The Team House - New Chinese "6th Gen" Fighter, & What Comes Next w/ Iran and the New Administration | EYES ON PODCAST

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

today we talk about the Chinese Dorito that was unveiled and what the Iranian relationship looks like wiith the incoming trump adminSubscribe to the new EYES ON YouTube channel.⬇️https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJytcQbSOEKLGyhNwkqpd3ASupport the show on Patreon:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseFind Marc Polymer here: ⬇️https://x.com/Mpolymer?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthorhttps://bsky.app/profile/mpolymer1.bsky.socialFind Andy Milburn here: ⬇️https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023https://amilburn.substack.com/https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operationshttps://bsky.app/profile/andy-milburn.bsky.socialhttps://open.substack.com/pub/amilburn/p/journal-of-a-plague-year?utm_source=app-post-stats-page&r=emo6q&utm_medium=iosFind Mick Mulroy here: ⬇️https://fogbow.com/https://www.loboinstitute.org/https://x.com/MickMulroy?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthorhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-patrick-mulroy-31198b52/https://bsky.app/profile/mickmulroy.bsky.socialFind Jason Lyons here: ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-lyons-666873316?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_apphttps://bsky.app/profile/bgsilverback73.bsky.socialBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Eyes On. I'm not the host. My name is Dimitio Contacos. I have Mick Mulroy here, Jason Lyons, both former Marines, former CIA officers. They're going to start, they're going to start accusing us of being like CIA shills. Don't they already, though? They do already. Yeah, they totally do already. I hope everyone had a good Christmas, a good holiday. Happy Hanukkah, happy everything. a lot going on I feel it almost seems like the big news kind of slows down during the American like the Christmas and stuff but we do have some stuff popping off the first thing that like caught the attention of everybody

was the new Chinese quote unquote six generation fighter that took like a test flight I think it's called the J36 or that might be the NATO designation yeah people are freaking out it looks like a Dorito I mean, it looks pretty advanced in terms of, you know, AV, you know, six-gen fighters.

What do you got, Jason? You've been tracking us a bit. Yeah, so first, I'm going to start off by saying Alex Hollings, if you're out there, you should be the one doing this. Yeah. And hopefully we'll get him on here soon to talk about it. He's the resident expert. But so I think the first thing from everything that I'm hearing and reading is that

that term six generation, that's actually. something that we came up with, if I'm not mistaken, with the fifth generation, I think Boeing or someone first coined the term, as a means of tracking how far ahead or behind we are with near-peer aircraft or technology. So given that, I know there are certain parameters. I don't know what they all are, but one of the things that determines whether or not it's sixth generation as far as we're concerned, is it's interaction with AI, autonomous aircraft, UAS drones, can it control, like support aircraft, unmanned support aircraft, things like that. Whether it can or not, I don't think we know right now. But I know that it has caused our defense

industry and our military to pause and say what the hell, because not that it came out of nowhere, I'm sure we had a hint that it was out there, but this maiden flight also there was another aircraft. I believe it was the was it the J35, I think. Do you have that in your notes? There was a second aircraft that they. I know they coined one, the J36. Okay.

The second one I wasn't really paying attention to because I'm useless, but. Yeah, no big. I mean, it's not a big idea. Yeah, so their J35 is the one that that's, I think that's coming out or students should be coming out. It's basically like a pat. They have the first flight was, the first time it went into production was September of 2023. So that one's been about for almost over a year and stuff that they've added to like their fleet essentially.

It's the second one with the J20, which was like when that one came out, people were freaking out. But I mean, for the little, I'm not an expert, of course, we need Alex Hollings on because he, he lives, breathes and eats this stuff. The big problem with the J20, which I'm sure they haven't figured out for the new ones, is the engines. Like, the engines are old copies of Meg and Sukoy engines that are not stealth at all. Like, that really causes a problem for them. So in terms of like, and it looks like the NGAD concept, that's the American. GAD, which is a next generation air defense fight program, which works manned and then like it has unmanned like wingmen. So I think people are freaking out.

