to use it. And yes, these countries resembled Ukraine maybe like in 2023, 2024 when it was only classic surface to air missiles. And in this case the mass is against defending countries. But with interceptors like sting, like P1 son and others, the exchanging in favor of the side that is defending. And it's unique Ukrainian knowledge because we were able to build the lowered defense involving different means among them UAV interceptors.
Sophie O'Sullivan
So the Iran conflict and Ukraine conflict have become quite sort of symbiotic in terms of technology exchange. First we had Iran giving Russia the licenses to make its own shahed drones. Then you have Ukraine giving the Middle east the technology and insights of how to defend itself. But has Iran evolved the shahed off the back of the Ukraine war as well? There are reports of carbon fiber coatings to evade radar, commercial SIM cards to alter routing in real time. What have we seen, Peter?
Peter Lee
Well, we've certainly seen some accurate strikes on UAE and particular and other places. So it suggests to me that they've Got some improved guidance systems on them. But again, that is not difficult to do. I think if you have a few good engineers, a few aeronautical engineers, you can just substitute one guidance system for another. You'll pay a bit more for it. But for the Iranians, that's worth paying because it has a bigger impact if they can hit the targets that they want. So again, air warfare, if going back more than 100 years to the First World War, thinking about the Europe situation, the British and allies and French would make some advantages and the Germans would make more advantages. And so there is always this competition. Now ultimately, I think when it comes to a competition of resources and technology, Russian and Iranian governments have some advantage in that their authoritarian states, so they can turn the whole economy of the state to support this kind of activity, at least until the state runs out of money. Whereas Ukraine and the Gulf states, the Gulf states have got a lot of money, so they're going to be able to spend a lot on defenses and they will make sure they've got a lot spent on offensive drones and other weapons. So there will be a very rapid development in the Gulf states on their defensive capabilities. And in Europe, I'm just as many of us are in such admiration of how rapidly Ukraine has developed from being a country that needed, say NATO expertise to learn how to fight in the early part of the war. Now NATO is sending soldiers to learn from Ukrainians how to fight. And so economically, as has been mentioned once, Ukraine can manufacture low cost, high effective interceptor drones and missiles. That is creating a defence market that then can boost the Ukrainian economy, bring money into Ukraine, continue to develop their defenses and make it harder and harder for Russia to have the success it has seen in the past. So yes, everything is quite interlinked and symbiotic.
Sophie O'Sullivan
So I think it's a good moment now to talk about how the west has kept up with this challenge. The US has come up with the Lucas drone, a low cost unmanned combat attack system drone. Reportedly this is based on reverse engineering a shahed drone and it was used for the first time during the Iran war. How good are the West's version of the shahed drone?
Peter Lee
Well, I think the west has the advantage that there is just such good technology available. So it is not expensive. In fact, it's very cheap to replace perhaps the material that the drone is made from. So if you produce with some kind of not glass fiber, but some kind of fiber material that has a very low electronic signature, it becomes harder to detect. Whereas if you have more metallic parts that give Off a bigger radar signature, they're more easy to detect. So the west doesn't need to make them that good. It's helpful to have some good guidance and it's helpful that they've got reliable propulsion. But all the west has to do is to give Russia the same problem that Russia has given them. And that is just keep them cheap and keep massive numbers of them. No need to really outperform Russian drones. You just need to keep the Russian air defenses exhausted. So I don't even want the western version to be much better. I just want to use the same principle and let the Russians deal with the problem of hundreds of drone attacks simultaneously. That will be very challenging for them.
Sophie O'Sullivan
Makolo, have you come across the Lucas drone yourself?
