Christopher Kirchhoff: evaluation

Transcript context

…If we think about Azerbaijan versus Armenia, Turkish drones helped Azerbaijan much more than anything helped Armenia. Is there any generalization looking forward? Oh, drones are good for Israel. Drones are good for countries willing to tolerate a lot of disruption. Drones are good for — fill in the blank. What would you say? I think drones are good for anybody looking to defeat a conventional military operating in conventional ways. I’ll just list off a couple of examples. One, how was it that Hamas fighters bridged the border in Gaza, which is essentially a modern-day Maginot Line with multiple lines of defenses? The key tactical maneuver they pulled off on October 7th was using quadcopters to drop small charges on the generators powering the border tower surveillance systems. Similarly, the Houthis have effectively harassed shipping now with a combination of loitering munitions, cruise missiles, and autonomous drones. Then, in northern Israel, perhaps most strikingly, Hezbollah has depopulated the first 10 miles of northern Israel using loitering munitions and cruise missiles because the IDF can’t effectively defend their northern border, and that has displaced 85,000 Israeli civilians. And the IDF is a very modern military. Is there a forthcoming era of assassination by drone? Do we know this? Can we prepare for it? What will that look like? Presidents never step outside?…

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