STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Military representatives from all 32 NATO nations met this week, and what is notable is where they met - Kyiv, Ukraine. They seem to be there to learn. Kurt Volker is following all this. He's a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and former representative to Ukraine in the first Trump administration. Welcome back.
KURT VOLKER: Thank you very much, Steve. Good to be with you.
INSKEEP: What are the NATO members learning?
VOLKER: Well, I think the first thing they want to get a look at firsthand is the air defense situation for Kyiv and other cities during the winter. Russia has really stepped up its air raids against Ukraine to try to knock out the electricity grid and other heating and things during the winter. And I think they want to get a look firsthand how Ukraine is doing, how prepared they are for the winter, what kind of things NATO countries might need to do.
INSKEEP: OK. That makes sense because we've seen these massive, much more constant air attacks on Kyiv, for example, and concerns about how they would get through the winter. Do the NATO allies have the capacity to help Ukraine with that?
VOLKER: They do. Obviously, the best system in the world is the Patriot system that we have provided in the past and allies have bought for Ukraine, but they're in very short supply. But there are other types as well that NATO allies can provide to help with air defense. The Germans, the French, Swedes, all have different variations of this.
And then the other thing that the NATO representatives want to do is to get a look firsthand at what Ukraine is doing on its own. They now have some of the best in the world capabilities when it comes to drones, counter-drones and electronic warfare. And it's much more efficient the way the Ukrainians are taking out drones that are incoming than the way NATO countries have done it. So we have something to learn from the Ukrainians in this too.
INSKEEP: This is amazing. So you're telling me we're in this world of asymmetric warfare where maybe the people with the biggest and most expensive weapons don't win. I guess this is an important lesson for the United States to learn, since the United States is the country with the biggest and most expensive weapons. They're not always the best ones?
VOLKER: Well, they can be the best, but they're also very expensive. And when you have someone that can send thousands of drones per night - and maybe the drones cost $30,000 - you're going to knock that down with a million-dollar interceptor missile? You can't keep doing that repeatedly. So we've got to learn some of these low-cost and high-volume ways to take these things out the way the Ukrainians have done.
INSKEEP: Is this the lesson of the Iran where - war, where the United States has spent billions against armed forces that seem to be able to respond very cheaply?
VOLKER: Yes, exactly. And in fact, the drones that the Iranians have used against targets in the Middle East - both U.S. bases and our Gulf allies - are the very same drones that Russia has been using against Ukraine for a long time. And so the Ukrainians have had a lot of time and experience now to figure out how to deal with these. The U.S. was using a large number of Patriot missiles to take down these very same things. That's why we now have a global shortage of Patriots - because we were using them with such volume compared to what we could have been doing if we had better lower-cost systems at hand.
INSKEEP: I think you said something that is very relevant here because you said Ukraine is leading the world in drones - or near leading the world in drones - but also counter-drones.
VOLKER: Yes.
INSKEEP: So this is a category of defensive drone? That's what the U.S. and others need to learn about?
VOLKER: Well, it's not - they do have defensive drones - the drones that take out drones - but they also have lower-cost systems that are targeted more at the low-cost drones that come in. So for example, you have a regular propeller-driven drone. You don't want to use an anti-aircraft or an antimissile missile to take that out. You can do that with a ground-based firing system that is lower tech, lower cost, but effective. The jet-powered ones are harder, but they're now learning ways to take those out too.
INSKEEP: Just very briefly, you mentioned electronic warfare. What do you mean by that in this context?
VOLKER: It - it's rerouting where the incoming missile or the incoming drone is supposed to go. By confusing the signals, it ends up not hitting the target, in some cases just crashing into the ground or into a river. The most famous one of these is called Lima. They reprogram the incoming missile to think its target is Lima, Peru...
INSKEEP: Wow (laughter).
VOLKER: ...Which is too far away to hit, so it crashes.
INSKEEP: OK. Wow. Kurt Volker, former U.S. ambassador to NATO. Thanks for your insights. Appreciate it.
VOLKER: My pleasure. Thanks. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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