The age of drone warfare has begun

Summary

---

UnHerd with Freddie Sayers

Episode: The Age of Drone Warfare Has Begun

Date: March 20, 2026
Guest: Shashank Joshi (Defence Editor, The Economist)
Summary by: [Your Name]

---

Overview

In this episode, Freddie Sayers explores the profound transformation in modern warfare brought about by the rise of cheap, effective drones—focusing on the current tensions surrounding the Strait of Hormuz. Defense expert Shashank Joshi joins to explain the mechanics of drone-powered military disruption, the implications for the world’s critical shipping routes, and the challenge posed to even powerful militaries by inexpensive, widely accessible technologies. The discussion delves into whether established powers can "defeat" such asymmetric threats, the limits of drone technology, and what the new age of drone warfare means for global security.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Strategic Importance of the Strait of Hormuz

(01:10-02:14)

• Sayers frames the issue: Can military force really secure this bottleneck through which 20% of the world's oil travels?
• Reference is made to Professor Robert Pape, who suggested that Iran could continue to disrupt shipping with very limited forces—mainly drones.

Quote:

• “Even with a tiny amount of military capacity, Iran has the ability to throttle 20% of the world's oil supply and cause chaos.”—Freddie Sayers (01:17)

2. What Does it Mean to ‘Control’ a Chokepoint with Drones?

(02:14-04:27)

• Joshi differentiates between total control versus imposing a significant risk premium that deters civilian shipping.
• Even a small chance of attack can cut shipping dramatically, as seen recently in the Red Sea.
• America’s past efforts to clear such choke points have had limited effect.

Quote:

• “You only need a very small level of a risk premium above the pre-war level to dissuade civilian tankers... [that] carries a small but nontrivial chance of having their cargo and their sailors blown up.”—Shashank Joshi (02:49)

3. Mechanics of the Threat: Weapons and Launch Strategies

(04:27-09:29)

• Mines: Iran may or may not have mined the Strait. Modern mines can be sophisticated, hiding from detection, but even the smartest remain largely indiscriminate, risking friendly ships.
• Missiles: Iran possesses anti-ship cruise missiles (shorter range, often deployed near the coast).
• Drones: Especially the Shaheed-class—low-cost, long-range, launched from deep inland, and hard to trace or preempt.

Quotes:

• “They're effectively small drones... not really the cartoon mine with a big ball and spikes.”—Shashank Joshi (05:25)

• “These can be fired from over a thousand kilometers away, and that is of course the really difficult bit...”—Shashank Joshi (08:10)

• Naval Drones: Remote-controlled “suicide boats” laden with explosives, reminiscent of WW2 fire ships, and used in recent conflicts (e.g., Ukraine vs. Russia in the Black Sea).

4. Uncertainty in Attribution

(08:53-09:32)

• Difficult to confirm which type of weapon hit recent ships—naval or airborne drones are suspected, but without physical evidence, attribution remains ambiguous.

Quote:

• “We haven't had great sight of... the damage that's been done. We haven't had sight of the precise images of... the holes in the ships to see where they've occurred. So I don't know.”—Shashank Joshi (09:04)

5. The Asymmetric Revolution: Cheap Drones Change Everything

(12:16-13:20)

• Sayers muses on how the low cost and broad accessibility of drones could let any actor, powerful or weak, threaten key routes or infrastructure.
• Wonders if drone swarms, like those in choreographed displays, could be weaponized.

Quote:

• “If even a country... like Iran, has the capability to completely control something like the Strait of Hormuz using these very inexpensive drones... it sort of changes the symmetry of all future war in some way, doesn't it?”—Freddie Sayers (12:18)

6. Limits and Vulnerabilities of Drone Warfare

(13:20-16:00)

• Joshi stresses that successful ‘sea denial’ is highly dependent on geography—narrow straits are vulnerable, but open waters are much harder to control this way.
• Large drone swarms (like in Chinese displays) are tightly choreographed; in warfare, they’d be susceptible to jamming and disruption.

Quotes:

• “These are drones, very rigidly choreographed... if you send jamming signals, you could cause a cascading effect that would mean this beautiful display would fall to the ground.”—Shashank Joshi (15:20)
• “The geography matters here... The Taiwan Straits... is 120km wide, rather than the Strait of Hormuz, which is... 21 nautical kilometers at the narrowest.” —Shashank Joshi (14:22)

7. Electronic Warfare: Jamming as a Countermeasure

(16:48-18:22)

• GPS and radio jamming offer some hope for countering drones, but are not foolproof.
• Drones can piggyback on civilian networks, and persistent jamming disrupts civilian life and aviation, bringing risk.

