Episode 723: June Free For All - With Lots of UKR Drones

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Ukrainian war, it seems to hit a whole bunch of hot button items that we've been talking about here on the show since twenty.

the pup k the Russians have. But you know this, these are if you've seen the videos of the drones that have been used for these attacks, that they're not complicated. I mean, they're just looks like things you could go down to your local hobby store and pick up and strap a a bump to it. You can to wipe out up a nice air.

and already took some of their most strategical land. They manage to push it back and they are schooling the rest of the world on what the future possibilities are when it comes to combat, how these things can change and adjust, and the you know, more than a golf clap to the Ukrainians, regardless of where you stand. I know there are there are some people out there that are pro Russian who aren't bad actors or just have interesting ideas, but don't care. You know where you are.

You have to respect the audacity. And the Ukrainian put out that they've been spending about eighteen months planning that. I don't doubt that because anybody who before I was last in Russia two thousand and nine, and the security getting out of there is not what you would think in the West. It's still got a little bit Soviet

tends to it. But to get from Siberia to the airfield that I can't pronounce, it begins with an o that's up there right south of Murmansk that houses the Northern Fleet, which originally their indications like they're hitting the Northern Fleet headquarters, but looks like they're hitting the strategic aviation at the airfield that's south is there, which makes sense with the larger effort, and even for those that

have peacetime sensitivity towards attacks. If just back up and look at the initial primary effect, you would have trouble picking a better target set, even if you We can talk about later on. There's some really positive second and third order effects to this, but the primary effect is the Ukrainian people on an almost nightly basis, are being attacked in their cities various locations, and the worst of

the attacks are coming via air launched missiles. It can only be carried by heavy bombers, the bears, the backfires, et cetera. And these are high demand, low density assets. They can only put as many missiles on target as they can get mission capable birds in the air, and they're not building backfires and bear bombers like a shoe factory. So they've taken out a lot of their units that

are really hitting their civilian populations hard. So it's great internally, it's great from a operational point of view, and it also begs the question. This gets into some of the second third order effects, the psychological maybe little SI outs

that they play it right. This also plays right into a century old Russian fear and why they have no natural borders and continue to expand they're highly insecure, and we all remember during World War Two as the Russia, as the Germans advanced, they would take things apart and move back into the interior because they have defense and depth, kind of like how we think we have the Atlantic

and the Pacific oceans to protect us. This undermines that critical psychological center of gravity for Russia, and I think internally the Russians are going to react to that in ways that will also benefit Ukraine and the conflict.

to get them there? So if I were the Russians, Fens and the Swedes and the Norwa'd be gone.

capabilities on one day? Or their follow up attacks? And you can really come up a nation really fast if you get paranoid about every truck, everybody who doesn't have a pure Russian accent that you run into down the side of the road. And I think it's a viable concern.

But there are the places where they do them up out of the ground, and they got big storage tanks. There are whole bunch of players where they are. I just don't know, you know what systems we see these guys fly these drones into buildings, in and out of buildings,

down into into caves. You know, that's pretty impressive, and I'm thinking, you know, if they're that good, what what kind of net can you put up that protects at aircraft to the point that how do you get it out of there without you know, opening up the net to lingering a lingering drune. You know, these are all questions that can't be answered right now, but it is as you said, there are so many things that make you ponder the what ifs, and a lot of our imaginations.

