The Team House - Kinetic Diplomacy w/ Alex Hollings | EYES ON | Ep. 21

Episode Date: May 1, 2024

Support the show here:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseAlex Hollings is the host of "Airpower" on the Sandboxx News and he's coined a term called "Kinetic Diplomacy". We talk about what that is and how we've seen it play our in the Israel/Iran conflict.Find Alex here:https://www.youtube.com/@SandboxxApphttps://www.sandboxx.us/news/https://www.tiktok.com/@alexhollings52?lang=enFind Andy here:Twitterhttps://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023Substackhttps://amilburn.substack.com/Andy's bookhttps://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operations/dp/1526750554Team House socials https://www.instagram.com/the.team.house/https://twitter.com/theteamhousepod?lang=en#iran #israel #geopoliticsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Eyes On. I'm Andy Milbin, and so we don't make this a kind of stunted introduction, which I already have. Jason, unfortunately, isn't with us today. We have our esteemed presenter, manager, boss, guru, D. Tacos, and the man that actually everyone has tuned in to see the famous Alex Hollings. Alex, we already have been talking about this topic and spoiling it. But I'm going to turn over to you to talk about kinetic diplomacy. Awesome. Well, kinetic diplomacy is probably a term that's been used by others.

But as far as I know, I was the first one to start using it a lot back in 2017. But the idea being that it's sort of the other side of the coin of gray zone operations or hybrid warfare. where so hybrid warfare or gray zone operations are military actions that sort of fall short of an impetus to war, right? The whole idea being that now that we have such a high bar for open conflict with nuclear powers especially, we can do a lot of stuff prior to that, which is something bad actor nations like Russia and China have taken a lot of advantage of. Kinetic diplomacy is sort of the other side of that coin. It's using conventional military power to send a message, but without the intention of escalating to open war. Often, even with a de-escalating message, or at least intentionally designed to provide an off-ramp, away from open conflict.

But while still sending a very clear message, often multiple messages to different audiences. You've got a domestic message. You're sending to your audience. And then you've got sort of an international message, especially one that you're sending to your advertising. your adversarial audience. And that's really what we saw play out between Israel and Iran in these past few weeks. Yeah, I was going to say that. You know, when you think about kinetic diplomacy, I mean, we already, we don't call it that, but we already integrate kinetic diplomacy into all of our military plans. And we call them flexible deterrent options. You know, essentially that is it.

escalatory strikes to send a message. But yeah, please go go ahead and talk about the attack that Iran launched on Israel on the 13th, right, of this month, and then and then the counterattack. But mostly what it means and why it was conducted and what next? So after a bit of tit-for-tat actions between Israel and Iran, and it's important to understand that, you know, Iran has been conducting offensive operations in this theater for many, many years, just usually behind the guise of plausible deniability, using their, you know, their tertiary actors, you know, through the IRGC and the Cuds Force. But this was notable because Iran actually launched this offensive against Israeli targets from inside Iranian borders. And they used a variety of munitions, ranging from

pretty inexpensive drones that might run 50 grand apiece up through really high-end weapon systems that cost multiple millions of dollars a pop. And, you know, the idea genuinely was to send a message. It was meant to be that we can send, and this is a bit of conjecture here, but it was meant to be that we can send a variety of munitions, some very high end, some very low end. We have the volume to potentially overwhelm some of your air defense capabilities, and we have some systems that can penetrate your integrated air defenses. Unfortunately for Iran, the United States and coalition forces in that area in the region really wiped the floor with this offensive.

The intent that Iran had was never to significantly strategically reduce the amount of combat power Israel had in theater because that would prompt an escalatory response. the intent was to send a message that we can strike targets in your territory. The fact that it failed, the fact that 99% of these munitions were intercepted en route, really sort of took some of the fang out of that message. But it is important to remember that at the end of the day, the goal here was not war. The goal was to tell Israel and any other politically aligned nations in theater that we're willing to use force in our military technology.

You know, we're resolute in our defensive posture, but also to send a message to that domestic audience who Iran has been radicalizing by saying, you know, the West is the bad guy, Israel and the United States are this evil partnership, we need to act. And they need to satiate the calls for action by, again, launching this offensive. And then we saw with Israel's response, which, you know, there was a lot of concern about how will Israel respond because Iran's response, Yeah, Alex, before, yeah, before we talk about this, you brought up a number of really good points there, and I know that we'll, you know, we'll get going on the Israeli counterattack, but I want to ask you a couple of things that have come up in subsequent discussions. So, you know, we talk about the breakdown of the mix, right, the attack. And unusually, when I say unusually, But compared to, for instance, Russian attacks in Ukraine, there was an unusually high number of cruise missiles and ballistic missiles in that mix.

Typically, you throw in the majority of drones, right, to kind of overwhelm and distract and blah, blah, blah, and you throw in a few nuggets. But in this case, it was like a 50-50 mix and a high density of more expensive. more capable systems thrown in with the drones, which were Shah Head 131s, 136s, although there were a few of those supposedly used for the first time jet powered variance. So it's kind of an R&D effort here. Absolutely. Throughout some figures for you either to say, hey, that's bullshit or, but really for kind of interpretation.

So you have, you know, 170 or so drones. By the way, these figures could be off, but probably not by a magnitude of a lot because they align with IDF estimates, UK estimates. I'm not sure I've seen one from the US, but also, you know, knowledgeable bloggers. But 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles, 120 ballistic missiles. And so the interesting aspect of this, too, and here's my question. you have the drones and the cruise missiles right and they're launched the drones are going to take five to six hours and there's this there's this like tetris what was that 80s game that we all used to play in the pub not you guys you too little but tetris you know Pac-Man right it was like Pac-Man who are going to launch and the drones and cruise missiles came across Iraq and Jordan number of them intercepted by by fighter intercepts U.S. and reportedly Jordan and a Patriot Battery in Iraq who was involved.

