The Team House - Russian Space Nukes & How the US is Losing the Missile Race to China | Alex Hollings | EYES ON Ep. 6

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

Introducing a new podcast called Eyes On with Andy Milburn & Jason Lyons, where we talk about geopolitics and national security news.Today we have on Editor in Chief of Sandboxx News and host of Airpower on youtube, Alex Hollings. The guys discuss what a potential conflict would look like against China, how far the US is behind China in the long range missile race and how aircraft carriers can potentially be just massive targets waiting to be sunk. And we talk Russian space nukes.Check out Alex Hollings here:https://twitter.com/AlexHollings52?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthorhttps://www.youtube.com/@UCNPMEL4N_kfEC-w2A6CuPGg https://www.tiktok.com/@alexhollings52https://www.sandboxx.us/news/Check out Andy Milburn here:https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8https://amilburn.substack.com/Support the show here:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse#russianspacenuclearweapon#chinaBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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 Team House 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. Hello, everyone.

Andy Bowman here. Welcome to another episode of Eyes On. I'm a little bit out of breath. I just literally walked into my hotel room here and checked in, set up. Super excited, though, we have today. Alex Hollings, Mr. Airpower, a rational airpower zealot, as we're about to find out. So without further ado, I'm going to turn over to Dee to introduce himself.

Thanks, Andy. This is Dee. I'm the producer. I want to thank Alex for being here. And I want everyone to go and check out sandbox news and airpower. The links will be in the description. And I'm going to turn it over to Jason because Jason and Alex have a connection from back in the day. They've been in the wars together, the media wars together.

Hey, good morning, everybody. Jason Lyons, former Marine, former CIA officer. So last week, we gave you the beauty with our good friend and guest, Jack Murphy, and the team house. And this week we're giving you the beast. Alex is a great friend. We met when we were both writing for Safra at the time. And Alex, not only became a great friend, but he also became a fellow aviation geek, but he took it to level 10 with it.

And now he is the resident expert on all things, aviation, especially military aviation. Welcome aboard, man. We're glad to have you. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Hey, honestly, thanks a lot for having me here. You know, Jason said he and I go back ways where really my journey into media and journalism started. I had been writing without bylines for a year or so before I started working with Jason at soft rep.

But Jack Murphy and Jason really were there when I got my first break into this industry. And I've sort of been very fortunate since then where not only was I working with guys that had a great deal of expertise who were able to sort of steer me in the right direction. but then I kind of found my niche with airpower and with defense technology. And so over the past few years, I've been running Sandbox News, which you can find sandbox with two axes news.com. And I run AirPower with Alex Hollings on YouTube. And you can also find me on TikTok and Alex Howling's 52. Awesome.

So one thing, just putting in a plug very quickly for Alex, the YouTube videos, okay, they are, you know, for those who like kind of aviation porn, they are core. They're everything that excites you. But at the same time with Alex's smooth talkover, you know, he's taking a lot of comments that we talk about on this show that are in fact front and center for anyone who cares about national security, things like on Overwatch, man-d-man teaming with aviation and man systems, you know, the sixth generation fighter, what, you know, what is it, bring to the fine, I guess. Yeah, we really are, we're all at all gone.

We're on the cusp of, you know, I would contend that back in the 60s, the late 60s through the 70s and the 80s, and into the early 90s was this incredible period of time in aviation technology where a lot of the most dominant platforms still today were being fielded, you know, back during those few decades. And we're sort of on the cusp of the next revolutionary cycle in that, which is such exciting time and aviation technology where the next, you know, F-16, the next F-22, these are the things that are emerging today, which is a super exciting time to be an airplane nerd like me. Yeah.

Really quick question for you. And I'm just going to show my display of my ignorance right up front as a ground guy. But we're talking about multi-role fighters, right? And we've got the, you know, we've got the F-35, one component made. you know, at least one component made in every state of the union, right? Just to keep a bit of political positioning on their part. Yeah, that's right, to keep pork happy. But here now we're talking about the F-AX, right?

Which is not the replacement for the F-35. But can you talk a little bit about what it? So what does it brain? And why are the Navy and the Air Force embarking on different models, didn't we, didn't, you know, F-35 futures that a multi-role fighter should be a joint one? So the truth is that the Pentagon has been trying to find a way to field the same tactical aircraft for Navy Air Force Marine Corps applications for a very long time. You know, the F-16 had the VOT-1600 program, which was aimed at sticking, you know, the F-16 on aircraft carriers. The F-15 had the F-15NC, Eagle,

program, very similar concept. The idea is that the fewer airframes you can field, the easier it is to manage the lower the cost is for logistics and so forth. And the Joint Strike Fighter program really was sort of the culmination of that effort, where the Pentagon thought that if we could field one general airframe that could serve all of these different purposes, it'll be the most cost-effective way to field a large force, you know? And the F-35 was envisioned as a replacement for a number of aircraft, but it was supposed to stand in directly for the F-16 as sort of, you know, the massive production. You know, the F-16 is the backbone of the Air Force today with some 2,000 active airframes, you know, 4,600 airframes out there in the world, right? But, you know,

the F-35 was meant to do things no other fighter had done before in a larger volume than any other fighter had before. And the acquisition process was a downright boondoggle as a result, you know, not just when it comes to cost overruns, but when it comes to technical setbacks and delays, in large part because we just kept adding more things that we wanted this aircraft to do. And the Air Force and Navy are trying to learn the lesson from the F-35 acquisition problems when it comes to now the next generation air dominance in development for the Air Force and the FAAXX and development for the Navy. Interestingly, they're both actually evolving out of one formerly classified X-plane program.

Now, if people aren't familiar with X-planes, they're usually experimental aircraft meant to help mature technologies towards service. So if it's got an X prefix, it's not meant to go into service more often than not. It's meant to help us get something ready for service. Now, we don't know exactly what they primarily focused on other than manned-on-manned teaming, but that one X-plane program back from 2015 or so proved something so effectively to the Pentagon that the Air Force and the Navy both kicked off next-generation air dominance programs sort of out of that. And now the Air Force's next-generation air dominance fighter, which is said to be a sixth-generation aircraft,

but we can talk about why that may be a misnomer. and then F-A-X-X is another separate program emerging from that same effort that will produce a totally different airframe. But the expectation is that they'll share modular systems alike. Same acronym, though, right? I mean, it's exactly the same acronym for the programs, the air domination. It is. Absolutely. Can you tell us the acronym again?

Next generation air dominance, or NGAD. Is they're using this. In-GAD. but to make different aircraft, as confusing as that sounds. But the reason why they'll have the same DNA is that we'll be looking at different airframes, different fuselages, but a lot of the interior systems will be modular, in other words, meant to be replaced easily, and somewhat interchangeable. So the avionics suite effectively might be very much the same,

whereas the exterior shape of the aircraft, maybe its ultimate performance, performance characteristics will be different, but they'll be able to leverage the same sorts of weapons systems and importantly have an open architecture that allows them to be updated more quickly than today's Jets. But aren't there two questions really that standout? One is range, combat range, and the other is on board weapons systems. Those are the greatest questions. Absolutely.