But at the same time, like we've had three demonstrators already do test flights. There was some talk about maybe and not being in the defense budget in terms of continuing to develop it and stuff like that. Obviously that may or may change with the new administration and the new secretary, uh, chief of the air force. So we'll see what happens. I mean, it's just pretty people were freaking out about it. I mean, Twitter was kind of going wild about it because it looks pretty advanced, but who knows, really. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's ugly.

That thing. I think, yeah, it's, it's pretty big, good size. It's, it has no tailplane, it's tail-less. It looks just like, what do they call it, the flying Dorito? Yeah. That's literally what it looks like. a lot of control surfaces, a tailplane or control surfaces on the wings,

I guess to make up for the lack of a tailplane. And then I saw someone noted that it has two intakes on the bottom and one on the top, which could, I doubt it, but could, I suppose, indicate like some sort of a ramjet ramjet sort of thing. I doubt it, but, you know, so, but it's interesting. It's very interesting. And it's loud as hell.

Like I was listening to the watching and listening to the video and it's loud. So, I mean, you know, not that that really matters. But it would be interesting to see what comes to this thing. So, Nick, did you have someone? I'm smart. Yeah, no, I was going to say we could probably have a whole episode with some experts on, not just seeing this, you know, this potential six-generation aircraft from China. But, you know, the whole U.S. offset strategy.

of how we try to leap ahead of our competitors, you know, whether it's nuclear or GPS and what's the next one, where the future of aircraft are going, right? Is any of them going to be manned? How we're going to transition to that? How much of a role lay I play? What will be the human component in it? I mean, there's a lot to discuss on this.

You know, if people are interested, perhaps we bring on somebody who really does specialize us on. not just the current, but where we're going. And then, of course, there's a whole issue of China stealing everything, right? Yeah. Whether it's military technology, you know, commercial side, what are we going to do about that? Because it's clear that, you know, they don't want to be just competitors. They want to steal our stuff.

So I guess somebody could say that's part of competition. But if it is, then maybe we should be doing it too, right? Yeah, exactly. So I don't think we are, especially on the commercial side. So I don't know. We can have a broader discussion on all that. Yeah, that'd be great. I mean, Alex Hollings is probably the guy.

He obviously has the YouTube channel, Air, Sandbox. And his show is called Air Power. And he is an absolute, I would give him expert. Like, at this point, he's like so into it where he's tracking this stuff day and day out. The interesting thing is, go ahead, sorry. Sorry, I was just last. last point out, I was having a conversation my son who's, you know, in the 101st, they get places by helicopter. And he's, he's asking me, like, when, when were they transition to, you know, unmanned aircraft?

And I think it'll be the last, will be the ones that actually transport troops. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, I mean, it could quickly move into any kind of the fighter attack aircraft, bombers and all that could easily, I think, transition. but I like to talk I'm a ground maritime guy so yeah like to talk to what I've got about that yeah can me ask you something in terms of like how china steals like our IP and our military secrets and stuff um are we in that game more and like all right if we come across some technology that they've cracked that like makes sense for us sure we'll steal it but are we into that more in terms of like espionage just to know what they're doing when they're doing it how they're doing it and stuff like that.

We don't want to talk too much about that. Sure. We don't do, but we, you know, generally, we stay out of the commercial sector. Yeah. Right. I mean, we have private companies there. I mean, we're a capitalist country. So we, we stay out of that.

I guess one can make an argument that our competitors don't. So maybe collectively we should do more. But that's a broad. That should be, that should be something for the, you know, the lawmakers to decide, not not the spies. Yeah. And it would seem to me that it would be more to your point, D, is we just want to know what they're doing, what they know, you know, because it, based on everything, and let's just take China. China is an example.

It seems like even if we did steal it, we'd be stealing our own stuff back. Right. Yeah. Like, hey, we already have this. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know that it would benefit us to steal and know this technology right now. Yeah.

There is a thing about like, you know how people, you know, MS, the MSS is really like, because there's a lot of Chinese, like Americans here. We can kind of reverse that on them, I feel like, right? Like we have people that feel like more Americans than they do feel Chinese. And like we can use those people as spies and stuff like that. Like I think, I know there's obviously a threat on the other side of them, like giving secrets up and we see people get arrested all the time. But I feel like we could do it really, we could probably steal a good amount of shit from them information-wise using our Chinese citizens against them.