probably a mission kill. This one they might be able to fix. We missed this. So they're getting real time data on what they're attacking. And of course you have all the syops involved in that as well. And the thing that popped into my head. Everybody's talking about AI and how wonderful it is. As these were controlled by operators located some ways communicating somehow getting their live feed

and some interesting. But we are very close to the nexus, and I know it's in the lab, and it may very well be in some secret squirrel location already just waiting for the for the Jags to give it a thumbs up. But we know other nations won't be as reclusive. But we are right on the cusp and we should assume it's already here, just has it been produced at scale. The wherewareof of the merger of two things. It's no

longer science fiction, it's no longer military fiction. It's reality of processing ability is required to process multi spectral imagery coming off a secret heead with producing those secret heads in a very affordable way, or coming together such that you don't even need GPS, you don't need fiber optics. Back for decades we had the ability to fly Tomawk missiles through people's windows just with train matching software. You know, run it off of a equivalent chip from the from

the Night teen eighties. So you combine AI's ability to think fast, the computers that can keep up with that think fast, and the data stream that's coming off of affordable seeker heads, we are reaching very much a point that you can park a truck somewhere and you don't have to have a man in the loop. You just tell the logarithm at this time or under the following conditions, open up the roof. You're looking for this type of

type of return, go forward and do nasty things. That is what should really keep people up at night, because then you're if you can't keep them out and away from your bases. Then how do you defend yourself from such things?

and a loop at all. You just flip the switch from red to green and drive to the nearest border and see what happens in twelve hours when it goes off. It's it's the reality is no longer science fiction.

these fairly dumb chips can do that. You don't need to really be super sophisticated. You just need to be sophisticated.

very hostile environment. It's an order of magnitude more difficult to get a truckload of attack drones from Siberia to the outskirts of the Northern Fleet headquarters in Russia than it is to do the same thing in the US. And you talk to anybody who does border security where people hide, you know, fitanol, marijuana, illegal aliens and trucks and stuff like that. If you have to do more than a curse research, it gets clogged up tremendously on

your border crossings. Now they have greater border areas to defend a little more porous, especially in Central Asia and East Asia. So if you have plenty of time, and you have a good plan, and you know who all the coruct people that are easy degrees, you can see how they got there. And it also had me thinking about concept that can get some people to roll their eyes out and can make accountants upset. And I got

to give credit where credit is due. And this I know this seems like yesterday to you and me, but it was a while ago.

If you're looking for secondary lessons we need to take as we think about this, because we need to look very very hard at strategic homeporting. And I'll have this link over on the show page, and for those that are in the chat room, I'll put it up in the chat room a second for folks to look at if you're on X you can see it. Tom Shugart Eback in August of twenty twenty four. And Tom's really good at seeing these things. He has for all those

that learned navigation training on the East Coast. Everybody knows about the Craney Island area and thimble Shoals. Anyway, it's the Norfolk waterfront. And he asked, all the way back thirteen months ago, quote, what if I told you as I type this, there is a vessel associated with the Chinese People's Liberation Army that could be equipped with many drones of anti ship cruise or anti ship cruise missiles and was parked less than four miles from the bulk

of the US Atlantic Fleet. And he makes a few more comments. From there, I think this and this is a point that we need to be raised again. Six it actually got written into law.

we had that rash of efficiencies and brac closures. There's a big push for just the opposite master air bases where we would locate, for instance, in as Jacksonville, it's a Master ASW base. All the pights and a lot of helicopters and a lot of other fun things are located right there at in s Jacksonville, right next to the Saint John's River.

a naval perspective. And just look at what is import on Christmas in San Diego, in Norfolk, and for lack of veterforate and even in Mayport, especially with our aircraft carriers, and then play out what the Ukrainians were able to do to the Russians. We have intentionally and consciously in peace created an incredible strategic risk two ours that nobody's talking about. And again I want to give full credit

to ad Mcharvey. He was the last flag officer who saw this and was able to mention it back in twenty ten. And it's only underlined and bold and blaring and red right now that we need serious people and serious jobs to talk to the accountants, and we need to look back at strategic homeporting. We back when you and I were kids, just on the East coast, we had chips. I think we had like almost a dozen ships based in Newport, Rhode Island.

they don't scatter the airplane. And now it looks like the days of right with the pictures you see of Pearl Harbor and the Philippines before the Japanese attack, they had, you know, to prevent sabotage, they clustered all the planes together, but all that did was making much better target for the aircraft coming in. And yeah, and your point is well made. And we do the same thing with the ships.

