Speaker 1: Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander and
Speaker 1: the Eagle One from Eagle Speak at Seer Shore your
Speaker 1: home for a discussion of national security issues and all
Speaker 1: things maritime. And welcome board everybody to this special Hammer
Speaker 1: time edition of mid Rats. Of course, there's nothing else
Speaker 1: we can talk about today if because of Operation Midnight
Speaker 1: Hammer that went down over this weekend, and we'll dive
Speaker 1: into that right off the start. But I just wanted
Speaker 1: to send out an invitation for those that are with
Speaker 1: us live. If you'd like to, you can find the
Speaker 1: chat room. We've already got quite a few people in
Speaker 1: their chat and a way if you have some observations
Speaker 1: you would like to share during the course of the show.
Speaker 1: Are some questions you would like for address to Mark
Speaker 1: or I, or just a topic you'd like for us
Speaker 1: to address, put it there, we'll see it and if
Speaker 1: we can, we will try to fold it into the
Speaker 1: conversation and I'll do my usual alter call. If you
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Speaker 1: that way will be available to you at a time
Speaker 1: better to your convenience if you don't honor us with
Speaker 1: your live listen. So Mark, first of all, good afternoon.
Speaker 1: Great to be with you again.
Speaker 2: Hey Sel, good to be here, and on a historic
Speaker 2: weekend it is.
Speaker 1: And one thing I wanted to touch on is you're
Speaker 1: a couple of years older than I am. I think
Speaker 1: it'd be safe to define you as a middle cohort
Speaker 1: baby boomer. Generation wise, I'm an early cohort gen X,
Speaker 1: and since I was in middle school, I was just
Speaker 1: starting to understand the world around me. But you know,
Speaker 1: you were a grown man at the time of the
Speaker 1: Iranian Revolution and the taking of the American hostages for
Speaker 1: you know, four hundred and forty four days, and ever
Speaker 1: since then my adult entire adult life and then some
Speaker 1: there's been a whole series of occasions. You know, you
Speaker 1: can start with the bombing of the Marine barracks in
Speaker 1: eighty three. Thousands of Americans have been killed, maimed, mutilated,
Speaker 1: left to be widows and widowers, children without parents to
Speaker 1: grow up because of the terror sponsored by Iran. And
Speaker 1: they've taken every opportunity to humiliate us. Play Lucy to
Speaker 1: our Charlie Brown with the football a few times, and
Speaker 1: when I saw the news, my two sides of my
Speaker 1: brain kicked off. The first part was the emotional side,
Speaker 1: going yes, Operation pream Mantus was not enough for me.
Speaker 1: It's time to give a little bit to the Iranians,
Speaker 1: and it was. It was good to see. It was
Speaker 1: also excellent to see because all of our airmen who
Speaker 1: went feet dry came home. We didn't lose a plane,
Speaker 1: we didn't lose in the airman. Nobody got shot down,
Speaker 1: no pow is none of that foolishness. And then there's
Speaker 1: a logical side of the brain because another thing we've
Speaker 1: been dealing with. It really became a big conversation point
Speaker 1: I believe in the Clinton era in the midnight has
Speaker 1: been Iran's desire to get a nuclear weapon, and knowing
Speaker 1: what the bad faith actor they've been on the on
Speaker 1: the world stage, they could not be allowed to get
Speaker 1: a nuclear weapon. It reached a crisis in the Oba administration.
Speaker 1: The Israelis have done a few things to slow them down,
Speaker 1: but it reached the point that they had just gotten
Speaker 1: too close. But it was a hard nut to crack.
Speaker 1: Iran's a huge nation on paper, at least until a
Speaker 1: week or so ago. They had a substantial military force
Speaker 1: not to take away their ballistic missiles and the killings
Speaker 1: that it's been doing all up and down Israel the
Speaker 1: last few days. But it was going to be a
Speaker 1: hard nut to crack, and they had hard in their facilities.
Speaker 1: And regardless of what happens down the road, we are
Speaker 1: not going to war. We have conducted what in previous
Speaker 1: generations and hopefully present and future generations will see as
Speaker 1: a punitive expedition. And we've done two things. One, you
Speaker 1: never really eliminate somebody who desires to get nuclear weapons
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons because you can't classify nineteen forties era mathematics
Speaker 1: and physics. Can adjust their supply, you can break their stuff,
Speaker 1: you can delay it, push it to the right, and
Speaker 1: hopefully different circumstances will approach the world. So we've bought
Speaker 1: everybody some time, if nothing else, and we have by
Speaker 1: weakening the Iranian regime, we've also opened the door if
Speaker 1: the Iranian people decide that they would like a different
Speaker 1: system of government, they have probably a better opportunity now
Speaker 1: than they've had in a long time. I thought it's
Speaker 1: been very smart of what Israel has done and what
Speaker 1: we did is we just targeted the nuclear facilities. Iran
Speaker 1: has mostly targeted the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, not the straight
Speaker 1: stick Iranian military. So it's you know, things might prop
Speaker 1: up in the future, but something I believe had to
Speaker 1: be done. The window of opportunity opened for us to
Speaker 1: do it, and the ground was prepared well by Israel.
Speaker 1: We stepped in it and did what had to be done.
Speaker 1: And tip my hat to everybody involved in the program
Speaker 1: because we'll find out more details in the in the
Speaker 1: months and the years ahead. But what a what a
Speaker 1: very well run program. No other country on the nation
Speaker 1: on the planet could do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I probably make some other country nervous. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean a punity of expedition, I tweeted earlier, texted Iran.
Speaker 2: You know, we get in, we blow it up, we
Speaker 2: get out, and if they don't understand the message, we
Speaker 2: go back and do it again. I mean, it is
Speaker 2: not any more complicated than that. That's what a punitive
Speaker 2: expedition is. And now we're seeing the Iranian government. You know,
Speaker 2: we're gonna have some kind of retribution. There is, as
Speaker 2: many people have noted, chance that there are sleeper cells
Speaker 2: in the in this country kind of do something or
Speaker 2: some of the crazies who are you know, always around,
Speaker 2: we're going to do something and claim that this is
Speaker 2: their motivation. We you know, we'd look at the threat
Speaker 2: of closing the strait of our moves. Uh. You know,
Speaker 2: I've also suggested that we, you know, want to pay it.
Speaker 2: I'm sure we're paying close attention to where the Iranian
Speaker 2: mind laying capable submarines are and you know that that
Speaker 2: is one of the ways you can cause problems. But
Speaker 2: on the other hand, they can't do too much because
Speaker 2: they've got their own tankers and their their one ally
Speaker 2: if you want to call it.
Speaker 3: That.
Speaker 2: China is needs the oil that they ship out, and
Speaker 2: the Iranians aren't going to get a lot of money
Speaker 2: if they close the entire strait of our moves for
Speaker 2: any extended period of time. So you know that the
Speaker 2: data there's also a threat to any troops we have
Speaker 2: in in Syria and and other Jordan other places like
Speaker 2: that that are nearby that I think President Trump warned
Speaker 2: the Iranians that that would not be a good idea
Speaker 2: to go after those folks, So, you know, it is it.
Speaker 2: It's an interesting time. A successful mission as far as
Speaker 2: we know. I hate to be too cynical about this,
Speaker 2: but over the years you get to the point where
Speaker 2: you go, you know, yeah, we we did put the
Speaker 2: penetrators in the ground where they were supposed to be.
Speaker 2: The extent of the damages is as yet unknown and
Speaker 2: maybe never really be known from until unless the Iranians
Speaker 2: going to show that we missed somehow. Oh no, here's
Speaker 2: here's our room full of eccentricis just you didn't get them,
Speaker 2: so it would be amazingly silly on their part. But yeah,
Speaker 2: we're you know, I think we're This is one of
Speaker 2: those things that anybody was alive in nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 2: and said it enough about what was going on when
Speaker 2: the passage were taken, and the the effort to get
Speaker 2: them out, the attempt to extract them, that crazy plan
Speaker 2: for the for the desert that went awry and we
Speaker 2: lost people there. We've lost people any number of times
Speaker 2: to the activities that the Iranians have been behind. They
Speaker 2: support as Bolo, the support hamas they support the Huthi's,
Speaker 2: They support a number of other entities that are not
Speaker 2: interested in our well being and or trying to get
Speaker 2: you know, their their goal their whole stick them for
Speaker 2: the for the Mullahs is that they're they want to
Speaker 2: get rid of Israel. They believe in some kind of
Speaker 2: armageddonish world that will end in there with them becoming
Speaker 2: triumphant and going off to to achieve great things as
Speaker 2: the as the prophet is as prophesized.
