Ukraine Offers US Help in Anti-Drone Warfare

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is offering to share Ukraine's anti drone expertise with the United States, Europe and the Middle East, Middle Eastern allies. We'll return now to two of our panels, Tom Speciale, former senior advisor and former direct to the former to the Director of National Intelligence in the National Counterintelligence Security Center and US Army combat veteran and national security expert Rico Danielson. Great to have you both back with us. So Zelensky is offering to share Ukraine's anti drone expertise with the United States, Europe and Middle Eastern allies. It appears as though Ukraine has developed these interceptors that can cost as little as $1,000. Tom, from a strategic standpoint, do you see Ukraine's battlefield experience? Excuse Yeah, so one of the things that can be very mindful when it comes to especially Russian Russian intelligence, Russian warfare is very be mindful of the Trojan warfare, right? They're going to give it to you for a reason is going to come with a cost. We just got to figure out that cost. Whether it's time, but being bullets or blood, I think they're, they actually do have a, a better tech to actually help out Operation Fury over there in Iran. And I believe that actually we can adopt that technology adopt that security and adopt that from a proactive autonomous robotic perspective. And it gives us a forefront on the cutting edge of this new war of new battlefield. And if Tom is back up with us, I think we're having some technical difficulties. We'll see if we can get him back on. In the meantime, how significant is the role of allied support in operations like this? If Tom is back, we can we can give this question to Tom, if not Rico, you could jump back in. Yeah, absolutely. It's actually very instrumental that we have allied support not only from the specific region, but also, you know, two, three layers down into the other regions. And it's very, it shows collaborative nature, it shows that even sometimes our own enemies or even a proxy enemies want to come forth and provide some sort of resolution because Russia knows that if Iran continues this, and it continues the behavior, it's going to actually propagate into Russia or in Chechnya or Albania or something like that. And it's going to cause regional instability. And the idea here is to make sure that they actually have the constraint and control to gain back the regional stability. Looks like we have Tom Speciale back with us, Tom, we're just talking about how critical it is that America's allies take a stance. Right now, early on in this operation, we've seen a few waiver, we're now seeing Ukraine offering its drone technology and assets to the United States. How important is this? Yeah, I think there's a couple of things here that I think are really important. The first one is the mere fact that Ukraine has been able to develop this kind of counter UAV expertise, and they're willing to share it. Regarding this Iran crisis, I think that's in and of itself, that's sort of an interesting technological battlefield development that we're seeing this specialized capability coming out of Ukraine that is now hopefully going to be able to be used in other situations. I think this is the same kind of thing we might be looking at in other regions later down the road, right. But probably the biggest thing that I'd want to hit on here is the fact that the fact that the Iranian regime is being decapitated right now, is going to have a profound impact on Russia's ability to wage war against Ukraine, because Iran was the principal sponsor of all of their one way attack drones. And so this is huge in a multitude of ways that people aren't really necessarily understanding how the Iran threat network and the Iranian regime basically enabled all this chaos globally. And I think that, you know, the fact that we're seeing the Ukrainians step up to assist is a step in the right direction for the world. That's a really fascinating point. You know, we're seeing a lot of these exchanges of technologies, the United States recently, touting our own reverse engineering of those very own attack drones that Tom just mentioned, that Iran was supplying Russia in Ukraine. So the Israeli Defense Force saying it has struck a building in Tehran that houses Iran's cyber warfare headquarters. Rico, to what extent does the Iranian regime rely on its cyber capabilities? So yeah, when it comes to cyber warfare, that's one of my bread and butters. I definitely know this. And one of the things I'll tell you is that Iran has a very sophisticated network of cyber attack, threat hacker, threat hacker gangs. And the fact that Israel can actually go in there, strike the heart of the lion itself, makes it a very difficult thing for Iranians to even bounce back. He's talking about critical infrastructure network, different means of technology, and they can no longer function at that. The bigger thing here now is it's going to go outward, right? You have Hezbollah, you have the Muslim Brotherhood, and then you have all these other terrorist organizations and ransom gangs, they're going to probably direct them to take care of those attacks from different regions, such as India, Russia, Chechnya, and also the northern Horn of Africa as well. So I wouldn't be surprised if we see a traversing or a new route from cyber attacks coming from different regions. Now, Tom, you mentioned Russia, China, the Communist Party has been serving as a another financial lifeline for Iran, while the Islamic regime remains largely sanctioned by the West, the CCP buying roughly 80% of its oil exports from the region there. So, Tom, talk to us outside of rhetoric. China has yet to provide any visible assistance to Iran. What are you watching for? And what really is the CCP grappling with right now as this unfolds? This is something I've been really for the last several days have been looking really closely at the Iran had the Straits of Hormuz essentially under threat of attack for the last 47. And they've actually carried out like people forget the tanker wars and things like that. Like they've actually threatened the global supply of oil for 47 years. And right now the Straits of Hormuz are firmly in the control of the United States government. With the loss of Venezuelan oil, and now the control of the Straits of Hormuz with by the US government. I think that China right now is in a situation where now we can choke Chinese oil supply in a way that has never was never anticipated by the Chinese, I believe. I don't think they ever expected the US government to have essentially control over their supply of oil, which they are absolutely dependent on, not only for their, you know, for their for their military, just for their, their economic growth. So now we have a pressure point, or we control the pressure point with regard to China, regarding oil that I think is unprecedented. And I think this is, you know, a lot of people sort of chuckle when they say, you know, Trump plays three dimensional chess. But when you think about the the loss of influence of Iran throughout the region with regard to the partners and proxies, the impact this will have on the fight with Ukraine and Russia, and the impact this will have economically and on the oil industry globally. I mean, this is checkmate really for, in my opinion, after being in the military for almost 36 years, and a national security consultant and a senior advisor for Tulsi at DNI, I have never been in a situation where the US has garnered so much influence in just a matter of a few days through the eradication of this of this bloodthirsty regime in Iran. I mean, this is this is globally unprecedented. I don't think we've ever seen anything like this. And I don't think we ever will in our lifetime. Certainly don't think you're overstating the point. Tom speciality Rico Danielson greatly appreciate you both joining