January 9, 2026 • 44 mins
Jesse Kelly does a dive deep into the rapid evolution of battlefield lethality – from the explosive drone swarms dominating Ukraine's skies to precision-guided munitions that allow strikes with pinpoint accuracy, and the massive artillery barrages that still grind down defenses through sheer volume. Discover how affordable drones, smart missiles, AI targeting, and next-generation American systems are dramatically increasing kill rates while reshaping strategy for great-power conflicts. What does this new era of hyper-lethal warfare mean for the future of combat? Let's find out.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Modern warfare.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
The wild thing is if you go back to World
War Two, let's say they were learning how to fight
modern warfare, modern for its time. And something that's always
fascinated me, maybe I'm just a huge nerd probably am, is.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
How fast warfare changes.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Speaking of World War two battleships, what's cooler than a battleship? Right,
And before World War Two, battleships were everything. And world
War Two, yes they were used, but battleship not near
as important as an aircraft carrier. If I have an
aircraft carrier full of planes and you have a battleship
with all these guns on it, you're going to die.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
But fast forward to today.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
We've had recently two major conflicts, one still going on
in the globe Russia Ukraine is Rio Gaza. I want
to know how those wars were fought. I want to
know the advance dances in technology. We have AI now
coming into play, drones counter drone technology. I want to know,
or at least I want some idea what future wars
(01:12):
will look like. And the reason I'm fascinated by this
is when I look back at all these other wars
that we fought throughout history, it seems that major powers
most of the time, in certain ways get caught with
their pants down because they weren't quite ready for the
new thing in warfare. So what is the new thing?
(01:35):
You can say, well, we fought in Iraq, we fought
in Afghanistans twenty years ago. Things have changed, all right,
and things have change tomorrow. We thought it would be interesting,
We thought it'd be interesting to bring a couple experts
on and break some of this down for us. So
how have these wars been going, What does the future
look like? What's happening in places like drones online, Russia, Ukraine.
(01:58):
Let's dig into that. We'll talk to you on Spencer next.
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(02:22):
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Speaker 1 (03:12):
Well, as I.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Mentioned in the Open War, changes have you Anybody who's
read any history at all about the history of warfare
knows that it changes, and those changes can be jarring
when you find yourself in a new conflict. And we've
had two real, fairly major wars still have I guess
in the case of Russia Ukraine recently and I have
been banging my head off the desk trying to get
(03:35):
some actual analysis of the combat on the grounds.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
War is so emotional.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
All you get is this person's propaganda and that person's
probably I just want to know what's happening. I want
to know what happened in Godza. I want to know
what's happening in Russia Ukraine. Joining me now, somebody who
can actually give that to us John Spencer, executive director
of the Urban Warfare Institute. John, before we get to
the conflicts, tell us about you.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Sure well, thanks for having me.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
Jesse So I spent twenty five years in the US
Army as an industry soldier. I did my own combat
deployments in the invasion of Iraq and later during the
sectarian biolence and Baghdad. So I have my own urban
warfare experiences. But over a decade ago I was working
in the Pentagon for Forstar General started focusing academically looking
(04:22):
at the history of urban warfare, urbanization around the world,
population growth. I transitioned them to be teaching strategy at
West Point, where I created a research center called the
Modern war Institute. Started focusing for over a decade on writing, researching,
visiting urban battlefields and really becoming the guy. And interestingly
(04:46):
that the world doesn't have people that study specifically urban
warfare nowhere for many reasons. We'll probably talk about the
evolutions of urban warfare. People don't want to do it,
so we haven't invested in really the study of it,
the experts in it, and everything. That leads me to
my current job, which is continuing to build the body
(05:08):
of knowledge on urban warfare and traveling into war zones
with a unique type of research I started doing in
twenty eighteen when I retired from the military, but kept
working on different research projects.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Okay, well, let's dig into that right now before we
get into these other two conflicts, specifically urban warfare. I've
only done a little bit of it in the Marine
Corps training for doing a little bit of it, I've
done enough of it to know it's freaking awful, absolutely awful.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Why it's a great question, and I have I actually
stood up a course in this evolution as well to
teach the only division level course to teach why is
urban warfare hard? And how whenever we met success or
not success? And each one of the services, each military
the world has their own different history street with urban warfare,
(06:01):
and the Marine Corps and like Way and Fallujah and
other places, the US Army as well in World War
Two and Akhan and other places.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
I mean, it's so hard.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Across the evolutions of warfare, really, I mean, urban warfare
really dates back as old as the warfare itself, and
some of the earliest writings on warfare in general and
Egypt are about fighting outside of cities and evolving too,
you know, castle siege warfare, where the objective is the
city inside of the castle, and continuing to involve to
(06:36):
why we have militaries is to move forward of our
cities and attack the military that's approaching. So we don't
have a fight in our city because that's where the
costs are, that's where the political capital is, that's where
the economic engine of nations is. There's many reasons why
the objective has always been urban. But we don't have
a long history of fighting in cities. We have a
(06:58):
long history of fighting four cities. Of course, as warfare,
like you said, changed, so did where did warfare occur
start to change?