Speaker 1: I think he made a really good point about deception.
Speaker 1: I believe it was the Sector or the Chairman General
Speaker 1: Kine one of the two who made a comment about
Speaker 1: and other people have done some great little visuals and
Speaker 1: graphics that there was a deception campaign on our part
Speaker 1: ahead of the strike to help surprise them. There is
Speaker 1: a non zero champ. We're not the only people that
Speaker 1: can do deceptions. That there was some that we had
Speaker 1: bad information or were successfully deceived, and we dropped our
Speaker 1: fourteen penetrators in the wrong spot and didn't make anything
Speaker 1: move that needed to be moved, and they can go, hey,
Speaker 1: we still have it here. That's always a chance. But
Speaker 1: you know, if you are paralyzed by possibilities, then you
Speaker 1: never do anything. And you you know, you know, war
Speaker 1: or conflict, it's a dark room. You really don't know
Speaker 1: what's in there until you step into it. But you
Speaker 1: make the best best decision you can, knowing that you
Speaker 1: have imperfect information, and hope that the imperfection decimal point
Speaker 1: is in the right spot. And you mentioned about the
Speaker 1: straight of hor moves and the mining. One thing that
Speaker 1: popped into my head when you said that. And there
Speaker 1: are a couple of sources that have put out this figure.
Speaker 1: It may or may not be correct, but it sounds right.
Speaker 1: The People's Republic of China gets forty five scent of
Speaker 1: the oil it imports through the streets of horror moves.
Speaker 1: And I could very well see Chairman she gets on
Speaker 1: the horn to to his sources and Iran and go eight.
Speaker 1: You do what you need to do with Israel in
Speaker 1: the US, but don't don't you stop the oil going
Speaker 1: through the streets or horn moves. I got enough problems
Speaker 1: with my economy now, I don't need another oil shock
Speaker 1: on my hands. Don't even think about it. That bad
Speaker 1: communication is probably taking place. We'll see. Would I Ran
Speaker 1: be angry enough to do that? I don't know. There's
Speaker 1: such thing as an impotent rage. They've been humiliated not
Speaker 1: just by the little Satan Israel, but by the big Satan,
Speaker 1: the USA, So how can they strike out. That's one way.
Speaker 1: The other way is they've got been generally reported I
Speaker 1: have no reason to doubt it. They supposedly have terror
Speaker 1: cells located all over the place. They could make the
Speaker 1: decision that we have to we have to strike back
Speaker 1: in any way possible. And this is one of the
Speaker 1: unfortunate things that I've already seen some really political people
Speaker 1: engage in where they said, Okay, if the Iranians attack
Speaker 1: any Americans, this is all the fault because of this,
Speaker 1: Like Iranians have been attacking us for a long time.
Speaker 1: And if you establish we can't do anything against Iran
Speaker 1: because they'll activate one of their terror cells we've let
Speaker 1: exist inside of our own lifelines, then again, you're going
Speaker 1: to be paralyzed by fear. And you can't survive on
Speaker 1: this planet by being paralyzed by fear. So that's another
Speaker 1: way they could find a way to lash out, and
Speaker 1: we everybody should be prepared for that in a variety
Speaker 1: of ways. I think there's and I've been guilty of
Speaker 1: this a little bit myself because I grew up with
Speaker 1: the with the kids of Iranian refugees. A lot of
Speaker 1: them were doctors or people in medical school over here.
Speaker 1: Who you know, their parents got on the phone and said,
Speaker 1: don't come back. They're not true. People who've been been
Speaker 1: to the US recently very well. And so they stayed here,
Speaker 1: married Americans, you know, kept their kids here, and I
Speaker 1: grew up with them. That's that that has some caution
Speaker 1: in my mind, but we can't and people, I think
Speaker 1: we've actually talked about this before on the show. One
Speaker 1: of the largest Iranian cities in the US is Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: It's well into six figures first and second generation Americans
Speaker 1: of Iranian extraction who lived there. But they're they're they're
Speaker 1: not a danger to anybody. They're great Americans, very great,
Speaker 1: great professionals, great neighbors. They're not the ones you worry about.
Speaker 1: What you have to worry about are those military aged
Speaker 1: males that were sneaking across the Mexican border for the
Speaker 1: last few years, undocumented, untracked, unlocated. That's what you have
Speaker 1: to worry about. But you know, that's one of those things.
Speaker 1: It's a bridge. We can cross it. Because one tar
Speaker 1: cell doing a terrorist attack is a tragedy. Iran having
Speaker 1: a nuclear weapon is existential to quite a few people,
Speaker 1: So it's one of the risks. I think you just
Speaker 1: have to take.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's barely been interesting because the Russians
Speaker 2: have come in and announced that that there are plenty
Speaker 2: of other countries that would be one way to provide
Speaker 2: Iran with a nuclear weapon.
Speaker 1: It was a med thatdev or somebody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the UH and the uh these well calling
Speaker 2: the Secretary of Foreign Minister from Iran is is now
Speaker 2: meeting with the Russians. Uh. You know it's one of
Speaker 2: those things, where is that just to make sure that
Speaker 2: people think that there's still a threat there and and uh,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of keep the the West from doing anything.
Speaker 2: Like you know, I don't think we have any intention
Speaker 2: of invading Iran. That would be we have talked about
Speaker 2: him a for It is a really tough nut to crack.
Speaker 2: But the Russians, they they you know, they don't mind
Speaker 2: maybe the straight of hor Moose closing because they've got
Speaker 2: their own oil to push and you know, things are
Speaker 2: going not quite as well as they should for their
Speaker 2: under the sanctions. And we could really crack down on
Speaker 2: on net if we got serious about it. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I know, there's there's a lot of words flying around
Speaker 2: that make you wonder what you know what is real
Speaker 2: and what is just posturing. You know, Iranians, you're our
Speaker 2: friends or Russian Iranian coalition which kind of exists, you know,
Speaker 2: one of these acts of evil things. You know that
Speaker 2: that's something we don't really reneed. We'd like to. As
Speaker 2: you said, I don't think we after our mistakes in
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties when we help the the elected government
Speaker 2: of Iran out of power, well, you know that caused
Speaker 2: a lot of sore feelings, which allowed Commanding to come
Speaker 2: in as the in seventy nine as the new leader
Speaker 2: of the Islamic Republic of Iran. So we don't really
Speaker 2: want to be involved in and another. We're happy to
Speaker 2: support a change of administration in Iram, but I don't
Speaker 2: think we want to be the cause or the driving
Speaker 2: force behind it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's all sorts of little interesting operational details that
Speaker 1: have come out of this as well. I actually had
Speaker 1: for those who haven't engaged in arguments with AI like chat, GBT,
Speaker 1: KROC or some of the other ones. It's actually kind
Speaker 1: of interesting because these large language models are only as
Speaker 1: good as the data sources they get to. And I
Speaker 1: had a fun back and forth with them when I
Speaker 1: was doing some of the show prep and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I need to catch up on the B two. So
Speaker 1: I went in and looked at the B two and
Speaker 1: it said that they have a bomb capacity of twenty
Speaker 1: thousand pounds, and I went, well, wait a minute, Oh,
Speaker 1: I mean forty thousand pounds. So wait, that can't be
Speaker 1: right because the penetrator has thirty thousand weighs thirty thousand
Speaker 1: pounds and they were supposed to carry two of them,
Speaker 1: so that's you know, even I can do that math
Speaker 1: three times two to six, so it's got to be
Speaker 1: more than that. And so I went in and they said,
Speaker 1: are you sure that it's forty thousand pound bomb capacity
Speaker 1: on the B two when they were carrying too, And
Speaker 1: it came back and said, no, you're right. So one
Speaker 1: thing that we have found out that the and again
Speaker 1: this isn't be the first. That's why it's important and
Speaker 1: we say it on a regular basis in opensource dot
Speaker 1: dot dot because what has actually done and in the
Speaker 1: real world is often very different, and in aircraft it
Speaker 1: can be. There's a couple of ways that you can
Speaker 1: take off in excess of your advertised load. If you
Speaker 1: do a couple of things. But so we now know
Speaker 1: that actually it can take off with sixty thousand pounds
Speaker 1: of ordinance by carrying two of the GBU fifty sevens.
