Episode 725: Hammer Time

into that right off the start. But I just wanted to send out an invitation for those that are with us live. If you'd like to, you can find the chat room. We've already got quite a few people in their chat and a way if you have some observations you would like to share during the course of the show. Are some questions you would like for address to Mark or I, or just a topic you'd like for us to address, put it there, we'll see it and if we can, we will try to fold it into the

conversation and I'll do my usual alter call. If you don't already, you can go over to iTunes, speaker, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts, go look for mid Rats, find us and subscribe. Won't cost you a penny, and that way will be available to you at a time better to your convenience if you don't honor us with your live listen. So Mark, first of all, good afternoon. Great to be with you again.

starting to understand the world around me. But you know, you were a grown man at the time of the Iranian Revolution and the taking of the American hostages for you know, four hundred and forty four days, and ever since then my adult entire adult life and then some there's been a whole series of occasions. You know, you can start with the bombing of the Marine barracks in

eighty three. Thousands of Americans have been killed, maimed, mutilated, left to be widows and widowers, children without parents to grow up because of the terror sponsored by Iran. And they've taken every opportunity to humiliate us. Play Lucy to our Charlie Brown with the football a few times, and when I saw the news, my two sides of my brain kicked off. The first part was the emotional side, going yes, Operation pream Mantus was not enough for me.

It's time to give a little bit to the Iranians, and it was. It was good to see. It was also excellent to see because all of our airmen who went feet dry came home. We didn't lose a plane, we didn't lose in the airman. Nobody got shot down, no pow is none of that foolishness. And then there's a logical side of the brain because another thing we've

been dealing with. It really became a big conversation point I believe in the Clinton era in the midnight has been Iran's desire to get a nuclear weapon, and knowing what the bad faith actor they've been on the on the world stage, they could not be allowed to get a nuclear weapon. It reached a crisis in the Oba administration. The Israelis have done a few things to slow them down, but it reached the point that they had just gotten too close. But it was a hard nut to crack.

Iran's a huge nation on paper, at least until a week or so ago. They had a substantial military force not to take away their ballistic missiles and the killings that it's been doing all up and down Israel the last few days. But it was going to be a hard nut to crack, and they had hard in their facilities. And regardless of what happens down the road, we are not going to war. We have conducted what in previous generations and hopefully present and future generations will see as

a punitive expedition. And we've done two things. One, you never really eliminate somebody who desires to get nuclear weapons nuclear weapons because you can't classify nineteen forties era mathematics and physics. Can adjust their supply, you can break their stuff, you can delay it, push it to the right, and

hopefully different circumstances will approach the world. So we've bought everybody some time, if nothing else, and we have by weakening the Iranian regime, we've also opened the door if the Iranian people decide that they would like a different system of government, they have probably a better opportunity now than they've had in a long time. I thought it's been very smart of what Israel has done and what we did is we just targeted the nuclear facilities. Iran

has mostly targeted the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, not the straight stick Iranian military. So it's you know, things might prop up in the future, but something I believe had to be done. The window of opportunity opened for us to do it, and the ground was prepared well by Israel. We stepped in it and did what had to be done. And tip my hat to everybody involved in the program because we'll find out more details in the in the months and the years ahead. But what a what a

very well run program. No other country on the nation on the planet could do it.

we're gonna have some kind of retribution. There is, as many people have noted, chance that there are sleeper cells in the in this country kind of do something or some of the crazies who are you know, always around, we're going to do something and claim that this is their motivation. We you know, we'd look at the threat of closing the strait of our moves. Uh. You know, I've also suggested that we, you know, want to pay it.

I'm sure we're paying close attention to where the Iranian mind laying capable submarines are and you know that that is one of the ways you can cause problems. But on the other hand, they can't do too much because they've got their own tankers and their their one ally if you want to call it.