Quote:

• “Jamming isn't a panacea. It doesn't always work 100%, which is why Russian drones... still get through to Ukraine.”—Shashank Joshi (17:57)

8. Is Military ‘Victory’ Possible in This Environment?

(18:24-19:49)

• America can reduce risks through bombing and escort operations, but cannot eliminate risk entirely or restore shipping to pre-war levels.
• Even with overwhelming military response, a 'normal' level of trade is likely unattainable.

Quote:

• “Do I think America can restore the pre-war level of shipping flows for oil, for gas... No, I think that's just not possible. The level of risk isn't going to come down.”—Shashank Joshi (18:55)

9. Lessons from Recent Conflicts: The Houthi Example

(19:30-21:07)

• References the Houthi campaign in the Bab al-Mandab, which ended partly for political reasons but also due to a costly military stalemate.
• The US and Israel expended high-tech interceptors, depleting their own strategic stores and still did not achieve full security.

Quote:

• “America realized it just could not keep doing this... burning through munitions fundamentally needed for any conflict involving China.”—Shashank Joshi (20:27)

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote / Moment | |-----------|----------------|----------------| | 02:49 | Joshi | “You only need a very small level of a risk premium above the pre-war level to dissuade civilian tankers...” | | 05:25 | Joshi | “They're effectively small drones... not really the cartoon mine with a big ball and spikes.”| | 08:10 | Joshi | “These [long-range drones] can be fired from over a thousand kilometers away...” | | 12:18 | Sayers | “It sort of changes the symmetry of all future war in some way, doesn't it?”| | 15:20 | Joshi | “If you send jamming signals, you could cause a cascading effect that would mean this beautiful display would fall to the ground.”| | 17:57 | Joshi | “Jamming isn't a panacea. It doesn't always work 100%, which is why Russian drones... still get through to Ukraine.”| | 18:55 | Joshi | “The level of risk isn't going to come down. Even with all the military power in the world...”| | 20:27 | Joshi | “America realized it just could not keep doing this... burning through munitions fundamentally needed for any conflict involving China.”|

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Strait of Hormuz and the meaning of ‘control’: 01:10–04:27
• Types of weapons and methods of attack: 04:27–09:29
• The democratization of military power by cheap drones: 12:16–13:20
• Technical limits, jamming, and the brittleness of drone swarms: 13:20–16:00
• Effectiveness and limitations of jamming/countermeasures: 16:48–18:22
• Can military force restore normality?: 18:24–19:49
• Lessons from the Houthi campaign: 19:30–21:07

---

Tone and Language

Both Sayers and Joshi retain an accessible, inquisitive, and occasionally urgent tone, but the conversation remains focused and analytical. Joshi consistently brings nuance—resisting oversimplifications—and anchors speculation with concrete examples and recent history.

---

Conclusion

This episode paints a sobering picture of the evolving landscape of warfare. Cheap drones and asymmetric tactics enable even weakened actors to have outsized strategic impact—particularly when geography favors them. While countermeasures like jamming and intensive military operations can reduce risk, perfect security is elusive, and the cost—for both military and commerce—will be persistent and significant. The underlying message: we are in a new era where the democratization of warfighting technology will challenge old assumptions of power, control, and victory.

---

Transcript

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.

[Bleacher Report App Promoter]

The Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports right now. The NBA is heating up, March Madness is here, and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports. I can follow the teams I care about, get real time, scores, breaking news and highlights all in one place. Download the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment.

[Freddie Sayers]

Hello and welcome back to Unherd. We are becoming obsessed here with the tiny passage of water called the Strait of Hormuz and whether in fact it has the power to cripple the global economy. Earlier this week we had Professor Robert Pate from the University of Chicago and he was saying that even with a tiny amount of military capacity, Iran has the ability to throttle 20% of the world's oil supply and cause chaos. What we want to understand today is how do you actually get over that? How do you defeat that threat militarily? Is it the case, as he was saying, that with just a few drones, they have the ability to continue this ad infinitum. In which case, what on earth do we do? There's one person we think can answer that question. Well, his name is Shashank Joshi. He is defence editor of the Economist and he knows more about the actual nuts and bolts of this kind of military threat than almost anyone else. He joins us now. Welcome to Unherd. Shashank, good morning.