You know, So if you're on the cruiser destroyer carrier piers there in Norfolk, that's a that's a very tempting, I weld think, a very tempting target.

And then you get into the question, well can you you know, how do you how many free you know, do you have frequency skipping jammers that you can place out there to make sure you've covered all your bases? Do you. You know, as we're talked a little bit to some people are going, oh, we need nets over all this stuff. Good, good luck with that. But you know what, what what are we going to do? And what kind of sensitivity of radars we have that can pick up

some of these small things? And if you do have it, what assets do you have to take them down?

they're going to do. And so that's another one of those lessons I hope we take on board because I've been hearing this since a station there. We have less than twenty fully operationally capable B two Spirit bombers, which we use as a lever all the time. People think we have a lot more, we don't, and they're homeported literally right in the middle of the US in Missouri. It's a very very safe, very very secure place. Yes, if you're thinking nineteen eighty seven, it is a very

very safe and very very secure place. But is it in twenty twenty five. I don't think it is. It's no less safe and secure than any place else. So going back to the comment about strategic homeporting, so if you have a strategic asset you do not have a lot of do you put them all on a location that is as vulnerable as if it was in Guam or Japan or any place else, or do you accept perhaps a little more logistical challenge and a little more

expensive peacetime expenditure. Do you have them on two bases? And that is one of those things that on December eighth, a lot of people pointed the finger and.

It was upset I think it was six or seven swopped with camels after the German Navy's base near the Danish border near the Keel Canal, and they had abandoned the airship base. They actually lost some equipment, but it took it out. It was I think it was like April twenty eighteen or so, but that was the introduction. And of course we even had the bridge attack on Toronto, which was kind of underlined to the Japanese what they needed to do in Pearl Harbor a few years before.

So there's there's lots of build up to new capabilities and war and you get these warnings, but do you have the right people listening to them? And that's the one thing that I really take away from this is some people voices this is a concern, but it's not a concern of the Ukrainian so to speak. These heavy bombers, the bears and the backfires their dual use. They're also part of the nuclear triad for the Russians. So as

you take out more and more of their assets. Yes, they'll have fewer assets to attack Kiev with with cruise missiles, but that also makes the strategic nuclear deterrent for Russia a little less than what would have already was that. Again, that's all theory. Nobody's going to nuclear war with Russia. But you know that's part of the second and third order effects, and you can trace it back to the Russians.

Even though they're in the fourth year of war against Ukraine and people have they've already seen long range drone attacks and ones or two. I know that somebody on the Russian Joint staff had warned and briefed to this era and was told to sit down and shut up. Raise a raise a shot glass of vodka to that

man or woman who had done that. But they're going to have to have to respond to this, both militarily to make a point, but also I think in how they can figure what they have left of their long range aviation.

you do, and in Russia is oh. I was right back then, and I was listened to you know, you

kill them both, they both get they both get bounced. But you know, let's connect some dots. I mean, we had the the drones flying over Laning, the Air Force base. We don't know who, who who they belonged to, at least they haven't officially said who they belonged to. We have these the giants, as Cant and John had been talking about. It was the giant balloon that what traveled across our country before we finally shot it down somewhere over South Carolina or over the shore line shore off

South Carolina. I mean, what are we thinking? And you know, we know that the Chinese have a sophisticated surveillance satellites. It's not like these these balloons and these these other things are doing it except testing I keep you know, you keep probing for weak spots, right, you probe here, you probe there. And and so we've had these Chinese

nationals trying to get onto military bases. We've had, I mean all kinds of things like that that that when you look, you know, you go, okay, well it's an isolated incident. But you know, after you get about thirty five isolated incidents, then you begin to go, well, maybe it's not as isolated as I thought. Now, as you point out for many of our bases there are you know, we don't do a lot of let's put our base bases way out in the woods. And now the Strategic

