Uh, GPS jamming or electronic warfare for m- more broadly in this measure, countermeasure, this constant arms race, who's got the upper hand at the moment? Is it the smart technical aspects of the electronic warfare, um, or the, uh, a weapons able to get through the jamming?

Well, so electronic warfare is very good at a tactical level because ultimately you're, um, against strike munitions.

So electronic warfare can do...

You know, it can disrupt radar, it can disrupt other sorts of sensing.

So on the battlefield, it's very good at keeping troops kind of hidden a little bit better.

It's the equivalent of shining a flashlight in someone's eye at night.

You might not be able to see anything.

Is this still occurring?" Phil asks, "Or are most weapons and explosives used in Ukraine newly made?" So what's coming off the rails of these F-16s?

Chris Pontu asks, "Why is Ukraine not targeting the Russian missiles factories instead of Wildberries warehouses? Shouldn't that be their top priority since no PAC-3 systems will be delivered anytime soon?"

So actually, no, they, they have been targeting.

In particular, they've been targeting the facilities that make guidance systems and other special microelectronics for ballistic missiles as well as ballistic missile bodies.

The difference is those facilities tend to be a little harder, a little stronger physically, bricks, industrial facilities designed to, to take kind of damage from the inside, whereas the Wildberry facilities are not protected and have a lot of different combat gear.

So what Ukraine has been doing is rotating between industrial targets, fuel refineries, and those Wildberry facilities based on where they think the strikes will be most effective.

I might not agree with the prioritization at what timing, but they have been going after the industrial facilities.

And remember, Russia adjusts their missile defenses where they think Ukraine will strike next.

Michael, where would you like to leave listeners today?

Trump gave those blueprints to Ukraine to be able to build these missiles, but many viewers and listeners have asked, when exactly can we expect these missiles to be given, assuming that those blueprints are handed over? So where do you want to start on this complicated topic?

First off, Francis, thank you for having me back on the pod.

So ri-right.

When it was announced that Ukraine would be getting a license production for the Patriots, overall that's a positive step for Kyiv.

It's a long-term integration and has many other benefits.

However, there's a lot of questions still, a lot of details.

The first one is it wasn't stated which Patriot it was.

So just zooming out slightly, if we look at the moment at the state of Ukraine's military logistics chain, its in-house production, and particularly focused on its defensive missile capability, what transformations, if any, can we expect to see over the coming months? Or do you think that in a sense we're likely to be in this situation for quite a long time, and that this sort of higher casualties, increased ballistic missiles getting through, this is gonna be the story of the second half of twenty twenty-six?

But if we can just focus on the equipment, what effect does weather have, good and bad weather have on battery life, sensors, just how everything works together? What happens to the fluids and the oils in an armored vehicle, for example, in, in really bad weather, and then conversely, when it gets slightly better, as we've seen in the last couple of weeks?

Well, there's a reason why humans like sort of being in that temperate fifteen to thirty degrees Celsius or, you know, fifty to eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit.It's very comfortable for us, in part because that's a comfortable room for water, for oils, for alcohol, all of the things that we encounter with on a daily basis.

There's a certain level of fluidity and viscosity that work well.

So I'll start with one that kind of was a, a factor early on in the war, tires.

So some of us going back to February and March of twenty twenty-two remember pictures of all of the Russian vehicles with busted tires.

Temperatures were well below freezing, and many of these wheeled vehicles were just stuck.

Well, you know, it was attributed to cheap Chinese tires what everyone talked about.

it was going so well

How the hell did the U.S. get in and out unscathed, Michael?

Dom, I'm sure being a former Gazelle pilot, you were white knuckled seeing a couple of the videos.

And this is actually where I'm going to kind of do a little compare and contrast to Kyiv here.

So in many ways, Venezuela and Ukraine had kind of a similar mix of air defenses.

Now, one thing that was different was Ukraine's had an integrated network that were most of the same producer.

Venezuela had a hodgepodge of Russian and Chinese systems.

But most of those were around the Caracas region.

But where would you like to leave us with your final thoughts?