Mykola Beliskov
No, I don't. And we can only rely on, you know, public statements, public statement from Department of War as they say right now, that it was quite successful, quite instrumental. It proved its promise basically. Overall it proved the idea that one way strategic attack UAVS would be among the arsenal of all the countries on themselves. They are not unique. And it's not only instrument in terms of attacking, but combined with other means you can create dilemmas for air defense. Because if you combine crisp missiles, ballistic missiles and one way attack uavs, you create very difficult situation for even the best integrated air defense given difference of speed, given difference of the trajectory, basically. So Ukraine also employ a number of one way attack strategic UAVs, but they are a little bit different. So we didn't copy the way us copied like the shape basically of this UAV. We rely on different kind of one way attack UAVs. But we also learned it that it's very instrumental and you can level the playing field. And now Ukraine military industrial complex produce comparable amount of one way attack and decoy UAVs. And actually you see it in the news that that more and more Russian oil processing, oil export, oil pumping, military industrial complexes attacks and they don't have any kind of answer. Finally, we are posing the same kind of dilemmas that we experience since 2022. What you prioritize that the defense of the grouping of forces that is deployed or the defense of the country and there is no simple solution. So both Ukraine, Russia war and the war in the Middle east demonstrate that it's going to be a mainstay in the arsenal in the majority of countries because it's cheap, affordable and very effective.
Peter Lee
There's one thing I would like to add and that is the defensive side of what was just set out so well just now, and that is the Gulf states are going to face the same challenge as the European states on the west side. And that is, how does each country that is bordering Russia, how do they integrate their air defense systems so their radar systems are the detection systems? How do these countries ally themselves to provide one wall of detection, if you like, that covers many countries. I think that's going to be a technical challenge, a political challenge, aided by NATO and aided in the Gulf region by the associations that they have there. But that's the next big political and military and financial challenge, is to create this multi, multi state, multi country, integrated detection and defense system. But if that can be done, or it will have to be done, and it will be done. So when it is done, it needs to be made in such a way that it becomes very costly for Russia to make attacks into either Western European airspace or for Iran to attack its Gulf neighbours.
Sophie O'Sullivan
So with this increased escalation of both sides having very similar abilities with these drones, these shahed drones, where does it end? Does it just continue to escalate? What do you think, Mercola?
Mykola Beliskov
Countries are going to build both defensive and offensive capability. And with proper combination of offensive and defensive capability, sides would be guided to simple conclusions that you are not going to get proper result if you resolve to military means. So it would be mutually stabilizing situation, though overall it's easier to attack than to defend. Countries would not only try to accumulate defensive means and build defensive capabilities, but also build the sheer number of means of attack offensive means. It would be destabilizing to certain sense. But overall, again, when each country has a huge arsenal of both offensive and defensive means, everyone would have a second thought, prudent one, whether or not to employ it.
Sophie O'Sullivan
Well, Peter and Mikola, thank you very much for joining me on Iran the Latest. That's all for today on the Latest. Thanks for listening. We'll be back on Monday. Till then, goodbye. Iran the Latest is an original podcast from the Telegraph, created by David Knowles and hosted by Venetia Rainey and Roland Olyphant. If you appreciated this podcast, please consider following around the latest on your preferred podcast app. And if you have a moment, leave a review as it helps others find the show. For more from our foreign correspondents on the ground, sign up for our new daily newsletter Cables, or listen to our sister podcast Ukraine the Latest. We're still on the same email address battlelinestelegraph.co.uk or you can contact us on X. You can find our handles in the show Notes the producer is Phil Atkins. The executive producers are Venetia Rainey and Louisa Wells.
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Episode: Iran’s drones have reshaped warfare. Can the US catch up?
Date: June 5, 2026
Host: Sophie O’Sullivan (substituting for Roland Oliphant and Venetia Rainey)
Guests:
This episode delivers a focused deep dive on the revolutionary impact of Iran’s Shahed drones in recent conflicts across the Middle East, the Ukraine war, and beyond. Host Sophie O’Sullivan is joined by Ukrainian military analyst Mykola Beliskov and British academic Peter Lee to dissect how Iranian drones have shifted the dynamics of warfare, why these low-cost UAVs are so effective, and the ongoing arms race as the United States and Western allies scramble to counter or copy them. Vital insights are provided into the parallel lessons from the Ukraine war, innovations in defence, and the evolving landscape of military technology.
Not technically advanced, but strategically brilliant.
Physical description and mechanics:
The episode’s tone is analytical, urgent, and insightful, balancing sobering analysis with expert testimony. Discussions are lively but focused, with a frank appraisal of both the technical simplicity and strategic complexity at play.
This summary captures the crucial analysis and exchanges on how Iran’s drones have redefined military asymmetry, how their legacy spreads, and what the West—and Ukraine—are doing to adapt.