Speaker 1: It is a thirty fifty five car. See the talk
Speaker 1: stations dating the obvious. It's Tuesday. For regular listeners, they
Speaker 1: know it's appointment listening. It's that time a week we
Speaker 1: do the Daniel Davis Deep Dive, the fort d's of
Speaker 1: Daniel Davis, not the five d's of Dodgeball. Welcome back,
Speaker 1: retired Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis. Have a deep dive. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about again. War's good to see my friend. Have
Speaker 1: you back on the program?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, where'd you get talking about something happy one of
Speaker 3: these days? But I know, I guess we got to
Speaker 3: know what we gotta know.
Speaker 1: Trust me, you know, and I know you do this
Speaker 1: for a living too, But you know, I just every
Speaker 1: single day, you know, I've got stacks of just articles
Speaker 1: after articles, I always tell my listeners. At the end
Speaker 1: of the week, after doing five shows four hours a day,
Speaker 1: I usually have a reams worth of paper of articles
Speaker 1: that I didn't get to and sadly none of which
Speaker 1: has any good information.
Speaker 2: It's a depressing job, man. Wow.
Speaker 1: Anyway, speaking of depressing, not nearly as depressing as apparently
Speaker 1: the Ukrainians feeling. Right now, let's start with Ukraine. The
Speaker 1: more I read the more I read that Russia taking
Speaker 1: over more and more land in Ukraine. They're advancing, not retreating.
Speaker 1: They're holding onto what they have gained. Ukrainians obviously struggling
Speaker 1: with getting people to fight for them, people leaving the
Speaker 1: country rather than serve. They keep asking for more and
Speaker 1: more weapons, ammunitions. I know there's kind of a slow
Speaker 1: drag on getting that. Can we provide them with enough
Speaker 1: that they could even defend or fight themselves or gain
Speaker 1: back the land? That remains a big question, And now
Speaker 1: they're pressing for NATO membership. What's your assessment on this
Speaker 1: one this week.
Speaker 3: Daniel, Yeah, it's not very good from their Ukrainian perspective,
Speaker 3: because the biggest issue is not necessarily equipment and ammunition
Speaker 3: as it had been for a long time, but manpower
Speaker 3: that they are out numbered on the front lines. In fact,
Speaker 3: Secretary of Defense Austin is there right now, and then
Speaker 3: he just announced a new four hundred million dollar package
Speaker 3: and they're going to get more ammunition and high marsh
Speaker 3: missiles and a number of other things that they need.
Speaker 3: But there's a second unexpected problem for some in that
Speaker 3: it's not just the number of artillery shells but the
Speaker 3: number of artillery tubes, the actual cannons are starting to
Speaker 3: wear out.
Speaker 2: They're being of.
Speaker 3: Course destroyed in battle, and they have a hard time
Speaker 3: getting enough because the West doesn't have enough to give
Speaker 3: them in the large numbers that they're needing. So the
Speaker 3: rate of fire continues to go down. But the biggest
Speaker 3: issue is the manpower issue. That's why all along, especially
Speaker 3: the southern half of the Eastern Front, is showing bigger
Speaker 3: and bigger and just sustained advances by the Russian side,
Speaker 3: and there's nothing that the Ukraine side has tried to
Speaker 3: do that's gonna get.
Speaker 2: Rid of them.
Speaker 3: And one of the other reasons is because Russia continues,
Speaker 3: according to US intelligence, to innovate even faster than the
Speaker 3: Ukraine side can on the battlefield about what works, what
Speaker 3: doesn't work. They shift to something new, they try a
Speaker 3: new tactic, they new technology, et cetera, and the Ukraine
Speaker 3: side just can't catch up, and they just keep getting
Speaker 3: pushing further to the west.
Speaker 1: Whoa, and you're out numbered by that many men. If
Speaker 1: you're talking about soldiers versus one side versus another, I
Speaker 1: suppose it becomes impossible to react on the fly to
Speaker 1: these various changes. The Soviet I keep saying, the Soviets.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Daniel, I'm of that mindset. I'm fifty nine
Speaker 1: years old, I lived my whole life fighting the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union and anyway. But the Russians, they have that advantage
Speaker 1: of manpower, and so they have a strategic advantage over
Speaker 1: maybe trying out different options. What can Ukraine possibly do?
Speaker 1: Is that why they want NATO membership, so that everybody
Speaker 1: gets drawn into it. They get soldiers from all the
Speaker 1: NATO countries. I can't see that as a viable option
Speaker 1: for us. It's not for us.
Speaker 3: But that is one hundred percent what Zelenski wanted, which
Speaker 3: is why his victory planned that he announced last week
Speaker 3: centered on first, get me into.
Speaker 2: NATO right now. Then give me all your.
Speaker 3: Weapons and everything else so we can shoot longer range,
Speaker 3: et cetera. But look, I think we've talked before. Long
Speaker 3: range weapons are not going to change the course of
Speaker 3: a war. It's going to be just another piece added
Speaker 3: into it. But it's got to be combined with other
Speaker 3: things or it's just not going to have any impact.
Speaker 3: But it could have disastrous consequences because if Russia takes
Speaker 3: that and it acts on what they said, then they
Speaker 3: could expand the warr in jeery and that's what's got
Speaker 3: a lot of the Western people unwilling so far, and
Speaker 3: I mean all of them to allow their long range
Speaker 3: weapons to be used by Ukraine into Russia. And for
Speaker 3: good reason, we shouldn't do that. But there's an additional
Speaker 3: problem with the manpower on the Ukraine side. I did
Speaker 3: want to mention is that because they have so few
Speaker 3: The Associated Press reports this morning that now then ten
Speaker 3: million people have fled Ukraine since the war began. It's
Speaker 3: now up to that number, and of course all the
Speaker 3: battle casualties, and now then the people that they're recruiting,
Speaker 3: they're not recruiting, they're actually grabbing off the streets. And
Speaker 3: when they get to the front, the commanders, the Ukrainian
Speaker 3: commanders are complaining that maybe one in ten actually fight.
Speaker 3: Many of the rest of them either refuse to fight
Speaker 3: or flee as soon as they get there, or unfortunately
Speaker 3: a lot of them die within the first few days
Speaker 3: just because of lack of knowledge and training.
Speaker 2: It's a pretty bleak picture. I'm afraid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, warm bodies is not just the answer to the
Speaker 1: question he'd have effective fighting forces. I mean, you think about,
Speaker 1: you know, one highly elite you know, like a Navy
Speaker 1: seal team can accomplish because they are such an effective,
Speaker 1: well oiled machine. Those are the highly as trained fighters.
Speaker 1: But grabbing some eighteen year old kid out of a
Speaker 1: bar and he doesn't want to even go fight, not
Speaker 1: only are you facing the challenge of trying to get
Speaker 1: them motivated to do it protect your own country, dammit,
Speaker 1: but learning how to effectively operate a fight, even as
Speaker 1: something as simple as an AK or an M sixteen
Speaker 1: that requires training. You can't just grab one and start
Speaker 1: shooting accurately at a four hundred and five hundred yards
Speaker 1: You can't.
Speaker 3: And you know, there's another another interesting dynamic associated with
Speaker 3: that is that because Russia has more just raw numbers
Speaker 3: of men, they have the luxury.
Speaker 2: Of actually training them up.
Speaker 3: And I actually, for the first time on my show
Speaker 3: this past week, got to talk to, oddly enough, a
Speaker 3: UK volunteer who was fighting for the Russian side and
Speaker 3: was pretty open about how they conduct their side of
Speaker 3: the of the fight. And he said that he spent
Speaker 3: about four months of different kinds of training at different
Speaker 3: locations before he even got into combat the first time,
Speaker 3: and the most common comment from the Ukraine side is
Speaker 3: they get there in a number of days in some cases,
Speaker 3: so the Russians do have time to so that when
Speaker 3: their guys get there, they actually do have some decent training,
Speaker 3: whereas the Ukraine side don't. And you see, every time
Speaker 3: you want to look at this, the comparative analysis just
Speaker 3: goes worse and worse against the Ukraine side, and it's
Speaker 3: a there is no path to them to avoid being
Speaker 3: defeated at this point, and I think it's going to
Speaker 3: take something besides just a wild hope to get into NATO.
Speaker 1: Well, and the exclamation point on all that is the
Speaker 1: Russians do have longer range, more effective weaponry, they're sort
Speaker 1: of keeping it on the back burner, like those supersonic
Speaker 1: hypersonic missiles. Russia has those that the disposal they only
Speaker 1: I don't know if they've necessarily used them yet, but
Speaker 1: it seems like they're keeping their powder dry to some extent.
Speaker 3: Well, they have periodically, but because they've been striking, especially
Speaker 3: deep within Ukraine on the energy system, YEA to keep
Speaker 3: them knockdown. But what's not been reported very much is
Speaker 3: that there's a bit between forty and sixty long range
Speaker 3: drones per day that are being fired throughout the Ukraine,
Speaker 3: and their air defenses are almost incapable now, so most
Speaker 3: of those are getting through.
Speaker 2: It just doesn't make much news, but it continues.
Speaker 3: To just degrade the ability to even fight at the
Speaker 3: front on top of the manpower issue.
Speaker 1: All right, and that provides a nice pivot to get
Speaker 1: back to Israel. You and I've had this conversation before.
Speaker 1: Israel has a finite number of anti surface to air
Speaker 1: anti missile missiles of a variety of different types, but
Speaker 1: they're really bloody expensive. There's a finite number of those,
Speaker 1: and seemingly an infinite number of very inexpensive drones and
Speaker 1: rockets and all the equipment that the various terrorist organizations
Speaker 1: have received from outside sources like Iran. But Israel's doing
Speaker 1: a very effective job and knocking off leadership. I only
Speaker 1: just got another guy and apparently just launched the strike
Speaker 1: on the what the banking industry, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're just completely dismantling everything in Hesbala, that's up
Speaker 3: in Lebanon where they've been taking that out. I'm not
Speaker 3: sure how effective it is to take out a physical
Speaker 3: bank building, just because most transactions these days are done electronically, right,
Speaker 3: But I mean, I guess if that's where servers are,
Speaker 3: it could certainly have an issue there. I don't have
Speaker 3: a lot of granularity on exactly what was in those
Speaker 3: buildings that they struck, but I do know they're going
Speaker 3: after the financial capabilities, which which is a pretty common
Speaker 3: thing in modern warfare to go after. But there's been
Speaker 3: a couple of strokes actually are one today from Hesbala
Speaker 3: launching a small number of drones, two of which one
Speaker 3: got all the way through the Israeli distance or air defenses,
Speaker 3: didn't even signal any alarms, which is concerning to them
Speaker 3: because they didn't track it coming in and it did
Speaker 3: land and kill a number of its Israeli soldiers inside
Speaker 3: of Israel today, so they've got to try to figure
Speaker 3: out what's going on with their air defense shield. Well,
Speaker 3: it seems to me that flying low and quote unquote
Speaker 3: under the radar, is that still a viable option these days?
Speaker 3: Apparently it is, because whether it's an electronic issue or
Speaker 3: they physically got under the radar is unknown, but that
Speaker 3: certainly did get through.
Speaker 1: So phase next phase for Israel, do you think they're
Speaker 1: still going to plan to launch some sort of strike
Speaker 1: on the Iranians, or where are we on that?
Speaker 3: Based on that leaked intelligence that came out in the US,
Speaker 3: a top secret document was released. But then even without that,
Speaker 3: you had President Biden last Friday was pointedly asked on
Speaker 3: the tarmac I think in Germany if he knew what
Speaker 3: Israel was going to do and when they were going
Speaker 3: to do it. He said yes and yes. Of course
Speaker 3: he refused to say what that was. But by all accounts,
Speaker 3: I mean, you take what was in that intelligence information,
Speaker 3: along with what Biden said, along with what the Israel
Speaker 3: leaders have said, it seems only a matter of time
Speaker 3: before something pretty major is launched by Israel against I Rotten.
Speaker 2: Hmmm.
Speaker 1: I guess the only thing we can do is keep
Speaker 1: our popcorn out because the Israelies seem to me like
Speaker 1: they're gonna do what the Israelis want to do, regardless
Speaker 1: of what Biden wants them to do.
Speaker 2: I think that's a pretty clear statement. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Daniel Davis always a pleasure. Search for him. You'll find
Speaker 1: Daniel Davis podcast. Just search Daniel Davis Deeve Dive. Always
Speaker 1: enjoy our conversations, as sad and depressing as they may be.
Speaker 1: Got to talk about reality. Daniel.
Speaker 2: Oh, we got to know what's really going on. I
Speaker 2: appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Amen, brother, we'll talk next week. Have a wonderful week.
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