[Shashank Joshi]

Thank you so much for having me. And pleased to be here.

[Freddie Sayers]

That first question, Professor Pape who we spoke to earlier in the week, he was of the opinion that pretty much no matter how much you batter Iran, no matter how few long range missiles or proper anti ship batteries or whatever else they have, they will still be able to control the Strait of Hormuz even with just a few drones. Is that your opinion as well?

[Shashank Joshi]

I think it all hinges and I'm sorry, this is Perhaps an unsatisfying answer on what we mean by control. If we mean can they exert some kind of what you could call sea denial, inability to use the strait totally freely? Yes, yes, I think that's right. Because you only need a very small level of a risk premium above the pre war level to dissuade civilian tankers and ships and merchant ships from making a crossing that they feel would carry a small but non trivial chance of having their cargo and their sailors blown up. And you saw that, if I can give an example, in the Red sea perhaps about 18 months ago, two years ago, when America bombed the Houthis, as you recall very well in Yemen, precisely over their effort to shut down the Red Sea. That campaign was effectively a failure because it didn't recover traffic in the Red Sea to pre war levels. America declared victory and went home and said our job here is done. But really it didn't win. Now, by control you mean can they keep the current level of closure, which is quite severe to give you a sense of it. Only about 89 ships have passed the Strait of Hormuz between March 1 and March 15. Most of them, I think, Iran affiliated ships or those that say they're linked to China and other countries like India, Pakistan, as opposed to an average of perhaps 100 per day prior to the war. If we mean can Iran keep it at that level, I think the answer is probably not. We're beginning to see America conduct very heavy bombing raids on those coastal areas and the coastal cruise missile batteries and storage sites on those areas. And I don't think Iran can keep the same level of jeopardy in place as America focuses its attention on this geography. But that doesn't mean they can't ease up conditions a little bit. Certainly if others were willing to help, and it doesn't look like they are at this point, that would also change things.

[Freddie Sayers]

This might seem a stupid question, but what kind of guns or what kind of drone launchers are needed on the edge of this strait? And do they need to be on the edge of the strait or are they launched from further inland? I mean, what are the mechanics of launching these kind of attacks?

[Shashank Joshi]

So you've got a few types of weapons, you've got mines, which are of course laid by ships, mine laying ships or other sorts of ships, perhaps fishing vessels. You can even throw them off the side, I think. But there's little strong evidence at this point Iran has actually mined the Strait of Hormuz. There are some reports I haven't had independent confirmation from my sources. The Americans are saying they don't know for sure, so, so we don't know. That obviously is the first and obvious way to try to impede traffic in a strait.

[Freddie Sayers]

Mines, then they float or they are at the bottom of the sea and are they presumably indiscriminate? So they can't kind of turn them off to allow friendly ships passage and then turn them back on.

[Shashank Joshi]

There's loads of different types and modern mines of which Iran may have some are manoeuvrable. They can scoot, they can hide, they can hide from minesweepers, recover their positions. They're effectively small drones. They're not really the conventional cartoon mine with a chain and a big ball and spikes off it. But equally you get crude mines that are tethered or that are static and sometimes they break loose and they float away. And we saw that in the Black Sea where Ukrainian or Russian mines, I think many Ukrainian mines have floated away and ended up in places like the, you know, the Turkish coast. So they can go incredible distances and be in that sense indiscriminate. But even the smartest minds, the cleverest mines can be programmed, but they are unlikely to be able to detect the precise signature of one vessel, a friendly vessel, over an adversary vessel. They're not that sophisticated. So all in all, these are fairly indiscriminate systems. And it would be difficult for Iran not to create some level of risk for its own ships unless it knew exactly where it had laid these mines, which is tough to do if you've decentralised command and you've told your naval officers, go lay these things where you can. And if these are relatively crude mines and they're not the very sophisticated sort, now that's mines. The other sort of weapons are of course projectiles. And I think you've basically got two sorts of missiles. You've got anti ship missiles and most of these are anti ship cruise missiles, which are as opposed to ballistic missiles. And just to state the obvious, ballistic missiles fly a ballistic trajectory up and down. Cruise missiles are like aircraft, they fly in the atmosphere, having air breathing engines through the air, much, much lower, much flatter and they're much slower, but they're equally, perhaps in some ways more difficult to detect. Iran does have anti ship cruise missiles. Those are quite sophisticated, they're quite expensive. We've seen ships struck with them before. America has been bombing these in the last 24 hours on their coast.