It's an interesting time. A successful mission as far as we know. I hate to be too cynical about this, but over the years you get to the point where you go, you know, yeah, we we did put the penetrators in the ground where they were supposed to be. The extent of the damages is as yet unknown and maybe never really be known from until unless the Iranians going to show that we missed somehow. Oh no, here's here's our room full of eccentricis just you didn't get them,

so it would be amazingly silly on their part. But yeah, we're you know, I think we're This is one of those things that anybody was alive in nineteen seventy nine and said it enough about what was going on when the passage were taken, and the the effort to get them out, the attempt to extract them, that crazy plan for the for the desert that went awry and we lost people there. We've lost people any number of times

to the activities that the Iranians have been behind. They support as Bolo, the support hamas they support the Huthi's, They support a number of other entities that are not interested in our well being and or trying to get you know, their their goal their whole stick them for the for the Mullahs is that they're they want to

get rid of Israel. They believe in some kind of armageddonish world that will end in there with them becoming triumphant and going off to to achieve great things as the as the prophet is as prophesized.

can do deceptions. That there was some that we had bad information or were successfully deceived, and we dropped our fourteen penetrators in the wrong spot and didn't make anything move that needed to be moved, and they can go, hey, we still have it here. That's always a chance. But you know, if you are paralyzed by possibilities, then you never do anything. And you you know, you know, war or conflict, it's a dark room. You really don't know

what's in there until you step into it. But you make the best best decision you can, knowing that you have imperfect information, and hope that the imperfection decimal point is in the right spot. And you mentioned about the straight of hor moves and the mining. One thing that popped into my head when you said that. And there are a couple of sources that have put out this figure. It may or may not be correct, but it sounds right.

The People's Republic of China gets forty five scent of the oil it imports through the streets of horror moves. And I could very well see Chairman she gets on the horn to to his sources and Iran and go eight. You do what you need to do with Israel in the US, but don't don't you stop the oil going through the streets or horn moves. I got enough problems with my economy now, I don't need another oil shock on my hands. Don't even think about it. That bad

communication is probably taking place. We'll see. Would I Ran be angry enough to do that? I don't know. There's such thing as an impotent rage. They've been humiliated not just by the little Satan Israel, but by the big Satan, the USA, So how can they strike out. That's one way. The other way is they've got been generally reported I have no reason to doubt it. They supposedly have terror cells located all over the place. They could make the decision that we have to we have to strike back

in any way possible. And this is one of the unfortunate things that I've already seen some really political people

engage in where they said, Okay, if the Iranians attack any Americans, this is all the fault because of this, Like Iranians have been attacking us for a long time. And if you establish we can't do anything against Iran because they'll activate one of their terror cells we've let exist inside of our own lifelines, then again, you're going to be paralyzed by fear. And you can't survive on

this planet by being paralyzed by fear. So that's another way they could find a way to lash out, and we everybody should be prepared for that in a variety of ways. I think there's and I've been guilty of this a little bit myself because I grew up with the with the kids of Iranian refugees. A lot of them were doctors or people in medical school over here. Who you know, their parents got on the phone and said, don't come back. They're not true. People who've been been

to the US recently very well. And so they stayed here, married Americans, you know, kept their kids here, and I grew up with them. That's that that has some caution in my mind, but we can't and people, I think we've actually talked about this before on the show. One of the largest Iranian cities in the US is Los Angeles. It's well into six figures first and second generation Americans of Iranian extraction who lived there. But they're they're they're

not a danger to anybody. They're great Americans, very great, great professionals, great neighbors. They're not the ones you worry about. What you have to worry about are those military aged males that were sneaking across the Mexican border for the last few years, undocumented, untracked, unlocated. That's what you have to worry about. But you know, that's one of those things. It's a bridge. We can cross it. Because one tar

cell doing a terrorist attack is a tragedy. Iran having a nuclear weapon is existential to quite a few people, So it's one of the risks. I think you just have to take.

But the Russians, they they you know, they don't mind maybe the straight of hor Moose closing because they've got their own oil to push and you know, things are going not quite as well as they should for their under the sanctions. And we could really crack down on on net if we got serious about it. But yeah, I know, there's there's a lot of words flying around that make you wonder what you know what is real

and what is just posturing. You know, Iranians, you're our friends or Russian Iranian coalition which kind of exists, you know, one of these acts of evil things. You know that that's something we don't really reneed. We'd like to. As you said, I don't think we after our mistakes in the nineteen fifties when we help the the elected government of Iran out of power, well, you know that caused a lot of sore feelings, which allowed Commanding to come in as the in seventy nine as the new leader

of the Islamic Republic of Iran. So we don't really want to be involved in and another. We're happy to support a change of administration in Iram, but I don't think we want to be the cause or the driving force behind it.