Whether it's first or second gen, like more Americanized Chinese citizens. I know you guys can't say anything, but like that's got to be the move. I mean, what are we doing? There's a reason why we're a melting pot and we should use it to our advantage in terms of intelligence. Absolutely. And, you know, there's groups that specialize in the, you know, double agent type scenarios, right? They're tricky, very tricky. But yes, I mean, they think they were vulnerable because they can use, you know, ethnically, in this case, Chinese.

But, of course, that's any country thinks they can do this with their own. But, you know, we are a melting pot. So you can hear you're American, right? Well, a few countries in it. You know, you can come here and even if you just got here and you're, you know, you're American if you want to be an American, right? And you do the legal stuff to get there. So I think, yeah, to your point, it could easily backfire on them.

They usually don't do it, I don't think, at least in my experience, and this is generality for ideology. They do it because there's a kind of threat against their families and stay in these countries, right? So it's a coercion type situation, not because they get here and don't like America and want to support the Chinese Communist Party. It's more like they have all their family members that will get a lot of, I grieve if they don't participate. Absolutely.

All right. Next thing, cooking, Russia shot down Azerbaijan commercial flight a couple days ago. One thing I wanted to point out, like, on Twitter, when it was going down, like a lot of Russian trolls were talking about how it was a bird strike. It was like, you know, pretty, pretty strong birds, you know. Mike, you were talking about how Putin didn't admit it,

but he apologized for it, which is like an odd, it's an interesting hedge. Yeah. Yeah. That's what it's being reported this morning. But I think, you know, from the U.S. perspective, we have, you know, our satellites or DSB satellites, they have the capability, I think, is through infrared to see, you know, when missiles are launched, right? And the difference in the heat signature between the background of the earth and traveling through, you know, the air, et cetera.

I think we already know that this was a, I think we knew relatively soon after it happened. that this was a surface-to-air missile. I guess it looks more like a proximity missile or that makes close to the aircraft. We probably already knew that. And then, of course, all the pictures come out and you can see the shrapnel. You can see it going in and not out.

So it was an explosion that was on board. I mean, it's pretty clear that the Russians did this. And they've done it before in 2014 over the UK. I think the biggest problem for the rest of the world should be, one, why are they a proven aircraft to fly into an active combat zone when they're shooting down drones at the same time? Two, how did they actually mistake a plane for a drone? Because that's pretty, you know, with all the technology that tries to prevent these type of thing.

And then three, if they're not admitting it, the whole world knows they did, you know, they're pension, they're not only negligent. They're intentionally criminal, frankly, instructing the investigation. So there should be a lot of hopefully airlines stop flying there. And hopefully there's some kind of consequences because, you know, people make mistakes. The U.S. shot down a plane before, right? But we owned it like immediately. That's the difference.

You know, mistakes happen and they shouldn't. But, you know, intentionally lying about it, that's where I hope the rest of the world would be pretty harsh. Yeah. Adding to that too, I just before we came on, I watched a video and they said that the flight crew, initially did report that they thought it was a bird strike because, you know, loss of control, things like that. But then they asked for permission to land inside Russia back inside Russia and were turned no, told no. And they had to turn around and fly like 200 miles back the other way. And so, of course, now the conspiracy theory is that they were doing that in the

hopes that the aircraft would crash into the, was at the Black Sea, or whatever. Yeah, the Caspian. And so it would erase all evidence. Now, I don't know how true that is, but it is on, it is recorded that they were told by Russian ATC, no, you have no permission, turn around. So. Okay. And that's, yeah.

Yeah, apparently the flight, the 200 mile flight, it would have been less time for them to turn around and go back to the airfield they came from, but they were denied. So they went back the other way. and that's when it happened. Well, that's a plausible explanation because I didn't under, I couldn't figure out why Russia would try to insult to injury and deny them landing. They were flying to Russia, right? Yeah, right?

So, okay, that does, I mean, obviously we don't know, but that is one plausible explanation for why they were denied, you know, landing in Russia. Yeah. That's just horrible. Yeah. And I mean, Russia's doing what Russia does, right? They're not going to admit to anything.