[Freddie Sayers]

Do they have to be near those anti ship missiles so they can't be launched from the interior in general the

[Shashank Joshi]

cruise missiles will vary in range, but most of them will be of shorter range. You know, they'll be of a couple of hundred kilometres. So you are launching them from sight that is kind of pretty near that Persian Gulf littoral. It's not sort of deep inside Iran.

[Freddie Sayers]

Still a couple of hundred kilometres is a pretty broad band of terrain to completely remove all it really is, and

[Shashank Joshi]

I'm speaking figuratively here, I have my copy of the IISS Military Balance. I could sit there and look up the exact range of Iranian cruise missiles here, but by and large I think these are still relatively short ranged relative to, to what I'm just about to talk about, which is the shaheeds, these long range cheap drones, the sort you're very familiar with from Russia firing in Ukraine. These are effectively a mix of drone of missile of aircraft. They're a kind of melange of all these things, but they're effectively low cost, quite slow, but very long range, simple missiles. They cost 50,000 to $100,000, maybe a little bit less if you're making them inside Iran. And these can be fired from over a thousand kilometers away. And that is of course the really difficult bit because although they are slow, although they are not difficult to shoot down if you know where they are coming from, you are firing them from locations deep inside the Iranian interior and you are firing them from platforms that are a lot smaller and perhaps more easy to obscure, like the backs of trucks than a traditional anti ship cruise missile or a ballistic missile. And that makes the drone hunting process much more laborious and difficult.

[Freddie Sayers]

And the ships that have been hit so far in the Strait because over the past two weeks they have made successful strikes. Which of those three types of weapon have they been using?

[Shashank Joshi]

The honest, honest answer is we just don't know. We haven't had great sight of precisely the damage that's been done. We haven't had sight of the precise images of the, the holes in the ships to see where they've occurred. So I don't know. As you can imagine, sailors in the Persian Gulf have other preoccupations than taking these photos. But I think there is a suggestion some of them may have been hit with naval drones. That seems to be the belief.

[Freddie Sayers]

So a naval drone is like a boat drone.

[Shashank Joshi]

Imagine a semi autonomous boat, a remote controlled boat that is packed with explosives, the sort that Ukraine has used against the Black Sea fleet in the Black Sea. It's a suicide boat. It's not unparalleled. It's been used in the Second World war. I think we saw examples of these used in the Pacific War, and you could argue that these go back to the fire ships of antiquity. So there's a sort of lineage to these weapons. But I think some of these ships have also been struck by Shahid type drones. But to say confidently it was struck by that drone rather than a missile would depend on seeing the debris, seeing the damage, seeing the payload, all of those things that we haven't been able to do

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

this episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, Monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.

[Cachava Advertiser]

Craving the coffee flavor you love but without the caffeine? Cachava's got you covered with their newest coffee flavor. This all in one nutrition shake delivers bold, authentic flavor. Crafted from premium decaffeinated Brazilian beans with 25 grams of protein, 6 grams of fiber, greens and so much more. Treat yourself to the flavor and nutrition your body craves. Go to kachava.com and use code smoothie new customers get 15% off their first order. That's K A C-H-A-V-A.com code smoothie the

[Bleacher Report App Promoter]

Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports right now. The NBA is heating up, March Madness is here and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports. I can follow the teams I care about, get real time scores, breaking news and highlights all in one place. Download the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment.

[Acast Host]

Say hello to Mia.

[Mia]

Hey there.

[Acast Host]

Mia runs a pet grooming service in Chicago, but getting new clients was rough

[Mia]

until I started using Acast. I recorded my ad targeted pet owners in the area and let Acast do the rest of the now people all over the city know about my grooming services.

[Acast Host]

Mia's business is looking sharp. What's your secret for happy pets and happy clients?

[Mia]

A fresh cut, a friendly vibe and a well placed podcast ad.

[Acast Host]

Get the word out about your business through Acast, visit go.acast.com advertise to get started.