I need to catch up on the B two. So I went in and looked at the B two and it said that they have a bomb capacity of twenty thousand pounds, and I went, well, wait a minute, Oh, I mean forty thousand pounds. So wait, that can't be right because the penetrator has thirty thousand weighs thirty thousand pounds and they were supposed to carry two of them, so that's you know, even I can do that math three times two to six, so it's got to be

more than that. And so I went in and they said, are you sure that it's forty thousand pound bomb capacity on the B two when they were carrying too, And it came back and said, no, you're right. So one thing that we have found out that the and again this isn't be the first. That's why it's important and we say it on a regular basis in opensource dot dot dot because what has actually done and in the real world is often very different, and in aircraft it can be. There's a couple of ways that you can

take off in excess of your advertised load. If you do a couple of things. But so we now know that actually it can take off with sixty thousand pounds

of ordinance by carrying two of the GBU fifty sevens. And that had me go, what do we have planned

for the B twenty one raider that's coming online? Because I remembered reading a while ago somebody was talking about the raider had a lower capacity to carry bombs because some of the design compromises with the B two derived from a lot of these old bomber guys and they were designing the B two, said no, this needs to be able to have a higher carrying capacity than what you're designing for it, so they had to change some

of the configuration of the B two to meet that requirement. Well, supposedly, the B twenty one has an advertised twenty thousand pound bomb load, which wouldn't be able to carry one GBU fifty seven. But as we've learned, so let's just say they can upscale it just like they did with the B two, so that would carry one GBU forty seven. I think we've seen, especially with the deeply buried things

have to do too. So for the folks that North were grum and maybe they could if they don't already, you know, a stretched version of the B twenty one, the B twenty one Bravo that had a larger carrying capacity. Maybe that's something they can build in the twenty forties. But I thought that was an interesting detail because people forget we have less than twenty flable B twos, and of that percentage, there's always going to be a certain

percentage of them that are in maintenance. And we had seven of them strike, which they had seven table From what we've been told, they had seven takeoff, seven land. They probably planned the mission being able to do it with one or two less if you had mechanical problems. But they made it all the way from Missouri across the Atlantic and back. They had some decoys. I think it was three that went west, So seven times is ten.

So you know, how many other fully mission capable B twos do we have left when we had ten in the air. I don't know. Maybe they sent some partially mission capable ones with the decoy unit going west, But that's an interesting detail. And with building the B twenty one, maybe we should build more than we think we need to. But that's something we can talk about down the road. As we actually started getting production going.

that it's interesting. We you know, we you have to design to the to the I guess the biggest you could carry, and I assume that without knowing for sure that a lot of One of the tricks aviators have used in the past is if if, if what you're carrying is beyond your theoretical capacity, you go light on the fuel at the at the takeoff, immediately refuel after getting airborne, and then it's and it's not that big a deal after that once you're actually in the air.

use to attack the turpets. Wow, that's big bomb. Well again, when you look at the GBU fifty seven, the massive ordnance penetrator, the mop you got mopped all right, it's twenty feet long and change, I mean over over six meters for you Europeans and Canadians, yet thirty inches wide point eight meters wide. I mean that's huge, huge weapon, which to penetrate as far as Open Source has it penetrated,

it would have to be. But that's just that makes that's bigger than the Doctor strangeloved nukes that we saw slim Pickens riding down to his glory.

I think the mate that's a Navy mission lately. You know,

the sub the SSGN out there fired a grunch of tea lambs. I don't know what the destroyers did, but I know that someone was standing by off the coast of Israel too for their anti missile defense stuff. So you know, this is a this is a big operation and carried out really smoothly as far as we know. So, but we wes and forget all these other folks were involved.

Air Defense Network to kind of clear the path. And then I've seen a couple of reports that had again your dad would appreciate that they had fighter escort, that they had at least F twenty two's flying with them, and if they were doing see I don't think F twenty two can do suppression of internew air defenses. That tells me that they, you know, probably had some strike eagles or some other We'll find out those details. And yeah, I saw the same report you did about the Tea Lamb.

You know, Navy had a little bit of play there as well. I don't know whether the carrier strike groups did, but I saw where the USS Georgia, which is forty one years old, the one of the four ssgns that we have left that were converted from the older Ohio boats, that it fired thirty te lambs and they carry one hundred and fifty four Tea lambs. It's just an impressive

piece of kit. You know, one thing I've always thought, you know, like I said, they're four decades old, which you can do with former boomers because they they don't. They are the submarine version of driven by the little Lady to church on Sunday used car. You know, they don't have many miles and their gentle miles that they have, so you can you can keep them for a while longer. But as we build the Colombian, I know, the Virginia payload module brings you a lot more capability in that regard.

But it'll be interesting to see in ten years, as we you know, have decommissioned the ssg ins that we have, whether that argument can be brought up. It's like, hey, when we get through recapitalizing ssb N force, why don't we build a few more and make them just dedicated missile carriers, because you can there's danger of putting too many eggs in one basket. But whatever. The follow on to the Tea lam is being able to park one hundred and fifty four of them off somebody shore and

they don't even know you're there. Again, that's a capability nobody else on the planet has.

It's again unique capability that nobody else has. And kind of a secondary benefit to this that all people have talked about is the Ukrainians have got to be happy because the Iranians have been uh now a lot of the production has actually been moved to Russia, but they helped the Russians a lot, especially in the first couple of years in the Russia Ukrainian War, because they had

sparic capacity. Israel has done a very good job of removing that sparic capacity from the Iranians, and what production capability they have, they're going to have to focus on rebuilding their munitions, a lot of which have been either expended or depleted. And you know, how do you The Israelis evidently have hit some of the manufacturing facilities for both the drones and the ballistic missiles, So you've got

to rebuild your factories first. So Iran is going to be focused on its own needs for a while as opposed to helping their proxies are helping friends they would like to have like Russia with their ongoing wards which again is a bit of fit to everybody. You've actually seen some of the usual suspects in Europe who rarely have anything nice to say about the US and what we do internationally, and it definitely won't to complement the Trump administration actually come out and say fair is fair.

This has done everybody on the planet a great a great service, because again, yeah, hate us for doing the

right thing, but we're we're going to do the right thing. And there's I have not seen I've seen plenty of people arguing against it. They're either focused like down just incredibly narrow and narrow aperture, focused on their particular bespoke worldview are they're just mindly part mindly partisan, where anything that goes well they have to oppose because they don't want to be seen given benefits to somebody who they

disagree with on other domestic political issues. So yeah, it's it's at least for now, and there might be surprises down the road, like we talked about with the deception or other things, but on whole, it's refreshing to see an operation go well.

towards India, and you know, you talk about destabilizing. If Ouran got a nuke, Saudi Arabia would get one almost automatically. And there are other nations around the world who might say, okay, you know, here we go. When North Korea went nuclear, North Korea is really only a threat to itself or South Korea. There's not this ability to have a domino flop. You could make the comment about the threat to Japan.

Japan's kind of unique creature. In Japan also has a bilateral defense treaty with the US, and I think it's quite clear that if anybody made the mistake of nuking Japan. The unless we have some very weird people at sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue, the response from the US would be apocalyptic to North Korea if they ever did that down the road. So it's a different formula down there. So again,

I think this has bought everybody time. Unless the Iranians deceived us pretty well and we did nothing but bomb the bedrock.

about that and would let us know. I think the other thing that this has done is the neighborhood where Iran operates all the countries around there, the Saudis, the Omani's, the Bahrainians, I would say, the Iraqis, but since their government seems to be in bed in a lot of ways with the Iranians, but a lot of the other countries in that area are going to breathe the sigh of relief that are iran It's somewhat been taken off

the board. You know, you got that group of people over there that is doing everything they can to stir up trouble because and there's you know, you know, all the whole Shiite Sunni and all the other variations of the of the Islamic religion. You know that everybody thinks that everybody else is an apostate, but and you just worry about your neighbor who thinks you're an apostaate having

a bigger gun than you have. I think this does take some of that pressure off those those countries, and we would allow if we if they can get back to the accords, with the Abraham Accords, that that would be a very positive thing that could come out of this, the.

