Episode 725: Hammer Time

What can the world’s most capable maritime and aerospace power do?

The world was reminded this weekend.There is no other place this week’s Midrats could start but the strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Summary

The conversation delves into the recent Operation Midnight Hammer, discussing its implications for U.S.-Iran relations, the threat of Iranian retaliation, and the strategic military operations involved. The hosts analyze the historical context of U.S.-Iran tensions, the effectiveness of military responses, and the broader geopolitical landscape, including the role of international relations and domestic political reactions. They also touch on naval operations, fleet readiness, and the evolving nature of mine warfare in modern military strategy.

Chapters

00:00: Operation Midnight Hammer: A Historic Overview
05:31: Iran's Nuclear Ambitions and U.S. Response
12:03: The Threat of Iranian Retaliation
18:03: Military Capabilities and Strategic Operations
23:09: The Role of International Relations
29:09: Domestic Reactions and Political Implications
35:08: The Future of U.S.-Iran Relations
41:45: Naval Operations and Fleet Readiness
48:04: Mine Warfare and Modern Naval Strategy
54:47: Concluding Thoughts on Military Success and Future Challenges

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander and
the Eagle One from Eagle Speak at Seer Shore your
home for a discussion of national security issues and all
things maritime. And welcome board everybody to this special Hammer
time edition of mid Rats. Of course, there's nothing else
we can talk about today if because of Operation Midnight

(00:51):
Hammer that went down over this weekend, and we'll dive
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

(01:13):
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

(01:34):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Hey Sel, good to be here, and on a historic
weekend it is.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
And one thing I wanted to touch on is you're
a couple of years older than I am. I think
it'd be safe to define you as a middle cohort
baby boomer. Generation wise, I'm an early cohort gen X,
and since I was in middle school, I was just

(02:11):
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

(02:33):
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

(02:55):
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,

(03:18):
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

(03:40):
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.

(04:01):
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

(04:22):
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

(04:44):
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

(05:04):
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

(05:25):
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

(05:48):
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

(06:10):
very well run program. No other country on the nation
on the planet could do it.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yeah, and I probably make some other country nervous. Yeah,
I mean a punity of expedition, I tweeted earlier, texted Iran.
You know, we get in, we blow it up, we
get out, and if they don't understand the message, we
go back and do it again. I mean, it is
not any more complicated than that. That's what a punitive
expedition is. And now we're seeing the Iranian government. You know,

(06:38):
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,

(07:01):
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.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
That.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
China is needs the oil that they ship out, and
the Iranians aren't going to get a lot of money
if they close the entire strait of our moves for
any extended period of time. So you know that the
data there's also a threat to any troops we have
in in Syria and and other Jordan other places like

(07:42):
that that are nearby that I think President Trump warned
the Iranians that that would not be a good idea
to go after those folks, So, you know, it is 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

(08:03):
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,

(08:27):
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

(08:50):
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

(09:12):
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.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
I think he made a really good point about deception.
I believe it was the Sector or the Chairman General
Kine one of the two who made a comment about
and other people have done some great little visuals and
graphics that there was a deception campaign on our part
ahead of the strike to help surprise them. There is
a non zero champ. We're not the only people that

(09:57):
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

(10:21):
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

(10:43):
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.

(11:04):
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

(11:25):
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.

(11:45):
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

(12:07):
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

(12:29):
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

(12:52):
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

(13:15):
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

(13:36):
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

(13:57):
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

(14:17):
have to take.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yeah, I think it's barely been interesting because the Russians
have come in and announced that that there are plenty
of other countries that would be one way to provide
Iran with a nuclear weapon.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
It was a med thatdev or somebody.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
Yeah, and the UH and the uh these well calling
the Secretary of Foreign Minister from Iran is is now
meeting with the Russians. Uh. You know it's one of
those things, where is that just to make sure that
people think that there's still a threat there and and uh,
you know, kind of keep the the West from doing anything.

(14:54):
Like you know, I don't think we have any intention
of invading Iran. That would be we have talked about
him a for It is a really tough nut to crack.
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

(15:16):
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,

(15:39):
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

(15:59):
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

(16:21):
force behind it.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah, there's all sorts of little interesting operational details that
have come out of this as well. I actually had
for those who haven't engaged in arguments with AI like chat, GBT,
KROC or some of the other ones. It's actually kind
of interesting because these large language models are only as
good as the data sources they get to. And I

(16:46):
had a fun back and forth with them when I
was doing some of the show prep and I was like, well,
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,

(17:06):
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,

(17:29):
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

(17:50):
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

(18:12):
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

(18:34):
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

(18:54):
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,

(19:16):
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

(19:37):
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.