[Freddie Sayers]

It's a very frightening new world, isn't it, in terms of defence? Because if even a country that has been massively weakened, or at least in conventional power terms, massively weakened, like Iran today, has the capability to completely control something like the Strait of Hormuz using these very inexpensive drones, then in theory, any country could do that. If the cost of entry is so low, it sort of changes the symmetry of all future war in some way, doesn't it? I'm trying to think that through. I mean, I'm thinking also about those amazing kind of firework style displays that you see in Chinese sporting events. With the 5,000 airborne drones making amazing, you know, shapes of animals and all the rest of it. The technology is moving so rapidly that if you can do that for a fireworks display, why could you not just attach explosives to them? In which case you could certainly control whole terrains just from your basement with a kind of remote control. I mean, how do we get over this?

[Shashank Joshi]

I'll say two things to that, Freddie. One of them is on how scalable is this approach? And we should have had another warning sign, which was the Houthis I mentioned earlier, successfully applying pressure to another choke point, which is on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula. And that's the Bab Al Mandab Strait off the Yemeni coast. And they, as a fairly low sophistication rebel group, succeeded in coming up against the United States of America and Israel. In fact, they even forced, I think, some aircraft carriers to dodge missiles, causing planes to nearly fall off or fall off. They forced F35s to take evasive action. So you can see you're absolutely right. There is a sense that military technology is democratizing some of these capabilities. However, there's two important points to make. One of them is that this does depend on geography. You need pretty narrow choke points to make this happen. You know, if you're looking at this across a big area, if you're Russia and you're trying to choke off Ukrainian transport across the Black Sea, that is a different matter. And it's a different matter partly on technical grounds. Your drones have to fly a greater distance over open water or over open terrain. They can be spotted in the middle with sensors. You could have boats that have radar pickets on them and you can intercept those drones on the way. These are not difficult to intercept. That's what I want to really emphasize. So the geography matters here. The Taiwan Straits is probably a different Proposition, I think it's 120km wide, rather than the Strait of Hormuz, which is, what is it, sort of 20, 21 nautical kilometers wide at the narrowest point. Now, the second thing to note is your scenario. These massive Chinese drone shows, these are very impressive, but recall, we call these swarms, but they're not really swarms in the true sense of this, which is each drone is communicating with the other in the sense of a murmuration of starlings, you know, a sort of an organic animal like formation. There's a spontaneity to it. These are drones, very rigidly choreographed with a centralized computer that is sending them messages. And they have very strict rules they are following to stay apart from their neighbours. If that is disturbed at all, if one is knocked, or if you send jamming signals, you jam the radio signals, you could cause a cascading effect that would mean this beautiful display would fall to the ground. And we saw an example of that in a fireworks show in China in October where there was a cascading effect. So those are actually very, very brittle. In a warlike situation, China could not put a beautiful choreographed 500 Swarm display up and expect it to stay in the air. You know, physics is still a thing. Electronic warfare is a constraint. So I'm not so worried about that. It's more basic things to worry about, like periodic volleys of long range drones, because it only takes one to get through and to strike a ship for that to cause this paralysing economic effect across the whole fleet.

[Unherd Subscription Promoter]

You can discover more of these kind of conversations with an unherd digital subscription. You get 12 weeks of unlimited digital access to unmissable articles from all of our writers such as Kathleen Stark, Glenn Lowry, Wolfgang Munshau, Yanis Varoufakis and many more. For just £12. As a subscriber, you can also watch exclusive weekly events here at the Unherd Club and read more in depth subscriber only. Investigations and deep dives. Not only that, we'll send you a free limited edition JG Fox Illustrated mug which features a punk protesting against offensive speech, which I hope you notice is ironically capturing our mission here at Unherd, which is to serve as a home for those still willing to speak their minds. Go to unherd.com podcast to claim this offer now.

[Freddie Sayers]

So what you say there about these kind of jamming technologies is the first slightly encouraging thing I've heard, which is that if all of these drones, whether they're airborne or seaborne, rely on GPS and the kind of functioning infrastructure and that can be jammed somehow. That seems like a potential way through here. I mean, should we have much hope in that?