Gaza and Solidary and they made the mistake. It was trying to start from Egypt thinking that Egypt was Luxembourg, and that didn't turn out too well formed. Some of them were given a wood shampoo by some security forces. But there's no love lost there. Saudi Arabia is just

waiting for the right window to step in. The new leadership in Syria maybe imperfect from Western standards, but I don't think Syria has ever had a perfect leadership by Western standards since the British and the French had that at World War Two. So the neighborhood is improving. Even Lebanon is making steps to kind of extract hesible his ability to attack the Israel from there. So things might change on a nine. But if if success is taking

three steps back, accepting the one step back, then taking three stepping back. One this this takes us three steps forward. There will be a step back, but this, this is definitely a three step forward operation.

you you don't represent anybody anymore. And I although I will note that our our ambassador to the UN has said that any retaliation against the US or US forces will be met with devastating retaliation. Yeah.

the fact that they're they're toothless, they're also counterproductive. Like a lot of the problems you look at the United Kingdom, it's been because their best and bright has decided that they wanted to even after Brexit, outsource a lot of what you would want in a democratic system, which you have in a constitutional monarchy. They've outsourced a lot of that to the International Criminal Court that we're not a member of the European Commission on Human Rights. They've they've

lost a lot of control to these international bodies. And outside of a few very narrow spectrums when you look at your average citizen of these nations, and you can open this up to the United Nations, you know what, Like I said in office space, you know, what do you do here? It's so yeah, the people in the UN can can say what they want to, but I think what little credibility they have left here in twenty twenty five, it's it's minuscule to to nothing at this point,

because it's just it's it's sad and laughable. It was a nice concept, it was a good concept, but it had some some critical failings on it that have manifested itself to the point that I'm not sure what it functions at this point. But it's I guess it's better than having nothing. Uh. But yeah, I don't think any serious person is worried what the UN does or does not say one way or another.

over the Philippines uh Exclusive Economic Zone, harassing there. You know, they're they're China talking about other people violating international law. Is that's just so pathetic that it's uh, it's ridiculous.

But yeah, that's it is it is affable. You look at what they do, what they have done, and they're continuing to do in Tibet and and can we call it East Turkestan because I can't I can't pronounce what the the wigers call it.

last day of World War Two. They've not only swept the skies, they've any of their surviving modern non visually aimed anti aircraft systems, you know those the commanders of those batteries is they reach to energize their electronic equipment. You know, if they have n c os like we have in the US, they're gonna be looking. I'm going, sir,

get your hands off that button. We're not We're not ready to anything, because you know, George and Fred and Sally over there, they're all little grease spots because they lit off two days ago. Let's just stay here and collect the paycheck. So's it's gonna be interesting to see if Iran just ropidotes that, how long Israel is going to continue to enjoy access to their airspace, because once

once Israel stops doing that, getting back in will be a challenge. That's what we look at it this week is how many more days are these strikes going to be going? And you have to remember the Israel also, It's it's not the US military where you got the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, you know, tach air every day twice on Sunday type of thing. It's the nation the size of New Jersey, and it's already been at war for let's see, that's twelve and six, seven,

eight nine, Yeah, twenty one months now. They've been at war since I'm AWESO invaded them. Yeah, they're they're a rich nation and where if you've watched the C seventies lining even on air. We're resupplying them as much as we can. But yeah, that that's going to be interesting to see how far in their tertiary target deck they get.

he says. You know, that really leaves it open for the Iranians to do something to get there, get themselves out of the out of the center of the target, because nobody is happy with what with what they've done over the years, and you know, their neighbors don't really like them. I assume somebody is giving permission for the Israelis to fly over their territory to engage in these activities. So,

you know, what, what are you left with? You're left with Iran that maybe we can We've got We've got Turkey, which is a NATO nation but aspires to be I think to be the major power in the Middle in that part of the Middle East, to the extent that they're in the Middle East. But you know that, you know,

where where do we go from here? You know is in the past Turkey had been kind of aligned with Israel, but not lately, you know, they're they've become sort of an Alama's state despart the despite the history with with Kamal out of most of the Kamal out of turk Uh, you know, want him to be a secular state. So, you know, the things are still it's been there. A lot of exciting things can happen. I think you're right

about Syria. You know, sometimes a stable but unpleasant government is the government you're happy, not happy with, but at least content to have there until they do something dumb that you can and then I'm not sure that that dumb to make if they see what's going on with with the Iran to be too aggressive these days, whatever you want to call the nation or empire that has Anatolia has been in conflict with whatever the nation or empire that is present day Iran slash Persia.

take or we take. But at the end of the day, as far as as much as nations do have friends, we do have friends and allies, and so does Israel, just not as many, but they have a lot more now than they had fifteen twenty, well twenty twenty five years ago. The Gulf States have seen the fact that what with the Abraham Accords, it the promise of normalizing relations with Israel does bring business and medical exchanges that

are beneficial everybody. And uh, that's that's if you're looking for what the cool kids call a white pill moment about the future, I think that, uh, this this kind of fits the bill because there are a lot of positive aspects of this and we should take it as such. So that's kind of the this time next week everything might be different. But where where were the threat vectors

a week ago versus where they are today? I would make the argue that we're in a much better place now than we're a week ago.

demonstrations a minute. The US does anything that we vaguely disagree with, and I think you talked about kind of at the start of the show, but you know, it is it is amazing to me. We've got you know, people in New York, We've got people in Dearborn, Michigan, people all over the place upset by the fact that the US has taken on the Iranian mulas.

pretty straightforward. It's right there. I mean, for the end show, just to maybe switch a little bit over to the Navy side of the house, interesting details came out that just had me had me thinking a bit about something that you know, you and I have been writing about

for over two decades and we've talked about for the decade and a half we've had the show here with multiple guests. It has to do with the problems we've had building a fleet, building ships, designing ships, getting things from the PowerPoint slide to actually displacing water. And I think we've had all this kind of encapsulated right now, and you know, behold the fruits of the poison tree

type of thing. Is the little announcement went out on the twenty fourth of June, coming up in Ya two days being that we're recording this here on Sunday afternoon, the twenty second, the gerald Ford will deploy now the Ford Carrier Strike Group, And it doesn't mention that if there are any submarines attached to it. Sometimes there are, I don't know comp to extra g T effics. But twenty four June, the gerald Ford Carrier Strike Group is going to be getting underway with their air wing and her

her escort ships are five DDGs now. Of those five, two have already deployed. The USS Winston S. Churchill deployed on the twenty first to June, and the Forest Sherman deployed on the sixth of May. Which in the Red Sea, there's a high demand for all things DDG. And it used to be within living memory, or at least in my living memory, we had cruisers, we had guided missile destroyers, we had regular destroyers, we had frigates, we had a nice diverse tool set, and now we don't even have

cruisers to deploy with. We've taken some of our upgraded early Burks. In this case is going to be the USS Winston as Churchill is going to be Alpha Sierra and a correction having flashbacks Whiskey, Alpha Whiskey, thank you the air warfare commander in a DDG, which it wasn't designed for, but you can make happen. That's why we

have some of our DDGs now. Uh to have six commanders, you know though it's supposed to be a commander command because you've got to have it's good to have an six as Alpha Whiskey and Uh, it's just an interesting point that we have reached. We have become the meme. I think we've jokingly talked about DDGs and the Arley Burks and we did a show, we did the restart the whole nine yards that we're going to build Arley Burks until the crack of doom because it's the only

ship we can build. If you told somebody and when you and I started blogging in two thousand and three, two thousand and four, I think you beat me by a year that we're going to reach the point that we're gonna have carrier strike carrier. Then we called them carrier battle groups. The battle is the scary words. We called them striking. Now, now carrier strike groups, we're gonna

have nothing but Arley Burke class destroyers. They'll go no, no, no, no, no no. We've got litoral combat ships we're gonna be in there. We're gonna have all these great zoom Walk class d d's that are gonna be there. We're gonna have cg X that's gonna be there. No, no, no, The Arley Burks will just be your you know, all purpose tool, an older ship. Now that's not gonna happen in twenty twenty five. Well, behold here we are twenty twenty five. We got nothing but Burke's. Maybe they're good ships.

