Judging Freedom - Ukraine Russia War, Drone Use on Both Sides w/Tony Shaffer fmr CIA

Episode Date: August 2, 2023

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Our guest today is Tony Schaefer, and I'm going to ask him, what is the state of military affairs on the ground in Ukraine? But first, this message. Hi, everyone. Judge Napolitano here, and the verdict is in. Everywhere I go, people are complaining how expensive things are and how their stomachs turn every time they get their IRA statement. Listen, many experts are predicting a recession. When, how, where, how bad, who knows? But why wait and see? Do what I did and learn how adding gold to your portfolio can help. Now, you all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital,

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Call today and see if you qualify for it. 800-511-4620, judgenap.com. Tony, welcome back to the program. What is the state of military affairs now? What is the state of the spring now, summer offensive? How deep, if at all, have the Ukrainians penetrated into Russian territory? How much of a meat grinder is this at the present moment for the Ukrainian military? So the Russians continue to occupy about 16% of Ukraine, I believe, based on what I've looked at on the map. It's my estimation. I'm not going off anything that I've reviewed personally, just what I've seen on the map it's my my estimation i'm not going off anything that i've reviewed personally just what i'm i've seen on the map that's down from about 25 the russians had after they had initially

entered the ukrainians were successful last year last fall taking back some of that and since then the russians have made incremental gains to regain places like back moot and places like that the um the offensive the uk the Ukrainian the vaunted Ukrainian offensive planned by Jake Sullivan according to people I respect and listen to uh their uh spring offensive has been um disheveled I guess to to in a one word summary um zolensky has not been able to consolidate military power effectively to use it to push the Russians out. The Russians were brilliant in using layered defense. They've put layer after layer, the Ukrainians have never gone through. And also a fundamental flaw in their strategy

is that they have two generals competing on the battlefield, which is never a good idea. This is the Ukrainians or the Russians? Ukrainians. I've never heard of this. Have you ever heard of this? No. Well, I've used the analogy of Eisenhower and Montgomery, if you look at World War II, very strong personalities. And if they decided to let Montgomery be Montgomery and go off and do his own thing, we would not have seen the effective use of military force on D-Day or after. You had Eisenhower as Supreme Commander.

You don't have that. So you've got two competing generals. You've got Zelushny, who essentially is the commander of Ukrainian armed forces, kinda. He's focused on Crimea. There's this constant drumbeat that they're gonna take back Crimea.

I just, I don't see it. I don't think anybody who has a rational military understanding sees it, but Zeluzhny is down South doing this. And you got Sersky, Colonel General Sersky, who outranks Zeluzhny, doing his own thing up North in Zaporizhia, in the Zaporizhia region.

So what you have now is two generals who will not talk by all accounts, do not like each other, and Zelensky not able to say one of the two, you need to fall in and do things. You combine that with the patchwork of weapons, weapon systems, training, nothing was ever integrated. So you match the Ukrainian forces which are outnumbered in some cases four and five to one against the Russians the Russians have superior numbers judge over the Ukrainian so when you combine superior numbers with bad strategy a lack of military leadership and a politician in Washington calling being your quarterback, it's resulted in, according to the New York Times, nothing occurring in the offensive. As a matter of fact, New York Times has finally admitted, and again, you know the New York Times is pro-war, pro-Ukraine. They've admitted to 20%

losses of the gear we sent them. I think it's higher than that. They've admitted that there's a pause right now. The offensive ostensibly started either on the 4th of June or the 8th of June, depending on who you talk to. But the net effect is no gains, huge losses, and no prospects for any victory by the Ukrainians at any time in the future. Scott Ritter, Colonel McGregor, and you have agreed that the Russians have built three concentric-shaped levels of defenses through which the Ukrainians would have to go in order to take back any of the land. Is it fair to say that the Ukrainians have yet to breach the first of those three concentric defenses? They have not breached any of the circles, any of the concentric circles. That's correct. Now, the Ukrainians have made incremental gains and then lost them instantly, almost instantly.

The Russians were masterful. And I'm not saying this because i'm i'm not pro-russian i'm simply state i'm calling balls and strikes the russians were masterful the way they laid out these three concentric circles and used land mines over and over and it's interesting because every time you see the ukrainians there's videos out there you can go look at on on youtube and on instagram and it's interesting every time the the Ukrainians make gains to get into the trenches, they're all landmines. So they end up getting in and then they're getting blown up by the landmines left behind by the Russians. Therefore, any gain they make is instantly attrited down to nothing. And again, I'm going to cite the New York Times as my reference point.