Speaker 1: And that had me go, what do we have planned
Speaker 1: for the B twenty one raider that's coming online? Because
Speaker 1: I remembered reading a while ago somebody was talking about
Speaker 1: the raider had a lower capacity to carry bombs because
Speaker 1: some of the design compromises with the B two derived
Speaker 1: from a lot of these old bomber guys and they
Speaker 1: were designing the B two, said no, this needs to
Speaker 1: be able to have a higher carrying capacity than what
Speaker 1: you're designing for it, so they had to change some
Speaker 1: of the configuration of the B two to meet that requirement. Well, supposedly,
Speaker 1: the B twenty one has an advertised twenty thousand pound
Speaker 1: bomb load, which wouldn't be able to carry one GBU
Speaker 1: fifty seven. But as we've learned, so let's just say
Speaker 1: they can upscale it just like they did with the
Speaker 1: B two, so that would carry one GBU forty seven.
Speaker 1: I think we've seen, especially with the deeply buried things
Speaker 1: have to do too. So for the folks that North
Speaker 1: were grum and maybe they could if they don't already,
Speaker 1: you know, a stretched version of the B twenty one,
Speaker 1: the B twenty one Bravo that had a larger carrying capacity.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's something they can build in the twenty forties.
Speaker 1: But I thought that was an interesting detail because people
Speaker 1: forget we have less than twenty flable B twos, and
Speaker 1: of that percentage, there's always going to be a certain
Speaker 1: percentage of them that are in maintenance. And we had
Speaker 1: seven of them strike, which they had seven table From
Speaker 1: what we've been told, they had seven takeoff, seven land.
Speaker 1: They probably planned the mission being able to do it
Speaker 1: with one or two less if you had mechanical problems.
Speaker 1: But they made it all the way from Missouri across
Speaker 1: the Atlantic and back. They had some decoys. I think
Speaker 1: it was three that went west, So seven times is ten.
Speaker 1: So you know, how many other fully mission capable B
Speaker 1: twos do we have left when we had ten in
Speaker 1: the air. I don't know. Maybe they sent some partially
Speaker 1: mission capable ones with the decoy unit going west, But
Speaker 1: that's an interesting detail. And with building the B twenty one,
Speaker 1: maybe we should build more than we think we need to.
Speaker 1: But that's something we can talk about down the road.
Speaker 1: As we actually started getting production going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I get boggled. I've been boggled about things since
Speaker 2: I've learned that the old f or Phantom could carry
Speaker 2: more and bombs than my dad's be seventeen could World
Speaker 2: War Two. So you know, these these numbers are astonishing
Speaker 2: to me that these aircraft, no matter how large, the eric,
Speaker 2: can carry that much in the way of wait, I'm here.
Speaker 2: You know the old has has the size of the
Speaker 2: weapons have shrunk except for these massive penetrators which here
Speaker 2: that it's interesting. We you know, we you have to
Speaker 2: design to the to the I guess the biggest you
Speaker 2: could carry, and I assume that without knowing for sure
Speaker 2: that a lot of One of the tricks aviators have
Speaker 2: used in the past is if if, if what you're
Speaker 2: carrying is beyond your theoretical capacity, you go light on
Speaker 2: the fuel at the at the takeoff, immediately refuel after
Speaker 2: getting airborne, and then it's and it's not that big
Speaker 2: a deal after that once you're actually in the air.
Speaker 1: Why the good Lord gives you lots of lots of
Speaker 1: runway And yeah.
Speaker 2: The kid's talking, we're talking, we're talking air Force exactly.
Speaker 2: If it's not twelve thousand or fourteen thousand feet, it's
Speaker 2: not it's not a runway.
Speaker 1: They get the entire Midwest prairie to take off. They
Speaker 1: got plenty of runway. But it reminds me, you know,
Speaker 1: as a kid, I just digested all those books on
Speaker 1: World War Two and you have those pictures of the
Speaker 1: tall Boy bomb that the British Lancasters carried that they
Speaker 1: use to attack the turpets. Wow, that's big bomb. Well again,
Speaker 1: when you look at the GBU fifty seven, the massive
Speaker 1: ordnance penetrator, the mop you got mopped all right, it's
Speaker 1: twenty feet long and change, I mean over over six
Speaker 1: meters for you Europeans and Canadians, yet thirty inches wide
Speaker 1: point eight meters wide. I mean that's huge, huge weapon,
Speaker 1: which to penetrate as far as Open Source has it penetrated,
Speaker 1: it would have to be. But that's just that makes
Speaker 1: that's bigger than the Doctor strangeloved nukes that we saw
Speaker 1: slim Pickens riding down to his glory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's uh, you know, and we mustn't forget too
Speaker 2: that this the B twos did a big part of
Speaker 2: the job, but there were one hundred and twenty five
Speaker 2: aircraft involved. Yeah, so that means one hundred and eighteen
Speaker 2: that weren't B twos and I you know, just judging
Speaker 2: by the the you know that somebody had to do
Speaker 2: if there was any suppression of the air defense systems,
Speaker 2: somebody had to do that. And I think, I don't
Speaker 2: remember what the Air Force has gotten those things, but
Speaker 2: I think the mate that's a Navy mission lately. You know,
Speaker 2: the sub the SSGN out there fired a grunch of
Speaker 2: tea lambs. I don't know what the destroyers did, but
Speaker 2: I know that someone was standing by off the coast
Speaker 2: of Israel too for their anti missile defense stuff. So
Speaker 2: you know, this is a this is a big operation
Speaker 2: and carried out really smoothly as far as we know. So,
Speaker 2: but we wes and forget all these other folks were involved.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you mentioned that because it is I mean,
Speaker 1: the details will come out and will be fascinating, and
Speaker 1: some of the stuff that we've been told now probably
Speaker 1: isn't accurate, but you only can run with what you got.
Speaker 1: But apparently it makes sense as a joint ie Air Force,
Speaker 1: Navy and combined as in US Israel operation where the
Speaker 1: Israelis really toted the remaining part of the Iranian Integrated
Speaker 1: Air Defense Network to kind of clear the path. And
Speaker 1: then I've seen a couple of reports that had again
Speaker 1: your dad would appreciate that they had fighter escort, that
Speaker 1: they had at least F twenty two's flying with them,
Speaker 1: and if they were doing see I don't think F
Speaker 1: twenty two can do suppression of internew air defenses. That
Speaker 1: tells me that they, you know, probably had some strike
Speaker 1: eagles or some other We'll find out those details. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw the same report you did about the Tea Lamb.
Speaker 1: You know, Navy had a little bit of play there
Speaker 1: as well. I don't know whether the carrier strike groups did,
Speaker 1: but I saw where the USS Georgia, which is forty
Speaker 1: one years old, the one of the four ssgns that
Speaker 1: we have left that were converted from the older Ohio boats,
Speaker 1: that it fired thirty te lambs and they carry one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty four Tea lambs. It's just an impressive
Speaker 1: piece of kit. You know, one thing I've always thought,
Speaker 1: you know, like I said, they're four decades old, which
Speaker 1: you can do with former boomers because they they don't.
Speaker 1: They are the submarine version of driven by the little
Speaker 1: Lady to church on Sunday used car. You know, they
Speaker 1: don't have many miles and their gentle miles that they have,
Speaker 1: so you can you can keep them for a while longer.