It's pretty interesting in terms of, like, I don't know, when Medvedev was, like, president for a little bit, and, like, it kind of seemed like Russia was, like, turning a corner in terms of diplomatically, at least. I mean, but it's, you know, just Medvedevide taking the turn he's taken. I mean, unbelievable, like a villain arc, you know, with his black trench coats and, like, talking about nuclear war. I mean, was it always bullshit?

It seems like it was always bullshit that Russia was playing. Mick, what do you got? What do you mean? Well, you mean like you overestimated either their strength or just talking smack? Well, I mean, I'll obviously overestimating. I mean, we've always overestimated. Look at the Soviet Union and it's collapse, right? I don't think any analysts, and that was an analyst,

and God bless them, they do great work. They do great work the whole time. But I don't think any analyst ever is, you know, pedalized for overestimating enemies. Yeah. Right. Whether it's Chinese or Russia, they obviously could be severely criticized if they underestimate an enemy and it proves to be not the case, right? So I think we overestimate them all the time. I think this proved.

I mean, think about if, you know, I'm in Montana, right? So if, you know, not to pick on Canadians, but if Canada, if we would have wanted to invade Canada and we would have bragged about it for months. And then we would have got, you know, what, 30 miles into Canada and basically collapsed, couldn't feed our troops, ran out of food, had to go to, you know, our allies to send tens of thousands of their troops to get slaughtered, losing 1,000 casualties a day. I mean, like, this would be considered, this would be considered an absolute catastrophic failure by the United States, showing the whole world that we were a paper tiger.

And that's what happened to Russia. Yeah. They're at over 700,000 casualties, I believe, right now. I mean, it's insane. The idea that, and they're, it's billions, hundreds of billions of dollars and lost revenue to their, they are a very weak paper tiger who, whatever they, I think, are exposed for their lack of military capability, they just start talking about nuclear weapons, right? It's all they have.

I guess that's one, one, I guess, problem. I guess you can put it that way with the USB and so much ahead most of our competitors is that they look at us and say, we're not going to beat them on the conventional bottom. 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. 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 Team House channel and podcast if you'd like to. And we really appreciate that. So go in and check us out at patreon.com slash the team house. So we're either going to get nukes or we're going to just use terrorist type tactics. There's nothing, nothing in the, you know, in the specter of modern. conventional warfare that they can compete with.

Yeah. Well, so like what I was referencing with Obama and Medvedev was like, it kind of seemed like there was a warming of relations and stuff like that. But I feel like that was just a ploy, right? The whole, like, I don't, over the last few years, it's like you can't really trust anything. The Russians talk about report. They're not a global, like, partner in anything really. You know what I mean?

maybe a couple times they've helped us with counterterrorism stuff, but it's like outside of that, it's like they're a absolute, they're just full of shit all the time. It's like such, it's just a facade, whether it's militarily or diplomatically. Like they're not friends,

unfortunately. They don't want to be friends. Yeah. As much as we think with, you know, and counterterrorism is what we always use because they're like, you got it, we got it. We got it. Why can't we work together?

Right. And it never, it never works. It just never works. Even when we tried to warn them with that one attack, that big ass attack, you know, they didn't even listen. Right. So, yeah, it's, we got to accept they don't want to be our friends. I'm going to talk about the Russian people, right? We're talking to government, but they say simply have no interest.

And everything, everything they do, even if it looks like an outreach, is to gain something else. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. I mean, every nation is going to work in its own best interest, but they are at, they have proven over and over again that even as they're putting out their right hand in supposed cooperation, the left hand is stealing something from you. So they're always, and they're not good at it.

They're not good at hiding their, you know, their hands. So we have to expect it. You know, like you said, it's not the Russian people. It's their government. Yeah. All right. So what's cooking with, you know, the current situation in Iran, new administration coming in seems to seems like they're going to be pretty tough on iran in terms of whether it's sanctions

or even more uh make what do you think in terms of what's going to go down and i mean do a little bit of speculation with what the new administration's going to try and do sure to start with i mean we think russia's doing bad iran's doing even worse right they've had their uh proxy forces i think uh last thing i saw as they give they were giving up the billion dollars a year to hesbalah Hasbel has been decimated. The leadership's annihilated. Even their very charismatic leader. Their mid-level leaderships are put.

Their arsenals are depreciated. I mean, it's, and now Hezbo wanted a ceasefire, right? They got it to a certain extent. Hamas, same situation. I think I saw about 20,000, estimated about 30,000 Hamas fighters to start with. There's about 19,000, I think, estimated killed. And 45,000, you know, Palestinians in Gaza, right? It's completely destroyed.

And then the Assad regime, no more corridor to fund Hezbollah. Now everybody's focused on the Houthi, so stand by. That's the answer to one of your questions is, I think, CENTCOM's imposing a lot of targets that haven't been approved. I would look for that to change pretty quickly once the new administration's set and in place. certainly the maximum pressure campaign, which was the Trump administration's efforts against Iran when we pulled out of the Kipola, a lot of those sanctions were removed from Iran. And even with that, the economy there is collapsing.

I mean, they're one of the biggest, you know, countries of oil and gas, and they can't get oil and gas to their people. They can't even power their country. And I think the real is in like a free fall right now. It's not an economist, but it's like, $780,000 per $1. So they have a really good chance of getting the regime over run. And I think the people in Iran are looking at Syria going, huh, you know, maybe it just takes like one giant effort.

I don't know. I don't know how that's going to happen. But I think the Trump administration is going to look at that, reinstate all the maximum pressure campaign sanctions, potentially install new ones. And I know there's ideas about how to prevent them from using selling oil to fund the regime. I think they'll be looking at all of that. And unfortunately, there's probably going to be a renewed discussion with Israel of what to do if they race toward a nuclear weapon that can be delivered. Because from Iran's perspective, they're out of schlitz, right?

Their proxies are getting annihilated. Their economy is down the drains. they have huge public, you know, dissent with the regime. And the only thing that I think they think that they can do to prevent, you know, at least outside interference is to get that nuclear weapon, kind of a North Korea scenario. So I think the Trump administration will, and I'm sure the Biden administration had looked at it, but just how successful it could be at setting back the nuclear program substantially with a strike and how that would go down and how it would be viewed. and all the things that go into those military type decisions.

Chase, you got anything? No, I agree. I mean, they're going to take what came before them and what worked when they were in office when the Trump administration was previously in office. And in concert with, as Mick said, Israel, I think they're going to formulate their best plans. But I guess if you're going to do it,

this is the best time to do it based on their, current issues in the regime as well as the economic situation in the country and that you know as Mick said Syria you know because I'm sure the regime is looking over their shoulder like oh shit you know it can be done and it was done so I wouldn't be surprised if that starts to peek its head up if we see some serious crackdowns as far as protests or you know we see them we see them we see the stories here and there of, you know, women, you know, getting, you know, caned or arrested or things like that. But I think if it starts to go the way of Syria and they get wind of it, because, you know, admit correct me if I'm wrong, the one thing that still works

well in Iran is their intelligence agencies. So I think if they get a get wind of it, we'll see some serious crackdowns. So, yeah, yeah, the administration, the incoming administration has its full plea. They do. And I mean, that's one thing's regimes seem to be good at is protecting the regime, right? They have a very substantial internal security apparatus. They have a whole section of the IRGC that's basically home rule, which is designed to prevent both an invasion, you know, it's kind of segmented, but also the population uprising.

It's huge. The couple of a siege, I think. And this ties into our earlier conversation when it comes. of nuclear is one of the biggest issues we're going to be looking at is what do we have to do to be able to successfully target nuclear facilities because it's it's huge mitigation of air and missile defense it's putting a lot of pilots at risk a lot very slow moving aircraft at risk you know so it has it's it's more than just flying over there and dropping munitions and of course it's specific kind of munitions that are very uh difficult to make and as far as I know we are the

ones that have it. So not Israel. So it's, there's a lot that goes into that that kind of ties together our first part of this conversation. Like if you, if you had unmanned, you know, stealth bombers and fighters, it would still be a big decision, of course, because we using lethal force, but it would be a different conversation. I could tell you. Does Israel act unilaterally at some point, do you think? Is that, is that in the cards? I think it's plausible. Yeah. And I know I'm not unusual for policy folks that have talked about this with Israelis. They basically make it clear to us, which might be their attention, that they will go along. They'd love for us to be part of it. But they're not going to wait if they feel like there's a nuclear deliverable weapon about to be completed, that they would love to have the U.S. It would be a much more difficult task. just rallies. But Israelis make it clear that they would still

attempt to me. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, definitely going to be something interesting to watch over the next couple of years. Ukraine, we've got North Korean reports of like human waves,