What is the range of those things? Because again, it seems like we're building Mr. Potato Head, right, to extend the range of our carriers because we're so in love with carriers. And so we need an airframe that can at least fly has a combat range, what, a thousand miles or so. I mean, he certifies, what, 600, but we want at least 1,000 miles. And then, and then talked a little bit about the surface. I mean, about air to air missiles, too, do. You got it. You got it. What needs to happen. If you don't mind, I'm just like, this is what I do. So the biggest thing you're right, is range is one of the primary focuses here. Although it's worth noting that with range,

you also really need to talk about an increase in speed, preferably, because the longer the distance that you're trying to cover, the tyranny of distance is a problem, not just in terms of logistics and resources, but also in time. It takes that much longer to engage a target or to respond to a threat. So we need- Why is the distance so important, Alex? I mean, what is the golden, What are the golden numbers here? So the big focus here is if we're talking about the potential for a Pacific conflict is China's anti-access area denial strategy. Where effectively over the past few decades of conflict, China has been paying very close

attention to how the United States conducts combat operations all around the world. And they don't need to develop the means to match American military capabilities to effectively cause huge. huge problems for the global economy and the South China Sea and so forth. Basically, they don't need to have a military that can stand in the ring and swing. They've spent the past two decades developing and fielding systems that can leverage vulnerabilities that they've identified. One of those big ones being range. So right now, the longest-ranged carrier-based fighter we have is the F-35C with a combat radius of maybe 650 nautical miles.

So, you know, a bit north of 700 miles, which means, means if an F-35 takes off from a carrier here, the furthest it can go to engage a target before it has to turn around is maybe 700 miles. China has the largest anti-ship ballistic cruise and hypersonic missile arsenal on the planet. Now, the kill chain you need to effectively engage a target at long distance is very complex. And there's no guarantee that they have it, but they are definitely working hard to develop it. And they're hypersonic DFSZF, which has carried a lot of by an intermediate range ballistic missile called the DF17 is probably the most potent threat specifically because it's a maneuvering hypersonic, which makes it very difficult to intercept.

Now, this weapon was designed specifically to engage American carriers at four-digit ranges. So if we want to be able to launch combat sorties against Chinese targets, effectively there's no way to do so without putting a carrier within range of this very difficult to intercept. carrier-killing missile. So effectively, we now need to either devise a reliable means of intercepting a maneuvering hypersonic, or we need to launch sorties from outside the reach of that weapon. Now, there are ballistic missiles, ballistic anti-ship missiles. China could launch at further range. But Aegis, the air defense apparatus that the carrier strike group uses, pretty darn effective at anti-ballistic operations. Basically, though, because we don't have an answer to hypersonics,

we need range. And the Navy's doing a bunch of Band-Aid solutions right now. But F-A-XX, if it can deliver a great deal of more range, could solve that problem. So, Alex, now that we've talked about the sexy fighters and, you know, the attack aircraft, can you talk a little bit about the false force multiplier, which would be the tankers, the air-to-air refuelers that would get them to, you know, extend that range? That's the thing people tend to forget about. I know that Lord knows the people I'm speaking to are well aware that logistics is one of the most, if not the most important aspect of prolonged warfighting operations, right?

And one of America's biggest strategic advantages is its tanker fleet. We have some 400, you know, air-to-air refueling aircraft dedicated as well as the means to use Super Hornets and other platforms for the job. But again, this range problem, creates issues because you can't always have a tanker aircraft in the neighborhood. Tanker aircraft need their own logistics, and they are very vulnerable targets. So the Navy is fielding something called the MQ25 Stingray, which is an autonomous drone refueler fielded for carrier operations that will basically be able to take off and go out and meet, you know, F818 Super Hornets, F35Cs,

to refuel them both on their way out and potentially on their way back. And that alone could extend the range of the F-35C, maybe up toward that thousand-mile range. But again, we are still talking about, you know, operating these aircraft on the outside limits of their operational parameters, which is something that you never want to do as a combat plan. You never want to plan to stress a limit to its max in order to just accomplish the objective. And that's really what we're still talking about doing when it comes to using the MQ25 with the F-35C, for instance, today. Now, there are some programs, though, that could offset that a bit like the low-drag tank and pylon program underway for the F-22 right now is fielding stealth underwing fuel tanks that alone could extend the F-35C by a ways. But there will be a performance trade-off.

You know, it won't be as aerobatically maneuverable. It won't be able to carry as much payload in terms of internal. ordinance, you know, everything that comes with weight. And isn't it fair to say to Alex that we, until we war game this really realistically, and I know, you know, there's some controversy regarding the Marine Corps wargaming of force design 2030. But, you know, unless until we do really war game this, we probably won't get a picture of all our vulnerabilities.

You know, we're talking about tanking. The whole procedure of tanking is more, right? it's more than the vulnerability of the tankers. It's the vulnerability of that whole package. You've got all these highly volatile aircraft doing a figure eight in the sky. You can use drones, but they're still susceptible being destroyed. You know, so you haven't completely solved the problem. You've just taken the human being, you know, out of it.

So yeah, AWACs and tankers are really juicy targets that people tend not to think about when they're talking about these kind of combat operations. But if you can take out an AWACs or take. take out some tankers, you can dramatically reduce the number of sorters, the number of combat sorters that a carrier strike group or a ground-based element can fly. And the fewer sorties, the fewer aircraft in the air, simpler air defense becomes. And that just makes the job a lot easier for China to take out aircraft, even when they're pretty tough targets to engage. Yeah. So I suppose, you know, when we're talking about refueling and everything, it's a great

example of kind of the knock-on effects as we look at this, right? You do a great job, Alex, in describing this very complex scenario. Take these things off because they're not doing me any good. You know, kind of a complex scenario that we want to really overwhelm the enemy is to have a spectrum of expendability on our platforms, right? From, you know, high-end the X-X, where arguably, you know, you'd only have perhaps one aircraft, which goes against all paradigms, right? But then the spectrum that goes all the way from high-end drones, sophisticated, not expendable, down to things like the Falkyrie, right? Which is sophisticated enough, but nevertheless, expendable. but the but what what gets to me

Alex is you know I've known a number of pilots and they're not that bright I don't care what they're saying right now go through the same school in the Marine Corps those guys get lost on land navigation they do all the you know stupid fucked up things that we grunts do but the pressure on a guy

handling all these unmanned systems flying at Mark whatever it is you know, at night on nods. It really is astonishing, right? You know, I would contend that there are a few positions with more innate responsibility than being a modern fighter pilot, maybe being a submarine commander, especially, you know, the captain of a boomer. But, you know, it's hard to overstate the complexity of flying $100 million worth of state secrets,

you know, the speed of a rifle round into a combat environment where you're trying to not just engaged targets. You're flying in with an intention, but there's also telephone pole-sized missiles coming at you from directly below you, you know, and they're flying at supersonic to even hypersonic speeds. There's a lot of threats to manage. And that's what a lot of this AI effort is focused on. People tend to focus on the AI-enabled wingmen, which are going to be a game changer. And that may be the step change that justifies the title sixth generation fighter rather than a fifth-gen fighter with drone wingmen. But what Project Venom, for instance, that the Air Force is doing right now is it's got AI pilots, AI agents riding in the cockpit

today of six F-16s that are being tested in Florida with those pilots flying standard combat exercises and things like that for the AI agent to learn these practices and the decision-making process pilots go through when they're exposed to new variables. And the idea, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, no, I, I, but the pilot still has to make the decision to pickle, right? We are not, we United States are never going to go to the, you know, it's never going to. So that is always going to slow our kill chain down. And it's a function of the fact that we are a democracy, blah, blah, blah.