Speaker 1: But as we build the Colombian, I know, the Virginia
Speaker 1: payload module brings you a lot more capability in that regard.
Speaker 1: But it'll be interesting to see in ten years, as
Speaker 1: we you know, have decommissioned the ssg ins that we have,
Speaker 1: whether that argument can be brought up. It's like, hey,
Speaker 1: when we get through recapitalizing ssb N force, why don't
Speaker 1: we build a few more and make them just dedicated
Speaker 1: missile carriers, because you can there's danger of putting too
Speaker 1: many eggs in one basket. But whatever. The follow on
Speaker 1: to the Tea lam is being able to park one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty four of them off somebody shore and
Speaker 1: they don't even know you're there. Again, that's a capability
Speaker 1: nobody else on the planet has.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we you know, the surface maybe made a big
Speaker 2: deal about one in the Arsenal ship, which basically does
Speaker 2: what these ssg ns uh do. And yeah, I can't
Speaker 2: imagine we're going to let that. Of course, I can
Speaker 2: imagine a lot of the capacity we let go. We
Speaker 2: let go, but I can't imagine we're going to let
Speaker 2: that capacity just disappear, and we're going to have to
Speaker 2: be really thinking strongly about what we want to do
Speaker 2: and where we want to do it, with what equipment.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: This is just is in many ways kind of a
Speaker 2: classic US operation because we did use our some of
Speaker 2: our expensive kit and we did not have to deal
Speaker 2: with in this operation these these nouveau tactics with you know,
Speaker 2: small drones and other nasty little things that could cause problems.
Speaker 2: This is this is a big boy kind of fight.
Speaker 1: And it does the theory to the practice. Now, one
Speaker 1: thing that a man to bomber gives you is flexibility,
Speaker 1: one of which is the ability to be recalled if
Speaker 1: need be, being able to effectively change mission even if
Speaker 1: you uh, you know, don't have communications as opposed to
Speaker 1: you know, fire, fire the drone and watch from satellites
Speaker 1: that you hopefully have access to to see what happens.
Speaker 1: It's again unique capability that nobody else has. And kind
Speaker 1: of a secondary benefit to this that all people have
Speaker 1: talked about is the Ukrainians have got to be happy
Speaker 1: because the Iranians have been uh now a lot of
Speaker 1: the production has actually been moved to Russia, but they
Speaker 1: helped the Russians a lot, especially in the first couple
Speaker 1: of years in the Russia Ukrainian War, because they had
Speaker 1: sparic capacity. Israel has done a very good job of
Speaker 1: removing that sparic capacity from the Iranians, and what production
Speaker 1: capability they have, they're going to have to focus on
Speaker 1: rebuilding their munitions, a lot of which have been either
Speaker 1: expended or depleted. And you know, how do you The
Speaker 1: Israelis evidently have hit some of the manufacturing facilities for
Speaker 1: both the drones and the ballistic missiles, So you've got
Speaker 1: to rebuild your factories first. So Iran is going to
Speaker 1: be focused on its own needs for a while as
Speaker 1: opposed to helping their proxies are helping friends they would
Speaker 1: like to have like Russia with their ongoing wards which
Speaker 1: again is a bit of fit to everybody. You've actually
Speaker 1: seen some of the usual suspects in Europe who rarely
Speaker 1: have anything nice to say about the US and what
Speaker 1: we do internationally, and it definitely won't to complement the
Speaker 1: Trump administration actually come out and say fair is fair.
Speaker 1: This has done everybody on the planet a great a
Speaker 1: great service, because again, yeah, hate us for doing the
Speaker 1: right thing, but we're we're going to do the right thing.
Speaker 1: And there's I have not seen I've seen plenty of
Speaker 1: people arguing against it. They're either focused like down just
Speaker 1: incredibly narrow and narrow aperture, focused on their particular bespoke
Speaker 1: worldview are they're just mindly part mindly partisan, where anything
Speaker 1: that goes well they have to oppose because they don't
Speaker 1: want to be seen given benefits to somebody who they
Speaker 1: disagree with on other domestic political issues. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's at least for now, and there might be surprises
Speaker 1: down the road, like we talked about with the deception
Speaker 1: or other things, but on whole, it's refreshing to see
Speaker 1: an operation go well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's nice to see a politician who takes
Speaker 2: office and does exactly what he said he would do.
Speaker 2: If if if Iran wouldn't back off on its nuclear program,
Speaker 2: he was not going to let them to get nuclear weapons,
Speaker 2: So more power to him for that. We tried to
Speaker 2: bribe them, we tried everything else that didn't seem to work.
Speaker 2: So I mean, sometimes the only thing people understand, especially thugocracies,
Speaker 2: is being out thugged. I think they got out thugged
Speaker 2: on this one, yep.
Speaker 1: And besides the occasional pinprick where we popped them in
Speaker 1: the forehead, like I mentioned praying mantis, in many ways
Speaker 1: our actions have encouraged them to think that they could
Speaker 1: lie to the international community, lie to US, lie to
Speaker 1: their neighbors, lie to their own people, to pursue what
Speaker 1: they would see as a unique capability in their part
Speaker 1: of the world. I mean, Pakistan has had a nuke
Speaker 1: for a long time, but their nukes are all focused
Speaker 1: towards India, and you know, you talk about destabilizing. If
Speaker 1: Ouran got a nuke, Saudi Arabia would get one almost automatically.
Speaker 1: And there are other nations around the world who might say, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, here we go. When North Korea went nuclear,
Speaker 1: North Korea is really only a threat to itself or
Speaker 1: South Korea. There's not this ability to have a domino flop.
Speaker 1: You could make the comment about the threat to Japan.
Speaker 1: Japan's kind of unique creature. In Japan also has a
Speaker 1: bilateral defense treaty with the US, and I think it's
Speaker 1: quite clear that if anybody made the mistake of nuking Japan.
Speaker 1: The unless we have some very weird people at sixteen
Speaker 1: hundred Pennsylvania Avenue, the response from the US would be
Speaker 1: apocalyptic to North Korea if they ever did that down
Speaker 1: the road. So it's a different formula down there. So again,
Speaker 1: I think this has bought everybody time. Unless the Iranians
Speaker 1: deceived us pretty well and we did nothing but bomb
Speaker 1: the bedrock.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that would be bad. But I think we must
Speaker 2: have had some pretty good intelligence. Certainly, the Israelis have
Speaker 2: been absolutely spot on with it. They've known about where
Speaker 2: things are in Iran and who, in fact where the
Speaker 2: people in charge live. So I'm pretty sure we're not
Speaker 2: too If we got deceived, it was not. I was
Speaker 2: just thinking of the level where they would say, no,
Speaker 2: you really didn't get us. Maybe they have a duplicate
Speaker 2: system created, but I would think the Israelis would know
Speaker 2: about that and would let us know. I think the
Speaker 2: other thing that this has done is the neighborhood where
Speaker 2: Iran operates all the countries around there, the Saudis, the Omani's,
Speaker 2: the Bahrainians, I would say, the Iraqis, but since their
Speaker 2: government seems to be in bed in a lot of
Speaker 2: ways with the Iranians, but a lot of the other
Speaker 2: countries in that area are going to breathe the sigh
Speaker 2: of relief that are iran It's somewhat been taken off
Speaker 2: the board. You know, you got that group of people
Speaker 2: over there that is doing everything they can to stir
Speaker 2: up trouble because and there's you know, you know, all
Speaker 2: the whole Shiite Sunni and all the other variations of
Speaker 2: the of the Islamic religion. You know that everybody thinks
Speaker 2: that everybody else is an apostate, but and you just
Speaker 2: worry about your neighbor who thinks you're an apostaate having
Speaker 2: a bigger gun than you have. I think this does
Speaker 2: take some of that pressure off those those countries, and
Speaker 2: we would allow if we if they can get back
Speaker 2: to the accords, with the Abraham Accords, that that would
Speaker 2: be a very positive thing that could come out of this, the.
Speaker 1: Whole Arab Palestinian conflict. That calculus has changed so much
Speaker 1: in the last few decades, and especially in academia, it
Speaker 1: seems like it's always nineteen ninety five on how they
Speaker 1: view things. It's like the scariest largest wall between Gaza
Speaker 1: and its neighbor is not Gaza and Israel. It was
Speaker 1: between Gaza and Egypt, and the Egyptians had a bunch
Speaker 1: of left wing European protesters who tried to march to
Speaker 1: Gaza and Solidary and they made the mistake. It was
Speaker 1: trying to start from Egypt thinking that Egypt was Luxembourg,
Speaker 1: and that didn't turn out too well formed. Some of
Speaker 1: them were given a wood shampoo by some security forces.
Speaker 1: But there's no love lost there. Saudi Arabia is just
Speaker 1: waiting for the right window to step in. The new
Speaker 1: leadership in Syria maybe imperfect from Western standards, but I
Speaker 1: don't think Syria has ever had a perfect leadership by
Speaker 1: Western standards since the British and the French had that
Speaker 1: at World War Two. So the neighborhood is improving. Even
Speaker 1: Lebanon is making steps to kind of extract hesible his
Speaker 1: ability to attack the Israel from there. So things might
Speaker 1: change on a nine. But if if success is taking
Speaker 1: three steps back, accepting the one step back, then taking
Speaker 1: three stepping back. One this this takes us three steps forward.
Speaker 1: There will be a step back, but this, this is
Speaker 1: definitely a three step forward operation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's for the most part, it's been good.
Speaker 2: I think we've had a few international the u N,
Speaker 2: the u N. I guess he's the head of the UN.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure you know, he doesn't. He's not really
Speaker 2: in favor of what we've done. And my attitude toward
Speaker 2: that is, well, you pay your own bills for a change,
Speaker 2: and we'd be happy to listen to you, but otherwise
Speaker 2: you you don't represent anybody anymore. And I although I
Speaker 2: will note that our our ambassador to the UN has
Speaker 2: said that any retaliation against the US or US forces
Speaker 2: will be met with devastating retaliation. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think we've kind of demonstrated the fact that there's
Speaker 1: a new sheriff in town who's not shy and actually
Speaker 1: follows through, which has a deterrent effect on itself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the the UN and a lot of these international
Speaker 1: bodies in the last few years, they haven't just shown
Speaker 1: the fact that they're they're toothless, they're also counterproductive. Like
Speaker 1: a lot of the problems you look at the United Kingdom,
Speaker 1: it's been because their best and bright has decided that
Speaker 1: they wanted to even after Brexit, outsource a lot of
Speaker 1: what you would want in a democratic system, which you
Speaker 1: have in a constitutional monarchy. They've outsourced a lot of
Speaker 1: that to the International Criminal Court that we're not a
Speaker 1: member of the European Commission on Human Rights. They've they've
Speaker 1: lost a lot of control to these international bodies. And
Speaker 1: outside of a few very narrow spectrums when you look
Speaker 1: at your average citizen of these nations, and you can
Speaker 1: open this up to the United Nations, you know what,
Speaker 1: Like I said in office space, you know, what do
Speaker 1: you do here? It's so yeah, the people in the
Speaker 1: UN can can say what they want to, but I
Speaker 1: think what little credibility they have left here in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five, it's it's minuscule to to nothing at this point,
Speaker 1: because it's just it's it's sad and laughable. It was
Speaker 1: a nice concept, it was a good concept, but it
Speaker 1: had some some critical failings on it that have manifested
Speaker 1: itself to the point that I'm not sure what it
Speaker 1: functions at this point. But it's I guess it's better
Speaker 1: than having nothing. Uh. But yeah, I don't think any
Speaker 1: serious person is worried what the UN does or does
Speaker 1: not say one way or another.
Speaker 2: Well, if you want to not worry about things, there's
Speaker 2: China has come out and said, you know, we the
Speaker 2: actions of the US seriously violate the purposes and principles
Speaker 2: of the UN Charter, international law and exacerbated tensions in
Speaker 2: the Middle East. China calls and the parties to the
Speaker 2: conflict Israel, in particular to reach a seafire as soon
Speaker 2: as possible and ensure the safety of civilians and start
Speaker 2: a dialogue and negotiation. China, in the meantime, is all
Speaker 2: over the Philippines uh Exclusive Economic Zone, harassing there. You know,
Speaker 2: they're they're China talking about other people violating international law.
Speaker 2: Is that's just so pathetic that it's uh, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they probably had one of their one of their
Speaker 1: junior staffers who attended Model u N in high school
Speaker 1: and in the US. Go ahead and write that up
Speaker 1: because that's kind of random, random uh UN related statement
Speaker 1: generator production. Yeah, impressive, you know the grammars better than mine.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's it is it is affable. You look
Speaker 1: at what they do, what they have done, and they're
Speaker 1: continuing to do in Tibet and and can we call
Speaker 1: it East Turkestan because I can't I can't pronounce what
Speaker 1: the the wigers call it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know, but I just that to me,
Speaker 2: that's just first it sounds like a they probably probably
Speaker 2: from some stolen AI program they had, they generated that
Speaker 2: that complaint. But yeah, that.
Speaker 1: Would be an interesting exercise. Maybe I'll do it if
Speaker 1: I have a writer's block, because I think I know
Speaker 1: what I want to write it about tomorrow. But if
Speaker 1: I have a writer blocks, maybe I'll steal your idea
Speaker 1: and go, you know, hat chaby Tea and kroc Uh
Speaker 1: generate for me a response from the People's Republic of
Speaker 1: China concerning dot dot. Yeah, you're gonna get a response.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, by the way, and I think somebody noticed
Speaker 2: this in the the chat room. The the I I
Speaker 2: a e A director said that the US did actually
Speaker 2: hit the the nuclear sites and that they were extentive
Speaker 2: additional damage because the Israeli's hit some of them before.
Speaker 2: So that's good. We you know, we've got some some
Speaker 2: kind of confirmation.
Speaker 1: Oh you know, blind squirrel nut whole nine yards, so
Speaker 1: hopefully they're right.
Speaker 2: Apparently they're GPS jammer in Iran to did not stop
Speaker 2: our bombers from finding the right place on the planet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but anyway, I think and the and the
Speaker 1: shooting's not over with. It might be over with from
Speaker 1: the American point of view, but the Israelis they are
Speaker 1: they are working into their tertiary target deck right now
Speaker 1: because they have aerial supremacy over Iran more than the
Speaker 1: US Army Air Corps had over Germany and Japan the
Speaker 1: last day of World War Two. They've not only swept
Speaker 1: the skies, they've any of their surviving modern non visually
Speaker 1: aimed anti aircraft systems, you know those the commanders of
Speaker 1: those batteries is they reach to energize their electronic equipment.
Speaker 1: You know, if they have n c os like we
Speaker 1: have in the US, they're gonna be looking. I'm going, sir,
Speaker 1: get your hands off that button. We're not We're not
Speaker 1: ready to anything, because you know, George and Fred and
Speaker 1: Sally over there, they're all little grease spots because they
Speaker 1: lit off two days ago. Let's just stay here and
Speaker 1: collect the paycheck. So's it's gonna be interesting to see
Speaker 1: if Iran just ropidotes that, how long Israel is going
Speaker 1: to continue to enjoy access to their airspace, because once
Speaker 1: once Israel stops doing that, getting back in will be
Speaker 1: a challenge. That's what we look at it this week
Speaker 1: is how many more days are these strikes going to
Speaker 1: be going? And you have to remember the Israel also,
Speaker 1: It's it's not the US military where you got the Navy,
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps, the Air Force, you know, tach air
Speaker 1: every day twice on Sunday type of thing. It's the
Speaker 1: nation the size of New Jersey, and it's already been
Speaker 1: at war for let's see, that's twelve and six, seven,
Speaker 1: eight nine, Yeah, twenty one months now. They've been at
Speaker 1: war since I'm AWESO invaded them. Yeah, they're they're a
Speaker 1: rich nation and where if you've watched the C seventies
Speaker 1: lining even on air. We're resupplying them as much as
Speaker 1: we can. But yeah, that that's going to be interesting
Speaker 1: to see how far in their tertiary target deck they get.
Speaker 2: Well, I think not you. Net Yahoo has made the
Speaker 2: right statements about what Israel's up to. It says the
Speaker 2: fighting would end when Israel achieves its goals, and when
Speaker 2: we achieve the goals, we will not continue the activity
Speaker 2: beyond what it necessary to achieve them. But will You're
Speaker 2: not going to end it too soon either, is what
Speaker 2: he says. You know, that really leaves it open for
Speaker 2: the Iranians to do something to get there, get themselves
Speaker 2: out of the out of the center of the target,
Speaker 2: because nobody is happy with what with what they've done
Speaker 2: over the years, and you know, their neighbors don't really
Speaker 2: like them. I assume somebody is giving permission for the
Speaker 2: Israelis to fly over their territory to engage in these activities. So,
Speaker 2: you know, what, what are you left with? You're left
Speaker 2: with Iran that maybe we can We've got We've got Turkey,
Speaker 2: which is a NATO nation but aspires to be I
Speaker 2: think to be the major power in the Middle in
Speaker 2: that part of the Middle East, to the extent that
Speaker 2: they're in the Middle East. But you know that, you know,
Speaker 2: where where do we go from here? You know is
Speaker 2: in the past Turkey had been kind of aligned with Israel,
Speaker 2: but not lately, you know, they're they've become sort of
Speaker 2: an Alama's state despart the despite the history with with
Speaker 2: Kamal out of most of the Kamal out of turk Uh,
Speaker 2: you know, want him to be a secular state. So,
Speaker 2: you know, the things are still it's been there. A
Speaker 2: lot of exciting things can happen. I think you're right
Speaker 2: about Syria. You know, sometimes a stable but unpleasant government
Speaker 2: is the government you're happy, not happy with, but at
Speaker 2: least content to have there until they do something dumb
Speaker 2: that you can and then I'm not sure that that
Speaker 2: dumb to make if they see what's going on with
Speaker 2: with the Iran to be too aggressive these days, whatever
Speaker 2: you want to call the nation or empire that has
Speaker 2: Anatolia has been in conflict with whatever the nation or
Speaker 2: empire that is present day Iran slash Persia.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's as old as the dawn of time.
Speaker 1: So I think that natural friction is going to exist there,
Speaker 1: and I ran, really they don't have any friends. They
Speaker 1: have proxies, and they have clients for the oil. That's
Speaker 1: about it. You know, we sometimes we forget because nations
Speaker 1: have agency, and some of our allies are allowed to
Speaker 1: have opinions different than ours, and we will disagree and
Speaker 1: argue about points of order and individual actions that they
Speaker 1: take or we take. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: as far as as much as nations do have friends,
Speaker 1: we do have friends and allies, and so does Israel,
Speaker 1: just not as many, but they have a lot more
Speaker 1: now than they had fifteen twenty, well twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: years ago. The Gulf States have seen the fact that
Speaker 1: what with the Abraham Accords, it the promise of normalizing
Speaker 1: relations with Israel does bring business and medical exchanges that
Speaker 1: are beneficial everybody. And uh, that's that's if you're looking
Speaker 1: for what the cool kids call a white pill moment
Speaker 1: about the future, I think that, uh, this this kind
Speaker 1: of fits the bill because there are a lot of
Speaker 1: positive aspects of this and we should take it as such.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of the this time next week everything
Speaker 1: might be different. But where where were the threat vectors
Speaker 1: a week ago versus where they are today? I would
Speaker 1: make the argue that we're in a much better place
Speaker 1: now than we're a week ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm interested in the in the we we all,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't we don't like to mess around
Speaker 2: too much with the domestic political structure too much. But
Speaker 2: I'm interested in the in the protest movements which spring
Speaker 2: up rapidly. You know, we're apparently the the the my
Speaker 2: era of Vietnam, and protesters have trained the next couple
Speaker 2: of generations as well to be We'll have these spontaneous
Speaker 2: demonstrations a minute. The US does anything that we vaguely
Speaker 2: disagree with, and I think you talked about kind of
Speaker 2: at the start of the show, but you know, it
Speaker 2: is it is amazing to me. We've got you know,
Speaker 2: people in New York, We've got people in Dearborn, Michigan,
Speaker 2: people all over the place upset by the fact that
Speaker 2: the US has taken on the Iranian mulas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there is a group of people that whatever appears
Speaker 1: to make the US strong is bad and they'll want
Speaker 1: to protest it. Anything that makes America weak they support,
Speaker 1: and they're that's best explained by either a psychiatrist or themselves.
Speaker 1: But it's it's hard, it's hard not to notice. It's
Speaker 1: pretty straightforward. It's right there. I mean, for the end show,
Speaker 1: just to maybe switch a little bit over to the
Speaker 1: Navy side of the house, interesting details came out that
Speaker 1: just had me had me thinking a bit about something
Speaker 1: that you know, you and I have been writing about
Speaker 1: for over two decades and we've talked about for the
Speaker 1: decade and a half we've had the show here with
Speaker 1: multiple guests. It has to do with the problems we've
Speaker 1: had building a fleet, building ships, designing ships, getting things
Speaker 1: from the PowerPoint slide to actually displacing water. And I
Speaker 1: think we've had all this kind of encapsulated right now,
Speaker 1: and you know, behold the fruits of the poison tree
Speaker 1: type of thing. Is the little announcement went out on
Speaker 1: the twenty fourth of June, coming up in Ya two
Speaker 1: days being that we're recording this here on Sunday afternoon,
Speaker 1: the twenty second, the gerald Ford will deploy now the
Speaker 1: Ford Carrier Strike Group, And it doesn't mention that if
Speaker 1: there are any submarines attached to it. Sometimes there are, I
Speaker 1: don't know comp to extra g T effics. But twenty
Speaker 1: four June, the gerald Ford Carrier Strike Group is going
Speaker 1: to be getting underway with their air wing and her
Speaker 1: her escort ships are five DDGs now. Of those five,
Speaker 1: two have already deployed. The USS Winston S. Churchill deployed
Speaker 1: on the twenty first to June, and the Forest Sherman
Speaker 1: deployed on the sixth of May. Which in the Red Sea,
Speaker 1: there's a high demand for all things DDG. And it
Speaker 1: used to be within living memory, or at least in
Speaker 1: my living memory, we had cruisers, we had guided missile destroyers,
Speaker 1: we had regular destroyers, we had frigates, we had a
Speaker 1: nice diverse tool set, and now we don't even have
Speaker 1: cruisers to deploy with. We've taken some of our upgraded
Speaker 1: early Burks. In this case is going to be the
Speaker 1: USS Winston as Churchill is going to be Alpha Sierra
Speaker 1: and a correction having flashbacks Whiskey, Alpha Whiskey, thank you
Speaker 1: the air warfare commander in a DDG, which it wasn't
Speaker 1: designed for, but you can make happen. That's why we
Speaker 1: have some of our DDGs now. Uh to have six commanders,
Speaker 1: you know though it's supposed to be a commander command
Speaker 1: because you've got to have it's good to have an
Speaker 1: six as Alpha Whiskey and Uh, it's just an interesting
Speaker 1: point that we have reached. We have become the meme.
Speaker 1: I think we've jokingly talked about DDGs and the Arley
Speaker 1: Burks and we did a show, we did the restart
Speaker 1: the whole nine yards that we're going to build Arley
Speaker 1: Burks until the crack of doom because it's the only
Speaker 1: ship we can build. If you told somebody and when
Speaker 1: you and I started blogging in two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: two thousand and four, I think you beat me by
Speaker 1: a year that we're going to reach the point that
Speaker 1: we're gonna have carrier strike carrier. Then we called them
Speaker 1: carrier battle groups. The battle is the scary words. We
Speaker 1: called them striking. Now, now carrier strike groups, we're gonna
Speaker 1: have nothing but Arley Burke class destroyers. They'll go no, no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 1: We've got litoral combat ships we're gonna be in there.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have all these great zoom Walk class d
Speaker 1: d's that are gonna be there. We're gonna have cg
Speaker 1: X that's gonna be there. No, no, no, The Arley
Speaker 1: Burks will just be your you know, all purpose tool,
Speaker 1: an older ship. Now that's not gonna happen in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five. Well, behold here we are twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: We got nothing but Burke's. Maybe they're good ships.
Speaker 2: But well the size of cruisers, you know, so I
Speaker 2: have some uh I kind of laugh at this a
Speaker 2: little bit. I mean all this every you know, the
Speaker 2: old tin Cans, the old Gearyon class and all those,
Speaker 2: you know, they were they were not huge ships. No,
Speaker 2: they carried a lot of weaponry for their side. But
Speaker 2: I mean the Burke are big ships, and I don't
Speaker 2: think adding a commodore to the size of their common
Speaker 2: information center and all that places where he's going to
Speaker 2: hang out is not going to add substantially to the
Speaker 2: to the crowding. You know, those are those are not
Speaker 2: little tiny spaces like we had on the on on
Speaker 2: a Gearing class destroyers. So you know, they're big ships.
Speaker 2: They have a lot of capability. That's not to say
Speaker 2: we don't miss the capability of the cgs. But if
Speaker 2: we're going to build cgs, when you really think you
Speaker 2: know exactly what the mission we want them to fill,
Speaker 2: because if it's being filled by a d d G,
Speaker 2: now is it just a matter of you know, do
Speaker 2: we make the can we and I don't know the
Speaker 2: limitations of expanding the the Burke Hall. I know you
Speaker 2: know that the flight various flights are slightly different or
Speaker 2: majorly different depending on what what flight we're talking about
Speaker 2: one one compared to three is. I think there's some
Speaker 2: big changes the uh, but you know, let's let's you know,
Speaker 2: we we need to really think hard about about what
Speaker 2: we're doing. We need we need more. If we're gonna
Speaker 2: do all this stuff with carriers, we're gonna do this
Speaker 2: stuff with with the ssg NS. We then we need
Speaker 2: to think really hard on on exactly what our carrier
Speaker 2: picture needs to look like.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: You know, we keep saying we need fourteen or sixteen,
Speaker 2: and we have what twelve ten, I'm not even sure
Speaker 2: anymore eleven? You know, we need we need to and
Speaker 2: that means you're gonna need more aircraft. And then we
Speaker 2: have to think about the aircraft mix, because if we're
Speaker 2: relying on on B two's that have to fly from
Speaker 2: Kansas to UH to the Middle East, that that seems
Speaker 2: to me to be quite a stretch if you could
Speaker 2: do it with and shorter fuse issues with the circumstances
Speaker 2: with the right kind of aircraft from a from a
Speaker 2: carrier air wing.
Speaker 1: So so I saw a report that's a thirty two
Speaker 1: hour flight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, thank goodness, they put I
Speaker 2: guess a bunk in there and a head and in
Speaker 2: a microwave so they could have burritos. I'm sure that
Speaker 2: really smells great.
Speaker 1: After Yeah, the B two must smell wonderful when they
Speaker 1: get back. In One other detail about the Ford Strike Group,
Speaker 1: besides the fact that two of its destroyers have already
Speaker 1: you know, headed East, is the air warfare commander. I
Speaker 1: mentioned before the Winston S. Churchill as DDG eighty one.
Speaker 1: That chip bless her heart, she is twenty four years old.
Speaker 1: She's a flight to Alpha. Now she's not even the
Speaker 1: oldest destroyer. Also, you have the Mitchener DDG fifty seven,
Speaker 1: You've got the Mahan DDG seventy two, and you have
Speaker 1: two relatively newer ones, the Bainbridge DDG ninety six and
Speaker 1: the Forest Sherman DDG ninety eight. So the Churchill's right
Speaker 1: in the middle of an age of of the escorts
Speaker 1: for the Ford, which of course is our newest career.
Speaker 1: And she's she's twenty four years old. She's not going
Speaker 1: to last as long as the USS Georgia, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: Just getting broken in, it's working it out, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: it's like it's like getting about sixty thousand miles on
Speaker 2: your car. You know, at some point it just begins
Speaker 2: to run like like it's new or better than new.
Speaker 2: You know, it's just all smooth. Everything's been ironed out.
Speaker 2: Everything was bad as falling off.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, it's like, yeah, it's been it's been
Speaker 1: fifteen years since they classified Inserve, which still is a
Speaker 1: is a bur in my saddle about that. So because
Speaker 1: I loved reading the Inserve reports and they would come
Speaker 1: out because it really told just a story about the
Speaker 1: actual condition of our ships when they get underway.
Speaker 2: Well, I think there's some other good news here. The
Speaker 2: LCS with the mine hunting unit on it is actually deployed,
Speaker 2: I believe, to our rain so along with whatever remnants
Speaker 2: of the mind sweeping mine hunting force we have. So
Speaker 2: that's good, right, I mean, that's the use for that ship.
Speaker 1: She can run away faster than the other mine.
Speaker 2: Warfare well, you know, give given the constraints of where
Speaker 2: they operate and if they have sufficient air cover to
Speaker 2: protect them, uh, that that may be a perfect platform
Speaker 2: for for doing the kind of work that needs to
Speaker 2: be done. And I don't think the crew I'm not
Speaker 2: sure what the crew and the old Avengers was, but
Speaker 2: I'm pretty maybe about the size of what the crew
Speaker 2: of the the LCS is, although then you've got to
Speaker 2: add the mine people to that too, So.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the one of the things that
Speaker 1: always I always think about mine warfare in the Arabian goals,
Speaker 1: depending on the mine A lot of times, you know, thankfully,
Speaker 1: a lot of them are the uh you know, the
Speaker 1: World War One floating ones at the horns on it,
Speaker 1: the whole nine yards, the one that you hit the
Speaker 1: Prince and in the the Princeton in the bunker.
Speaker 3: That was it, the.
Speaker 1: Princeton and tank one of our large deck anthets I was,
Speaker 1: I was there. I remember back then and but a
Speaker 1: lot of the modern minds, you've got to a lot
Speaker 1: of times you have to put a diver in the
Speaker 1: water and uh, there's lots of snakes and the waters
Speaker 1: around there. They don't we don't pay our divers enough money.
Speaker 1: They're going to get in the water surrounded by sea snakes,
Speaker 1: or you put them in the water and they've got seals.
Speaker 1: Who thinks it's entertaining to to try to rip the
Speaker 1: regulators off their face. But yeah, every time I look
Speaker 1: at the warfare ships, I was like, man, I feel
Speaker 1: sorry for the divers having to go in the waters.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever actually seen on a
Speaker 1: on a clear day that's really long sea grass down
Speaker 1: there're like, no, no, no, that's not sea grass. Snakes the
Speaker 1: scary boys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never heard of a diver dying. Maybe diver
Speaker 2: diving from being bit by a snee snake. But yeah,
Speaker 2: we've got the I'll just reading about this. We've got
Speaker 2: the USS Canberra LCS thirty with the and the Santa
Speaker 2: Barbara or the or the ones with the MCM packages
Speaker 2: and they're in Bahrain. So that's good. And you're right that,
Speaker 2: you know, the the old thing was that they had
Speaker 2: all these World War One Soviet design mines with the
Speaker 2: horns and all that stuff, you know, but now there's
Speaker 2: now they've got these more sophisticated plastic mines that can
Speaker 2: go on the bottom and they're really hard to get to.
Speaker 2: I don't pretend to know that much about it, and
Speaker 2: I don't probably know more than I want to, but uh,
Speaker 2: you know, there are a lot of people looking at
Speaker 2: this problem, and I'm sure that the one of the
Speaker 2: reads that we had to wait so long for the
Speaker 2: packages to be ready for the for the LCS is
Speaker 2: what that you know, it's a more complicated problem than
Speaker 2: it used to be because there are you can no
Speaker 2: longer just cut of mines uh connection to the weight
Speaker 2: that held it on the ocean floor or whatever, and
Speaker 2: then blow it up with a rifle shot. But again,
Speaker 2: you know, they as I understand that looking at Salma
Speaker 2: Carglano's stuff, that the shift has gone already. The people
Speaker 2: are the tankers that are coming out of the strait
Speaker 2: or administrative or moves are are hugging the uh the
Speaker 2: Omani side of the of the lanes they call those
Speaker 2: lanes the transit lanes and not and trying to avoid
Speaker 2: the Iranian waters as much as they can.
Speaker 1: You just when you're talking about mining, the modern mind
Speaker 1: you remind me of is like, where did I read this? Yeah,
Speaker 1: if anybody isn't familiar with it, and I don't I
Speaker 1: know whether ever wrote about this or not. Maybe if
Speaker 1: I haven't, I'm going to look up. I mean, Operation
Speaker 1: Midnight Hammer is kind of spot on. But at the
Speaker 1: end of World War Two we had another spot on
Speaker 1: operation called Operation Starvation, which was the aerial mining campaign
Speaker 1: by B twenty nine's off Japan. That JISS was tremendously
Speaker 1: successful and air drop mines. If you need to lay
Speaker 1: an offensive minefield, and even a defensive minefield, if you've
Speaker 1: got nothing else better in modern navigation, you can do it.
Speaker 1: But a lot of people familiar with you know, the
Speaker 1: old S three's and the A six's and Vietnam, you
Speaker 1: even had A seven's dropping minds.
Speaker 2: Yes we did. I was there for that.
Speaker 1: P threes can drop mines, pH can. But if you
Speaker 1: really need to reach out and wake somebody up. The
Speaker 1: Air Force has gotten back into the net game and
Speaker 1: they've the quick strike mines is basically your iron bombs
Speaker 1: with different fuses and it becomes a mind. Well, they
Speaker 1: have a thing called quick Strike Extended Range which quote
Speaker 1: Mary's a Mark sixty four underwater mine to the jay
Speaker 1: Dam extended range variant to strike a target precisely from
Speaker 1: standoff range of over forty miles sixty four kilometers. So
Speaker 1: they had B fifty two's eight hundred. How many thousands
Speaker 1: of quick Strike minds going to be fifty two carry?
Speaker 1: So that is something in the Western Pacific that if
Speaker 1: we really needed to make things difficult for the Chinese.
Speaker 1: It's not just a naval solution, especially the B fifty
Speaker 1: twos that are not going to get very close to shore,
Speaker 1: but they are very good at doing pop ups. You
Speaker 1: have a B fifty two pop up forty miles off
Speaker 1: your coast with enough top cover, and you've got all
Speaker 1: these quick Strike mines headed towards your port, or you
Speaker 1: got to be one they can do it, or a
Speaker 1: B two or B twenty one.
Speaker 2: UH.
Speaker 1: Mine warfare. It's not just that World War One era
Speaker 1: mine with the horns on it you see floating around
Speaker 1: the Black Sea or the Persian Gulf. Modern mind warfare.
Speaker 1: It's it's scary and it's dangerous, as any any scammer
Speaker 1: can tell you that. If you if you think you
Speaker 1: have minds off your port, you're not getting underway. It's
Speaker 1: just not gonna happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's always been the you know, I'm a
Speaker 2: standard joke, right, how many miles does it take to
Speaker 2: close a port? Well, none, just just the announcement that
Speaker 2: somebody's minding it, you know, and.
Speaker 1: You get await for something you have to go check.
Speaker 2: You can't got to.
Speaker 1: Wait for people to come sweep them. Yeah, that that
Speaker 1: that could that could take.
Speaker 2: A while, or you could take do what we did
Speaker 2: during the early stages of one of the Gulf Wars.
Speaker 2: I'm losing track the tanker wars UH, when we would
Speaker 2: put you know, the tanker bridged in. I think it was,
Speaker 2: you know that one of the one of the escorts
Speaker 2: head of mine UH and the bridge took the lead
Speaker 2: and the outline escorts were following this huge tanker through
Speaker 2: the gulf because it could take a hit better than
Speaker 2: than the escort vessels. Good.
Speaker 1: So well, Uh, we've already been here an hour. Okay,
Speaker 1: chat away. Uh do we miss anything?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 1: In the uh in the chat room, Uh, A lot.
Speaker 2: Of pe people have been really talking, you know, comment
Speaker 2: amazing good comments, the the the They do note that
Speaker 2: h I. Sutton has put out a summary of Iranian minds.
Speaker 2: It's available on YouTube, which, if you need the link
Speaker 2: is in some money. Helpfully an e C actually linked
Speaker 2: to it, so very helpful.
Speaker 1: Very very germane Oh and I see we have Matt
Speaker 1: Hipple has been very Matthew is that Hipple? Hey Hipple,
Speaker 1: glad to have you in the comments section speaking of
Speaker 1: mine war for experts. So yeah, he made a very
Speaker 1: good point, that little sarcastic I guess that's the sarcastic emojis. Boy,
Speaker 1: glad glad we don't have aerial mechanical sweeping anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fifty three is going to get to you faster than
Speaker 1: non existent mind sweepers, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know. I didn't know we'd done away
Speaker 2: with that. I thought we still had some fifty three
Speaker 2: units doing that. I'm not current, I guess on the
Speaker 2: aerial mind sweeping force.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one just kind of closed the loop. And what
Speaker 1: we started with. I mentioned, you know, the right side,
Speaker 1: the emotional part of our brain. And when the photographs
Speaker 1: came out last night in the situation room as the
Speaker 1: strikes were going on, they got a picture of Chairman
Speaker 1: of the Joint Chiefs, General Kane looking what I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's Doo's Holy Diver or that's hook them
Speaker 1: horns something from Texas University of Texas. Anyway, two horns down,
Speaker 1: and I just put caption contest out there because I
Speaker 1: just thought it was funny picture of him. And as
Speaker 1: of a couple of hours ago, when I looked in
Speaker 1: eighteen hours, four hundred and thirty seven thousand views on
Speaker 1: that one little comment on X that's not because I
Speaker 1: have that many foul flower follow just people saw it
Speaker 1: and shared and they told two friends, and they told
Speaker 1: two friends and so on and so on. So I
Speaker 1: don't think that we're alone in having a little bit
Speaker 1: of a spark in our step with the success that
Speaker 1: we had in that operation. So obviously, be cautious, don't
Speaker 1: get over confident or anything like that. But if you're
Speaker 1: an American and you're concerned about security and sometimes you
Speaker 1: have concerns about our armed forces and what they do,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll find out something down the road. But that
Speaker 1: was an operation very well executed and led by the
Speaker 1: Air Force, worse with an assist from the Navy. So
Speaker 1: Bravosulu to everybody. They are really impressive to see.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, and we probably hot to wrap this up.
Speaker 2: I would like to say that you know there can
Speaker 2: be a lot of speculation over the next couple of days.
Speaker 2: Don't believe anything. All first reports are always wrong and
Speaker 2: wait wait till you get and even sometimes the official
Speaker 2: version is not necessarily right, as we know for various reasons.
Speaker 2: So but just keep your eyes open for any domestic stuff.
Speaker 2: And then thanks to the people that the sailors and
Speaker 2: the airman who participated in this thing, because it's so
Speaker 2: far from what we know. Has been a rousing success.
Speaker 1: Amen, and thank you everybody for join us for another
Speaker 1: edition of Midrads. And until next time, hope you have
Speaker 1: a great Navy day.
Speaker 3: Cheers reply worry Paddy, all my many wants to marry
Speaker 3: me and leave a friend of becondily for you being
Speaker 3: to blame my love fairly love me, silly folding your tame.
Speaker 4: It's a long way to Dipperary. It's a long way.
Speaker 4: It's a long way to Dipperary, to be queen.
Speaker 5: Go by, becdi farewell, left dwell, it's a long long
Speaker 5: way to differate.
Speaker 4: But my lie, my name