to the crowding. You know, those are those are not little tiny spaces like we had on the on on a Gearing class destroyers. So you know, they're big ships. They have a lot of capability. That's not to say we don't miss the capability of the cgs. But if we're going to build cgs, when you really think you know exactly what the mission we want them to fill, because if it's being filled by a d d G, now is it just a matter of you know, do we make the can we and I don't know the

limitations of expanding the the Burke Hall. I know you know that the flight various flights are slightly different or majorly different depending on what what flight we're talking about one one compared to three is. I think there's some big changes the uh, but you know, let's let's you know, we we need to really think hard about about what we're doing. We need we need more. If we're gonna do all this stuff with carriers, we're gonna do this

stuff with with the ssg NS. We then we need to think really hard on on exactly what our carrier picture needs to look like.

that means you're gonna need more aircraft. And then we have to think about the aircraft mix, because if we're relying on on B two's that have to fly from Kansas to UH to the Middle East, that that seems to me to be quite a stretch if you could do it with and shorter fuse issues with the circumstances with the right kind of aircraft from a from a carrier air wing.

oldest destroyer. Also, you have the Mitchener DDG fifty seven, You've got the Mahan DDG seventy two, and you have

two relatively newer ones, the Bainbridge DDG ninety six and the Forest Sherman DDG ninety eight. So the Churchill's right in the middle of an age of of the escorts for the Ford, which of course is our newest career. And she's she's twenty four years old. She's not going to last as long as the USS Georgia, that's for sure.

regulators off their face. But yeah, every time I look at the warfare ships, I was like, man, I feel sorry for the divers having to go in the waters. I don't know if you've ever actually seen on a on a clear day that's really long sea grass down there're like, no, no, no, that's not sea grass. Snakes the scary boys.

and they're in Bahrain. So that's good. And you're right that, you know, the the old thing was that they had all these World War One Soviet design mines with the horns and all that stuff, you know, but now there's now they've got these more sophisticated plastic mines that can go on the bottom and they're really hard to get to.

I don't pretend to know that much about it, and I don't probably know more than I want to, but uh, you know, there are a lot of people looking at this problem, and I'm sure that the one of the reads that we had to wait so long for the packages to be ready for the for the LCS is what that you know, it's a more complicated problem than it used to be because there are you can no longer just cut of mines uh connection to the weight that held it on the ocean floor or whatever, and

then blow it up with a rifle shot. But again, you know, they as I understand that looking at Salma Carglano's stuff, that the shift has gone already. The people are the tankers that are coming out of the strait or administrative or moves are are hugging the uh the Omani side of the of the lanes they call those lanes the transit lanes and not and trying to avoid the Iranian waters as much as they can.

successful and air drop mines. If you need to lay an offensive minefield, and even a defensive minefield, if you've got nothing else better in modern navigation, you can do it. But a lot of people familiar with you know, the old S three's and the A six's and Vietnam, you even had A seven's dropping minds.

they had B fifty two's eight hundred. How many thousands of quick Strike minds going to be fifty two carry? So that is something in the Western Pacific that if we really needed to make things difficult for the Chinese. It's not just a naval solution, especially the B fifty twos that are not going to get very close to shore,

but they are very good at doing pop ups. You have a B fifty two pop up forty miles off your coast with enough top cover, and you've got all these quick Strike mines headed towards your port, or you got to be one they can do it, or a B two or B twenty one.

just thought it was funny picture of him. And as of a couple of hours ago, when I looked in eighteen hours, four hundred and thirty seven thousand views on that one little comment on X that's not because I have that many foul flower follow just people saw it and shared and they told two friends, and they told two friends and so on and so on. So I don't think that we're alone in having a little bit of a spark in our step with the success that

we had in that operation. So obviously, be cautious, don't get over confident or anything like that. But if you're an American and you're concerned about security and sometimes you have concerns about our armed forces and what they do, maybe we'll find out something down the road. But that was an operation very well executed and led by the Air Force, worse with an assist from the Navy. So Bravosulu to everybody. They are really impressive to see.

far from what we know. Has been a rousing success.