Air Command used to do that. I mean, as my dad was an officer in the Strategic Air Command, we we had some really interesting bases that we would we would go to Guam was one of them. Worksmith Air Force Base up north up in Michigan, but there were a whole bunch of them, was a big chain of these bases. Aunt SAC used to keep bombers in the air all the time. So there was always some airborne response group that in this the early days, but was out there flying around and if called on, would go

forward and do their mission. Now that was a different kind of war, a different kind of time. We did used to worry about that kind of sneak attack. But these these drones, they're small, they're hard to detect, as John has said, if you know, I'm talking about them jamming. But if you're got using a terrain guidance system and you don't, you can fly in low and slow and nobody's going to pay any attention until you've done your deed.

So we really need to think about, as you said, dispersing the force, figuring out how we could make it more difficult for us to be targeted. And I keep thinking, we've said that so many times about Guam and and the bases in Japan and everything in the Pacific that you know, it's like that are people listening to this stuff? Because why are we doing the same thing over and

over again. I think it's going to get better. Well, we'll protect Wuam with these, you know, all the assets the army has, the patriots, the the the the other missiles that are that are are a little further out. But you know what, what what is to stop as we've already said, and innocent looking Chinese instant looking Chinese fishing vessel. Vessel just have to be floating by and releases, you know, three dozen drones and directs them towards the

various bases on Guam. It's you know, it's we're not thinking right.

this many of this type of weapon. For attack drones on the low end, they use this and they say, Okay, we have X number of ships out in front of us that will probably have this load out A or this load out B or this load out C. How many weapons do we need to fire at them until they're Winchester and that's what a lot of people, and we've talked about it here, have been looking at the challenge in the Pacific as well, And I don't think that just packing everybody together on a few locations makes

that map work any better, because I think what it really does is it gives your your risk level higher because should your defenses be inadequate on one location and you've packed all your stuff in this location because you think it's more secure, then you have a compounded problem.

more so. The Russians may have had their strategic aviation assets quote well distributed unquote better than we do, but that doesn't mean they're not able to get hit. If you have a well run operation like the Ukrainian side.

is if you want to cut power. We've seen what happens when the power goes out, you know, and if it was a multi you know, very large enough attack took out a few lines that can be replaced in repair,

but that takes time. You know. We've talked about the fuel tanks, the field storage, all those issues, and we haven't even talked about the fact that many of our works where we have the ships like San Diego have a very limited entrance and exit and difficult to get out of there if somebody were to do something to off there off ballast point. I mean, it is the

same thing with San Francisco when we were there. I'm not sayingbody would would sink the or managed to drop the Golden Gate bridge, and that it may not water may be deep enough there that with that wouldn't make a difference, but it's still a challenge. If somebody was to come in on one of those Chinese fishing vessels and lay lay a few mines, and where were mine warfare assets in that area? Same thing up in Washington State,

same thing in Norfolk. We don't have. Uh, you know, if you're going to about thimble Shoals and all that good stuff and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. You know, if you want to cut down access to our ports on the East coast, most of them are not exactly right on the beach. Mayport maybe the actually the easiest one to get it out of on these.

not North Charleston in two thousand and five. I can tell you that up and down the West Coast there are also lots of options, but you're going to run into all three of those dates, a lot of local opposition from the political side of the house, But the federal government has lots of ways to recapture that, and you will have the arguments that it's more expensive. I'm happy to have the discussion of people. They'll say, Okay, I'll tell you what. Just to use round numbers here.

You can have one base with five carriers and twenty destroyers, or you can have two bases with three carriers and seventeen destroyers. I'll take the second option every day of the week, because when you look at that beautiful little chart that Tom put up thirteen months ago, combined with what we've seen people can do, and this has been a concern for decades. Yeah, you can have all your ships located one place at D minus one, but at D plus one, you'll be lucky if you have a

third of them left. Because no competent peer adversary is going to go to war with the US and not try to take advantage of Norfolk and San Diego.