They're saying that the soldiers, the Ukrainian soldiers are being decimated, huge losses. The morale is very low. And I don't even have to talk about the Russian side to know that the Russians are benefiting from the Ukrainian ineptitude at this point. So. Have the Russians recently undergone the sacking of a series of generals and colonels by Defense Minister Shoigu. I think they have. And why did that happen? So I think from the beginning of the Operation Judge, there were many generals who were essentially, I would describe as politicians in uniform, much like our generals russian generals you're talking russian generals and and they were i think many of them were promoted based on how well they could kind

of hide their own shortcomings and in many instances you have corruption all through the system the soviets before the russians before the current russian fed Federation had huge issues with uh with resources being diverted by uh corrupt individuals this nothing has really changed and I would argue that's why the initial entry um a year and a half ago by the Russians was so chaotic because I think Putin had been lied to I think a lot of folks had given him Intel based on what they thought he wanted to hear not the reality so I think this is a continuing paring out, paring down, getting rid of those generals who are not competent. War is a great discriminator of competence. Either you're competent or you're not. And once you're engaged in military and combat operations, those who are competent show up very rapidly.

And again, Stalin went through this with his generals at the beginning of World War II. Every other conflict I've seen, if you're going to win, you have to actually start figuring out who's competent, who's not. We used to fire generals for being incompetent. We don't do that now. But during World War II, you would have generals relieved instantly if they lost a major battle. So I think there's been things within the Russian system

which have been less than optimal. I have no direct access to the Russian systems. As a matter of fact, I'm refusing pretty much any contact with the Russians or Ukrainians at this point, just to completely stay out of everything. And from what I'm watching through open sources, it's very clear that they're trying to pick generals who can actually do military operations effectively over those who have been able to hide their shortcomings and essentially be very much in the being spring, now some become summer offensive.

That's a mouthful. It's going on. The Ukrainians are using drones to inflict pinpricks on Moscow office buildings. Here's a report from my friend Richard Engel at NBC News. I'd like you to watch this, about a minute long. And at the end of it are some, I'll let you evaluate them, statements by President Zelensky, which are translated into English. Take a listen. The drones exploded in the heart of Moscow's financial district on Sunday morning around 4 a.m. Russian officials say at least three drones were involved and blamed Ukraine. Russians can no

longer turn a blind eye to this war now that it's coming home. Although Ukraine didn't take responsibility, President Zelensky gave what seemed to be the most direct admission of cross-border attacks into Russia yet and suggested a new chapter is beginning. Ukraine is getting stronger. Gradually, the war is returning to Russian territory, its symbolic centers and military bases. And this is an inevitable, natural and absolutely fair process, he said. What kind of sense does it make to be using drones to break windows in high-rise banks in downtown Moscow when you're losing the summer offensive on the battlefield? Well, it's a sign of desperation.

And like you said, it's not having any military effect. This reinforces Putin's narrative, Judge, that Ukraine is a terrorist state. He says this in almost every speech. So if you simply look at what Putin says and what Ukraine is doing, it validates what Putin's saying. And again, I'm not a Putin guy. I'm not a Russian guy. I'm just saying that the inner, and this is not about us. It's not about the West. It's about the rest of the world. You just saw this African conference where they had African leaders show up with Putin, and he's messaging more to them than us. So Zelensky's own words and actions feed into the narrative that Putin's putting out to the

rest of the world. It's not helpful, and it's not a military necessity. These things will not help Ukraine win on the battlefield, Judge. These are signs of desperation. All right. Well, we saw the drones. They appeared to be maybe the 25th or 30th floors of high-rise office buildings on Sunday. Presumably, the office buildings were unoccupied. That's why I called it a pinprick. Can't the Russians defend against those drones? So the answer is the Russians have been effectively knocking down, I'd say, 80 to 90 percent of what is sent their way. Some of these things are very small, and the smaller a drone is, the more difficult it is to intercept. I think their S-300, S-400 systems that they have are effective, but they've had to, like any military operation, learn how to do better.

And I think as we see things now, Judge, they have been very effective. I think I was reading something last week about the attacks over the weekend, and they knocked down, I think, 22 drones and about two got in. So it's still a good ratio. It's not perfect, but it is something that they're improving on. So again, Zelensky doing this is not having any military effect. It is simply feeding into Putin's narrative that the Ukrainians are terrorists and it's not helping Ukraine one bit. I want to deviate for a minute on drones. Sure. If the small ones are difficult to detect.

Could somebody hit the U.S. Capitol or the White House with drones undetected? Oh, yeah. So I've talked to a number of my colleagues about this, and your drone technology is very advanced, especially when you start using AI with it. Some of these things could be pre-positioned, just lay dormant until they're ready to be used. You could bring them in via foot, via vehicle, put them somewhere, leave them. And then at the time of your choosing, choose to overwhelm things. And yeah, I see the day where some smart terrorists

would be able to do essentially a comprehensive attack against the Capitol, against Congress, against the White House, which would have some detrimental effect. I think of these things all the time. I used to run red teams. We've talked about this a little bit off the air in the old days. And I ran red teams where I would put myself in the shoes of the bad guys. And I'm very creative in how to be very devious, just saying. And, well, you, come on. I mean, it's true. It is what it is.

You know, I mean, I'm not going to sugarcoat my semi-criminal background doing these things for our side. So I'm just saying that, that someone who has the understanding of technology and can actually do a comprehensive intelligence preparation of the battle space, you could do a devastating attack on the cheap. Okay. Let's, let's get back to the battlefield. I want to show you a full screen in English of a statement made by Dmitry Medvedev. Mr. Medvedev is the vice chair of the Russian National Security Council. The chair is Vladimir Putin, and he's a former president of Russia. Just imagine that the offensive,

he's talking about the Ukrainian offensive, in tandem with NATO succeeded and ended up with part of our land being taken away. Then we would have to use nuclear weapons by virtue of the stipulations of the Russian presidential decree. There simply wouldn't be any other solution. Our enemies should pray to our fighters that they do not allow the world to go up in nuclear flames. It's July 30th, so this is just four days ago. This is the second time that former President Medvedev has mentioned the desirability of something catastrophic. He once said we would go across the Polish border if necessary. Now he's saying we'll use nukes if necessary. Is this a good guy, bad guy between him and Putin? Is this a trial balloon?

Or is this the public policy of the government of Russia? I believe this is the policy. And he's the guy that's supposed to deliver it. Putin is supposed to be the good guy in this kind of being open to alternatives. But let me state why they're saying it. Two reasons. First, they've been using this nuclear rhetoric for over a year now judge and they're doing it because

they see weakness in NATO especially in Biden they do believe to push back NATO again looking at it from their perspective not ours they see NATO as a threat, absolutely as a threat. They see what we're doing as a threat. They're looking always for escalate, potential escalation. And they've contemplated based on people I speak with the idea of just taking nukes and laying them out, you know, three or four, maybe 10 tactical nuclear weapons, Hiroshima size thereabouts, and just letting them off because they believe, and this is an internal debate apparently within Russia, letting them off in Ukraine because Ukraine is not a NATO member. And if there's circumstance where the Russians really do think they're losing, I think they're going to do it because

they think they can get away with it. Weakness to two factors here, weakness, you dare never show weakness to an adversary. And Biden has showed weakness over and over. And secondly, they think that there's time to make a statement to stop NATO moving, moving east. And this, this would be a very strong statement. So this is a policy statement, as well as a political statement. This is a warning to NATO. It's like, don't come any closer. The Russians have a natural paranoia regarding their territorial prerogatives. It goes back to the Tsars. We've spoken about this probably five or six times, Judge. So the Russians have been invaded by a number of nations,

Napoleon, Hitler. Before that, there were a number of groups, tribes which invaded. So they have been invaded. This is something that runs very deep in their cultural memory. So I could see them doing something like this if they feel they're put upon. And I don't think they're bluffing. And it's a very dangerous thing to trifle with at this point in time. I don't think it's worth us pushing them. And I think that's what they're going to do. Here's General David Petraeus about two thirds of the way through this. He talks about carpet bombing.

I think they need to be doing what they actually are now doing, having adapted their plan. Of course, no plan survives contact with the enemy. And it was quickly clear that these miles-long minefields, anti-personnel, anti-tank minefields, tank ditches, dragon's teeth, trench lines full of Russian soldiers, all overwatched by forward observers and drones with artillery on call, that these were going to be very, very difficult to breach, given the shortcomings that the Ukrainians have in certain assets that we would have deployed in this kind of situation, in particular, massive air power. We would have just carpet bombed the

whole area of these minefields, tried to blow up as much as we possibly could. And then very substantial, heavily armed, essentially bulldozers, D-9 bulldozers that just plow their way through this, supported again by close air support, attack helicopters and the rest. They don't have that. So they've adapted, I think, impressively. Is he suggesting a strategy that's impossible for the Ukrainians? Is the offering, isn't carpet bombing a war crime? It destroys everything in its site, civilians, civilian structures, civilian human beings? Well, I don't want to comment on the legality of it. I know we do it and we have done it and we did it in Afghanistan. So I don't want

to go down that path necessarily. But I will say this, what he's saying is completely detached from reality. First, one of the factors I forgot to mention is the fact that they're going on the offensive with their air... They do not have air superiority. They don't have air parity. They are inferior. They do not have an air force to speak of. They've been able to manage one or two

local tactical strikes. Let me just stop you. You are correct that the F-16s, which won't arrive for another year, have not arrived. They have not arrived. They're not going to arrive. I don't think, Judge, I don't think they're ever going to arrive. I think it's something they've said, that West has said to the Ukrainians to placate them. It's like, yeah, yeah, we'll give you the F-16s. Okay, back to your analysis of General Petraeus, please.

Yeah, so I was going to say, so the whole idea of having to go in with all those weapon systems he's talking about, he's talking about air-land battle and the Fulda Gap, Judge. We trained on that as lieutenants, and he was a lieutenant back then, too. And it was going to be a slugfest with the Russians. I mean, look, I think I've told you off air. I thought when I was a lieutenant in the 80s, I thought I was not going to live past, uh, into my thirties. I had given, I thought we were all going to die on some great battle in Germany facing off against the Russians. And what he's talking about is what that battle would have been. It would have been massive troop movements, uh, hard fought battles, uh, going

through minefields, laying down all the engineers going through, being blown up, airstrikes on airstrikes. And even if we were the ones fighting the Russians right now, the Russians have the most effective anti-aircraft systems in the world. We would be constantly contesting the airspace for superiority. It would not be something we could do easily. And so what he's saying about, oh yeah, we would do all this, it's not practical. It would not be something we could do easily. And so what he's saying about, oh yeah, we would do all this. It's not practical. It would not happen. And to think that he's saying they're practically adapting, knowing full well that it would be a slugfest for us as a peer-to-peer challenger, he's insane. He's completely insane. And the way that he's saying, I suspect he's been advising Sullivan on this, too, just the way he's talking about this. And I know Petraeus has contacts with the White House. I think that that he has somehow sold them a bill of goods thinking that, oh, yeah, just would have to be us or the Chinese or all of NATO

coming together, you're not going to be able to have carpet bombing or any such thing to penetrate those lines. It would be a slugfest based on the current circumstance. I just want to switch gears and ask you a few questions based on your experience in military intelligence. Sure. Does the military spy on American civilians in America? So I can comment on what we did and on what I think is going on now. So we, I was actively doing a number of operations which had domestic aspects to them. That is to say that we were going after bad guys, but some of the things we were doing were being observed by Americans. There was something called EO 12333, which Reagan signed into law into, it's an executive order, he signed into effect, it still exists. I'm very familiar with it. The intelligence community thinks it lets them do

whatever the hell they want. Well, not us. We were restricted to only being able, like we intelligence officers had to tell, like if I was running an operation, you happen to be incidentally involved. I had to tell you I'm an intelligence officer. I had to say, look, I'm doing this. Does the military spy on American civilians? They don't, as far as I know. Now, NSA, because of Jim Clapper and others, opened that door on behalf of the FBI. So the military, NSA, National Security Agency, is a Title 10 slash Title 50 organization. It's a military organization. NSA does not, on its foreign intelligence mission, spy on Americans.

With that said, they do take special taskings. Let me do the air quotes. Special taskings from DHS and FBI to do things domestically because they do own the full collection assets. And they have built something out West. Catherine Herridge did a report on this a few years ago, built these huge, under Keith Alexander, they built these huge repositories for data. And so the military does do general sweeping of all signals and they're retained out there. So while they don't spy, they have the capability to spy on Americans because of the nature of how they do collection, which I argued against. I don't think it's legal to sweep up everything. I've never, never believed that's legal. I've always said, it's like trying to go after seven, you know, seven fish in the size of the

Atlantic ocean. You're not going to get them. Correct. Correct. Anyway. And they do do special taskings for the FBI, which we do know they do and for DHS. So those NSA is the conduit for that. And a friend of mine, Russ Tice did, it was a whistleblower back years ago, about the same time I was a whistleblower. And he talked about the fact that NSA had developed domestic spying capabilities based on domestic law enforcement agencies' requests. So that's a long answer. So the answer is they have the capability. They are not tasked to do it, but other agencies they work with do task them for the information that they need for domestic violence. Suppose the military thought the president was mentally deficient. Would they spy on him? Well, that's a tough question.

I can tell you that the people I've worked with in the military at the senior level are very practical. And the requirement to serve the Constitutional Republic has always come first. There has to be a clear prerogative that somehow there's a deviance from protecting the Constitution before they would ever spy on any public official. It had to be seven days in May level, you know, kind of incompetence to do something like that. I don't think they would do anything unless there's clearly an indication that the president is compromised

to the level of selling out to another nation. Tony Schaefer, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you very much for joining us. Good to be here. Thank you. Scott Ritter in 25 minutes at 4.30 Eastern today. More, of course, as we get it. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching!