Is Washington Negotiating Russia’s Terms to Ukraine? | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

We break down the latest U. S. diplomacy with Russia and Ukraine, Iran’s missile threat to American warships, and the growing strain on U. S. Patriot and THAAD interceptor stockpiles. We also look at what the wars in Ukraine and Iran are exposing about America’s defense industrial base, autonomous warfare, and whether the Pentagon can adapt fast enough for a potential conflict with China. Support the show on Patreon:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Jack's news outlet:⬇️ https://thehighside.substack.com/ Find Jon Hackett here:⬇️ Jon's Twitter: https://x.com/jonathanhackett Jon's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejonathanhackett Jon's books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0C5L659N5?ccs_id=e11a2062-f8d3-498e-bfd7-7d2f3869caf6 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejonathanhackett Twitter: https://x.com/jonathanhackett Check out Mick's new podcast here:⬇️ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/at/podcast/pub-and-porch-applied-stoicism/id1836955475 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1k3QPmkAMwnGJxMLDwUSSd?si=n6piIu8XRcag1Z0K43A3bQ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@UCd0Hq6QFk8CoTu5j-VU0Ong Find Mick Mulroy here: Fogbow ⬇️ https://fogbow.com/ Lobo Institute ⬇️ https://www.loboinstitute.org/ Twitter ⬇️ https://x.com/mickmulroy?s=21&t=-Ze3F_Ix2vlJ18KFvORTCA LinkedIn ⬇️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-patrick-mulroy-31198b52/ Whitefish security summit ⬇️ https://whitefishsecuritysummit.com Find Marc P here: https://x.com/Mpolymer Find Andy Milburn here: Twitter ⬇️ https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8 LinkedIn ⬇️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023 Substack ⬇️ https://amilburn.substack.com/ Andy’s book ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operations 00:00 – Start 00:21 – Witkoff & Kushner Meet Putin in Moscow 04:50 – What Did Russia Get in Exchange for Robert Gilman? 07:33 – Is Washington Carrying Russia’s Terms to Ukraine? 11:11 – What U. S. Allies Are Learning From the Ukraine Negotiations 12:21 – What the U. S. Could Do Differently With Russia 15:09 – Why Ukraine Keeps Striking Russian Oil Infrastructure 18:34 – How the Russia and Iran Wars Are Connected 21:19 – The Problem With Seized Russian Oligarch Yachts 22:17 – Iran’s “Hypersonic” Missile Threat to U. S. Warships 25:38 – Are Iran’s Missiles Actually Hypersonic? 28:14 – What Happens If Iran Hits a U. S. Navy Ship? 30:39 – The Bigger Problem: Running Out of Interceptors 31:45 – AEI Report Warns of Major U. S. Missile Defense Shortfalls 36:12 – How Depleted Are America’s PAC-3 Stocks? 37:26 – Could the U. S. Sustain a War With China? 39:24 – Is the Pentagon Spending Money in the Wrong Places? 41:16 – The Gulf, Ukraine & the Global Competition for Patriot Missiles 43:24 – Would America’s Nuclear Arsenal Actually Work When Needed? 44:47 – Why the U. S. Defense Procurement System Is Failing 46:05 – What America Should Be Learning From Ukraine 48:02 – The V-22, MRAPs & Legacy Weapons We May Not Need 49:39 – Can the U. S. Defense Industry Actually Reform? 52:34 – Autonomous Warfare & Taking Humans Out of the Loop 54:45 – Will the Pentagon Finally Wake Up? 55:46 – Army Modernization & the Driscoll Problem 59:19 – Ukraine Is Already Using Autonomous Target Engagement Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

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  Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC. Next day on Hulu.

• 1:01Speaker 05

  Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of Eyes on Geopolitics. I'm here with Jonathan Hackett, Mick Mulroy, Andy Milburn and myself. Andy's leaving CAD. Good seeing you. Mick, congratulations on your daughter getting married.

• 1:16Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 1:17Speaker 05

  Slonchen. You're welcome. And we got a lot cooking as usual. We just had, um, we just had Uncle, uh, Uncle, uh, Steve Witkoff and, uh, and Jared Kushner head over to Moscow to talk to Putin.

• 1:35Speaker 05

  And now they are in currently we're shooting this right 11 a.m. on Sunday, uh, Eastern time. They are now in Ukraine talking with Zelensky. Um, I didn't really see a lot of like the readout on what they really talked about in Russia and stuff like that. I did make a joke on Twitter that they went to get their marching orders from Putin and then are going to Ukraine to like, give Zelensky a laundry list of stuff. I did see a little bit of some stuff, a clip of like Witkoff kind of just glazing Putin, basically, uh, which was incredible to me. How like, we're, we're gonna, we're gonna be old and we're gonna be thinking about these as really good times. Like, bro, you're not, you're not leasing a strip mall, brother. This is like people dying every single day in a illegal invasion

• 2:18Speaker 05

  by Russia into Ukraine, into a sovereign country, democratic country. So, not exactly like just a feel-good thing to be talking about and like with such kind of very blasé, I'd say. Um, where are you guys at? What do you think's gonna come out of this? Did you get any readout as to what they were talking about? What the, you know, were there any like specifics? Uh, Mick, you go ahead. John?

• 2:44Speaker 04

  On the substance of the meeting, also, they discussed, uh, US Marine veteran Robert Gilman, who had been imprisoned in Russia unlawfully for four years because he was teaching in Russia. Um, he was held there as a political prisoner and last month, the US negotiated for his release. And in this meeting, just this weekend, the delegation thanked Putin for releasing him. So the question is, what was exchanged? Um, that's not been discussed, I don't think. What was exchanged for that person to, that American to return home? So I think that's important for people to pay attention to as well, that these things aren't free. Russia's not releasing people for charity. There's absolutely something that was given in return and it would be interesting to see what that thing was. Um, besides what

• 3:27Speaker 04

  you already mentioned Mick, which are all very important, like strategic level things, there was a more tactical issue I noticed when Kushner was getting off the airplane. He was wearing white Nike tennis shoes, jeans and a black t-shirt and everybody else was in a suit, including, uh, Kirill Dmitriev, the presidential envoy, which is the equivalent of Witkoff, but on the Russian side, wearing a full black tailored suit, clearly indicating, you know, sartorial decisions are decisions and people choose to wear what they're wearing to send a message. If you remember when, uh, the CEO of Twitter was in Congress testifying, he famously refused to wear a suit, even though the dress code is a suit and refused to, you know, dress appropriately. I feel like Witkoff is, or I'm sorry, Kushner is

• 4:10Speaker 04

  doing something like that in this meeting where he's intentionally dressing down. Just something interesting that I noticed in the image, if you look at it. Um, and also Dmitriev said, so he took a bunch of pictures and released some pictures on his X account and he said, "Welcome to Moscow, peacemakers." That was how it was, uh, advertised on the Russian side in Russian and through task media was that these are peacemakers arriving in Russia, which is something very interesting as well.

• 4:35Speaker 05

  I will say this, I hate Kushner as much as the next person does. Uh, he wore that like when he got off the plane, but in the meeting with Putin, he was suited up.

• 4:44Speaker 04

  True, true. But it's just like, I mean, if you've done these kind of flights when you're like, for example, when I was at the couple of embassies, we would get these diplomatic or these distinguished visitors coming in, you know, usually a secretary or somebody higher than that. There's, there's a protocol, there's a dress code, there's very specific ways that you have to appear as soon as you get off the aircraft. You know, for example, one time we were receiving the Secretary of State in a country I was in and, uh, the Secretary of Defense as well. And the senior person on my side of the delegation forgot his tie. And because he forgot his tie, all of us had to remove our ties because we couldn't be dressed above his level. So like, this is like carefully orchestrated stuff. It was not an accident and it wasn't just because he wanted to be on Casual Friday. There was, there was a choice in how he dressed.

• 5:24Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, I, I would say that is, that's such a pathetically minor gesture compared to, you know, the, the central part of this is this, that the, the pattern since, where are we now? So the pattern since last year, early last year, is that we send, we, the United States, we send the same envoys to Moscow first. They come away with the gesture, right? In this case, the release of, um, Gilman. And, and then they carry the Russian framing to Kiev and, and to Europe. Uh, so, you know, whatever the intent, whatever Kushner

• 6:07Speaker 06

  is wearing, uh, the, the sequence in which the United States is doing this makes Washington kind of the broker of Russia's terms, right? Rather than the backer of the side it's supposedly allied with, which is Europeans and, and Ukraine. Uh, and, and so, you know, that's, that's one thing I find disheartening. Putin's got no reason to stop, right? As long as we do it this way. Uh, he believes that time favors him. You know, I get it that absolutely the Russians are losing what to us is an incomprehensible amount of people on the front every month. But until that translates into some groundswell movement in Russia,

• 6:51Speaker 06

  uh, and even then, uh, it's, it's hard to see it affecting Putin or putting him in a bind. I mean, in, in return, you know, Ukraine is having a manpower crunch, something, by the way, I predicted on Substack two years ago. Uh, Western attention's been firmly on Iran and, um, the US administration keeps showing up in Moscow. You know, so, I mean, negotiation only works, although I'm, I'm laughing a little bit here because we don't appear to be very adept at negotiation, the art of the deal. But negotiation only works when the other side thinks that continuing costs more than negotiating, right? Or agreeing

• 7:34Speaker 06

  to a settlement. And nothing in our current approach changes that calculation for Putin. I mean, Putin's concessions are all theater. You know, Gilman's release, a weekend pause that costs Russia nothing. It buys headlines. And, um, you know, they're just kind of treating them as goodwill rewards. Um, and, and it just invites more, it really cedes ground again to the Russians.

• 8:04Speaker 05

  I also, what I, one thing I found like kind of weird is like every time that they would have a, it would be reported that we're talking with Zelensky or Zelensky's coming to America and stuff like that. Uh, President Trump would always have a phone call with Putin beforehand. And to me, just the lame, and it looks like, what it looks like when Witkoff and Kushner go to Moscow first before they go to Ukraine, it kind of looks like, where they're getting their marching orders and essentially going to negotiate Russia's terms to Ukraine. Even with the phone calls with Trump, it always, it's happened like multiple times before Trump met with Zelensky. I don't know if that's protocol or whatever, but like, it seems like, why the fuck do the Russians keep talking first? Why don't

• 8:49Speaker 05

  we get what the Ukrainians want and be like, this is what they want, bro? Like in X, and you're invading a country, dude. Like, who are you to dictate, and you're not doing it well. Who are you to dictate terms?

• 9:01Speaker 06

  That's my, yeah, that's my point, you know? And, and there's, there's another point too. Doubtless, our regional allies in the Middle East are watching, right? So Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Doha are probably drawing conclusions from how Washington treats Kiev.

• 9:16Speaker 04

  Also, the Iran negotiators are looking at this. Think about how differently we're approaching the Ukraine-Russia negotiation versus the Iran-US-Israel, because there's three countries on both of these conflicts that are, you know, negotiating in different ways. The US, first of all, would never visit Iran to negotiate before talking to Israel, first of all, right? They also don't call the Iranians first to talk about what they're going to talk to Israel about before talking to Israel. And Israel's on our side and Ukraine's on our side. And just look how starkly contrasted those two approaches are to how the US is approaching both of these conflicts, neither of which are going in the US's favor to the exact degree that we want it to go. But it's just kind of interesting to look at that choice and it's the same people, Whitkoff and Kushner. It's the same human beings on both of these teams, right?

• 10:01Speaker 06

  You know, in deference to the section of our audience who who are downhearted by the fact that we're always pointing out bad things and suggest that we are being overly pessimistic. I would say there's not, well, there's not a lot to be too optimistic about, but in terms of solutions, you know, I mean, it's it's simple here. Go to Kiev first, agree the terms with Zelensky and the Europeans, then present them in Moscow.

• 10:30Speaker 06

  And then, and you know, the other thing is put leverage on the table before the talks, right? But say, I mean, look what we're doing against Iran. Do the same against Russia, secondary sanctions on buyers of Russian crude. Go after the Russian shadow fleet, the banks that that are aligned with Russia.

• 10:51Speaker 06

  You know, enforce all of these things the same way that we're enforcing the Iran blockade. Russia's, you know, and John Crimea from wrong, but Russia's budget, its war budget runs on oil revenue. And and so the same tools that squeeze Iran will will probably work against Russia. And and then at the same time, restore the weapons pipeline and say so publicly, right?

• 11:19Speaker 06

  And I know I get it. I understand all the arguments. I've got a good friend, a senior executive Lockheed Martin. So I understand all the arguments about Patriot interceptors, but step it up, you know?

• 11:33Speaker 06

  Still, we could still be able to do that, raise Ukraine to a higher priority for patriots and long range, long range, precision fires.

• 11:46Speaker 06

  You know, all of these things. And yeah, as I said, announce it and stop.

• 11:52Speaker 06

  You know, as far as Ukraine, stop leaning on Ukraine to pause the air war. I mean, Ukraine's deep strikes are the one lever that actually reaches Russian decision making. You know, and we've talked about the the pressure they're putting on the Russians here. It's this significant amount of their oil refinery, of their energy infrastructure based on oil is getting hit.

• 12:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, and harassing the rear area in those deep strike scenarios. It's it's not just a one for one thing like you just strike and that's the damage. It also has a moral effect on the population. It demoralizes those who are connected to those industries and it it kind of it goes far deeper. It's got an exponential impact if you're able to strike something far, far inside the country versus at the front line. It brings the war outside the theater into the place where the people think they're safe. And that has a huge impact.

• 12:46Speaker 05

  I have a question. If you're Ukraine, right? And you kind of see the messaging, right? Because like, obviously, US is, you know, pretty focused on Iran and what's going on there.

• 12:59Speaker 05

  But when you see like the like Scott Pesant go on the news and talk about how the reason oil is spiking up a little bit is because the Ukrainians are striking oil infrastructure in in Russia as if that's like a bad thing and like kind of comparing Ukraine and what they're doing with those deep strikes on oil infrastructure to like Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz and, you know, and blocking shipping essentially.

• 13:30Speaker 05

  The fact that like, I don't know if those are talking points that are given or this guy's just flailing because everything he's done is fucking hurt the economy more and more percent. But to like lump Iran and Ukraine into the same kind of basket, it's it's very different, right? Because on paper, Iran is our enemy, right? Like whether you believe that this war that we started was a good thing or not.

• 13:58Speaker 05

  You know, Ukraine's not the enemy. It's like very clear Russia's the enemy. And it's weird that this administration particularly does a lot of like spinning, for lack of a better word, for Russia. If you're Ukraine and you're seeing this, like, I know we need, it's a delicate situation. They need the info, they need our intel and stuff like that. But at what point are you like, guys, whose fucking side are you really on?

• 14:27Speaker 04

  The problem with what Pesant says is a lot of

• 14:30Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, sorry, Mick, you're a little, you're a little lagged. I think you're like a few seconds back. Uh, let's go Mick and then John, you pick up right after Mick.

• 14:39Speaker 07

  Okay. Yeah, so what I was gonna say is the Ukrainians don't have a choice. This is how Russia raises money to to fight the war. So if they don't go after their ability to fund themselves, just like we're going after the Iranians' ability to fund their third, like we're having an effect. The Iranian economy is in a free fall right now. That's what the Ukrainians are trying to do. They're trying to cut off the source of funding for the Russians. And and one thing I wanted to point out to like, you know, the internet went down is Russia's helping Iran. They actually came out and announced relatively recently that they're going to do everything they can to help Iran get past the economic restrictions that the US is putting on them.

• 15:23Speaker 07

  So the fact that they're not our friend is clear. And they're providing, I think, a lot of the intelligence that they're using to say, and I know we're going to get to it, target our military. So Ukraine has no choice. They're fighting a war against a very large enemy who started it. And Russia is clearly not our friend. They are, they're doing what they can to help Iran basically deal with our strategy, which is to economically isolate the regime and cut them off with their funding. So I think it's clear. I mean, people have different opinions, but I don't believe that's an opinion. I believe that's, that's pretty much a fact.

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• 18:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I'll mention that too, that kind of unity between the Ukraine theater and the Iran theater. There have been numerous overlaps in combat between these two theaters since 2021 and even earlier, obviously. But the Alabuga Shahed drone factory in Russia is a key thing to point at, that there is a unity on their side over both theaters. It's not about the US thinking both are connected. It's those adversaries believe they are connected both militarily and financially. And a great thing to point out for the financial side, the Caspian Sea route between northern Iran and Russia is a key trade node that they control. You've got other countries in the

• 18:56Speaker 04

  the Caucasus region that are either aligned with Iran or aligned with Russia or neutral or aligned with Turkey. And Turkey's allowing it to occur. And that Caspian Sea route is providing a lot of trade, not just oil and gas and things like this, but food and other materials that Russia or Iran, depending on which material it is, can't get their hands on internationally. And they have this kind of closed domestic sea route that they're able to. It's as if the US and Canada were friends again and we were shipping back and forth across the Great Lakes. You can kind of think of the Caspian Sea like this. It's an open space for them that it's hard for the rest of the world to access, right? So that's something important between those two countries, that they're both helping each other in both of these conflicts, right? And then, you know, the way that we're going after Russia with sanctions, there are plenty of sanctions against Russia. Don't get me wrong.

• 19:41Speaker 04

  But it's about what do you do with them? And there was a great article in the Wall Street Journal last week about the Russian oligarch yacht seizures. So we've been seizing a bunch of these big expensive yachts. The problem is, there's there's one, for example, in Italy that's just sitting there docked. US taxpayers have to pay for all the staff, all the food, all the fuel, the docking fees, the dry dock fees. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to keep these yachts alive while we have them sanctioned and captured in these foreign ports. And there are dozens of these yachts. We're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars the US taxpayers are paying. So it's like, where is the actual punishment going?

• 20:20Speaker 04

  Because the US government and through and taxpayers are keeping these yachts that belong to these oligarchs in pristine condition while they're captured from the oligarchs. So it's like, we're taking care of the oligarch's yacht for them. And I'm sure they can get another yacht because they're wealthy. So it's this very strange kind of offsetting that the US is doing where we have a very strategic view of sanctions. But as soon as they trickle down to the tactical level, we're kind of forgetting what we're supposed to be doing with these sanctions. We're thinking about what are the actual effects on the ground, both to the oligarch and to the American taxpayer. I thought that was interesting. I think readers should definitely check out that article.

• 20:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was gonna say like, take the staff off and just fucking sink.

• 21:02Speaker 04

  So the other problem is they're trying to sell some of these and depending on which jurisdiction they're in, they're trying to sell them and like rename them. And the problem is insurance companies are like, we will not insure that vessel because the person who owned that vessel before it was taken was a murdering psychopath working for the government of Russia and they're probably going to murder the next owner of it. Like, this is the concern that these insurance companies have. So just like the insurance companies in the Straits of Hormuz with like Maersk, for example, they're like, well, maybe you say it's safe, but is it safe? I don't know. I'm not gonna bring my actuaries to tell me that that's actually safe enough to insure. So of course, the buyer won't buy it because the buyer doesn't want to have an uninsured $50 million boat off the coast of Italy, right? So there's a huge challenge here where, okay, we've got our sanction, but okay, what next?

• 21:46Speaker 07

  Trying to do the Ukrainian Navy.

• 21:49Speaker 04

  Excellent idea.

• 21:51Speaker 05

  Just sail it into the Black Sea and let them deal with it. Let them shoot, like, throw, like, send over a jet ski, a drone jet ski and just let it rip. Take the people off it. Don't kill the staff. All right. I'm not, I'm still a lib.

• 22:07Speaker 05

  Let's, uh, we were gonna talk about the AEI report. Let's do that next after this. Let's talk about Iran and the hypersonics and the fact that we can't stop them. Uh, John, start us off with that and enlighten us a little bit.

• 22:21Speaker 04

  So hypersonics generally are a big issue because they travel so fast that they're hard to defeat. And that's kind of the point is that with missiles, because of physics, the more advanced our air defense gets, the faster a missile has to go to defeat it, depending at what altitude and speed and things we have our air defense systems. So, for example, like the PAC three or the THAAD or any of the like SA7s on the, on the Russian slash Soviet side, like, these are all with numbers on them because those numbers are like the next generation because the others, the other thing it's trying to defeat also has increased its speed and other things. So the hypersonic issue is like the latest generation of challenge where this thing is traveling so fast and at such a trajectory

• 23:06Speaker 04

  that it's almost impossible to stop because not just, you know, the speed it's traveling, but the way it's traveling. So if you look, you know, mathematically at this, it's very hard to defeat. So with that kind of like underlined of how challenging this is, Iran is trying to use hypersonic missiles against US vessels in the Straits of Hormuz. So this is kind of a new development. They've been experimenting with hypersonics for a while. So has Russia, so has China, so has the United States, but less loudly. And, you know, Russia is probably the loudest advertiser of it because they want to scare the other side. I mean, that's what deterrence is. It's making a credible threat public and making the other side know that you're willing to use it and that you, you will use it. So Russia's using this as a deterrent. Iran is not using it as a deterrent. Iran's using it as a defensive

• 23:49Speaker 04

  mechanism because they're running out of options, right? So different, different reasons for using the hypersonics, but they're trying to fire them at our, like the George Washington, for example. Now, we have very advanced systems like the Aegis and other systems aboard vessels and also land-based systems that can do some things, but so far, they haven't struck a vessel, probably because their GPS has been struggling to work properly, most likely not by accident. But once their GPS is able to work properly, let's say they use the Chinese, uh, global, the GNSS system that China has, Baidu, they might be able to get past our GPS interference, right? So there's a real threat here that hypersonics could actually hit a vessel. And even if they didn't do it purposely, if they did hit a vessel,

• 24:32Speaker 04

  even by accident, we're talking about a problem. Doesn't have to kill anybody. It just has to strike because then, then suddenly their level of competence is perceived to be much higher than we thought it was, which is again, another problem we had in February when we thought their level of competence and sustainability was lower than we thought it was, or it was higher than we thought it was. And we had the war and we saw like, that wasn't true. So they're going to probably try more of these hypersonic strikes. It's kind of a low cost for them to test these out. And all it takes is really one.

• 25:02Speaker 07

  They do. I mean, I think if they're using hypersonics.

• 25:06Speaker 05

  Mick, hold on, let Andy go. Yeah, sorry.

• 25:08Speaker 06

  No, it's just a question, John. I mean, are they, are they actually hypersonics? You know, I mean, so I, or are they, um, reentry vehicles, something ballistic missiles that, you know, that, that reenter and then, you know, have the ability to, to maneuver at the last minute?

• 25:27Speaker 04

  That's an excellent question, Andy. You're absolutely right. And actually, this is the same problem with the Russia advertisement of hypersonics where they said, oh, we used a hypersonic and then it came out that it wasn't actually Hypersonic. It was a modified medium range ballistic missile. And that's exactly the same situation here where you have something called the Chybar, which is called the Castle Breaker, or has some history behind the name, which I won't get into. It has to do with Jewish people, but this missile they've developed can actually maneuver upon reentry and also change speed after launch. And they've modified the motor on it for this purpose. So let's say it's coming toward the vessel, the vessel moves, or the vessel launches some kind of air defense system, or there's a jet that's trying to intercept it in the air. This missile is able to maneuver

• 26:09Speaker 04

  at that reentry point. And remember ballistic missile for listeners, ballistic just refers to the trajectory of the munition. So it has to launch and it has this curved exit up into the different levels of the atmosphere, depending on what kind of missile it is. And as it reenters, it has to change things about it. And older missiles could not change their impact point after they started reentering the atmosphere. And, uh, this missile that we're talking about, the Chybar, is able to change its trajectory after reentering the atmosphere. So not only can it change where it's going, it can also change its speed. And this is how Iran is advertising as hypersonic. Hypersonic is a squishy word because there isn't actually such thing as a hypersonic missile yet anywhere in, that anyone's used. But it does sound

• 26:54Speaker 04

  powerful to the world hearing this. And that goes exactly to your point, Andy, that they're trying to make it sound like they've got some new super weapon, but really it's a faster, more precise, medium range ballistic missile that they're able to use.

• 27:07Speaker 06

  Maneuverable reentry, basically, which is, which is actually not new technology. It's old technology, 80s.

• 27:19Speaker 04

  Right. And the ballistic missile itself, people should remember, is, is based on the V2 ballistic missile that the Nazis used in World War II against Britain. So this is actually pretty old technology all the way around. I mean, it's all just physics, really. It's like, how much can you pack onto this thing at what speed and how, what distance? And that's really what it comes down to.

• 27:36Speaker 05

  Mick, go ahead. Sorry.

• 27:39Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's in the, I mean, excellent description there, Jonathan. And the other part of that is they get better every time, right? So they're figuring out how to deal with each defensive systems, the gaps, the seams, the, so there is, I think, legitimate concern that if they pair really high level intelligence, lessons learned every time this happens, and then potentially just get lucky, right? I mean, that might happen too. Um, this is going to go high order, right? I can think we can all imagine if we're sitting here watching a smoking hole on the side of the USS George Washington, uh, what's going to happen next?

• 28:18Speaker 07

  Right? So, um, I think they're actually trying to strike it. Um, I don't think you'd use this type of technology that they know is difficult to deal with if it was just like a symbolic thing. And it clearly showed they're really wanting to cause damage and casualties to the United States. Think it's going to probably increase as the economic pressure increases. And this is far from over, but one strike that kills sailors and marines aboard one of our naval vessels, and this is, this is going to shift dramatically. I think they know that. They need to be told that. Uh, this is going to be, you know, whether we wanted to escalate this substantially, uh, we're not going to take, you know, high

• 29:01Speaker 07

  level casualties, surface men without a major response.

• 29:09Speaker 04

  Yeah. And it's very similar to the USS Cole bombing, which remember that was a very low tech attack, but had a massive impact on Americans, as it should. The Liberty incident that Israel struck the USS Liberty in 1967, June 1967, killed American sailors that also had an impact, although relatively smaller. But it, it doesn't take a massive impact. I mean, the American culture toward the military is that any American casualty is a massive problem, as it should be in our culture. I mean, that's how we are as a society. And they know that. They don't need to make a mass casualty event like 911. They just need to kill one American soldier, sailor, airman, or marine, and that will have a huge outsized impact domestically inside the United States. The midterms are only a month and a half

• 29:53Speaker 04

  away and they have their eye on that.

• 29:55Speaker 06

  It's funny, the, the term, though, and, and we've seen this with Russia, as you pointed out, the term hypersonic gets everyone's attention, but it's really our, I mean, I, I would guess, not, not guess, but informed speculation that the real problem continues to be interceptors. That's the real threat, right? Because the way, the way to get through lead ballistic missile defense is saturation. I mean, the, the, so the, the, uh, maneuverable reentry missiles, vehicles, whatever you want to call it, where it, you know, interceptors like the SM3 intercept those ballistic missiles before they enter the atmosphere anyway. So

• 30:39Speaker 06

  it doesn't matter if they maneuver once they've reentered.

• 30:43Speaker 06

  But the real question is, do we have enough interceptors to sustain that? Can the Iranians build up a big enough inventory to saturate our defenses?

• 30:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, um, so talking about inventory, there was an AEI report that John brought to our attention about procurement. And, uh, John, give us the skinny on that.

• 31:05Speaker 04

  That's a really interesting report. It does a kind of high level statistical analysis of a lot of publicly available information on US procurement, modernization, kind of comparing every year as far as the pre-law version of the National Defense Authorization Act for the past 40 years roughly, to see, you know, in, in the pre-version, like the draft version, what's in there, what is Congress asking for, what does Congress think is a priority? And I think it's interesting to look at that instead of the actual NDA, because it shows what does Congress actually want, not what do they negotiate to become the law? So that does tell you more about what is the actual desire for specific procurement outcomes, specifically like the PAC three, the THAAD missile defense, counterterrorism, these kind of things.

• 31:50Speaker 04

  Very interesting to look at. And one thing that they saw was the PAC three and the THAAD being challenged, but so to say, in, in procurement. In particular, the THAAD is almost completely depleted. And what they've asked for is a five-year accelerated output model, because we're 27 years behind on where our THAAD numbers should be. That's a shocking, shocking number. And that's, that's based on what we would need to actually defend against a peer adversary like Russia or China. And the AEI report in, in particular, looks at China as the threat. So they're looking at what would we need against China and looking at these national defense authorization pre, pre-bills? And could we do it? And the answer is no.

• 32:34Speaker 04

  And the focus needs to be, according to this report, on hypersonics, like we were just talking about, on countering hypersonics, on counter UAS, on UAS, deep strike, long range improvements. The aircraft carrier, Andy will like this, is a problematic concept that should be reduced or eliminated in a conflict against China, according to this report, based on their analysis. Um, so the, the peer threat is where our modernization should point, not Iran, which is a regional actor, and not even Russia, which is a kind of declining actor, especially in the last 20 years, we've seen for sure. Their, their capabilities are not what they used to be, at least on a peer-to-peer level. China is a rising power, not just in the Navy, which has been, you know, loudly proclaimed

• 33:19Speaker 04

  that, that the production of Chinese vessels is, is going to overwhelm the US naval fleets and so on. Um, that's not as much the focus here. The focus more is on the air, space, cyberspace, the less focus on the sea, as far as I read it. And the, you look at, for example, how much did we fund for our, uh, defense in terms of GDP? It's only 3.7% of our GDP. During the Cold War, it was 7%, which is almost double spending on defense for GDP. So that's kind of interesting because there is a lot of talk about, you know, one point, I think it's $3 trillion of defense spending, which is actually less than it was in the Cold War as a percentage of GDP by half, which is very interesting because, you know, there, these are big numbers, but inflation is a real thing.

• 34:04Speaker 04

  And we have to adjust back CPI to see what did it actually cost in the eighties? For example, for the Strategic Defense Initiative, you know, Star Wars, what did that cost in today's dollars? People's eyeballs might get a little bit bigger when they actually see what did we spend back then? And what are we spending it on now? Like, where do those dollars actually go now? Uh, like the PAC three, for example, is an interesting development. And this report points it out that it can go further than the Patriot missile. It's an intermediate solution, just like the THAAD, and it can protect ships. But we don't have enough of them. And the PAC three isn't just an interceptor that goes and, you know, throws fragmentation up in the sky or tries to shoot something down when it launches. It's a body-to-body impact weapon that smashes into the other weapon, which is a different approach than other weapons we have.

• 34:49Speaker 04

  And this report kind of pointed out that our PAC three stocks should be dramatically higher than they are right now, not just to defend you, our allies and partners like Ukraine, but also to defend the United States against a Chinese direct attack, right? So this is a very interesting report because AEI has typically, it depends how you read it, but AEI is typically moderate or a little bit right. So this is kind of a report that's designed to speak to the administration, not so much to be a contrarian, I think.

• 35:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, so the, the PAC three, I mean, it's kind of scary if the numbers are correct. So the, back in July, August, open source reports said that the depletion rate, and we don't have the exact, but the depletion rate was somewhere between 65 and 80%, um, which leaves something like a thousand, right? Uh, maybe, maybe under that. And, and they get made very slowly every year. I think it's

• 35:52Speaker 05

  600 a year.

• 35:54Speaker 06

  Is that how many? Yeah, so, I mean, if we've, we, we fired, uh, something like 60, 80% of 2,300. So we fired, you know, about two, possibly, yeah, almost three years' worth of, of, um, PAC threes, uh, three years production-wise in, in six months.

• 36:19Speaker 05

  And we haven't gotten anywhere, really, you know? In our aims or whatever our aims are.

• 36:26Speaker 07

  Think about

• 36:27Speaker 05

  Please, Mick, go ahead.