I'm not sure we have what we have up there anymore, if there is anything, and you know, it's it is a sobering thought to think, well, you know, we need to spend encourage the various industries to harden themselves. I mean, with the power companies need to think about how they're going to harden these long distance transmission lines. You know, we we we're pretty good on things like the reactors around electric producing electricity producing reactors, they're they're pretty tough.

It would take quite a lot to knock one of those things out. That's not that that's not their weak point.

Their weak point is always in the transmission system. So you know, we need to we need a whole of government. Here we go again, a whole government approach to this. We need to have a readiness zar or something. I need to add more people to the payroll. But you know, somebody's got to be thinking about these things. And where's our red team. Where's the red team who's thinking? You've got to think like the Chinese. We have a lot

of people who've been doing that. We need to put them in a position where they can they can act on this stuff. You know, we wait and we keep going to the same thing. We could do a lot with less expensive ships and what we have. We but we have really good expensive ships and we don't want them to be wasted. And you know, but it is easy to go Winchester if you have a limited magazine.

And we keep talking about you know, what happened to the railguns, what happened to the we're late we're a cool laser gun, you know systems and all that, because we we need to have those those large capacity systems that don't run out of out of bullets, you know, after after fifty or sixty shots, and there are.

nations would initiate war with the People's Republic of China out of the blue. There is no bolt out of the blue attack coming from the east onto the Chinese Pacific coast.

So maritime powers can completely dominate what little maritime powers a land power has, but they can take it and still be able to once they have land to keep it.

So I think it's a different set of concerns, and I'm not not as concerned about that type of scenario with Russia here, but I think the Europeans need to because should the war in Ukraine go south, the security situation in Europe will be very different than it is today, and they are well within range of a huge land border of uncertainty, and they are extremely vulnerable to this type of attack and warfare, especially with the lack of control and relative lawlessness you have in the interior of

cottinental Europe. So I know the Europeans have got to be looking at this really, really, really close, because the Russians, if nothing like to copy good ideas has to do the Chinese, though, after they lick their wounds and embarrassment rage a little bit about the successful Ukrainian operation, they're gonna go, Okay, how do we do that to our enemies. I think they already have a lot of the resources to do that, but but they're going to go down

that path. And I think that's more of a concern for our European allies it is for us.

Because you know they don't have they don't have super ranges and uh, you know, if I'm the Russians, I'm gonna be complaining the least complaining and wondering that that very question. And would they do anything against those those three Nordic countries? Uh? You know then are they and you know where else? So they what what would you do if you were Russia? You know, they've got asset, they got allies. It is Paris. I think Paris is still burning today, right, are the mobs still running rampant

in Paris? To uh, you know, it's not like it was was. You know, all we're the French and we're

only the French. They've we've invited so many uh what's the right word, disruptive forces into our countries that you know that that could be a real issue as we go down the road, especially as you said, you know, we we we know there were a large number of military age Chinese people coming over the boarder and you know, if you're looking for those teams and I've read so many apocalyptic novels now about excuse me, about what could happen if those if those guys get active, are activated,

because you know, it is it, it is real. It's a real question for us. So you know, they don't have to with us, with our country, don't you know. Some of the scenarios are always they could grab an elementary school somewhere, and you know, but we would be so caught up in that we might forget to do look for the other things that would be coming down the pipe. So it's you know, it's really somewhere somebody needs to be thinking about all this stuff and figure

out how how the response is going to come. I know that that is part of the planning for for some organizations, but it's got to be it's got to permeate down through the system.

what we have. And that's really since the November election, it's gotten a lot of additional attention, which that's important. It's one thing for me and you and our small little conversation coffee clatch to talk about. It's got to

reach a larger audience. And I noticed there on a few days ago on May twenty, of all the establishment rags you can think of, and I use that term with great affection, the Atlantic is on that list, and Arvin Row from the Welcome to the Party gift inserted directly here quote who killed America's shipbuilding industry despite being economically and militarily reliant on shipping US has an astonishing lack of maritime capability unquote that's the title subtitle Hallelujah.

I mean, it is a little infuriating knowing who the audience, your average Atlantic reader is, that this would be a surprise to them, But that's just the reality we live in. But that is good news is this realization is expanding beyond our normal talking circle. And you know, it's not like that article was published on you know, George's feed and seed in Valdosta, Georgie's newsletter. This is in the Atlantic. So it's going to ask a lot, a lot of questions.

And they have that classic picture from a Kaiser yard that has one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine nine liberty ships lined up in that World War two yard. You've probably gotten this pushback as well. We will go and we're not going to be able to do it, just like World War two todd where you can find the workers. Well, nobody is asking for you know, Rosie the riveter to strap on her headband and hop

on board a ship. This is twenty twenty five, and there are some really smart people that are working on ways to build ships differently. That kind of echoes a little bit towards the end of the Second World War how the Germans were able to build their submarines part by part. But I what I've been thinking about is, and I kind of threw some snark at science fiction people the other day, but science fiction is nice when it's well written. It gives you stuff to think about.

And the movie that came out over a decade ago, I think it was Tom Cruise movie that had a minority report and one of the standard issue Tom Cruise chase scenes and report they're going through a car factory this building, and he actually helps in a car right at the end of the factory and drives off on it. But it's very interesting when you look in the background what they were talking about in this, you know, just

on the edge of reality future time point. It's an automated car factory where you had robotics, highly refined materials being able to put together in an exact way that only robotics can be. That there was nobody involved in it. Now, how do you scale that up to huge ships? I don't know, but in parts and smaller ships kind of like the maritime version.

the possibility of that and per ton of ships. How many full time equivalent personnelities that take to build a warship today and it did in nineteen forty five, And what would be our goal in twenty thirty five to be able to build a ship at you know, the present day is one? Can we do it at point eight? Can we do it at point seven? Are we just

going to be at point ninety five ten years? Technology is developing such that there's got to be a smarter, better way that we could build ships, because that gives you scalability.

and you know, great shipyards and all that. And you know, I think John's talking in the in the chat room about we have twice the population roughly of what we had in World War Two. I don't know why we

keep thinking we don't have workers. We must. You know, we could fire everybody from speaking as a as a as a retired lawyer, but half the people who work in white collar jobs could be a gainfully employee doing many other things and pushing a stack of paper from the inbox to the out box and doing their what's the thing?

around you don't know. So anyway that I think, you know you're comment about The Atlantic a spot on, but I guess because I am a closet optimist that when we have somebody from one of our friends from the General General Accountability Office, not the General Accounty Office, the General count Accountability Office, are you know, one of our our great public servants, you know uniforms up there in Congress and Senate, and they bring up the topic that

maybe somebody go, Yes, I read in The Atlantic a couple of months ago.

needs to be ready for. If members charts are right, we are only spending about three percent right now. Does that mean that we're going to spend five percent of GDP on defense? I sure haven't seen that come out of Congress.

than worry about what's good for the country. So there'd be a fundamental shift in the demand curve demands we're putting on our congress people too, And you know it's not you know that we want every lobby group that goes in there, whether it's for farmers growing cotton or or they know the the honeybee industry. You know, everybody got something they want Congress to help them fund and fix.

And it's I think that psychology needs a chance. Fortunately, there seemed to be a number of people, and we've talked to a couple here who have the kind of a different mindset. But that's refreshing. Hope that that is a trend. But you know, it have to be that people who are not supporting advancing our defense get taken out at the polls and replaced by people who do care about what happens to this country.

percent mark yet, but we refuse to grow towards that mark. Well, I think Poland will probably get there on its own, maybe a couple of the Baltic states, though I think a lot of them. They're not big nations. They're like but are There are one point three million Estonians and one point nine million Lithuanians and somewhere in between there. For Latvians, well, they'll probably top out at two and a half three, which is better than where they historically

have been. If we're not going to go to five percent two that I don't think we are. I just don't think financially we're going to be able to do it. I wrote something last week in a moment of depression about it. I keep reminding myself, but I think the planning assumption should be, if we're lucky, that we'll have constant dollars, which is we have a pretty good constant dollar amount we're spending on the military. It's just what

we're spending and how we're spending. If you need to get more money, then you need to get it from someplace else. Dodge DoD might buy you one more DDG at the end of the day, but there's larger structural issues that need to take place, both on how you allocate the budget but also what you spend it on.

And there is some lot of money out there pushing for things that I think will soak up too much of the available money a classic example, and a lot of people I know disagreeing on that, And that's fine. I reserve the right to be wrong, but I don't think I'm wrong here. The whole push to bring back the nuclear capable submarine launched cruise missile, our surface launched cruise missile. I was and you remember, you're a couple

couple of months older than I am. But when I was at JO, I remember all the academic the overhead involved with having nuclear weapons. It's got an incredible cost to it. We don't need to be investing in that. We need to invest in more SM three, more SM six,

things of that manner than bringing back something that the weird people in the skiff come out and want to talk about once a fiscal year.

But somebody, somebody asked about the admiral that got fired, because you know, we talked about a little bit earlier before the show about PEO of Unmanned and Small Combatants was relieved, and he's also was the former former in charge of the constellation program. So there wasn't much said except a loss of confidence blah blah blah. But you know,

I'm wondering whether is this a good thing? Is they're going to shake that program up, because that those programs unmanned and small combatants are where we really need to be focused a lot of our attention.

or was it? Program and competence? Everybody should know that, especially those that are are coming up for commands, so they.

the pre show for the listeners, we said, well, you know, here's the list of things to talk about, but what happened today in Russia will probably dominate the conversation.

what we were talking about. This is actually happening. You need to go talk to person X, Y and Z and see what our capabilities are to either do something like this or to defend against it. Because you're not going to like the answer. You got a great opportunity. Hopefully those types of hard questions are being asked cause you know, Bravozulu to the Ukrainians and it sucks to

be a Russian. But this is a great opportunity for US, our NATO allies, Japan and South Korea to kind of step back and go, Okay, who do we have focusing on this and related issues? You know, I want to brief Tuesday at fifteen hundred for no longer than forty five minutes, no more than forty five slides, thank you very much, and see what happens. So hopefully that's what is being done in a variety of places right now, because this is a gift if people are willing to accept it as such.

defense contractors involve. They've got to be a whole room full of geniuses with these with these drone programs that could could mass manufacture this sort of thing and it wouldn't even cause them to break a sweat. We just need to simplify the acquisition process. They don't have to be perfect the first five hours to fly to them. You know, we just need This is another one of those quantity versus quality issues and we need to get at it, hop on it hard.

some things went wrong and what went right? You know, who had their jockstrap left over the sidelines, all those It's gonna be a great story. I look forward to reading it one day.

make it so that they're not suffering from neglect. And I think that's where we are.

hasn't overlooked it in the past. For instance, if you had a sec NAB who was a retired four star admiral and he came out and made a statement like that, there would rightfully be a lot of people going, oh, really, where were you when that was on active duty. So here we have the second NAV just a few months into the job, looking at this and going, well, this

is unsat Okay, these three things you brought me. You want me to sign off to put money, I'll tell you what, We're going to take that money and we're gonna.

see and hopefully with some action on it. You know, take take care of your people. Used to be the rules, radical but true, and we get take care of people. I think we'll let folks go. Thank you everybody for joining us. We've had a great chat room today. I appreciate all the input. We'll catch you next time, and until then, hope everybody has a great Navy day.