(20:01):
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.

(20:21):
But that's something we can talk about down the road.
As we actually started getting production going.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
Yeah, I get boggled. I've been boggled about things since
I've learned that the old f or Phantom could carry
more and bombs than my dad's be seventeen could World
War Two. So you know, these these numbers are astonishing
to me that these aircraft, no matter how large, the eric,

(20:47):
can carry that much in the way of wait, I'm here.
You know the old has has the size of the
weapons have shrunk except for these massive penetrators which here
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

(21:10):
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.

Speaker 1 (21:31):
Why the good Lord gives you lots of lots of
runway And yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:35):
The kid's talking, we're talking, we're talking air Force exactly.
If it's not twelve thousand or fourteen thousand feet, it's
not it's not a runway.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
They get the entire Midwest prairie to take off. They
got plenty of runway. But it reminds me, you know,
as a kid, I just digested all those books on
World War Two and you have those pictures of the
tall Boy bomb that the British Lancasters carried that they
use to attack the turpets. Wow, that's big bomb. Well again,
when you look at the GBU fifty seven, the massive

(22:05):
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,

(22:26):
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.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
Yeah, it's uh, you know, and we mustn't forget too
that this the B twos did a big part of
the job, but there were one hundred and twenty five
aircraft involved. Yeah, so that means one hundred and eighteen
that weren't B twos and I you know, just judging
by the the you know that somebody had to do
if there was any suppression of the air defense systems,

(23:01):
somebody had to do that. And I think, I don't
remember what the Air Force has gotten those things, but
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

(23:25):
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.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
I'm glad you mentioned that because it is I mean,
the details will come out and will be fascinating, and
some of the stuff that we've been told now probably
isn't accurate, but you only can run with what you got.
But apparently it makes sense as a joint ie Air Force,
Navy and combined as in US Israel operation where the

(23:58):
Israelis really toted the remaining part of the Iranian Integrated
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,

(24:19):
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

(24:43):
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

(25:04):
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

(25:26):
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

(25:47):
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.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
Yeah, we you know, the surface maybe made a big
deal about one in the Arsenal ship, which basically does
what these ssg ns uh do. And yeah, I can't
imagine we're going to let that. Of course, I can
imagine a lot of the capacity we let go. We
let go, but I can't imagine we're going to let
that capacity just disappear, and we're going to have to
be really thinking strongly about what we want to do

(26:28):
and where we want to do it, with what equipment.

Speaker 3 (26:31):
You know.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
This is just is in many ways kind of a
classic US operation because we did use our some of
our expensive kit and we did not have to deal
with in this operation these these nouveau tactics with you know,
small drones and other nasty little things that could cause problems.

(26:55):
This is this is a big boy kind of fight.

Speaker 1 (26:58):
And it does the theory to the practice. Now, one
thing that a man to bomber gives you is flexibility,
one of which is the ability to be recalled if
need be, being able to effectively change mission even if
you uh, you know, don't have communications as opposed to

(27:20):
you know, fire, fire the drone and watch from satellites
that you hopefully have access to to see what happens.
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

(27:43):
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

(28:06):
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

(28:27):
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

(28:50):
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.

(29:12):
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

(29:35):
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.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
Yeah, and it's nice to see a politician who takes
office and does exactly what he said he would do.
If if if Iran wouldn't back off on its nuclear program,
he was not going to let them to get nuclear weapons,
So more power to him for that. We tried to
bribe them, we tried everything else that didn't seem to work.

(30:14):
So I mean, sometimes the only thing people understand, especially thugocracies,
is being out thugged. I think they got out thugged
on this one, yep.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
And besides the occasional pinprick where we popped them in
the forehead, like I mentioned praying mantis, in many ways
our actions have encouraged them to think that they could
lie to the international community, lie to US, lie to
their neighbors, lie to their own people, to pursue what
they would see as a unique capability in their part

(30:47):
of the world. I mean, Pakistan has had a nuke
for a long time, but their nukes are all focused
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,

(31:11):
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

(31:36):
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

(31:56):
deceived us pretty well and we did nothing but bomb
the bedrock.

Speaker 2 (32:01):
Yeah, that would be bad. But I think we must
have had some pretty good intelligence. Certainly, the Israelis have
been absolutely spot on with it. They've known about where
things are in Iran and who, in fact where the
people in charge live. So I'm pretty sure we're not

(32:21):
too If we got deceived, it was not. I was
just thinking of the level where they would say, no,
you really didn't get us. Maybe they have a duplicate
system created, but I would think the Israelis would know
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,

(32:43):
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

(33:04):
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

(33:25):
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.

Speaker 1 (33:40):
Whole Arab Palestinian conflict. That calculus has changed so much
in the last few decades, and especially in academia, it
seems like it's always nineteen ninety five on how they
view things. It's like the scariest largest wall between Gaza

(34:01):
and its neighbor is not Gaza and Israel. It was
between Gaza and Egypt, and the Egyptians had a bunch
of left wing European protesters who tried to march to
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

(34:22):
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

(34:46):
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

(35:09):
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.

Speaker 2 (35:24):
Yeah, I think it's for the most part, it's been good.
I think we've had a few international the u N,
the u N. I guess he's the head of the UN.
I'm not sure you know, he doesn't. He's not really
in favor of what we've done. And my attitude toward
that is, well, you pay your own bills for a change,
and we'd be happy to listen to you, but otherwise

(35:48):
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.

Speaker 1 (36:05):
I think we've kind of demonstrated the fact that there's
a new sheriff in town who's not shy and actually
follows through, which has a deterrent effect on itself. Yeah,
the the the UN and a lot of these international
bodies in the last few years, they haven't just shown
the fact that they're they're toothless, they're also counterproductive. Like

(36:26):
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

(36:47):
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,

(37:10):
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

(37:33):
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

(37:55):
not say one way or another.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
Well, if you want to not worry about things, there's
China has come out and said, you know, we the
actions of the US seriously violate the purposes and principles
of the UN Charter, international law and exacerbated tensions in
the Middle East. China calls and the parties to the
conflict Israel, in particular to reach a seafire as soon
as possible and ensure the safety of civilians and start

(38:18):
a dialogue and negotiation. China, in the meantime, is all
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.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
Yeah, they probably had one of their one of their
junior staffers who attended Model u N in high school
and in the US. Go ahead and write that up
because that's kind of random, random uh UN related statement
generator production. Yeah, impressive, you know the grammars better than mine.
But yeah, that's it is it is affable. You look

(39:00):
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.

Speaker 2 (39:12):
Yeah, I don't know, but I just that to me,
that's just first it sounds like a they probably probably
from some stolen AI program they had, they generated that
that complaint. But yeah, that.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
Would be an interesting exercise. Maybe I'll do it if
I have a writer's block, because I think I know
what I want to write it about tomorrow. But if
I have a writer blocks, maybe I'll steal your idea
and go, you know, hat chaby Tea and kroc Uh
generate for me a response from the People's Republic of
China concerning dot dot. Yeah, you're gonna get a response.

Speaker 2 (39:45):
Like yeah, by the way, and I think somebody noticed
this in the the chat room. The the I I
a e A director said that the US did actually
hit the the nuclear sites and that they were extentive
additional damage because the Israeli's hit some of them before.

(40:08):
So that's good. We you know, we've got some some
kind of confirmation.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
Oh you know, blind squirrel nut whole nine yards, so
hopefully they're right.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
Apparently they're GPS jammer in Iran to did not stop
our bombers from finding the right place on the planet.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
Yeah, yeah, but anyway, I think and the and the
shooting's not over with. It might be over with from
the American point of view, but the Israelis they are
they are working into their tertiary target deck right now
because they have aerial supremacy over Iran more than the

(40:48):
US Army Air Corps had over Germany and Japan the
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.

(41:10):
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

(41:34):
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

(41:56):
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

(42:16):
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

(42:39):
we can. But yeah, that that's going to be interesting
to see how far in their tertiary target deck they get.

Speaker 2 (42:48):
Well, I think not you. Net Yahoo has made the
right statements about what Israel's up to. It says the
fighting would end when Israel achieves its goals, and when
we achieve the goals, we will not continue the activity
beyond what it necessary to achieve them. But will You're

(43:08):
not going to end it too soon either, is what
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

(43:32):
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

(43:54):
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,

(44:17):
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

(44:38):
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.

Speaker 1 (44:57):
I mean, that's that's as old as the dawn of time.
So I think that natural friction is going to exist there,
and I ran, really they don't have any friends. They
have proxies, and they have clients for the oil. That's
about it. You know, we sometimes we forget because nations
have agency, and some of our allies are allowed to
have opinions different than ours, and we will disagree and

(45:20):
argue about points of order and individual actions that they
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

(45:42):
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

(46:04):
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

(46:27):
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.