But while that was happening or at some point 120 ballistic missiles is, you know, different trajectory, different. But not synchronized, you know, not synchronized with the other attack. Very, you know, any thoughts about why that happened? I would argue that that was a mistake. I mean, again, without being able to peer directly into Iran's strategic planning. Sure. We're all speculating here. We're allowed to. The idea behind launching a multifaceted attack like this, where you're going to use ballistic missiles, you're going to use cruise missiles, and you're going to use a mix of lower end, two mid-to-higher-end drones,

the idea really is to over, to saturate the integrated air defenses of the defending nation. What a lot of people may not realize is that air defense is never assured. thing. Anytime that you're trying to defend against targets in the year, it's a bit of a gamble, even if there's subsonic cruise missiles that, you know, everybody's afraid of hypersonic weapons. Cruise missiles at low speeds can be just as if not more dangerous when launched in a coordinated and well-timed attack. So the reason you would launch a mix like this is, A, to overwhelm those defenses. Get your defensive systems that are looking for high altitude threats like ballistic missiles are busy.

Your defenses that are focused on low altitude threats like drones and some cruise missiles are busy. The idea is to reach a saturation point where even if you have a 100% intercept rate, which is all but impossible, they're still going to end up with weapons that get through because you've saturated those defenses and you've confused them.

So by not coordinating the attack, you sort of eliminated the possibility for that to happen. And I think my theory, on that would be that Iran thought that some of their higher-end weapons, that this was really their first operational use, they assumed those were going to walk through. And because of that, they were creating opportunity to blunt this attack on Israel's part. With the assumption being that we're going to launch, you know, 300 or 130 or whatever it might be, we're going to launch hundreds of munitions, the majority of them may not get through or may not find their targets

are high-end ones, which we have carefully chosen the targets for, will get through. They will create some kind of a strategic impact that's going to force Israel to think twice about messing with us in the future. But again, with the ultimate goal of not escalating the conflict, but sending a real message. We can penetrate your airspace at any time. Exactly. To importantly to a global audience, you know, I think the Iranian regime, even the Iranian regime, realized that they were on thin ice with her own domestic audience. But yeah, we can do this. I was going to comment to that luck, you know?

Yeah. You know, that whole thing about overwhelming and deliberately not overwhelming is fascinating. Of course, this is where else has a great advantage in this sense that it's a small area. But I mean that it's well covered by three-tier air defense in a way that you could never do with Ukraine. you know, with Arrow, David's sling, and an iron dome. And hardware requirements alone, it would be all but impossible. Yeah. And so penetrating, if they really wanted to overwhelm them, they would have had Hezbollah

way, and that's the key component here. You know, I mean, that, that would have, that really would have had Israel facing a serious threat, a massive delusion. Because most of those weapons came from Iran. It provided up to mount an intercept, whereas you're 100% right. If the intention had been to escalate to open war, we would have seen the attacks coming from multiple directions, from proxy forces aligned with Iran as well as from Iran. And the fact that we didn't see that really sort of points to motive. So there's a very, I mean, there's so much interesting stuff here that you don't, I mean, you don't have to be a ballistic missile nerd or a drony.

um just just interested in warfare i mean it so for a start the the arrow three which is the latest version of this really right the you know long range ballistic missile interceptor equivalent to our sm three i think u.s naval sm3 um reportedly there were exo atmospheric interceptions right which would have been the sm three or the arrow three i think i believe for the first time in combat if it is the SM3, US Navy. So we're kind of, I mean, it was a testing occasion for both sides, right? I mean, it was, it might have been a no-show for most people watching, but there are a lot of missile heads really, really enthralled by this and are probably still having wetrooms. Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support

the podcast if you're not already. We would really appreciate it if you guys went and reviewed us on Apple or Spotify. Those reviews really help people find the podcast and help it get recognized. And, you know, if you've been enjoying the show, we really appreciate your support. Another thing that you can do to support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month. And when you sign up, you get access to all of our episodes ad free. That's the big bonus for that. I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers. But this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Teamhouse channel and podcast if you'd like to.

And we really appreciate that. So go and check us out at patreon.com slash the team house. And for the people involved in the Aegis program, too. You know, Aegis is an incredible, it's probably the best air defense capability this planet has ever seen. But it gets a lot less conversation than Patriot and, you know, some of these other platforms. that have seen use in Ukraine. But it was really, it was an opportunity for ages to shine that, you know, I think nerds like me really appreciated, but if you aren't a nerd like me, it probably, like you said, seemed like a bit of a non-event, you know?

Well, yeah, I mean, sadly, it's a non-event because of technology and Western liberal democracy's military success in missile interception. It would be anything but, you know, it's easy for us to laugh about this massive attack, but it relied on. I mean, just to give you, I mean, you know this, Alex, but just to give you an example. So you take the drones alone, 170 launch. The US only intercepted 80, right? Okay, yes, shahads.

But even with that warning and everything, the US intercepted only 80 using mostly attack aircraft. The Brits and the French, intercepted an unknown number. The Jordanians say dozens. So, you know, let's say two or three dozen. But that doesn't, that's not 100% interception rate. And interestingly, too, when you do the math on the ballistic missiles,

the interception rate doesn't work out either, which means that a large number may well have crashed. Yes. you know, in route, failure. You know, so the Iranian, there was a sense, perhaps, of testing here, too. Which shouldn't, which isn't shocking. I think that because the reason these ballistic missiles and some of the higher-end cruise missiles were used was meant to be a demonstration of Iranian technological capability.

