His military experience has been a long-running campaign theme — nearly all of Buttigieg’s TV ads flash a picture of him in fatigues — but the subject also throws one potential weakness into sharp relief: the brevity of his national security experience, and his generally short resume compared to others in the 2020 presidential field.

“He’s the candidate with the military background who served” abroad, said Kathy Sullivan, a member of the Democratic National Committee from New Hampshire, who likened it to a “double-edged sword” for Buttigieg. “But at the same time, he’s the youngest candidate in the field without a ton of other foreign policy experience,” and a conflict with Iran “could shake up how voters are viewing this primary.”

Buttigieg, for his part, argued to reporters Saturday afternoon that “somebody who has been on the ground as an intelligence officer, understanding what’s at stake in these issues, is bringing the exact kind of bearing we’re going to need,” adding that managing future conflicts around the world requires “a forward-looking view” from the next president.

Voters at Buttigieg’s events were openly mulling those qualifications. Jane Goodman, a 53-year-old undecided voter who saw Buttigieg speak in Claremont, N.H., said his inexperience on the international stage “gives me pause” when “there are so many scary things going on in the world.” But she noted that his military service “gives me some comfort, even if he hasn’t been to the big leagues in D.C.”

“If he didn’t have the military background, then he would be a really inexperienced candidate and it would be a big void, but because he has it, it answers a lot of those questions,” said Steve Barker, another voter deciding between Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar. “The last 24 hours has jolted us into thinking about it.”

Buttigieg leaned into his own training when asked a question about how he would handle the conflict in the Middle East at a town hall here Saturday night.

“When I was an intelligence officer, I was trained to ask tough questions so that they could be thought through before a decision,” Buttigieg said. “We have seen no evidence presented that that took place here.”

The strike against Soleimani jarred the Democratic presidential primary as a whole: Joe Biden briefly delayed an endorsement event in Iowa to address it, reiterating his credentials on the world stage. Bernie Sanders hammered home the fact that he voted against the Iraq War at a town hall. Elizabeth Warren issued two statements on Soleimani’s death, after facing criticism for her tone in the first.

And while the candidates raced to react, no one quite knows how it will affect voters. “When bullets are flying, voters may want someone with more experience” on the world stage, said Andy Smith, a University of New Hampshire pollster. To the “extent that it makes [Buttigieg] look young, it’s an issue for him.”

Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton, an Iraq War veteran who ran for president but dropped out of the primary last year, said that Buttigieg’s age wasn’t necessarily a liability — but that his experience wasn’t the type that voters would be looking for if they grow more concerned about foreign policy.

“I don’t think that age matters as much as experience, but we need someone who has had to actually make decisions involving the lives of other people and the only person who I know who’s done that is Vice President Biden, among the candidates who are left,” Moulton said.

“When you make foreign policy decisions, you want to have the views of analysts,” Moulton continued. “But analysts don’t make decisions.”

Biden and Buttigieg both lean into their military and foreign policy experience in TV ads, blanketing the early states with those messages. Biden cut a viral digital ad that highlighted foreign leaders reportedly laughing at Trump during the NATO summit last year.

“If we give Donald Trump four more years, we’ll have a great deal of difficulty of ever being able to recover America’s standing in the world, and our capacity to bring nations together,” Biden said in the ad, narrating over images of himself with world leaders, like Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“The fact that Mayor Pete is the only top tier candidate who has served creates trust and a clear sense of his long-held values, but there's no doubt that candidates like the senators have more experience and relationships on the world stage to tap on day one,” said Meredith Kelly, a Democratic consultant who worked on Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s now-finished presidential bid.

Buttigieg’s campaign pointed to the more than 200 national security and foreign policy officials who endorsed his candidacy, including former Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning and former National Security Council spokesman Ned Price.

“Pete is the only leading candidate who has served [and] he has seen the true cost of war up close,” said Jon Soltz, president of VoteVets, a progressive veterans group that has endorsed Buttigieg’s presidential run. “The next president is going to have to undo an unbelievable amount of damage Donald Trump has done and I think Pete’s military background is going to pull people toward Pete in this moment, not away.”