North Korean casualty, supposedly a North Korean PLW. What do you guys, what do you guys see in there? I know one of the things I'm seeing is there's videos making the rounds of North Koreans and Ukrainians, you know, who are saying that they're witnessing North Koreans using the tactic of human bait against drones, you know, send out. It's kind of, and Mick, you probably remember this in the Marine Corps and some of the manuals they have, at least when I was in, they had a thing where it's like, if you want to detect whether there's chemical agents, in the area line ever line the squad up take the private pfc and be like take off your mask um you know if he starts flopping well it's there so basically it's like same thing send somebody out you know

to tool around in a field drone starts chasing him well we do our best to shoot it down if not well sorry buddy um so uh yeah so that seems to be a thing and then i have seen uh videos about the human waves. Like there's just like I think one Ukrainian soldier described it as old black and white movies he watched from the Korean War where like somebody's like blowing a bugle and they just

get online and and you know wave after wave after wave and they just get decimated because they don't know anything else. Yeah. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable that they would need these folks. It just shows you how desperate they are and that North Korea would just

sign up their troops to be just purely father. Yeah, just purely fodder, right? So I think right now we have 4.3 billion left and approved security assistance to Ukraine. I think they just announced today 1.82 billion that's going. So I think the Biden administration is trying to get everything out the door before January 20th, obviously when President Trump takes over and his team takes over. I do, I think that people might be jump into the wrong conclusions necessarily about what's going to happen under second trump administration if you listen to mike waltz uh who's a very serious national security expert and is obviously the incoming national security advisor but if you listen to his past statements the criticism that i

saw and i pretty much agree with was he he thought the vitamin administration was moving too slow on approving you know advanced weapon systems and it was dragging this out having public debates and it's like if we would have just approved this early on we would have been a different situation now and it's it's it's it's almost like we were supporting them just so they didn't lose but not really that they had an opportunity to be successful yeah so if that if that line of thought is prevalent in the white house which seems like it would be if you pick him as a national security advisor it might be that president trump looks at this is okay well we'll throw some ideas on the table but if russia doesn't accept it then maybe we'll go

more in we're supporting Ukraine. Like he will be the president that wins or loses this. Yeah. Right. Ultimately, he's the American president. We're the leaders of the free world. We're in NATO. If we don't win this, we lose it.

Yeah. Okay? Because the Ukrainians are fighting. Like, they're doing everything they can. Like nobody, you know, pro-Ukraine or not pro-Ukraine, if you look at what they're doing, they're doing everything they can to save their country. I mean, you got old men showing up on the, in the front lines begging to replace a young guy because they know an entire generation of Ukrainians are going to be gone. Like they're not going to have, you know, Ukrainians. So can't, can't

criticize them at all. It really comes down to the support. So if President Trump's administration goes all in, this could be, it could change. Maybe I'm being, you know, glass out foolish kind of, but I would just caution people who think they know what's going to happen with the second Trump administration. Yeah. I think there's going to be. Go ahead. Last point. There's not just the National Security Advisor, but Senator Rubio,

likely the next Secretary of State, you know, he's, he has a very, I think, traditional view of U.S. national security priorities and policies. Yeah, what's interesting to me is it's like the number sounds big, but

it's not cash. It's not like we're sending in pallets of cash. It's equipment that we were going to decouement that we were going to decommission anyway. Or manufacturing. Right, exactly. And there are no American boots on the ground. It's not like we're losing guys.

You know what I mean? So like in terms of like, I know this is a war and it's people are dying. But in terms of like U.S. strategic policy, like the ROI is there. We're bleeding Russia. And like, sure, everyone could say, yeah, this has happened in history before where they've lost a ton of guys. They eventually win. Times are different. You know what I mean?

Putin can't mobilize St. Petersburg, Moscow. Like, he cares about state and power. He doesn't, he doesn't want, he can only push the Russian people to a certain point before they actually come out and, and overthrow him or cause major problems at home. So, yeah, I don't get, and it's not like the $60 billion is coming in our pockets. Like, we're all going to get a check in America. You know what I mean? Or we're going to get health insurance.

It's not going to happen. So it's like, let's look at it a little bit. more pragmatically in terms of what we're getting for this equipment support all that i don't know that's my team and if the last year's budget for the dod was eight hundred fifty billion dollars and we spent 64 billion on ukraine since february at point two right so it's it's a direct correlation to it's in our own interest they've uh essentially decimated the russian military so their our strength is relative to their strength and china strength it's it is in our own interest, even if we didn't have any moral or ethical issues of supporting a democracy. Just take

that out. It's in our own interest. Russia still would be doing it for us 100%. Like they're in Vietnam, you know, right? So this isn't that complicated. So people would make this into a, you know, we'd be given money to people, you know, Hurricane relief. No, we wouldn't. This is part of our defense budget. If we want to have that debate, I mean, I know we don't talk about those kind of things here, but have the debate. But this is not either war. This could be part of the defense budget is depleting our enemies, right? Our adversaries have lost tens of thousands of tags.

Just go down the list. You can Google it yourself and just see just how. I mean, Ukraine destroyed their Black Sea fleet, and Ukraine doesn't have a Navy, right? And it's a lot of the stuff we're delivering. And we're gaining all the knowledge of this, you know, new form of drone warfare that we would have to be doing in action, you know, but we're learning it through our allies, which are the Ukrainians. Yeah.

I'm worried about what a peace deal looks like and if the Ukrainians take it. Because like freezing the lines, I mean, is Ukraine really going to take that? I mean, I know that's a bigger conversation, but. Well, my understanding from the Kellogg proposal, I think we're calling that, General Kellogg, who's the, becoming special envoy, is that they would be frozen, but it doesn't mean that Ukraine has conceded the territory they've lost. It just means they'll stop fighting and they'll seek to do that through diplomatic means, which I understand is very difficult to get back. But it would stop the fighting,

right? And then there'd be some kind of, it would be, I think, in many ways, Ukrainians and Ukraine's interest because they can build back up their capacity. We would be funding them, but not to the same levels because it wouldn't be an act of combat. And we could get them to a point where they're just so militarily substantial that they would lose no more terrain. You see what I mean? So I'm not, I'm not saying I'm bought into it because I think ultimately it comes down

with the Ukrainian people making that decision on us. But there's benefits if you listen to the whole. And then if Russia, you know, because Russia lies all the time. So as soon as they see, they have an advantage, they'll break the treaty. So let's be upfront about that or this ceasefire. Then we can, part of the agreement can be if you break the ceasefire, then we will fund to the maximum extent. Everything is on the table. All weapon systems we have, except for nuclear, and they can be used to anywhere in Russia.

We can make these caveats, right? Yeah. It would make this a lasting. And if it's the Ukrainian people's desire, I think, which is important. Yeah. I mean, that's an interesting, yeah, it buys them time to like kind of stand themselves up and be able to like support, like defend themselves without as much support from NATO or EU or us, right? That is an interesting point. That's all I got, guys.

Anything else on your mind? That's chapping your asses or anything? No. Not really. I think we covered it all, man. Yeah. Get that damn Alex Hollings on here so you can call us all liars and say, you guys screwed that up completely.

I'm going to try and get Alex on for this week sometime, probably maybe first or second of January or something. Maybe try and get him on to give us like the load down of the specifics about what's going on over there in China with the new fighter jets. I'll say one. Go ahead. Oh, just one point on that that I had the interest in. when I was in the Pentagon is what they call the post-heroic era. And when AI takes over with robotics, that the consequences of war for the most advanced society

is changed considerably. Right. That's why they mean by post-heroic. Like nobody, you know, whether you're a soldier, a Marine, sailor, Airman, putting yourself direct harm's way, the country itself has to make that determination. And it's a real decision. It's going to be a different situation when they're like, wow, we just lose a bunch of robots.

