"Mopeds," said the Ukrainians, when they heard and saw a new kind of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)'s buzzing over their skies. That was mid-2022. Others in Kyiv compared the sound to a lawnmower. Some called it a scooter. By 2023, Western media picked up the term while describing the drone swarms attacking Ukraine. These drones were actually the Iranian Shahed-136 drones, which senior journalist and defence expert Sandeep Unnithan says, "appeared over a decade ago". The Shahed-136 drones were procured by Russia for its war on Ukraine. Since then, the sound of the "moped" has stayed the same. The theatre...