Thank you, everyone. I'm very happy to answer questions, more so about Turkish foreign policy and certainly about the regional context. I'll give a little bit of background to some of the issues we're speaking to today, specifically the export permits to Turkey. My friend Christian is going to add to the context in terms of the utilization of the particular systems in question, but I thought I'd give a little background to some things I think are important to note.
Of course, Armenia and Azerbaijan had a very short conflict very recently, and we've talked a lot about the fact that Turkey had given the Azerbaijanis an advanced arsenal. I think it's important to point out that by virtue of its relative economic situation, Armenia hasn't really had a chance to update much of its arsenal. It has been composed almost entirely of very old systems, mostly Russian rockets. The Azeris, because they've had a lot of oil wealth, have been able to invest over the past 20 years, not only in a very diverse arsenal of weapons, but more importantly, in modern ones, including missiles, rockets and drones.
I think the attention that's been brought to the use of drones is certainly very important, but I think it's also important to point out that it's partly because the Armenians didn't have very good air defence systems that really made the drones so effective. Certainly these particular drones were really helpful, because they were able to give the Azeris a big advantage on the battlefield.
The other point we're going to talk about at some point is that the cameras put on these particular drones were also being used for other purposes. In fact, many Armenians have pointed out that they were used to make very explicit propaganda videos, so this is something else that we must consider. It's not just about their tactical advantage; they also had a very interesting messaging advantage.
One thing I'd like to point out that would be important in the conversation about where we're going is that this particular war is a shift and change in modern warfare. Drone technology is really going to change the battlefield, partly because drones are low-cost, they're cheap, and we're going to see more countries using drones, particularly those that don't have a strong air force. If you don't want to invest a lot of money in having an air force, you can use drones to effectively mimic what air power can do at a fraction of the cost. We're going to see a lot of smaller countries get access to these very cheap tactical aviation tools, which also sometimes have precision-guided weapons. They can be very effective because they destroy much costlier equipment, such as tanks, vehicles, artillery units and so forth. Some say these drones were able to effectively wipe out approximately a third of the Armenian tanks, so they really did have a big impact on the battlefield.
Similarly, this technology is pretty widespread. The Turks, the Chinese and the Israelis are all in the business of exporting drones. It should be pointed out, though, that in Turkey, which has been manufacturing drones for the past decade in an effort to up its game in terms of its indigenous armaments industry, most of the software for these particular drones has to be imported. Having to import parts means it's not in a space to say it's completely indigenous and able to stand on its own. Hopefully, that is a helpful point to folks here.
Last, while these particular drones have been used in the Azeri and Armenian conflict, the technology has also been used, as others pointed out, in the Libyan civil war. As well, we know it's been used to support the Syrian rebels and also to target Kurdish insurgents, both inside Turkey with the PKK, and inside Iraq.
I'll leave it there. I'm very happy to answer any questions.