You know, the post heroic part of what's coming, I think is an interesting discussion because it fits with the artificial intelligence and, you know, unmanned terrestrial and aerial drones. We're headed toward it really quickly. Yeah. And there's going to be a gap between it's, I guess it could be the third offset, right? It's going to be a gap where we're so far advanced that we could just go do whatever we want, not that we will. But eventually all these other countries are going to come up with some version of that. So it's consequential to us, right? So something to consider.

Yeah. That's kind of scary, dude, if you think about it, right? Because they kind of take, if you take the human element out of war, it's like, are people really looking at the consequences? Right? Because like you're worried about losing your guys, right? But if it's just like, yeah, you know what? Click a button and send over the drones, wipe out this people.

And it doesn't matter. Like, because we're not losing any guys. Yeah. And we're getting to a point where we can clear buildings with drones. Yeah. Right? So it's like, and I understand it. I mean, as a guy spent my whole, you know, life involved in this.

I like anything that mitigates chances of me and my friends get and not get killed, right? Yeah. So it's not going to stop. It's there's not really going to be a debate like, okay, let's just all not do this. We're doing it. Yeah. So there's got a lot of discussions that needs to happen with it because it's, you know, especially at first, all the advances.

are going to be able to just re-caffic wherever they want. Yeah, there's got to be, there's got to be rules. There's got to be consequences and people have to abide by them or it's not going to be, they're not going to be relevant. It's just one of those things that Westerners do and not our friend of Russia or China. That's a great topic. We should have a show about that because that there's like so many ethical questions too about it. It takes you away from like what goes on in war, right?

Like, because, you know, now there's people that go into rooms and clear them out and or fight in lines and die when you don't have that risk. Like, it brings up a pretty wild ethical question in terms of like, will you be with willy-nilly with like the death and destruction of people? And it desensitizes you to the next step, which would be, you know, nuclear weapons. And so it's like if you feel nothing for sending a bunch of drones out to kill the bad guys, what says that you're not going to, you're going to care about pressing a button to launch nukes and just, you know, wipe everyone out. Yeah. And we get real comfortable with like advanced technology killing people, to be honest. Like I don't know how many times, I'm sure plenty of people had conversations.

Like, you know, we could just go in there and shoot the guy instead of dropping a $45,000 missile on them. And they're like, no way, that would be bar. You know, and you're like, okay. You're a different version of barbarism than I do. But because, I mean, it's safe. We feel much more comfortable looking on a TV screen going, oh, yeah, we got that guy. He sees those, right?

But, you know, send somebody into this shoot him point blank. And it's, you know, it's a different conversation. So if that's where we're going, then. Yeah. And these conversations are happening. But I don't think they're happening in our society. Because our society kind of is now removed from our, you know, our military pretty far.

So I think it's a good conversation. We're extremely removed from the military. Like me as a civilian, you know, Iraq and Afghanistan, like, that was something obviously I tracked and paid attention to, but it wasn't happening here. Right. And it's a professional army. There's, you know, it's all volunteers.

People are very much far removed. And we just expect to be on top, right? And no one's going to fuck with it. us. We've got two oceans. It's interesting. Yeah, it's a wild things to come. Jesus. Absolutely.

Thanks for the letdown, Mick. Jesus Christ. Happy New Year. Merry Christmas. Yeah. That note. 25 is going to be an interesting year. Yeah. Yeah. Don't forget to subscribe because we're going to be talking all about it on eyes on.

Mick Mulroy, fogbo, lobo. Everything is in the description. cool new books coming out right guys are almost wrapped up i can't wait for that so look out for that jason lyons all his links are in the description linked in blue sky andy milburn he's back in the motherland for the holidays his links are in the description as well when the tempest gathers the best way to support the show is patreon dot com slash team house that link is in the description as well i spoke to jack this morning the sales are going very well for we defy if you have haven't checked it out check it out we defy the lost chapters of special forces history

link is in the description for that as well um and thanks guys have a happy new year everybody thank you happy new year everyone everybody