Speaker 2 (46:34):
Yeah, I'm interested in the in the we we all,
you know, I don't we don't like to mess around
too much with the domestic political structure too much. But
I'm interested in the in the protest movements which spring
up rapidly. You know, we're apparently the the the my

(46:54):
era of Vietnam, and protesters have trained the next couple
of generations as well to be We'll have these spontaneous
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,

(47:17):
people all over the place upset by the fact that
the US has taken on the Iranian mulas.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
Yeah, there is a group of people that whatever appears
to make the US strong is bad and they'll want
to protest it. Anything that makes America weak they support,
and they're that's best explained by either a psychiatrist or themselves.
But it's it's hard, it's hard not to notice. It's

(47:48):
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

(48:11):
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,

(48:33):
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

(48:55):
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,

(49:17):
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

(49:38):
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

(50:00):
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,

(50:20):
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

(50:42):
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

(51:03):
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

(51:23):
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.

Speaker 2 (51:41):
But well the size of cruisers, you know, so I
have some uh I kind of laugh at this a
little bit. I mean all this every you know, the
old tin Cans, the old Gearyon class and all those,
you know, they were they were not huge ships. No,
they carried a lot of weaponry for their side. But
I mean the Burke are big ships, and I don't

(52:02):
think adding a commodore to the size of their common
information center and all that places where he's going to
hang out is not going to add substantially to the
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.

(52:25):
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

(52:46):
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

(53:09):
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.

Speaker 3 (53:22):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
You know, we keep saying we need fourteen or sixteen,
and we have what twelve ten, I'm not even sure
anymore eleven? You know, we need we need to and
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

(53:42):
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.

Speaker 1 (53:55):
So so I saw a report that's a thirty two
hour flight.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, thank goodness, they put I
guess a bunk in there and a head and in
a microwave so they could have burritos. I'm sure that
really smells great.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
After Yeah, the B two must smell wonderful when they
get back. In One other detail about the Ford Strike Group,
besides the fact that two of its destroyers have already
you know, headed East, is the air warfare commander. I
mentioned before the Winston S. Churchill as DDG eighty one.

(54:31):
That chip bless her heart, she is twenty four years old.
She's a flight to Alpha. Now she's not even the
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

(54:53):
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.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
Just getting broken in, it's working it out, yeah, you know,
it's like it's like getting about sixty thousand miles on
your car. You know, at some point it just begins
to run like like it's new or better than new.
You know, it's just all smooth. Everything's been ironed out.
Everything was bad as falling off.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
Yeah right, yeah, it's like, yeah, it's been it's been
fifteen years since they classified Inserve, which still is a
is a bur in my saddle about that. So because
I loved reading the Inserve reports and they would come
out because it really told just a story about the
actual condition of our ships when they get underway.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
Well, I think there's some other good news here. The
LCS with the mine hunting unit on it is actually deployed,
I believe, to our rain so along with whatever remnants
of the mind sweeping mine hunting force we have. So
that's good, right, I mean, that's the use for that ship.

Speaker 1 (56:13):
She can run away faster than the other mine.

Speaker 2 (56:15):
Warfare well, you know, give given the constraints of where
they operate and if they have sufficient air cover to
protect them, uh, that that may be a perfect platform
for for doing the kind of work that needs to
be done. And I don't think the crew I'm not
sure what the crew and the old Avengers was, but
I'm pretty maybe about the size of what the crew
of the the LCS is, although then you've got to

(56:38):
add the mine people to that too, So.

Speaker 1 (56:41):
You know, one of the one of the things that
always I always think about mine warfare in the Arabian goals,
depending on the mine A lot of times, you know, thankfully,
a lot of them are the uh you know, the
World War One floating ones at the horns on it,
the whole nine yards, the one that you hit the
Prince and in the the Princeton in the bunker.

Speaker 3 (57:04):
That was it, the.

Speaker 1 (57:04):
Princeton and tank one of our large deck anthets I was,
I was there. I remember back then and but a
lot of the modern minds, you've got to a lot
of times you have to put a diver in the
water and uh, there's lots of snakes and the waters

(57:27):
around there. They don't we don't pay our divers enough money.
They're going to get in the water surrounded by sea snakes,
or you put them in the water and they've got seals.
Who thinks it's entertaining to to try to rip the
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.

(57:49):
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.

Speaker 2 (58:02):
Yeah, I've never heard of a diver dying. Maybe diver
diving from being bit by a snee snake. But yeah,
we've got the I'll just reading about this. We've got
the USS Canberra LCS thirty with the and the Santa
Barbara or the or the ones with the MCM packages

(58:24):
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

(58:46):
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

(59:10):
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

(59:31):
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.