But, but is that, is that serious? Is that a serious vulnerability? So there is some ethical debate here because you're right, in military, the DOD's requirements, the regulation state that a human operator needs to make the kill decision, right? The question effectively becomes how distant, how far removed from that decision can that human operator be for us to still consider it to be that decision? And the example that I would offer is if we launch Tomahawk land attack cruise missile, you know, at a target 1,200 miles from now, that missile is going to cover 1,200 miles in much the same way a tactical aircraft might, you know, flying along

a fairly horizontal flight path under power. It's going to respond to threats to some extent, especially as they get more advanced, and then execute that target once it gets close enough. And we consider the person making the fire decision, maybe an hour before the weapon impacts target, making the kill decision, despite the fact that the weapon did have to react to some stimulus along the way. And we're going to have to decide how far removed we consider still in the loop. So, for instance, the human pilot flying an F-A-XX, a six-generation, you know, carrier-based aircraft with AI-enabled drone wingmen, that pilot will tell the drone execute that target, whether an air-to-air or an air-to-ground target, whatever it may be, that drone will then use, you know, on-board decision-making capability to execute within the parameters of the command.

is that still the human making the kill decision? If that drone has to go and conduct, you know, three or four complex operations to position itself to get a bead on that target and then fire, if it fires an hour after the command was made, was that still a human in the loop? Or at that point, are we saying that the AI effectively made the kill decision?

You know, so there's still a great deal of ethical wiggle room within the regulation as it's written. And that's something we're going to have to contend with, you know. And before we get a stream of complaints, you know, about why is Milburn trying to slow the kill chain with these ridiculous questions. These questions are a thing, especially in, you know, the tech industry. And as we try and close the gap between DOD and real tech industry, not defense contractors. I mean, like, you know, innovators, the guys on the cutting. edge, then we need to address problems like that, which I know is very difficult to do.

It is. And it's tough to have the conversation sometimes because people, you know, to your point, can be dismissive of the debate. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And it's, and it's, and it becomes quite complex because there are, you know, we already use autonomous, we already have autonomous weapons systems that make a decision to kill without a human and elite. They're like, you know, C-Cat or the I mean, a lot of stuff that we use for ship protection is just one example, right? Yeah, you know, it really is, it's a practical application of the trolley problem, you know, where we, if you're not familiar with the trolley problem out there listening, it's the idea that, you know, you're on a trolley that is on a track that could potentially

run three people over. You have the ability to pull a lever to switch tracks and only run one person over. But then you go from it being a passive decision to allow three people to, die to an active decision to kill that one person. And we're facing that, but instead we're facing the question of leaving it up to the trolley. And then how do you manage accountability thereafter? You know, it's tough to, as it is right now, you know, the United States and the world at large has made huge strides in minimizing sort of, you know, the secondary casualties of tactical operations, using things like the R9X, you know, the Hellfire

of swords and things like these efforts to mitigate the chances of innocent people being hurt. But when you pass the decision off to an automated system, who do you hold accountable when innocent people get hurt, for instance? It's the sort of thing you need to have an answer to optimally before you're passing off the decision. So that way, when something does happen, as it inevitably will in warfare. You know, you have a policy in place. You have a procedure to lean on. So Alex, you use the word intention. and for the purposes of what we're talking about, the intention of air power is at its root cause

is to clear the skies for the grunt on the ground. So where do you see, or is there a connection between all of these advances in aviation technology and the grunt on the ground? Is the grunt on the ground? Is that corporal, Lance Corporal Sergeant going to have the ability to interact with these air assets so that when that,

that pickle switch is hit, they might have the, depending on the munition and, you know, in the future, the ability to say, you know, break, break, you know, that you're, it's too close or whatever, wrong target, whatever it is. So is there that link? And if not, are we working on that? So that I would argue is probably the most important part of all of this technology that's, that's emerging and being matured right now, is this idea of creating a coherent battle network that actually leverages all of the sensors and the thinkers that you've got in the battle space more effectively. Because right now, to your point, there are people on the ground who know things that the people in the air do not. And we do a great deal of networking and communications and training to try to mitigate that.

But at the end of the day, we're still basically relying on a bunch of big-brained monkeys with walkie-talkies to relay very complicated things. and stressful situations with no time, you know? And to our previous point about these pilots, you know, the cognitive load of all the things that they're paying attention to. And then the combat power that you have, especially when you've got six drones, also carrying ordinance, also operating under your command, you've got the means to devastate a whole neighborhood or to, you know, take out an entire, you know, target facility. So what we need to do is find ways to not just create the network.

that connects those, which there are in place and there are some being worked on, but also it needs to be able to heal itself effectively. So when a system comes down, the network automatically reestablishes its own connections. That's a huge part of the manned-unmand teaming concept is that if all of these things are networked and one of these drones gets taken out, the other drones need to be able to shift to accommodate and still accomplish the mission, even though they may not have the same systems anymore that they had when they started. And if you can create a network that not only allows these things to share information readily for a fused battle space awareness, but can also quickly

change and go, okay, all the telephone poles got knocked out. Now we've got to use cell phone towers or something, you know, that equivalent. It's got to be able to do it fast enough that it's seamless to the operator in the fight. And right now we definitely don't have that capability. that is the long-term goal of using all of these variety of low to extremely high-cost drones for varying jobs. If they can't interact with one another and coordinate, we're spending a fortune on this stuff that we're basically just shotgun blasting, you know, which can be a fit. Isn't that supposed to be the defining difference of this system? And that is why it has the acronym it is air domination. It's not about a single platform. It's

about the teaming, which makes sense. And I am anything but a Luddite this is overdue. But at the same time, you know, I'm watching how, and I recognize against, you know, near peer competitor, we have to do all this stuff. My concern is this, that at the other end of the tech spectrum, we have requirements to for armed overwatch. And the other part of that, you know, so we still have to focus on that. But the other part that really concerns me about this whole package is we've got to change the culture and training on the ground.

We are so far behind. We have been paying lip service a long time to this feeling, you know, this any sensor, any shooter. I can tell you within, you know, Jason's and my old service, Marine Corps, always a Marine, right? We are far behind culturally. You know, I've talked about this before. but the average Lance Corpropal doesn't have the training or confidence to pick up a a headset to call for fire as is now. I was just going to say that.

I mean, that is the problem. So we have 13 guys, several baton commander, maybe, you know, I mean, 13 guys, squad. You got the squad leader, maybe one or two other guys are useful, and the rest are just targets. I mean, that is. They all have to my point is human beings on the ground have to be integrated into this for it to work. And in order to do that, we need to really look at who we're bringing, you know, can we do this? Can we reduce, do we really now, now is the time perhaps to look at getting a much higher quality guy, taking kind of a soft approach, soft like. We, you know, and this is going to terrify a lot of people, maybe reduce and strength as we, you know, as we get up to this machine.

But we've got a long way to go just in training and educating our own people. Oh, shut up, but that's- It's a three-layered problem, too, you know, because it's a technological problem in that the systems need to be user-friendly enough that you don't need a year of training in order to effectively leverage a system in combat, right? So we need technology that is simple and robust. We need a user-based that is competent and trained, and then we need a culture that embraces both of those things.

And those are three separate challenges. Those are three separate expenses at that, you know, because with the technology, we're not only facing the challenges that come inherent to fielding new technology, but also bureaucracy associated with fielding new technology. With training, again, we're facing cultural issues, but again, bureaucracy associated with changing

the way that we go about training. And then when it comes to culture, we've got the bureaucracy problems and the technology problems, but we also have our monkey brain problems where this is the way I've done it and I'm not going to do it a different way or even those with the best of intentions

who are saying, I've been doing this for 22 years, I am the best in the world at what I do and I don't understand this new system. How do I manage it on the twilight of my career and still be effective at what I'm doing while this new generation is coming up? And again, you always face that challenge of capacity versus capability, where we could field all these systems today. And again, as you said at the beginning of this episode, be ready for war in 10 years and just have to hope there's no conflict in the interim.

Or we have to piecemeal these solutions out so that we maintain, you know, one portion of the force structure that's ready to respond to something that breaks out tomorrow and a portion of the force structure that has predicated entirely on. modernizing for what conflict is sure to look like five years from now, you know, because drones aren't going away. They're going to become cheaper, more capable, more robust, and more available as time goes on. So we can find ourselves, you know, I always think back to when I was deployed to Mozambique Africa and, you know, the comm Marines spent three days getting comms up. They were intermittent throughout, but the guys in Mozambique who are just using their little

nextel chirps. had comms up the whole time. They weren't secure, sure. But they were an active communication with one another using off-the-shelf technology while we were putting up tense and talking about what we would do once we had comms up on Wednesday.

And we faced that challenge kinetically as well because these drones will get cheaper, they'll get easier to use, and the force that's buying them off the shelf and operating them versus the massive structure-wide acquisition process, and then training pipeline is so much slower to leverage these new technologies force-wide than it is to be the plucky underdog who's buying them off the shelf.

And we need to find ways to work around that just sluggish pivot that's inherent to a massive military structure, you know? On the, you know, on the point of, and I wouldn't believe at the point on aircraft carriers, I suppose it's the grunt in me that it just gets infuriated by the, by the Navy's, you know, going down with a ship thing of no, no, A, we'll find a way that they make, eventually will the aircraft carrier halfway not obsolete, right? So, I mean, it seems to me as though we're developing this aircraft in order to keep the aircraft carrier relevant because we have a bunch of four-star admirals who, who, who,

whose, you know, Halcyn days were spent on a carrier. I'll be the aircraft carrier. Although I do, I think that there is a great deal of value to what you're saying. You're not wrong. The aircraft carrier, I would contend in today's world, is a strategic deterrent, sure, but it's a diplomatic tool as much as a combat platform. And what I mean by that is that the aircraft carrier is very effective for asymmetric conflicts.

And it's a very effective means of making a presence known and making a big spectacle of, you know, American support. But in a near peer conflict, the aircraft carrier is a target. And it's important to understand the economics of a $100 million hypersonic missile might be immensely expensive. But when the target costs $16 billion to replace, that $100 million missiles a bargain. Yeah. And that was the question I had for you, Alex, is I was still barking up when it comes to drones. We're being too high tech. You know, I mean, look, think about Nagora Karabach, and I know that that was presented in a way that made it sound too slick.

But the bottom line is, you know, with loitering munitions, I believe it was the Harrop and the Bioktar. Neither of those are very complicated, right? Yeah. And yes, they were going against kind of a third-rate military, but they had a first-rate ayats, and these things went through it like a knife through hot butter. And the bioktar is maybe $2 million a platform. You see what I'm saying? I mean, this was all being orchestrated now.

And volume does not require a great deal of technical proficiency. You know, you can feel a high volume of drones without an advanced battle network meant to help them accommodate to new variables. way we're trying to field. Because you're overwhelming the enemy. And you want to throw into decoys whatever you are doing. Even if you're running logistics resupply using drones, you want to throw up decoys and all kinds of shit to cloud up.

Right now, what is, you know, what is arguably the first ever naval blockade without a Navy, you know? And this is what we're seeing is that you can use these low-cost systems to impact very high cost strategic operations. How do you... We're learning. They're teaching. You know?

I love that. So the Houthis stole 2030. You could get what the Houthis are doing in the Red Sea right now and extrapolate that to a much larger margin and see what the South China Sea would look like in a conflict because of China's massive anti-ship stockpile. They would be operating in a similar way, but with a better kill chain in a, much larger arsenal and a wider variety of targets. But this is a little chip points.

Yeah, yeah. You know, whereas the United States would be looking at, okay, how do you operate in an environment that is so contested that there's constant 24-hour surveillance? There's supersonic drones that are providing targeting information to hypersonic missiles that are adjusting course and flight. How do you operate in an environment like this where the Marine Corps is planned? for, you know, hot loading on austere air strips and stuff like that, the faster the kill chain can execute, the less effective goes.

You've got to create ambiguity at that point, right? Because you don't have enough, you just don't have enough stuff to intercept all the kill chains being thrown out against you. So you're going to throw up multiple targets. Yeah. If you want to use, you know, for the Navy, for instance, on the, you know, on Aegis equipped ships right now, the cheaper interceptors, the SM2s,

$1.2 million a piece, you know. So when you're trying to intercept a swarm of drones, lobbing, you know, $1 million interceptors at $10,000 drones becomes a problem very quickly in a large-scale conflict. But aside from the economic attrition, there's just the fact that we can't restock these ships underway. They need to go back to port to be resupplied. They need to be taken out of the combat environment entirely.

in order to be put back in and combat effective. And this is why we're seeing Harriers and Super Hornets conducting a lot of intercepts lately. It is a lot cheaper. They haven't disclosed, I think, all the systems that they've been using, but it is much cheaper to use a top end Aim 9X sidewinder to take out a target for maybe $470,000 versus an SM, you know, like an SM3, for instance, can be as much as $36 million to replace. It's still a balance. It's still, you know, it's still an ineffective,

inefficient way of, in a method of air defense. Yeah, it works against the Houthis when we know that we can still outspend them. But they're still a drone, you know, according to, I mean, the Navy's says they're looking at. It's still a drone got within four seconds of hitting, I forget the name, it wasn't a connie. Oh, shit. But it, for real, the real thing happened in this last.

week. And it's an important and a very unsophisticated drone too. Yeah, I think that this is something that the hypersonic discussion has misled the public on in general is the fact that air defense is never a certainty. It doesn't matter the complexity or the capability of the threat. When you are trying to shoot something down in the sky, it's never a sure thing. You know, no matter how capable your air defenses are or how inept their assets may. be you can never be 100% certain that you're going to take everything out. But the higher, the volume, the less the chance becomes that you're going to be able to stop them, which is now what the Navy is aiming to do in the Pacific to China inversely. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask,

Alex, like, what's the move? Like, just keep building $15 billion targets. So that's a great question. So the Pentagon kicked off about six months ago, something that they called the replicator initiative. And this concept is basically not a new procurement plan. It's not a new program. It is a philosophy to sort of be implemented across programs where the idea is to emphasize affordable mass, right? So we want to have those high-end, exquisite platforms, the six-generation fighters that can be combatant commanders in the sky.

But then we want something that costs half as much as that jet, that we also don't want to die, but has not quite the same level of capability, but a great deal. And then something that costs half as much as that, half as much as that, half as much as that, all the way down to very small, very low-cost platforms. And if you can field enough of them in volume, that's why they call it the replicator initiative. The idea is basically to overwhelm by volume the same way we did in World War II, where our military was exponentially larger than it is now, but far more specialized by platform.

We're sort of getting back to that, where we're going to have specialized drones that have a few specific jobs, and we want to be able to pump them out in huge numbers. But the other answer is, how do you stop the opponent from doing the same to you? And I think people are mistaken to place all of their stock in lasers, directed energy weapons. In atmosphere, there are real limitations to directed energy weapons, particularly atmospheric scattering and thermal blooming. And what these problems are basically is it's air, particles in the air work effectively like a lens. As a laser burns through the atmosphere, thermal blooming lenses it and makes it less accurate the further way you are. Atmospheric scattering is just, you know, imagine shining a flashlight into a room with a smoke machine. The smoke machine catches a lot of those light particles.

So as a result, the Navy is not confident that lasers will ever be effective outside of 10 miles. And today, the most powerful lasers we've got are maybe a mile. When a hypersonic weapon is doing five miles a second or whatever it might be, that's not enough time. You're not ever going to be able to burn through the nose cone of one of these weapons. Lasers will probably work for low-cost drones, but we need to find a way to solve the cost attrition problem of how do you take out a large volume of targets quickly without expending every interceptor you've got on your ship? compromising your combat capabilities. Alex, in the last, I think it was the last episode we had,

we talked about this, particularly about the, so the Russians are using just massive use of EW. And you probably read Rousse's report last month that estimated that the Ukrainians are losing up to 10,000 drones a month to Russian EW efforts.

So my point here is, yes, I know EW has shortfalls, and I know the Ukrainians are working, around it, you know, with the FPV drones, drones. I mean, you know more about this and I do. There are workarounds, but for a lot, for a while, at least, you know, maybe I don't know, the next five, 10 years, we know that EW is going to be an effective system against a lot of drones, if not the majority of drones, and those that doesn't work against, we can focus greater efforts. But we're behind the EW race. I mean, that's what, you know, I saw a greater interview with

General Hodges, former Yukon commanded the other day, where he was very upfront about this. Hey, the Russians are so much more advanced than we are at EW. And I'm not talking about necessarily the systems, but their doctrine, their training, their application, how it's integrated into their combat operations. And it really comes down to effective priorities. And this is one of the places where the past few decades of basimetric conflict have really hurt the United States because we had a great, we had a lot of efforts that were maturing and robust and then atrophied on the vine as we focused on these asymmetric conflicts over the past

few decades. And just like you're saying, Russia and China have had the benefit of being able to focus on these as offensive assets based on the idea that they would need to leverage them against us. So basically, we call time out and let these other countries, we imagine, to play catch up, but they weren't trying to catch up. They were trying to poke holes. That's a way more effective strategy. And now we're in this position. Electronic warfare is one of a number of places where it's not just the technology we have fielded. That's a concern. It's the academic infrastructure, the pipeline into fielding these systems that has atrophied. China's biggest advantage in hypersonics isn't the DFZF. Chances are good. If we went to war with China

today, it'd be tough for them to actually hit a carrier with that weapon. China's big hypersonic advantage is their massive academic infrastructure that they've built in the past 10 years, all focused on developing these technologies so that 10 years from now, they'll be significantly further ahead, at least as the plan. We helped educate a lot of that scientists. Absolutely. Part of that plan was to send a bunch of students to our schools to. too. You know, and we shoot ourselves a little bit further because America's solution to these problems is money, right?

We go, all right, well, we'll pile up a bunch of money over there and lighted on fire, and when it's done burning, we'll have a solution. The problem that we run into is that not everything can be solved that way. We saw this with Arrow. It was to be America's first operational maneuvering hypersonic weapon. We were trying to field it in like 18 months as an operational weapon because it was a glide vehicle. and we thought we had that technology fairly well in hand. Then all the tests failed, not because of the missile, but things that we should have had unlocked, like its ability to detach from the aircraft, the wiring bus to the aircraft's command system.

The failures came in those portions of the test, but because there's only maybe two flight corridors in the United States where you can test a missile with a thousand mile range and a Mach 5 plus top speed, they had to wait six months to try to test it again. And then when they got to their new test date, they launched it. The missile worked right. The sensors on the test range were down that day.

They don't get another day for six more months. So because we have 70 hypersonic weapons programs competing for resources with each other, we're slowing all of their progress down by this lack of testing and academic infrastructure. Why not just distill it down to like instead of 70, like four? A lot of it comes down to, you're not sure. which programs are going to work. So by investing in a bunch of them, you know you've got a really high likelihood of success. And that usually works because it's usually not a weapon that needs to travel at Mach 10, you know, and you need to also see how effective it's warhead is against

different kinds of targets. So the methods that we're accustomed to using aren't working when it comes to these emerging technologies because we didn't invest in the infrastructure required to support these emerging technologies, we sort of rested on the laurels of, well, we've got the most money, we'll figure it out. And that isn't even necessarily true. You know, some of the more recent assessments of Chinese defense spending actually places it north of $700 billion a year. And with their difference in purchasing power parity, that's more than we're spending. And when you think of it that way, China has the advantage. I think of Hazard Lee, who's an F-35 pilot, a friend of mine who used to be an F-16 Wild Weasel pilot.

And he talked about Wild Weasel is the suppression of enemy air defense operation. It's the closest thing to being a Wild West gunfighter that fighter jets get to do. You fly into contested airspace and wait for the enemy air defenses to paint a target on you or your wingman. And once that targets painted on you, you launch an anti-radiation missile, a weapon that hones in on the signal they're using to target you. It is a gunfight. You try to hit them before they hit you. And the problem that you have as a wild weasel pilot is that you're not competing against another aircraft that has to worry about weight of systems or fuel load on missiles.

You're competing against the ground, which can hold missiles with twice the fuel that you can, which can carry 10 times the munitions, the ordinance that you can. It's an unfair fight. And that's what we're talking about in China on a much larger scale. We're talking about expeditionary forces squaring off against stationary forces on their own home turf. It's an asymmetric battle inherently. And then on top of that, they're able to invest heavily into not matching our capability. They don't need the expeditionary power, but the U.S. has. They can lay siege to the South China Sea and turn off the world's economy.

You know, what do they need to invade for? Alex, what about the Russians now? Can they really launch a nuclear weapon? Can they detonate a co-pro weapon? All right. And say, destroy one or more of our satellites without. And what would be, no pun intended, what would be the fallout? So I think that this nuclear weapon in orbit thing is not a new concern.

This weapon would be a new means to the same end that we've been concerned about for a long time. Now, a few years back when Heather Wilson was the Secretary of the Air Force, when she was talking about America's satellite infrastructure, she said the U.S. built an exquisite glasshouse before the invention of stones. And what she meant was that most of these satellites that we rely on today were launched at a time when there were no orbital threats to be concerned with. And as such, they're not hard to get anything. So now the United States faces the very real threat of China or Russia in particular, compromising

America satellite infrastructure that we rely on, not just for combat ops, but for day-to-day life. And it would hurt the U.S. more than China or Russia. But make no mistake, compromising the whole satellite infrastructure would be a death blow to all developed nations. But it is worth noting. So back in 2020. Why Blinken brought it up right with China. Exactly.

You know, it was almost, hey, they're not listening to us. But let me tell you what's going to happen. You know, so this is the thing that we need to worry about when it comes to a nuclear detonation in orbit is twofold. There's two big concerns. The first one is the detonation itself. And we can look back to, I want to say, 1962, Starfish Prime. Johnson, at all. Johnson at all, right?

Exactly what happened. Exactly. So Starfish Prime was one of five tests as a part of Operation Fish Bowl. These were high altitude nuclear detonations. Starfish Prime was a W-49 nuclear warhead, carried a loft by a Thor rocket to about 250 miles, which is four-ish miles shy of where the International Space Station orbits today. So well into low-earth orbit. When it detonated, we weren't really sure what it was going to do.

But what it did was way worse than we anticipated. There were 24 satellites in orbit at the time on Earth. It immediately knocked out three of them, including the UK's first, which I'm sure didn't go over great diplomatically. Special relationship. You know, and then the radiation belt that it produced knocked out six more of the only 24 satellites in orbit. Bigger concerns than that, it put a huge cavity in the ionosphere and expelled the Earth's magnetic field for almost 30 seconds. So, I mean, if it had lasted longer than that, we'd all have a real

bad sunburn, but, you know, immediately thereafter. The EMP knocked out some 300 streetlights in in Hawaii, 900 miles away. It interfered with telephone calls. It set off burglar alarms. The concern with the EMP is not what we often hear in science fiction, but it is certainly a concern. So the first thing that would happen is that nuclear detonation would probably wipe out the functionality of a third of the world's satellite infrastructure, and the radiation belts created by it would wreak havoc thereafter. But the more dangerous situation immediately thereafter is something we call the Kessler syndrome. And what that effectively is, it was named that for Donald Kessler, who came up with this in the 70s, is the idea that there are so many satellites

in orbit now, that if you destroy a small number of them and the debris cloud created by those satellites continues to orbit at 17,000 plus miles per hour, that debris impacts other satellites, destroys those satellites, which then turn into an even larger debris cloud. And it creates a cascade that eventually consumes all of the satellites in orbit and makes lower Earth orbit pretty unmanageable for us to get back into thereafter. And that's really what this weapon would do. It would create a Kessler syndrome scenario in one fell swoop. one hopes that Putin's advisors are letting them know. But remember, the Russians don't necessarily,

they're not necessarily the first to plug gaps when it comes to nuclear safety. Yeah, that's fair. And that's number one concern. And number two is that I'm not sure anyone's willing to tell Putin that he's not wearing clothes anymore. But you can see how I think, and I'm not a chicken little,

but you can see how he thinks, you know, he's, yes, the war in Ukraine's at a sense, Dan still, but he still has points to make. He wants to hold on to Dombas. And he, it probably appears, it probably sounds to him like the most rational thing in the earth in the world to a nuclear definition. And, you know, when we're talking about a, you know, with a nuclear weapon, which you know, we're talking about at the end of the day diplomatic leverage above all else.

What this is is it's a means for Russia. I would contend the RS 28 Sarmat, which is there potentially as much as 50 megaton yield ICBM that they've described as capable of wiping out an area the size of Texas or France with one launch. Likewise, they're Poseidon, status six,

this doomsday torpedo. What these are, these are big bang for your buck options where you can field a small number of systems that garner lots of news headlines and lots of discourse and lots of concern. And it gives you diplomatic leverage when your conventional military force doesn't have. We down to the Kinsal, you know, hypersonic weapons. These things are all predicated. You know, Russia puts I.O. first.

And Kinsel being billed as a hypersonic weapon was about advancing foreign weapon sales. They want to be the weapon supplier of choice for everyone on America's naughty list. So look at how advanced our tech is. Because the year got a bad rap. They're more conventional. Older gear got a bad rap from the Ukraine war, right? So this is going to get on the weapons systems. Russia is playing the game of if we can instill enough fear in the global populace,

they will apply political pressure to their own leadership to back off. And systems like, being able to threat, you know, James Bond villain systems are the best bang for your buck. They're the most cost-efficient way of scaring the general public into wanting to back off. And that is really what I think we're seeing here, you know, especially Kinsel being a great example, but hypersonics in general. Russia has built an entire industry around lying about these capabilities to create this idea. that they're a looming presence you need to be worried about when they are a looming presence that people you know in the Baltics certainly need to be worried about but they want you know mom at

home in Tulsa Oklahoma to be afraid of Russia and that's what they're hoping systems like this can provide for them yeah kind of a bummer thing there does the U.S. have any kind of like counter to this or do we have our own system that does the same thing so the first thing that you need to know, especially when it comes to strategic deterrence, like putting a nuke in orbit, mutually assured destruction is still basically it. I can tell you right now, without putting a nuke in orbit, Russia could create a Kessler syndrome scenario with anti-satellite missiles. They already have an inventory. Likewise, if they launched a full-scale nuclear attack on the U.S., America's ground-based mid-course

defense system would have no hope, not even, you know, America's home. in defense system could intercept a North Korean launch and a small number of inbound weapons, very high likelihood none of them would make landfall. If Russia or China did a full-scale launch, there's nothing you can do but respond. And so right now, to be clear, no, mutually assured destruction is still basically it. If Russia, now I want to be clear that this nuclear weapon, Russia does not have in orbit. It looks as though. It's just a system they want to field. And it's similar to the question of, well, wouldn't that violate the 1967 Outer Space Treaty? Sure, but they don't care, right?

All we can do now is develop the means to respond in a way that creates such a threat that they wouldn't dare use it. And that's basically the only effective weapon. There are lots of hypersonic weapon interception systems in development now. And I am sure it's a nut that will get cracked. but again, air defense is never a certainty. So the real answer, as bad as it sounds, is a good offense, is to be such a looming threat that they don't dare launch. It's really the only safe.

Alex, is this, you know, and bear in mind, this is a very grunt-level kind of discussion of the, I mean, for me, of the problem, but doesn't it come down to essentially this? And to your point that the only thing we can do is throw worse weapons, systems back because we cannot really adequately, we can't defend against the hypersonic glide bomb that is maneuvering. You know, we can defend against the cruise missiles. Yeah, we create a cruise missiles that are slower maneuvering or a ballistic missile that doesn't maneuver it, but that comes in, you know, from, ballistically, but a glide bomb.

Yeah. I mean, it goes up right into the stratosphere. I mean, in order to launch and it's that incredible speed plus the ability of it to maneuver that makes it impossible impossible you know so you raise a great point about what what makes a hypersonic weapon special is not really necessarily at speed in fact often they're slower than ballistic missiles in terms of time to target because of those maneuvers but the way air defense systems work is it's just complicated math you establish its trajectory based on multiple points of travel and then you figure out where a point in the future trajectory will be that your interceptor can meet it there to stop it from coming.

So by maneuvering dramatically, what you do is you render those calculations moot. And so then it's got to assess where your new trajectory is, do the calculations again, and then come up with a new intercept point to launch an interceptor, and maybe then it maneuvers again. And so what we're doing is we're making it far more complicated to conduct the intercept. Not impossible, but a way bigger challenge. But the problem isn't, how do you stop one? The problem is, how do you stop 10? You know, because you may well be able to, even with today's age of systems,

we might be able to take down some hypersonic glide vehicles. The same way you might be able to take down, you know, a ballistic missile with a system that wasn't designed to take down a ballistic missile, but you might be able to swing it. The problem becomes you're not going to get lucky with three. coming at you, you might get lucky with one. You know, and so the real question becomes, how do you establish a system that can not only defend against these threats,

but can do so consistently without expending every interceptor on board, without taking yourself out of the fight, or without the economic attrition of lobbing something that costs 10 times what the weapon does at the weapon to stop it from getting there? And right now, the only answer to that, in a tactical standpoint is distance, is range. But then you're the problem of how do you hit back. And in a distance, but also, you know, with a, and I hate to use the term, but I'm going

to the transparent battlefield and long range precision targets, you make yourself arguably less of a target. You know, a carrier is a huge fucking target. Satellites, in the words of General Hayden, are big, fat, juicy targets. So, you know, there's an active, when there's the active measures part, but we've got to figure out a way how to accomplish the mission using less vulnerable platforms. That's kind of the point that's getting at that rather than just keep trying to build on these same obsolete platforms to try and bring them into back into obsolescence. We just need to figure out a new way of doing, of launching attacks, of providing logistics. And, ultimately, how do you replace the capacity you lose?

when one of those exquisite platforms does go down, when one of those satellite targets or one of those carriers is compromised, how do you replace the combat capacity that it delivered on the short term quickly enough to have an effect? With the weapon systems we have with the F-35 and now with the F-A-XX,

why do we need to have a carrier with all these aircraft on the deck when we can have one with unmanned systems that can, you know, can the wreck havoc among the enemy, and it's not going to need a massive platform, except for the one-man system, right? And so that kind of gets back to as soon as we put a man into anything, it becomes less capable, more vulnerable.

The value of a carrier in that circumstance is still the political insulation. And what I mean by this is something we ran into in the Cold War with the U-2. This is why we actually operated the U-2 off of aircraft carriers in three separate instances is because you run into situations where the partner nations in the region, because of their own geopolitical implications, suddenly won't grant you access to the airstrip that you need.

You might not have the facilities that are required anymore. And a carrier strike group is something you can park in the region and conduct those operations from without that political debate. but the problem becomes how do you keep these platforms effective when they're so large and expensive to replace? It's a challenge. Alex, and we've heard that argument all our careers as a defense to the carrier. And it really, it was a good argument when we were in coin, right? But it's really difficult, really difficult looking ahead to think of a circumstance where a carrier would be the right answer to any job.

or political problem, aside from show of force, right? You know, kind of... Carrier is a carrier is flaccid hard power, right? I mean, it's... Yes. You know, it looks like an erection, but it's not. Actually, you may have to cut it... We're not gotten that.

Yeah. But my point is, there's a whole bunch of capabilities that we do need at that end. You know, as a former soft guy, we need AV. and we need a platform that can remain there constantly providing fire support. We need with our partner nation forces to have expendable drones, blue-collar drones that they can afford, but they can afford to lose. But at the same time, you know, these are all things that we really do need for what is happening now while we're preparing all these high-end stuff,

all these high-end things to keep the carriers relevant. And the high-end challenge. That's a Luddite brunt devil's advocate. You know? No, you're, this is the reason why the Marine Corps is pursuing the lightning carrier concept, to your very point, right? This idea of using amphibious assault ships as more widely dispersed carriers in a Pacific fight.

Because, again, you know, I don't want to over, or I don't want to understate just how tough it is. a carrier is a massive target. There is no doubt about it. It is really tough to hit a carrier moving at full clip against the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean at a four-digit range. That is a massive targeting challenge.

Not one that cannot. Nowadays, you're exactly right. What if you're using sea drones? This is exactly what China's working on now is developing a very robust kill chain that leverages drones on the surface, drones below the surface, drones in the air, not just the type of drones that we think of, but aerostats, long-duration, high-altitude balloons, supplemented by satellites, supplemented by geosynchronous satellites.

So we have multiple layers of systems that are all working together to geolocate targets in the South China Sea to be able to put missiles on target very quickly. And this is an incredibly dangerous situation when you have a force structure like Americas, where, you know, people like to say China has the superior numbers, but America has the superior tonnage. As though that's a flex, it sort of isn't. You know, when we say America's Navy is significantly larger in terms of tonnage, but not numbers, what we mean is we have a bunch of much larger vessels and way fewer small ones. And what that really means is that we've got some very, very big targets that if we don't defend effectively, we'll have a lot of trouble replacing. But I do want to highlight, again, though, that it is hard to overstate the value of having a four-acre airfield that you can park where you need to if you've got an aircraft with the range that you need in order to effectively engage these targets. So a hypothetical engagement with China would have to start, I would argue, with submarine-based

Tomahawk and B-21 Raider, maybe the stand-in attack weapon-based engagements. And what they would need to do is fly to the Chinese coast first, identify, using its ISR suite, these anti-ship weapon emplacements that are closest to the coastline. You've got to engage those to clear a path for these carriers to get into the fight. otherwise they won't be in the fight at all. And if we don't wipe out these systems effectively, when you look at war game scenarios for Taiwan, for instance, it is effectively a sure thing that the U.S. could win this conflict if it stepped into it,

but almost assuredly at the cost of at least one carrier and often two, based on how these war games play out. And that is all about this range game. Now, if we can interfere with China's kill chain, great, that helps. If we can clear a path at these anti-ship weapons systems, that helps too, because the closer we can get this projectable power to Chinese shores, the more effective it can be. But at the end of the day, what we really need is a variety of different types of platforms and systems, just like you're saying. So that way the carrier isn't the only threat you're worried about.

You want to be worried about these other threats posed by the submarines, by the soft units that are able to use submersibles to get in, the drone support. But you want to be worried about all of it. Otherwise, they could focus on one thing and reach havoc on it. Well, you want to, yeah. I mean, I agree, Alex. And if, you know, if carriers, as I'm afraid they will remain, remain the backbone of our Navy. Yeah, I mean, my point is then we have to present, when the enemy looks at our order of battle, we have to, he has to see something that we've, we've manufactured.

for him that presents a hundred carriers, you know, and he's got to decide which are the real ones. I mean, that's the problem right now. You know, the Navy that's out there today is, for all intents and purposes, not all that dissimilar from the Navy of Desert Storm in terms of system functionality out there. We have some. But, Alex, not completely. Sailors can now keep their hands in their pockets. You know, progress is progress.

You know, that makes us far. almost formidable and adversary. But, you know, when you look at Desert Storm, it was a symphony of planning and technology, you know, executed very, very effectively. But I worry that we now have a bit more of a disparate network of systems where, you know, Frank Kendall, the Secretary of the Air Force said this fairly recently, where there's been emphasis on developing systems, but not necessarily on integrating them. You know, we're trying to create these capabilities in a vacuum rather than having a really good overarching strategy for how to put these capabilities together into an effective battle plan.

And I think part of that is that Americans by and large have this misunderstanding that America has a preordained right to air supremacy and to, you know, dominance in a combat environment. You'll see commenters that are furious at the prospect that America has the steam roll through. China, you know, in a conflict. But that's the truth of the situation is that warfare is, obviously, I don't need to tell you guys, but warfare is complicated and messy business. No strategy works the way that you intended to when you start. And we can't look at, you know, the fact that China is still using horses and trains to move troops around, you know, inside their own borders. That doesn't mean that China can't pose a massive threat to American interests, to global stability to national security. We have this bad habit of going, oh, well, they don't have the F-35.

So that's not how war works. We're seeing it, you know, live in action in Ukraine where, you know, Ukraine really didn't have any right to do what they did. And people often say, oh, well, Ukraine's getting all this support from the West. And that's why they're still in the fight. they don't realize that if Russia had executed effectively in the first five weeks of the campaign, the way the coalition did in a desert storm, help never would have come in time. Ukraine would have been over before support arrived. Russia's inefficacy created room for Ukraine to mount this resistance. And if Ukraine can do it, if the Houthis can do it in the Red Sea,

it is crazy not to think that China could do it on a much larger scale, you know? Alex, we need to bring you back on again because you know, there's so much more to talk about on this on this subject, whether it's drones or whether it's

armed overwatch but also what you've just been talking about, the lessons from the air war in Ukraine why here, you know, I just was talking to an Israeli soldier downstairs about, you know, I didn't bring it up, But the, you know, a large number of civilian casualties are reflection of the fact the Israelis

aren't using their J-DAM kits. Why is that? What are they learning? You know, they've gone to dipalming techniques, but they're still having problems, right? You know, so there's so much to talk about as far as... You know, I think a lot of that can be attributed to, again, you know, I remember the ambassador to Afghanistan a few years ago saying something to a... tend to, it's tough to have conversations with our partners because they base their understanding of our

capabilities on movies. And I think that people often misunderstand the level of technology that we have with the level of technology that's deployed force-wide and how effectively it can be leveraged. Russia being a good example, you've got a lot of precision munitions that pilots never trained to leverage doesn't make them good for much. Likewise, it doesn't matter how many, you know, maybe JDM kits you have if you don't have people trained to put them on the systems they need to be on, or people train in how best to leverage them, or in the maintenance of those kits, or in, you know, something that people tend not to understand is that every system has not only flight hour restrictions, but G restrictions. So if you put a weapon system on an aircraft, it goes out and

flies a combat sortie and doesn't leverage that munition, the force, the exertion put on that weapon degrades its service life. It's operational lifespan and you need to spend money to keep these systems in the air, basically. There's, there are so many different pieces of the puzzle that I think people tend to think of warfare as a video game where they go, oh, I got an upgraded system. This is what all my systems are now. And whereas the truth is, is it's always a trickle, you know, right? You know, the system's getting out to where they need to be and then the people learning how to leverage them. I can't say that's what's happening in Israel, but that's one possibility.

Yeah, I mean, it would certainly wouldn't surprise me. I think it's a good explanation. Well, guys. I honestly, I have a blast. I know I don't stop once you get me started. I think we've probably got many more questions for you, Alex. So definitely want to bring you back. Before we close down, though, D&J,

did anything, anything more, anything, while we have, well, we have the, the air theorist here? I mean, I had, you know, the Russian space lasers. That's what I wrote down here, the nukes, you know what I mean? No, that is, I want to be clear that the Russian weapon might not be an orbital nuke, but a nuclear-powered weapon, which is what some people argue. I would contend strategically that would have even less.

value only because it would be a capability they already have in their anti-satellite weapon systems and their orbital inspector satellites. Interfering with the satellites function is pretty easy. Nudge it into a degrading orbit and it's done. And as a result, you can actually take out a lot of satellites without having to expend kinetic anything. So yeah, it could be a nuclear-powered weapon, but that would, again, again, we're talking about Bond villain weapons that have greater value in terms of perception. Yeah, it's a propaganda win, right? Yeah.

I got nothing. I'd say. Alex, on that note, though, he wasn't there a, wasn't there an American who shot down a satellite? Was he flying an F-15 or F-16? It was a 60-degree time. I want to say it was an ASM-135 was the name of the ordinance,

but yeah, it was an air-to-air-kill on a satellite. But to be, so when the U.S. did that back in 1982 and Russia did their test, it was. Yeah, believe it or not. Or maybe it was 85. So Russia did their test in 2021. And the U.S. said, Russia, that was pretty irresponsible. And Russia said, well, you guys did it in the 80s, not recognizing that there are a lot more satellites in orbit in 2021 and then in the 80s.

And that makes that Kessler syndrome threat that much more real. But, yeah, China has also conducted an anti-satellite weapons test. And I want to say maybe India as well. So, yeah, orbit, when people say that the space force is militarizing space, space has been a warfare theater since Sputnik. It has always been, you know, a theater of warfare. People are just catching up with it now. Russia and China both have space-based branches of their military

that have been active for years prior to the space force. well Alex I for one want to thank you very much for coming on Jason thank you too for for hooking them in absolutely yeah this this is great um all right everyone uh I just want to thank Alex very much coming on and and also uh Jason and all of you and we'll see you again in another three days, right? Yeah, and let's remember. Don't forget to like. Don't forget to subscribe.

If you're listening to us on any audio platforms, you can rate and review it. You can check out the Patreon. And, of course, check out Sandbox and Alex's outfit. Airpower. I mean, it's, you know, if you're watching this, you know all about air power and the huge numbers it does. Yeah, and make sure to check me out on TikTok, too,

you know, not using your government phone. but it's where I try to speak to the children. Yeah, so everything will be in the description in the show notes of this show, so you can check out Alex there. Okay, cool. All right, everyone. See you in three days.

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