• 36:27Speaker 07

  Does make you, I mean, we obviously need to correct this, right? We're, uh, we're in a, uh, air-only war, regional war with a mediocre military. And we're having this level of defense production issues. It's a, it's a multi-administration issue, right? So it's not just this one, it didn't just start. But this has to be addressed because if, uh, if we were going up against China, for example, just like Jonathan was describing, we'd be screwed, technical term, right? I mean, this is, this is, and we're seeing that our main adversaries do have production capability, right?

• 37:09Speaker 07

  North Korea providing how much of, uh, munitions for Russia to fight Ukraine. They are addressing the issue. Um, I realize we've spent a lot on our defense, but as Jonathan also pointed out, uh, relative to during the height of the Cold War, we're not. And, uh, the war, the world's a dangerous place and we need to be prepared. And if, right now, we're that low on precision-guided munitions and defense interceptors, this needs to be addressed. Obviously, we need to find cheaper alternatives, but we also need to figure out how to mass-produce things that we would need in the case of a major, you know, global war.

• 37:51Speaker 07

  I hope it never happens, of course, but, you know, most people would say during World War II, it wasn't just the fight, men and women of the armed forces that won it. It was the production capability of the United States that just out-produced, uh, our enemies. So, you know, I don't have all the answers, so it's easy to point out the problems, but that needs to be addressed and it needs to be made, just like we need to adapt all the autonomous fighting that's going off, uh, going on in Ukraine into our system. We need to figure out the defense production.

• 38:25Speaker 05

  I'm with you on the defense production, guys. Sorry, I'm going to cut in because as the citizen, you know, that's not part of the military industrial, uh, base, our defense industrial base. Star Wars was never fielded, right? It was a thing on paper we wanted the Soviets to know about, to be scared about shooting missiles our way. I get it, and to make them spend money that they didn't have. And I'm sure it helped, uh, bring down the Soviet Union, for sure. Um, 1.3 trillion, guys. Let's, before we start adding, let's see if outside of the Marine Corps, the DOD can pass a fucking, uh, audit. Let's see where the money's going, really?

• 39:08Speaker 05

  This is where I'm getting a little doji, where like actual, like, um, people that know what they're fucking doing, not Doge, but like actual, like, you know, bean counters and whoever you need to do, consultants, bring in whoever you need to bring in, find where the fat is and fucking get rid of it. Yeah, and be, be relentless with it. Um, because the fact that this report where we're, we should have 27 times more or whatever the fuck, you know? What are we spending the money on? Where's the money going?

• 39:38Speaker 06

  Well, a lot, a lot of it goes on platforms, right? I mean, I, no, I get it, you know, the biggest, the, the biggest source of DOD spending is, uh, is personnel. But, um, beyond that, you know, platforms, procurement, and to, to the point that we talked about earlier here, yes, there should be a wake-up call on the fact that, uh, we need to focus spending on more mundane things like, uh, interceptor stockpile, 155 munitions, um, to prepare

• 40:07Speaker 05

  There's a whole plant in Texas that's not fucking doing anything. It costs $500 million. Who gets fired there?

• 40:14Speaker 06

  We, we're just scraping the surface on the interceptor discussion. When you think about it, we, it's not just about, we're not the only users, right? I mean, there are, there's Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain. Um, so the Gulf, the Gulf countries, right? They all depend on us for PAC threes. And we don't know how many they've fired, but we suspect that the percentage that they've expended, a far greater percentage than the United States has. I mean, that would stand to reason, right? Because they've been the main targets and they started off with fewer.

• 40:50Speaker 06

  Um, but the Gulf is competing with the US, but also Ukraine, Poland, Germany for the same 600 rounds a year. So that, you know, people who say there is not a shortage are really burying the heads in the sand. And, and from Iran's perspective, the, I mean, this talk about hypersonics is kind of a distractor, right? And we talked about the fact that what Iran has fielded is not a hypersonic, it's a maneuverable re-entry vehicle. Um, but, but that's not the point. So it doesn't need a missile that beats Patriot or THAAD.

• 41:28Speaker 06

  It just needs to make the US fire interceptors that things start, aren't worth those interceptors, right? Um, so PAC three is what, $4 million? We talked about this, Shahed is a few thousand, $10,000.

• 41:43Speaker 05

  I think THAAD is $8 million apiece.

• 41:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, so just continuing to, to force us to expend these interceptors is a, um, is, is liable to be to a more effective strategy than any high-end missile. Um, Interceptors are really the, they're the currency of deterrence in the region right now. And our credibility, when I say our US, US air defense umbrella of Riyadh, where I am now, Doha, you know, and Tel Aviv, it's really a function of how many rounds are in the magazine.

• 42:25Speaker 04

  And on your point about deterrence, Andy, let's say deterrence failed. And now we're in a war force on force with a peer actor, let's say China or Russia. We have these ICBMs that are designed to launch in a first strike, second strike. And there's all kinds of different nuclear strategies and things like this. But these systems that are underground, that are ready to launch, many of them have been there for 30 years, 40 years, and we haven't been able to test them or recalibrate them. Or if we have to press that button and launch, do we know for sure that they will actually launch? That they'll launch the way we want them to, that they'll strike where they're supposed to strike? There are so many questions along that launch line to the target that we haven't been able to test

• 43:07Speaker 04

  or reevaluate because of our treaties and because of the way that the world works. And they're sitting there and we're just hoping that they'll work. And it's not just us two, it's also China and Russia have the same problem, but they're not as constrained as we are on these strategic testing initiatives. And that's a concern to me is what happens if we do launch into a war, deterrence fails, we press the button and that ICBM crashes in California? Or it explodes out on the platform? Like, there's so many questions about, are we actually ready to fight? Not just forces on the ground, but with the full spectrum of weapons that we think, that we assume that we have if this war does start.

• 43:43Speaker 05

  And like, one thing I'll say is like, you know, how they're, you know, with us like trying to license or like the idea of licensing Patriots or Pact 3s to Ukraine? And Lockheed and the other defense primes being worried about them, innovating them and making them cheaper. And I know, Andy, I'm sorry, I don't want to point out your buddy who's an executive at Lockheed, but like, what's, who's, who's his primary person he's worried about? Is it the defense of the United States or is it his shareholders? Like, let's be honest here, right? We should be able to innovate what's been going on the last four, five years with Ukraine. We should have been at the forefront of innovating what we're supposed to be doing on defense.

• 44:27Speaker 05

  We see what's going on plain as day, right? Drones are a big thing. And it's like, we can't get, we can't help but trip over ourselves. Like, it's, it's amazing. And we have smart people that know what to do. And the fact that they, we can't make decisions to implement those changes as a citizen is frustrating. And when I hear, let's add more money to the defense budget, I'm like, no, fuck off. Frankly, I mean, am I crazy to think that? There's no, I mean, anybody with a working frontal lobe would be like that. Your thoughts?

• 45:01Speaker 06

  We, we, our acquisition procurement system, I mean, we've talked about this and it's been written about endlessly. It's just not designed to innovate. And everything that we have read in about initiatives to change that have, you know, in the last year or so, just been kind of diddling around in the margins.

• 45:26Speaker 06

  We are not, I mean, Ukraine is probably the most innovative, has the most innovative defense industry in the world right now, undoubtedly. Necessity is the mother of invention, but we are.

• 45:41Speaker 06

  It's, we're nowhere near.

• 45:46Speaker 06

  And we don't seem to be making a comprehensive, coherent effort to, to change that. But you're right. I mean, everything from drones, short range, air defense, armored vehicles, right? We talked here about the fact that manned armored vehicles are arguably already obsolete. And yet we still, we're still pouring money into them and depending on them.

• 46:14Speaker 06

  All of these things. Manned aircraft, right? We're still bemoaning the fact that we're losing Predators at a, at a very expensive rate in the Middle East. Well, why are we still fielding Predators? Why we haven't, why, why haven't we worked out how to make drones with the same capability or similar capability, but mass produced? You know, blue collar sophisticated drones, the rest of the world is doing that. You know, the Turks are leading the charge, for instance, on that. We are not. So, yeah, I don't, you know, it's one of those topics. I, I don't see a solution on the horizon when it comes to the US.

• 46:58Speaker 04

  A great example of that too is the MV22 Osprey, which was imagined up during the end of the Cold War to fight Russians that we thought would continue to be an adversary. Cold War ended, the MV22 procurement continued, development continued, it was built, there was no war for it. 9/11 happened, suddenly there's a, just by chance, there is a need for it. And now it feels like it should be part of our military. But it is this like literally ancient concept, as far as the speed of the military process goes, the world goes, that we're using because we think we need it. The Mat V is another example. We procured all these Mat Vs for overseas contingency operations. We don't need them anymore. We bought a bunch of them for our allies and partners who also don't want them.

• 47:40Speaker 04

  There are tons of them just sitting in the Gulf on pavement, never used and will never be used. And Oshkosh got paid for it. And there's this whole maintenance program for it and all this that's just being spent on stuff we don't need. Because it was thought up and the thought takes so long to reach the ground that the ground that would, that needs it doesn't exist anymore when it actually is ready.

• 48:02Speaker 07

  McLoeb?

• 48:06Speaker 07

  Guinness, actually. Do you gentlemen ever heard of splitting the G, by the way? Not change the subject or, or failed, splitting the G is when you drink a Guinness, your first sip, you try to get it right in the middle of the G.

• 48:19Speaker 04

  I'll have to try that.

• 48:20Speaker 05

  I have to try that too.

• 48:22Speaker 07

  We tried hard.

• 48:26Speaker 07

  My business partner's really good at it.

• 48:31Speaker 07

  So, I mean, I agree with everything. This is, this is, you know, it might seem, well, it shouldn't seem mundane to anybody, quite frankly, but this is one of the biggest issues we have to address as a nation. National security, don't care whose side you're on, you should just be on the USA side, right? We, we don't want a war, nobody should want a war, but we should be prepared to win it. And I, and I think we have the best military as far as like capabilities and people, but we're just not keeping, and, and, and, you know, biased, obviously. But one of the things the United States is known for is innovation, right? I mean, that's what we do, that's what we do. We can do this, we need to do better. And it's going to take, you know, some hard work, probably on the committees, right?

• 49:16Speaker 07

  The Armed Services Committee, some Appropriations Committee. But it's going to take both sides to really just kind of put the partisan stuff aside. It's not about pointing fingers, because you could point fingers at every administration when it comes to this. And I think that's what needs to happen and it needs to be, you know, one of the top efforts, right? It's not just about spending money, it's about spending money wisely, right? And, you know, that would be my two cents on this. It needs to, it needs to be number one priority.

• 49:48Speaker 05

  I completely agree with you, Mick, totally. Like, and you see a lot of these new defense tech firms, specifically ones that are focused on like UAS, and counter UAS, they're raising a lot of money. And it feels like, I want people, I want these companies to actually believe it and not just be preaching it because they want to fucking raise 300 million. So they're worth $2 billion and they can exit by being sold to a prime and become rich. And nothing gets fixed, nothing gets done, right? Like, like are these companies, the Andorils and even the smaller ones, are they going to Ukraine? Are they fucking learning?

• 50:30Speaker 05

  Are they actually doing this to justify what their valuations are? And I hope greed is not getting in the way of an actual problem that needs to be fixed. And frankly, I don't think that's happening. Going to be on, I think greed wins every time. Especially, you see these valuations, every week it's like another company got $100 million in seed fund. And now it's worth a billion dollars. And it's like, are you producing fucking anything? Or you just have a really good pitch deck and you walk into these offices and you're just, people are sold and like, yeah, let's do this. Like, I want to see, I want to see actual fucking results rather than just, just talk, really, from these defense companies.

• 51:15Speaker 05

  Primes and the little guy, and the little guys who are trying to climb up and disrupt or whatever the fuck they say in their pitch decks to try and like, woo and on investors.

• 51:26Speaker 07

  Yeah, the other you already brought it up, but the other aspect of this is we're moving so fast into no formal warfare that we got to keep up like there's you really talk to the people spend some time in Ukraine and I have like on the front lines and

• 51:43Speaker 07

  there's going to be really quick here where the first phase of a conflict has very little humans actually directly engaged even in the decision process. Right? And I know people should be nervous about that, but the problem is you talk to people who've really looked into this, whether it's artificial intelligence or, you know, the next phase of this, which could come within a few years and even the higher the super intelligence. It moves so fast that putting a human in the loop actually slows it down to the point where if your adversary isn't, you will lose. Right? So you can definitely have a philosophical or ethical debate about it. But the problem is we're moving so fast into this new world where automated systems paired with

• 52:26Speaker 07

  artificial or super intelligence are going to be making a lot of the decisions, including lethal. Right? And it's happening. And so, you know, we might have all these legacy systems which are doomed on the, you know, next 10 years of our battlefield and we're still making them because it's made in a, you know, a district. Right? It's, I mean, I get it. I'm I understand the jobs, but we're not, we gotta ensure that the people making the decisions about what weapon systems and stuff are the warfighters. The people that actually are responsible for winning the war and not necessarily a jobs program for and they're all across the United States, but I get the point,

• 53:09Speaker 07

  but we have to make the right decisions on weapons procurement for the battlefield of the future so that we actually are successful and not just, you know, worried about particular plants. We could just switch the plants to them. Right? There's a way to do both. And so I, yeah, we could, we should, we can, and we should talk about this quite, quite a bit.

