Hossein Dadvand is a greying commander who runs an important combat college north of Tehran. He is tasked with training the thousands of Iranian soldiers who pass through his barracks gates on how to fight — and win — on the battlefield.
In the lead-up to the weeks-long war with Israel and the US, Dadvand was among those within Iran’s military assiduously mining the war in Ukraine for strategic lessons. These ranged, Dadvand wrote in an article, from the resilience of Ukrainian defence production to the use of 3D printers to mass-produce cheap drones.
His recommendations were published in a prestigious Iranian defence publication two years ago. Iran, he appealed to his superiors, must invest in drones, use nimbler and more mobile combat units, and update how it trains and fights. It should also look towards applying AI in its weaponry, he suggested.