Speaker 1 (59:49):
You just when you're talking about mining, the modern mind
you remind me of is like, where did I read this? Yeah,
if anybody isn't familiar with it, and I don't I
know whether ever wrote about this or not. Maybe if
I haven't, I'm going to look up. I mean, Operation
Midnight Hammer is kind of spot on. But at the

(01:00:14):
end of World War Two we had another spot on
operation called Operation Starvation, which was the aerial mining campaign
by B twenty nine's off Japan. That JISS was tremendously
successful and air drop mines. If you need to lay
an offensive minefield, and even a defensive minefield, if you've

(01:00:36):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):
Yes we did. I was there for that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
P threes can drop mines, pH can. But if you
really need to reach out and wake somebody up. The
Air Force has gotten back into the net game and
they've the quick strike mines is basically your iron bombs
with different fuses and it becomes a mind. Well, they
have a thing called quick Strike Extended Range which quote

(01:01:11):
Mary's a Mark sixty four underwater mine to the jay
Dam extended range variant to strike a target precisely from
standoff range of over forty miles sixty four kilometers. So
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

(01:01:36):
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

(01:01:56):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
UH.

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
Mine warfare. It's not just that World War One era
mine with the horns on it you see floating around
the Black Sea or the Persian Gulf. Modern mind warfare.
It's it's scary and it's dangerous, as any any scammer
can tell you that. If you if you think you
have minds off your port, you're not getting underway. It's

(01:02:26):
just not gonna happen.

Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
Yeah, that's that's always been the you know, I'm a
standard joke, right, how many miles does it take to
close a port? Well, none, just just the announcement that
somebody's minding it, you know, and.

Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
You get await for something you have to go check.

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
You can't got to.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
Wait for people to come sweep them. Yeah, that that
that could that could take.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
A while, or you could take do what we did
during the early stages of one of the Gulf Wars.
I'm losing track the tanker wars UH, when we would
put you know, the tanker bridged in. I think it was,
you know that one of the one of the escorts
head of mine UH and the bridge took the lead
and the outline escorts were following this huge tanker through

(01:03:09):
the gulf because it could take a hit better than
than the escort vessels. Good.

Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
So well, Uh, we've already been here an hour. Okay,
chat away. Uh do we miss anything?

Speaker 2 (01:03:22):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (01:03:23):
In the uh in the chat room, Uh, A lot.

Speaker 2 (01:03:26):
Of pe people have been really talking, you know, comment
amazing good comments, the the the They do note that
h I. Sutton has put out a summary of Iranian minds.
It's available on YouTube, which, if you need the link
is in some money. Helpfully an e C actually linked
to it, so very helpful.

Speaker 1 (01:03:47):
Very very germane Oh and I see we have Matt
Hipple has been very Matthew is that Hipple? Hey Hipple,
glad to have you in the comments section speaking of
mine war for experts. So yeah, he made a very
good point, that little sarcastic I guess that's the sarcastic emojis. Boy,
glad glad we don't have aerial mechanical sweeping anymore. Yeah,

(01:04:10):
fifty three is going to get to you faster than
non existent mind sweepers, that's for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
Yeah. I don't know. I didn't know we'd done away
with that. I thought we still had some fifty three
units doing that. I'm not current, I guess on the
aerial mind sweeping force.

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
Yeah, one just kind of closed the loop. And what
we started with. I mentioned, you know, the right side,
the emotional part of our brain. And when the photographs
came out last night in the situation room as the
strikes were going on, they got a picture of Chairman

(01:04:51):
of the Joint Chiefs, General Kane looking what I don't
know if that's Doo's Holy Diver or that's hook them
horns something from Texas University of Texas. Anyway, two horns down,
and I just put caption contest out there because I
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

(01:05:16):
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

(01:05:39):
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

(01:05:59):
Air Force, worse with an assist from the Navy. So
Bravosulu to everybody. They are really impressive to see.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
Yes, indeed, and we probably hot to wrap this up.
I would like to say that you know there can
be a lot of speculation over the next couple of days.
Don't believe anything. All first reports are always wrong and
wait wait till you get and even sometimes the official
version is not necessarily right, as we know for various reasons.

(01:06:25):
So but just keep your eyes open for any domestic stuff.
And then thanks to the people that the sailors and
the airman who participated in this thing, because it's so
far from what we know. Has been a rousing success.

Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
Amen, and thank you everybody for join us for another
edition of Midrads. And until next time, hope you have
a great Navy day.

Speaker 3 (01:06:49):
Cheers reply worry Paddy, all my many wants to marry
me and leave a friend of becondily for you being

(01:07:11):
to blame my love fairly love me, silly folding your tame.

Speaker 4 (01:07:21):
It's a long way to Dipperary. It's a long way.
It's a long way to Dipperary, to be queen.

Speaker 5 (01:07:39):
Go by, becdi farewell, left dwell, it's a long long
way to differate.

Speaker 4 (01:07:50):
But my lie, my name