• 53:37Speaker 05

  Going to your head, guys. Do you think that's actually going to happen? Mick, you can go first, and then I want John and Andy to tell me.

• 53:43Speaker 07

  I think this is actually waking us up right now. The war in Ukraine and the war that we're in Iran. So I think this could happen. Yes. If it wasn't, if it was just a status quo, then there's no forcing function necessarily. We'd be all be happy thinking that we, we are doing the right things. But one thing about warfare, it teaches you really quick lessons and innovation, you know, the mother of success. Innovation is necessity and the mother of necessity is you're in a war.

• 54:18Speaker 05

  Hack it.

• 54:20Speaker 04

  I think if Americans are too distracted by each other, they will not innovate the way that Ukrainians are because Ukrainians are united against something and Americans are disunited relatively speaking now. It'll be a challenge if that continues.

• 54:36Speaker 05

  Colonel?

• 54:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, you know, I, I hate to bring it back to something that may seem like a political statement, although it's not the Driscoll actually had the army or was pushing, you know, with the army transformation initiative to put the army's futures command and trade arc on, on the right path of this, right? You know, killing the, the Apache, the Grey Eagle, the M10 Booker and redirecting all that money into drones, counter drone, long range,

• 55:15Speaker 06

  precision fires, cheap mass over exquisite platforms. It was really from an army perspective, at least, is the first serious attempt to reshape army procurement. And that's really where most of the problems lie right now. I mean, you know, the Navy is a different, it's a different beast and we're going to be wasting money on aircraft carriers for as long as any of us live here. And, and so I'm not sure.

• 55:48Speaker 06

  I'm, I'm not sure we have seen the light, you know, it really, we'll, we'll see whether that those efforts are sustained. But suddenly Driscoll got it. Now it seems as though not just procurement in the army, but the army generally is, is pretty rudderless, even more so than the army normally is.

• 56:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, didn't they kill that?

• 56:14Speaker 06

  Kill what?

• 56:15Speaker 05

  Didn't they say they were gonna, they were getting rid of the unit that was gonna be innovating drone and?

• 56:20Speaker 06

  Drone, the drone specifically, yeah. I'm talking about army, kind of army transformation initiative, the, the whole picture.

• 56:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, this is what happens when you have inept people running DOD or the, the actual secretary. It's just the fact, that's a fact. I mean, there's a reason why things were leaking like a sieve in that place and they purged generals and it's still leaking like a sieve.

• 56:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, I, I think, again, politics aside, the modernization loss with Driscoll departing, that's, that's a concern. So, you know, everything we've been talking about here, interceptor economics, cheap drones, launcher attrition, Driscoll was arguably the, you know, the one senior civilian trying to build a force around or taking them on board those lessons and trying to reshape the force around them. And that, I don't know the whole story. I don't know much of the story about the, your point was about the Europe drone unit, right? That

• 57:25Speaker 06

  got shut down and the unit, I mean, they were studying exactly what Ukraine has been teaching for three years. I don't know what the rationale was for that, but it's concerning certainly.

• 57:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's devoid of rationale. Boys, anything else? I never feel good after this ever. I'm sorry that the listener, but maybe one day we'll have some good, good news to end the show with, well, Mick's daughter got married. So congrats there. There you go. That's some good.

• 57:58Speaker 07

  I'm gonna split the G right now. You should too.

• 58:00Speaker 05

  All right. Cheers.

• 58:02Speaker 07

  Guinness is better than our, in Ireland, by the way. It is fact. It's not just a saying.

• 58:07Speaker 05

  It's not just a urban legend.

• 58:09Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 58:11Speaker 06

  Just one point, I, you know, not to kick it off again, but Mick's, Mick's point about autonomous engagement, right? In gate, target engagement without having a human in the loop. I mean, we're already there. Not, not us in the, in the States yet, but the Ukrainians have, and they don't advertise this, but they've got, you know, they've, they've got drones that, that do autonomous navigation. They fly to a grid without a GPS or a link. And then terminal guidance, right? So right now the operator picks a target on the screen and, and the drone locks

• 58:54Speaker 06

  on and flies the last kilometer itself because Russian jamming to avoid Russian jamming from cutting the video link. But then now what does that drone do in those last couple of kilometers? It's autonomous engagement. So the machine, the drone finds, chooses and strikes with no operator decision at all. And the Ukrainians are doing that. All right. And they're saying, hey, no, we still have a human in the loop, but the human just gets the drone to that the last kilometer or two, and then it's all up to the drone, recognize the target, make the decision to engage. So materially, there's nothing, there's no, there's already, and, and

• 59:39Speaker 06

  I'm, you know, the, there's more than rumors that the Israelis are doing the same thing and those are on, those are among our allies. So undoubtedly our adversaries are able to that too. That's concerning, right? I mean, if you, it's concerning on a lot of levels, I suppose, on a, on an ethical level, but it's concerning because if you can do that, if you can make these decisions at the edge, right? With, with, not with, I mean, with masses of drones, now, now you've increased, you've increased tempo beyond to a point where it's, it, the interception

• 1:00:20Speaker 06

  problem becomes harder and harder. I just wanted to add some more good news, right?

• 1:00:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, some more to think about. Guys, a pleasure as always. I want everyone to go and check out the links in the description. Andy's new book's coming soon. John's writing a new book and you can grab his books that are available now. All those links are in the description. Mick2, Y Fish Security Summit, patreon.com slash the team house that helps support the show. You get both Eyes On and Team House episodes ad free and early and you help support the show. So please do that or consider doing that. Guys, I love you. Happy Sunday.

• 1:00:59Speaker 07

  See you guys.

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  Please help us, they're everywhere.

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  We think they're murder warnings.

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  That's one of the plagues of the Bible.

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  And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

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  Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

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  Bretzky, I got you. I've had so much luck on spinquest.com. They have all of my favorite games, slot games, live blackjack, craps, and bubble craps. You can even get a $30 coin pack for just $10.

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  Spinquest is a free to play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

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  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. 911, what's your emergency?

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  We think they're murder warnings.

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  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

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  That's one of the plagues of the Bible.

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