They wanted to say, look, we've worked out the literal rocket science to place these weapons on target at long range. you know, a ballistic missile really is in many ways an orbital rocket, right? Which is the reason why we've seen these exo-atmospheric intercepts. So the ability to propel a weapon like this and then to actually guide it to a target is a pretty significant capability. The same way coordinating cruise missile strikes at low altitude to hide behind the horizon of the earth is a pretty significant modern military capability.

And the whole goal here was to show off those sophisticated military capabilities. Of course, it didn't pan out quite like that. But I agree with what you were saying earlier that, you know, there's a, there was good reason behind this mix and, and that good reason was that Iran did assume there was going to be a high intercept rate. But they also assumed that their higher end, most capable weapons were going to get through. And it looks like they also planned for a certain failure rate, which would point to a decent testing apparatus if they were aware of their failure rate, you know? Yeah, that's a great point.

I hadn't occurred to me. And all those systems that kind of, you know, the drones and the cruise missiles, arguably would be used in a real war from, you know, from closer at hand, from Lebanon where there was less flight time and combined with the, just a thing about ballistic missiles. So they, you know, I remember, I mean, we started off with learning about the Shahab 3, which I believe was North Korean, right? and it was what Iran had, but it had a, you know, it was not very accurate,

it's like a CEP of two clicks. And then all these other names start emerging, right? You know, and most recently the Kaiba, what's it, the Kaiba Shikhan, which supposedly was launched this time, someone explained to me that every time the Iranians do a minor change on the Shahab, you know, improve the guidance system, improved the range, solid fuel is the latest thing, solid fuel for the Kaibir. It gets a new name, but it was all built on this basic North Korean design. And they're testing it. They need to test it. Absolutely. And they're testing it, you know, with active use at times. You know what I mean? Like as we saw in this engagement,

you know what I mean? That's one thing that Iran benefits a great deal from their proxies for is that while Iran might not necessarily launch offensive actions, you know, under their own banner all that often, they are able to collect data from the offensive strikes launched by proxy forces all throughout the region all the time, not just all those functions, but also on the response to them, you know, which I think is why Iran likely thought that they had identified some holes they could poke in the Israeli defense that didn't end up being holes quite the way they've thought. Yeah, but interestingly, if, let's say, I mean, the two. the two air bases that were hit.

Never team, and I think the other one was called Ronan. Both and the other places that were hit were up in the Golan Heights. And which, by the way, when you look at the number of hits, that definitely more, it means that even with all those systems, that by the time it got to Israeli airspace, that ratified intercept rate of 99% wasn't quite. It was lower than that without being overwhelmed. So that should be a warning to the Israelis as it is.

You know, the Iranians did them a favor by kind of like, yeah. But anyway, so they got missiles in, by the way, they were using, you know, we talked about ballistic missiles. A cruise missiles were an upgraded version. Which are pricey, especially by our ends. It's like the Pavar. It's a first seen in 2023. Exactly. you know and that's probably why they'd be used far fewer but anyway so they hit these two

bases and the go on well these two air bases are in the um they're out in the desert and uh and so the point is there right there isn't civilian infrastructure there's there's not a lot of opportunity for things to go badly wrong now there so happens a bedouin kid was hurt but it but that kind of shows how sparsely populated this area was. So it says, okay, we're going to go towards two of your defensive positions. It's going to make good optics. One of them, by the way, isn't that far from Demona, your nuclear research center. So there was all kind of a guided message in this too, right?

Very deliberate selection of target. Same thing with the Golan, disputed area, but sparsely populated or really evacuated. by the Israelis as the Iranians knew. Nail on the head, you know, and this is, and this speaks exactly to what kinetic diplomacy is. It's the idea that you're going to take military action. You want to demonstrate your strength. Basically, most of all, you want to save face. That is the baseline requirement for kinetic diplomacy is to save face, especially with your

domestic audience. But sometimes, you know, you're escalating a bit beyond that. You want to make a statement. But you have to make sure that that statement that you make doesn't come at such a high cost that domestically, a big part of kinetic diplomacy is recognizing that your adversary has domestic political needs. So if Iran had launched a strike that made a significant impact on Israeli civilian infrastructure, or there was a massive loss of life, either civilian or military, or if Iran had managed to compromise, a great deal of Israeli combat capacity in the region, there would be a political outcry and a leadership outcry from within Israel

to retaliate with a larger offensive strike. So exactly as you're saying, these targets were chosen very specifically meant to send a message, but while still creating that off-ramp, while still creating opportunity for this not to continue to escalate toward open war, while Iran still gets to try to send the message

to the international audience they want to send. Well, Iran creates opportunity for Israel to manage the expectations of the Israeli audience without escalating to open war. You know, it's a multiple. And arguably, it was a win-win. You know, Iran looked good to global and domestic audience. At the same time, the attack strengthened Israel's hand diplomatically. you know it was an expensive tack

but there were deliberate decisions made according to the rules not to escalate to the war and I think you know I hate to sound like a nerd than I am one you know you think back to the book that was required reading for us as officers in the Marines guns of August right you know the how how the beginning of the First World War well how the First World War started

And there was a six-week period where it didn't matter what the leader said or did. The mechanisms of war were rolling, right? Yes. You know, the mobilization process was such, you know, trains, telegrams that once you started it on both sides, it was hard to stop. And, you know, there's a, there's a supposedly the Kaiser said to Mulkey at some point,

hey, listen, we, you know, we need to de yes. late and and Malki said, hey, sir, it's already too late. Yeah, we're going to war, you know, and this was weeks before it actually started. But now, um, you, you have these, these rules and these off ramps, um, that, that we should all be grateful for, right? They, they take the place of the constraints of the Cold War, um, and view through a political lens, as you, as you pointed out, from Iran's perspective, we talked about Iranians, uh, Israel's hand being strengthened diplomatically and eyes being averted from the debacle in Gaza. Did I say about what's happening in Gaza? But from a Rainia perspective, you know, it showed off new technology, penetrated Israeli

air defense, hit key targets, no civilians. It was a great demonstration to the world and worth all the resources. You know, and you raise another great point there is the idea here, that this idea of kinetic diplomacy, the idea that you can use military actions this way is a fairly recent development in large part because of the ways that we can communicate with one another now and how we can sort of stave off those mechanisms of war to the last possible minute with the way society is sort of built now. Though I do have concerns about the way that we as a media tend to cover these events almost like wishful things. Like this World War III, it's finally here, you know.

And we create narrative opportunity for things to escalate through our discourse. But Alex, you know, we all get our news according to our inclinations and personalities. So the, you know, the crisisists will always look for those sites that say we're at World War III. You know. What I liked about this was all the good was the moderate stuff, you know, the explanations, the nations on social media and in the media, but maybe that's because I need to just be focusing less on the negative. And if I look for the people doing a good job, I'll probably find out. So now we're going to transition to discussion of the Iranian counterattack. By the way,

you know, I've talked to, oh, I can't believe I messed this up. So I caused a furor about a month ago when I talked about Baruch Goldstein, who opened fire in the cave, the patriarchs in 1993, I think, killing 29 Palestinians, wounding a worshippers, wounding another 100 before he was beaten to death. All right. Got all the facts out there. Okay. Anyway, why is he coming up in this discussion? Because, again, Ben Gavir, who is, I've got to get this right, Yov Garlon, is the defense minister,

Ben Gavere is a national security minister, Minister of Security. He had a picture of Baruch Goldstein on his wall. Ben Gavir is the guy who right after the attack said, hey, is that all you got? You know, and the Iranians picked that up as an example of arrogance. and even reportedly Netanyahu slapped

Ben Gavir's risk for that you know but but it was like dude you don't you don't understand the rules of the game but it was like within this cabinet there was one guy let's go let's go you know it's like shut up and then

and then Ben Gavir he's had 78 traffic citations the last 70 23 years, including a number of accidents. Then he ran an Israeli civilian's car and his armed car, put people in hospital to include his own daughter. I didn't know, but he ran a, yeah, he ran a, yeah, he was, he was ran, apparently ran a red light.

And he does this not, you know, 78 citations. He's lorrent to himself. But that took him out of the picture, fortunately. It was almost as though Mossad had stuck something or shouldn't have stuck something. I'm not suggesting that for a moment. Well, he also, like he also tweeted after the Israeli counterstrike on Isfon that it was a weak counterstrike. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I, yeah.

Cut the knees out from under this kinetic diplomacy. Yeah, I know. You know, there's always a free radical. Yeah, absolutely. Can we get into that? Israeli counterstrike just because it kind of was surprising, you know. It seemed like Israel completely defeated everyone's, at least Iran's air defenses and stuff like that. It does seem as though they were very effective.

Now, I've read a couple different competing claims about exactly what munitions were used and which platforms launched them. But you could argue that Israel's response was much more kinetic diplomacy. than it was military action in that there was a lot of concern about how Israel was going to respond. When I posted my video about the Iranian attack saying this was never going to cause World War III because that wasn't the outcome either side were pursuing, you know, the response in the comments was repeatedly, yeah, but Israel's going to escalate. And that's what's going to create the opportunity for a runaway escalation. And, you know, and my response at the time was, well, this is what we need to be looking for. We need to be looking to see how Israel responds and whether or not

it's a measured response or an escalatory one. And there was obviously a great deal of political pressure on Israel to minimize this retaliatory strike. But it's also important for us to acknowledge that that political pressure also creates the need within Israel to respond. Because the last thing they want to do is be seen as though they are just doing whatever they're told by the United States or by the current administration. You know, this is a running narrative you see from bad actors all the time that the U.S. is either a slave state to Israel or vice versa. You want to make sure that you don't, you know, enable those narratives. So Israel had to respond. The United States was clear that if it was an escalatory response, you know, you couldn't count on American

support in an offensive, though likely you could in the defensive measures that would follow. And I think Israel really, I think it was a pretty crafty response because it created tons of opportunity for narrative play within Israel and Iran and in the geopolitical environment. And that being that within Israel, you can say that these weapons, which were launched from aircraft a few hundred miles out without penetrating Iranian airspace, the weapons made it through, by and large, through Iranian defenses, found targets that were not necessarily a huge strategic impact on a round, because again, this is important. We need to make sure that we don't compromise Iran's military capabilities in theater or they'll have to respond. You want to send a message that isn't one that's too much of a stomach, but, you know, too much of a shot to the gut.

So Israel demonstrated its ability to fly right through Iranian air defenses, which within Israel is a powerful domestic message. Can I stop hear that for a moment? Yeah. I mean, yeah, but obviously. arguably that was not too big an obstacle since they have F-35s and glide bombs, right? And I'm wondering if that was a discussion beforehand with the U.S. You know, I definitely think so.

I think that what we saw was a carefully concocted plan. And the plan was, again, it was emphasizing that kinetic diplomacy side rather than offensive operations. You know, you raised a great point, Andy, that I don't think everyone, necessarily will appreciate. And that's that for all the money that Iran does invest into defense, Iran does not have anything that can really stand up to the F-35, the broad capability suite that it's got, I'm not even just talking about F-35's delivering ordinance. Just an electronic warfare capacity alone, F-35s can enable a lot of other types of offensive

operations. But so, you know, I liken a lot of this to being in a bar. you know, I'm a big rugby guy. There's always a big drink up after the rugby game. And depending on who you're playing with, there may or may not be a fight in that bar, right? And when you're walking around in that bar, and there's the short guy who picks a fight with everyone.

This back after state, right? When he shoves you, yes, you could take him outside and beat the crap out of this guy, but you have nothing to gain from that, right? But you also don't want to shrink away. from that, you know, that conflict. You don't want to look as though you're soft and then let the next guy come and shove you too.

So you need to make a bit of a show of puffing out your chest. You need to demonstrate your resolute strength and defense in a way that gets him to back down, but still gives him the opportunity to not be embarrassed. Because if he's embarrassed, you're going to fight, you know? And that's what we saw here. We saw, you know, Iran was that short guy who came up and popped his chest out and shoved Israel

And Israel could have taken Iran out back and beaten the living crap out of them. But doing that would have created nothing but more problems. So instead we saw a puffed-out chest response. Even the counterattack was controversial. You know, famously Biden said, look, take the win. But Netanyahu, as you pointed out, his political survival depends on support from the extreme right. and that is why you have nutters like Ben Gavir in his cabinet. Everyone knows he's a nutter.

Unfortunately, he's involved for an internal external security, which is a fairly big portfolio to put in the hands of a nutter. But Ben Givir is useful for us to kind of explain the mentality of the people that Netanyahu has to please. Yes. We talk about, this is going to be controversial. Should we talk about Islam, Islamic fundamentalists? We need to talk, too, about Christian and Jewish fundamentalist, because they exist, right?

Yeah, radicalized. This is not my take, but people with radicalized beliefs have more in common with one another than they do with the religion that they fall under. They understand each other. That's, you know, that's the weird thing about this. Ben Givir, you know, his background is, he's, from Iraq that has, what I'm saying is he does understand this mentality and has brought into it. And it's a very Middle Eastern approach, not as we in the United States would want, you know, the views of a Western liberal democracy.

And we like to think that when we give F-35s and bombs like that, they're going to be used in accordance with those sort of values and views. This raises a question that I was asked last week, whether or not when the United States sells F-35s to partner nations, if the F-35s have like a secret code that the U.S. can type in. To activate. You know. It's like what he uses on his car with the breathalyzer. Yeah. It's like, yeah, you know, you put in your country code and you get certain capabilities. You know, and so as far as, you know, I've spoken to a few F-35 pilots.

about this, that isn't true. Though there are very clear ways to sort of turn off a nation's ability to operate their F-35s in the long term. You know, basically withholds sustainment. But the problem with doing that, you know, Israel represents a good example of this is that if the United States really didn't want Israel to use its F-35s, the implications of sort of preventing them from using them extend way further than U.S. Israel relations. We're talking about a trillion-dollar program. Right. You were going to lose customers.

We're talking about FM. I mean, we're talking about the whole ethos behind FMF, FMS. Exactly. It's, yeah, there is some very deep-seated policy. It's a complicated and messy situation to consider, you know? But here's how, you know, this. Here's how I would think that the Israelis are looking at this. and how they're selling it, how Netanyahu can sell it certainly to his right wing,

the right wing, more right wing components of his cabinet. Those targets in Iran, again, weren't selected at random. You know, Natanz, right? I mean, the Natanz province, which is also home, of course, to, you know, you'd think the Iranian weaponization, nuclear, I've got to be careful. I'll say that it's a uranium enrichment and possible weaponization.

Yeah, yeah. It's where the centrifuges are and all that. It's the, so yeah, they didn't, they didn't plank near where the, you know, the actual site is, but they did reportedly, hit an ADA system on an air base, which is, and I'm, I'm, this is coming from the Israelis and it's not, you know, it's not official. So I'm, but reportedly they took out, it was an S300 system, which was subsequently removed by the Iranians, which would explain why so little damage was shown.

But it, but again, a message, hey, what was that air system doing there? And, you know, obviously it was part of the coverage for IADs to protect their nuclear. site and the point was we can take any one of these systems and we can take them all out at any time. And that's 300. It's a higher end system too. I mean, it's obviously not the highest and Russian air defense system, but it is a higher end expensive platform. So that sends, again, I think people, you know, obviously not you, but I think a lot of folks don't appreciate how complex air defense is and what a difficult undertaking it is and how expensive these platforms that we use for air defense really can be. And the S-300 is a great, you know, the S-300 in many ways is sort of the Russian equivalent to Patriot,

though the S-400 uses the same Nibo M, you know, radar array, but it has better anti-ballistic capabilities. But these are, you know, Russia's top-tier air defense systems. The S-300 and S-400 have something like a 70% component overlap. So Iran demonstrates. that they could walk right through the S-300 without any trouble is a big message. It's a big message to Iran and to the international community. And to Russia, who is undoubtedly pondering. I mean, Russia's already agreed to upgrade a number of Iranian systems that it can. And most U.S. systems remember were originally U.S., so Russia can't do that,

but it can really help Iran with its anti-air defense system. And that is one of Israel's biggest fears. Yeah. And because, again, I think that we do have a bad habit in the West. We tend to either think of Russian air defense systems as impenetrable or junk. And they are neither. No air defense system is impenetrable. And Russian air defense capabilities are pretty capable.

I would argue that Patriot is more capable at this point, but only in the right circumstances. The fact of the matter is the S-300 and the S-400 are top-tier air defense systems. Nothing's going to stop everything. But they don't have the counter-stealth capabilities that Russian guys online might like to claim, but they certainly are capable. Look what they've done for Ukraine. I mean, it's been S-300. I mean, originally, the first seven, eight months of the war, it was a S-300. hundreds. Absolutely, you know. And I think that this speaks to a problem that Russia is having

where, because Russia has focused so much on foreign weapons sales and uptalking all of their military capabilities, the SU 57 is a pretty easy example of this. The SU 57 is hands down the least capable fifth generation fighter on the planet. However, had Russia brought this platform to market as the most capable fourth generation fighter, it would be seen as a very competent platform. But because Russia is always sort of trying to outkick their coverage in terms of claims and they're dishonest about their testing regime and the capability set these platforms have, we tend to overcompensate in one direction or the other. And you're 100% right. Russian air defense capabilities may not be these impenetrable bubbles that they're presented as online sometimes.

But the last thing that Israel wants is for Iran's integrated air defense capabilities to continue to improve. And the more improved they are, the higher end Israel's attacks would have to be or responses would have to be. And the higher end something is the more implicit risk. You know, if Israel lost an F-35 over Iran and this response, that would have been a much bigger deal than Israel launching some missiles into Iran. Yeah, that would have been huge. You have me thinking, you know, unfortunately, we've only got this one episode, so I have to bring you back. But, you know, the nuclear threat from Iran,

and I'm not a nuclear expert. So this is all from research and reading, talking to people. The worst case scenario is that Iran, Iran, and there are indicators to suggest that Iran might be in this position, can break out within six months and producing, you know, adequate amount of enriched uranium. Well, six months doesn't mean they can launch a missile. They still have to weaponize it. But nevertheless, having weapons grade uranium sufficient quantity for four or five weapons within six months, which is, it's a frightening prospect. It's terrifying for Israel that regards it as an existential threat. And it heightens tensions within the Israeli national security community between two schools of thought on how to deal with this. I say two schools because there is no longer a diplomatic school of thought. So the two schools of thought are, hey, let's do more of the same, just continuously disrupting their efforts. You'll notice that, you know, Iranian nuclear scientists tend to have a very short lifespan.

that's you know no surprise there a Mossad operation involving again indigenous you know Iranian Jews who can blend in very very except for one attack that was an automated gun the other attacks were very not low tech which you know but very skillfully carried out you know signs of a sophisticated intelligence organization the Mossad has learned a lot from their mistakes. They've had some horrendous mistakes in the Middle East, to include that one recently in UAE, where they had a bunch of agents rolled up with foreign passports. Anyway, so they don't always do things smoothly, but in Iran, it's been particularly useful. So anyway, back to non-tech, low-tech, they just, and I'm just recounting this because I think

it's interesting story, like sticky bombs that they attach to cars from motorcycles and heavy traffic you know i mean perfect almost the perfect way in a in a congested place like turan to take someone out and then disappear absolutely okay and then Stuxnet you know the cyber efforts um there are the the Israeli um um special forces unit maclan maglan uh specifically is focused on uh Iranian mission inserting guys there and taking things out with, you know, with long-range precision. I mean, with precision strike weapons from inside Iran. So there's all this kind of gray zone stuff.

And then there is the lobby that's no, we need to, we need to fucking do what we did to the Syrians in whenever it was 2006, Iraqis in 1981. And that is destroyed their reactor. Yeah. The only way they can do that. I think that we see a lot of this. mentality is not all that dissimilar. Obviously, the politics, the overarching politics are, but the mentality within military planners and leaders seems to be not too dissimilar from the

United States in the Cold War in the 60s, especially. The 50s and 60s where we saw World War 3 as an inevitability. So rather than later in the Cold War and today, where American foreign policy is predicated largely on deterrence, which is sort of that one mentality, you know, speak to, this idea that we'll keep doing what we're doing, we will deter this conflict, which some people, especially hardliners, tend to see as kicking the can down the road. They go, all you're doing is making this a problem we have to deal with in five years or 10 years or that my kids have to deal with. But, you know, the bright side to that kicking the can down the road deterrent model is that you can outlast your adversary. The United States

did this, you know, with the Soviet Union. I honestly think that in a lot of ways that is China's current plan towards the United States is they don't they're not long game. Yeah, they're not escalating toward open war. They're playing the long game where they are betting on themselves to outlast American efforts to sort of be their political and cultural counterweight, you know. And so the deterrent strategy is a long game with no necessarily positive outcome, which is, I would argue that that long game is easier for autocrats, who aren't going to change power.

All of the power of their state is isolated within them, so they don't need to worry about political support. But within a democracy, that deterrent game is not as popular because you may have a new leader, you know, in office in a few years with a completely different strategy. That is a really good point. I hadn't thought about that.

So the head of Mossad was removed by Netanyahu, I want to see back in, oh, it's about six years ago, right? and reportedly, of course, not in the paper, but reportedly it was over this difference of opinion, and it plays exactly what you see. You've got a long-standing head of Mossad, who's been there through a couple of administrations at least,

and then you've got a political leader who's also long-standing. But he wants to get a quick big bang, you know, hey, especially if he has just being humiliated in one of the biggest, in the most humiliated. and egregious, highest casualty attack in Israel in its history. You know, watch for that. And I think that especially when it comes to figures like Netanyahu, there's that other element we need to, you always need to consider the leader-saving face

as a part of that domestic communication piece of the puzzle. You know, Iran being a good example. They obviously need to have a message to their domestic. audience, especially their hardliner audience. But when we talk about that, sometimes we lose sight of what you're talking about right now, is that it's not just about the government saving face. It is often about the specific figurehead. We do talk about this in regard to Russia, where we go any opportunity to end the conflict with Ukraine has to end with something Putin can color as a victory. Otherwise, this will be the Cuban missile crisis of his administration. After this, he will be

you know, a figurehead until he's gone, but his perceived strength and capability will be gone, you know, and that's something you have to worry about in autocratic states, but very much in democracies where we're always campaigning for our next election, you know? And because of that, you know, it's sort of like the corporate model of you need quarter over quarter wins in order to be popular enough to win the next election, whereas you're dealing with, you know, bad actor states that don't have any of those concerns. You know, they're just playing the long. But, you know, nevertheless, so a positive, I don't know.

I mean, I'm by no means can provide any defense of the Iranian regime. But I'm saying at least there's a rational calculus, right? You know, yeah. Based on self-interest, of course, but it's a rational calculus. It's not, which is what we're concerned about, for instance. with Putin. Yes. Yeah.

But anyway, no, I'm not downplaying the Iranian threat for Iranian regime by any means, because I would say, not Chicken Little, I am glass-half-full, but I think we need to be a little bit concerned about such a well-telegraphed event, deliberately not synchronized, deliberately not intended to go off the population centers, deliberately not combined with local proxy attack. And yet, and yet a number of missiles got through. Way more, way more than the 1% that was advertised. And the U.S. only destroyed 80 to drones.

You know, if there was indeed, as it looks like up to a 50% failure rate, then luck was a big player in this too. Yes, yes. Now the Iranians knew that they probably had that that was going to happen, as you said, so maybe that's not quite the case, but the point is still that even when everyone's making every effort not to escalate, not to hurt people, I can missiles get through? Yeah. And so you multiply that by tens of thousands or whatever.

I mean, all thousands, which is not an exaggeration when you throw in Hezbollah, rockets, everything, projectiles. And you have an overwhelmed iron dome system. then the results. You know, it's a harbinger. And I think anyone who laughs at it is missing some of the serious undertones here. I agree. And I, to be honest, I even think, so I've written in the past about our misconceptions about the air defense enterprise and how, especially those of us who live in a very safe environment and we've never, you know, those of us who have never been in, you know, a forward environment where you may have threats coming in.

above you. We don't recognize how much of a sure thing air defense is not. You know, amen to that. We, we tend to talk about, you know, so if, if a Kinzel gets through anywhere in Ukraine, we go Patriot failed, you know, that's not how air defense works. If anything, every successful intercept, in my opinion, is something that you pump your fist for. and the intercepts that don't happen, the weapons that get through are the ones that I expect and anticipate because air defense as a whole is, you know, you're not just trying to hit a bullet with a bullet.

You're trying to hit a maneuvering bullet with a maneuvering bullet. Well, both of the bullets fly faster than bullets, you know? And in these circumstances, especially if Iran had coordinated this strike, where you have threats coming in from above and from breaching the horizon with the cruise missile, and from drones, which create a great deal of clover for these radar arrays to try to distribute through. The way air defense works is pretty simply you blip that item as that's coming towards you here,

and then you blip it again a little further, and you calculate its trajectory. You determine what its forward trajectory will be from there, and you launch an interceptor to further along that course. So let's say you can do that to 30 targets simultaneously, and there are 100 targets coming through. the concern isn't just whether or not you're going to be able to take out 30% of the targets coming through. You run into confusion and problems with that, where you might use multiple interceptors on the same target. You might end up hitting nothing. You know, this is an old rugby and football axiom for me, but if you try to hit two guys, you'll miss both.

You know, you create the confusion on the battlefield that allows for a much more successful attack. And to your point, which I hadn't thought of before, the fact that Iran didn't coordinate the timing of these strikes almost looks like they were trying to create the opportunity for a high intercept rate. Yeah. And maybe even to lull you into a bit of a full sense of security, you know? Yeah. And my point is even then, the rate was not high enough. Yes. That's really my point. It's not high enough because if those missiles they got through had been aimed at Tel Aviv,

Yes. It would have been a different story. We know why they weren't, blah, blah, blah, but one day they might, right? And when people ask why South Korea or the United States don't take more of an aggressive stance on North Korea, this is part of the reason is that people don't realize that North Korea's, you know, artillery mountain right near the border with Seoul and range may be a very old school, old-fashioned approach to warfare. It doesn't change the amount of damage they could reek, they could reap if given the opportunity and pushed into that position. You don't need an F-35, basically, to, you know, lay an immense amount of destruction upon your adversary, especially in close quarters like this. But, you know, to speak to that air defense thing, if you were to launch a strike just like Iran launched from that same range against the United States, we wouldn't stop much of it. Yeah, but, you know, when I talk about Israel having an advantage of their defense, that it's a small country, that's a serious disadvantage when it comes to air defense being penetrated because your critical infrastructure.

And I would put critical infrastructure into three components here. One is, and very specific, one is their nuclear research station. The other is a massive chemical plant in Haifa. and the third is simply, the third is simply, you name it, highly built up population centers. Yes. That is critical infrastructure in Israel because human life, the life of their civilians, you know, of course civilian life is important. It's all Western democracy. But in Israel, it is, you know, it's part of their survival. It's all meshed into their national identity. So you are going after their critical infrastructure.

sadly by hitting, you know, these. And you just, you know, I've commented on the show before. I've been going to Israel since 1981. And I've watched it grow up, up. I mean, you, Tel Aviv is skyscraper land now. And you've seen a lot of these towns, Bersheva, any Israeli town now is full of these massive tower blocks that were built to accommodate, you know, Russia,

the various surges of immigration. and they are incredibly vulnerable. Yes, 100%. You know, and again, we have to think about what happens when you strike a target like that too. Because let's say, and this brings me to the other element of kinetic diplomacy, which is that inherent risk, there's always the risk of escalation

when you start sparring with an adversary state. Even if you're trying to launch a limited strike, even if you're making very calculated choices about the targets that you're going to send these things after, there's always the risk that you miscalculated and something's going to go wrong. If one of these weapons, if one of these ballistic missiles had struck an apartment building like that, you know, and killed, let's say a thousand people, Israel would have to respond with a larger escalation of offensive force.

Within Israel, Netanyahu wouldn't be able to survive the political upheaval, especially from the most radical in his cabinet and in his, you know, sort of voting populace. If he just let that pass, you know, his political career would be over and Israel's defensive posture would be degraded. Right. So from his perspective, he would have no choice but to go and take lives, maybe more likely, in Iran. And because we didn't see that, we dodged a bullet, you know, but whenever, you know, I want to be clear when I talk about kinetic diplomacy, because it sounds almost cheeky, you know, like I'm like, it's just tit for tat political measures. Lives are lost. These are bloody actions. But the idea is to keep them, you know, sort of within that threshold where they stay, you know, in a very real way, they stay gray zone operations. You know, their offensive military operations that are meant to fall short of that threshold for open war.

And, you know, we're really kind of pushing the bounds of what we would consider that. But in a real way, it is that as long as you don't hit one of those skyscrapers, as long as you don't hit one of those apart. aren't the buildings as long as you don't hit a nuclear enrichment facility as long as you don't hit a target that is so strategically valuable or politically valuable that you force you know an escalator escalation yeah you know no yeah sorry go on go on Alex I was just saying and we're fortunate that it didn't go that way you know amen to everything you said about air defense um you know just hard to understate it's it's important in one warfare every level.

And I'd like to say, yeah, go on. You know, whenever we talk about this air defense challenge, the first thing people say is lasers. And lasers aren't going to solve the problem for us. You know, lasers are a very effective means of defending against mortars and rockets, things like that. But lasers aren't going to save us from ballistic missiles or even cruise missiles for a long time, if ever.

Lasers are not going to save us from hypersonic weapons either. There are a short range air defense. Nailed it. Lasers are like a modern sea whiz. And I think what people don't understand, I mean, some people, but in my opinion, but for, as you pointed out, ballistic missile interception, you know, there's, you can't intercept a ballistic missile at any point on its trajectory. It has to be at certain points, you know, normally, I'm going to be criticized for getting this wrong. But, you know, normally, like, you know, after entering exo atmosphere, at the zen-if of its

trajectory and then again when it's re-entering atmosphere, I think. But I will be corrected. But anyway, the point is just only a limited number and you can't use a laser. And if you do use a laser, it doesn't give you any advantage

over Earth. Yeah. Yeah. You know, range air defense against multi, you know, drone swarms, yes, lasers, but they, yeah, that they're not a... And to speak to what you were saying before about those, if it were coordinated, if it were coordinated and coming in waves, you run into a real

problem fast because the, the problems you run into with air defense are depth of magazine, you know, and the cost exchange ratio becomes a real concern and prolonged conflict, but depth of magazines are concerned today, because if you use up all your interceptors, it doesn't matter how good your air defense is, everything's getting through, you know. And so the fact that we didn't see multiple waves, the fact that they weren't coordinated at one time. You know, these were all opportunities Iran put in there for that, for that off ramp. But again, I don't want to, I'm not portraying Iran in a positive light here. Like you said, this was self-serving. Iran does not want to get into an open war. They might lose any more than

anybody else does. They are bad actors, but they're not stupid. They're not. They're very frighteningly rational at times. So, yeah, big proponent of everything that we, We have talked about having been sadly unfortunate coincidence, but maybe not in the first Ukrainian city to be hit by Iranian drones when it was hit by drones in October of 22. And then sadly, in Israel, the first time Israel was hit by Iranian drones. That's wild. And actually, looking back, I was in Isfahan, first time it was hit by Iraqis in the war of the cities in, oh, God. Gosh, October of 87. No, 86.

When I ever meet in? I'm a magnet. You say, Alex, what you say? So what Andy's saying is if we ever meet in person, I should be concerned. In a deep shelter. Yeah. Alex, where can everybody find you? Sandbox News, air power on Sandbox News's YouTube channel.

I'm going to put all the links in the description. So check them out there. Anything else? You can find all my written work on SandboxNews.com. That's Sandbox with two X's. And you can find my, you know, me talking to the camera on YouTube at the sandbox channel and on my TikTok. If you're still using that app for as long as it exists, I've got a pretty big following on there. So I'm sticking around at Alex Allings 52.

And Andy, of course, your book, When the Tempest Gathers, a award-winning book. Congratulations again. I haven't read it. It's incredible. It's a really good book. I haven't read it yet. I'm going to have to fix this. Oh, Alex.

Yeah. And then do an episode on it. You got it. I'd love to get that audience. Yeah. Like and subscribe. If you're listening to us on audio, rate and review at five stars,

that really helps the channel out as well. Patreon.com slash the team house. YouTube is crushing our soul. So we're trying to get support wherever we can. And yeah, thanks, guys. Yeah, everyone. Alex, super having you again. And we're going to, and hopefully you'll come back.

because it's always really enjoyable. Yeah, best part of my day. I'd love to come back. All right, everyone. See you in a few days.