[Shashank Joshi]

Yes, Jamming is quite a good effective way. If you go to Kyiv or you go to Moscow for that matter, you will occasionally find your gps, if you're driving around, gets completely scrambled. And that is because both sides are attempting to shut down the communication. These drones rely upon with satellites, either satellites for communication, for communicating their position so they can be piloted, or communicating their location so they can be automatically guided to an end point. That doesn't always work. Sometimes they can fly higher or lower. We have also seen cases where in Russian drones, they have piggybacked very cunningly off Ukraine's mobile phone network, which of course can't be shut down in its entirety and isn't susceptible to the same sort of jamming as a satellite would be, a satellite signal would be. So you can do that. But of course, it does come at a cost to your civilian population if they've lost GPS signals or they're being constantly scrambled and disrupted. It carries the risk for civilian aviation, as we've seen with Russian electronic warfare in the high north around the Baltic Sea as well. And it doesn't always work. In some cases, these may be using, for example, signals connecting to Russian glonass satellites or other sorts of navigational systems. So jamming isn't a panacea. It doesn't always work 100%, which is why Russian drones, of course, still get through to Ukraine.

[Unherd Subscription Promoter]

What's your best guess about the way

[Freddie Sayers]

this plays out from a defence point of view? I mean, can, in your opinion, the Strait of Hormuz be secured militarily?

[Shashank Joshi]

My view is that once America has done much, much more intense pounding of Iranian coastal defences of missile positions, they've devoted more intelligence and surveillance to those areas to spot and detect launchers, including inland, and try to attack them once they have been able to make that area, then safe enough to bring in some US Navy ships to escort tankers. I think that takes a while, but I think they can bring the risk down to the point where more ships will be getting through Hormuz. Do I think America can restore the pre war level of shipping flows for oil, for gas, but also for all sorts of other things, you know, iron ore pellets and helium and vital minerals and gases? No, I think that's just not possible. The level of risk isn't going to come down. Even with all the military power in the world focused on laser, like on that narrow bit of territory you mentioned

[Freddie Sayers]

earlier on the Houthis comparison, and that's a really interesting one because it's just the other side of the peninsula. And we faced a very similar conversation 18 months ago about their ability to shut that straight. How did that end? Why did that go quiet? And is there a lesson for us there about how this might end?

[Shashank Joshi]

Well, it fundamentally went quiet for two reasons. One of them is the war in Gaza ended. And that was the ostensible rationale for the Houthis conducting this pressure campaign against Bab Al Mandab. And once that ended, the political rationale ebbed away slightly. But the other reason it ended is because the Houthis, I think, ground the Americans and the Israelis to a stalemate. They suffered very badly. Of course. Israel bombed Houthi and Yemeni infrastructure, you know, ports, airports, all kinds of things. But they survived as an entity. They still run Yemen. And America realised it just could not keep doing this. Not least because that campaign was costing huge amounts. They burned through a significant chunk of their annual production and in fact, their entire stockpiles of Thaad high end Thaad anti ballistic missile interceptors. They ran through huge numbers of SM3 interceptors that are fired from US Navy ships and that can destroy missiles as high up as in space. And they were burning through these munitions that are fundamentally needed for any conflict involving China, as they are doing today. And I think Iran now realizes, whilst it may be the weaker party here, America also has a hell of a lot to lose. With every passing week of this conflict, it really gets weaker in its ability to wage war in the Pacific for the next 18 months or two years.

[Freddie Sayers]

Shashank Joshi, thanks so much for your time.

[Shashank Joshi]

Thanks very much for having me.

[Freddie Sayers]

That was Shashank Joshi, Defence editor of the Economist. Really interesting to hear what it might mean for war, for defense in general, that suddenly the price of entry has just been reduced and anyone who can power a complicated drone can essentially start a war. Fascinating. From him. Thanks to him and thanks to you for joining. This was unheard.

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.

[Cachava Advertiser]

Craving the coffee flavor you love, but without the caffeine, Cachava's got you covered with their newest coffee flavor. This all in one nutrition shake delivers bold, authentic flavor crafted from premium decaffeinated Brazilian beans with 25 grams of protein, 6 grams of fiber, greens and so much more. Treat yourself to the flavor and nutrition your body craves. Go to kachava.com and use code smoothie. New customers get 15% off their first order. That's K-A C-H-A-V-A.com code smoothie the Bleacher

[Bleacher Report App Promoter]

Report app is your destination for sports right now. The NBA is heating up, March Madness is here, and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports. I can follow the teams I care about, get real time scores, breaking news and highlights all in one place. Download the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment.