When the world's at stake,
go beyond the headlines.

Welcome to Rewind & Reconnoiter. Each week, we’ll ask one of our authors to look back at an article they’ve written for War on the Rocks in light of a current news event. Did their argument hold up? Read more below to find out.***In 2021, Aaron Stein, author and chief content officer at War on the Rocks, wrote “Say Hello to Turkey’s Little Friend: How Drones Help Level the Playing Field,” in which he argued, regarding Turkey’s TB2 drone, that, “[a] cheap, simple-to-use platform has benefits in providing support to ground forces in conflicts where an adversary has little in the way of capable air defenses. However, in a peer-level conflict, drones like the TB2 are not survivable.” We asked him to look back on his article and argument, especially in light of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Read more below.Image: CeeGee, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsIn your article, written before Russia invaded Ukraine, you write that “Turkey has pioneered drone use for the social media age, splicing together videos of the TB2’s kills and rapidly spreading these videos and imagery through semi-official social media accounts. The videos shape narratives about the efficacy of Turkish drones and their battlefield prowess, reinforcing ideas about the future of combat.” Can you discuss the role these videos played in the war in Ukraine?They are truly innovative. If you are of a certain age, you will remember how wild it was to see U.S. smart bombs falling through windows in Iraq in 1991. Those videos shaped how a lot of people thought about precision and war. And, as it turned out, the percentage of those laser-guided bombs used during Desert Storm was a tiny fraction of bombs dropped during the conflict. The videos distorted public understanding of the war. The same is true with a TB2 — or