Russia's Ukraine War Lessons Are Hitting the Gulf || Peter Zeihan

TL;DR

Russia is sharing Ukraine war drone tactics with Iran, teaching Shaheds to swarm and weave, rapidly depleting Gulf states' interceptor stockpiles.

Key Points

• 1.Russia has been sharing drone swarm and weave tactics learned in Ukraine with Iran. By pre-programming slightly different flight routes for each Shahed drone, the weaving formation makes air defense lock-on harder and forces defenders to fire more interceptors per attack.
• 2.The Shahed drone is a simple, cheap weapon that becomes dangerous in mass swarms. It uses a slow NAND chip with a preset flight route and only a basic decision tree for target selection, but batched launches guarantee some penetrate air defenses.
• 3.Western Gulf states are on the verge of running out of interceptors within one to two weeks. Starting with roughly 2,000 interceptors, they have faced at least 2,000–3,000 Shahed launches over two weeks of conflict, with Iran continuing to fire while Russia provides precise targeting data.