Speaker 3 (07:07):
World War one?
Speaker 4 (07:08):
You have for done World War two, you really start
to see major battles for actual cities as the logistical
hubs or the political capitals. If you're season on nation
and you have major urban battles like Stalingrad, Leningrad, American
experiences in Akhan around Bosstone, and you keep evolving. But
(07:31):
there's something that happens really, you know, post World War two,
even the laws of war changed, we don't although we
destroyed lots of cities in World War two, if you
think of back to like Dresden, Tokyo, others where cities
are targeted to try to compel governments to do the
will of the other force. The law of war changed
(07:51):
as well, but that urban warfare continued and actually increased
for many reasons. Really after the Korean War, which saw
a lot of urban warfare as well, we had some
massive shifts in population and urbanization growth. I mean, it
took until nineteen sixty basically for the world to hit
three billion, but by nineteen ninety nine we're at six buildings.
(08:13):
So four decades later, we double the population of the
entire globe. And we also increased cities. Where we had
in the nineteen fifty fifty cities of one million, now
we have two hundred and fifty. And as warfare evolved,
yes we had Vietnam, and you had Way and Saigon
and a few other urban battles, but you still had
(08:34):
mostly fighting outside of the urban areas. As the world
continued to urbanize and population growth, you saw military shrinking
as well, So that becomes also an issue of why
it's so hard. But the simple answer, Jesse, why urban
warfare is so hard is because it's as we have
(08:55):
evolved as nations and as militaries, and as war has evolved.
It's where the military doesn't want to go because it's
where the civilian population is. And really the laws of
war were created to limit the brutality of war on
those not involved, the civilians and their homes and infrastructure
(09:15):
and everything. So once you enter an urban area, it's
already going to be the place where militaries are constrained.
It's also ready made combat and hell and lots of
US forces, marines and others have annotated that in the archives.
Is that's where your weapons get negated, your ability to maneuver,
(09:36):
your ability to mass, your ability to see and shoot
things to be ambushed in the urban terrain, that concrete jungle.
Whoever's in there already, no matter what size they are,
they already have an advantage and can contest that ground.
But really it's so hard because it's where the restrictions
on the use of force and where the defender, if
(09:58):
they get there first, has such a an advantage.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
And that's what we've.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
Seen as we've seen major peer on peer or non
state actor versus state actor wars increasing in urban areas.
It's for those reasons they are the prize, and they
are also in the way because as we've seen in Ukraine,
you're having urban battles in places where in World War
Two you didn't because there wasn't an urban area there
(10:23):
before even the Battle of Kiev. It's the largest encirclement
in history during World War Two and then becomes the
basically the defeat of the Russian objective in the early
Ukrainian War. So there's a long list of reasons, Jesse,
but it's the main reason is that people don't want
to fight there, so that's where the fighting is starting
(10:43):
to happen.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Then let's go to Ukraine.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Let's go to this Russia Ukraine thing, just like the
other conflict we will get to eventually. It's just I
found it so frustrating because the military tactics and things
like that fascinate me, and I'd like to know what's
coming in future.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
It's hard to get accurate information.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
You have all propaganda from here, in propaganda from there,
and this country's propaganda. I want to know what the
actual combat has been like on the ground and what
lessons have we learned as Russia and Ukraine have been
killing each other.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
John, the floor is yours.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
So it I mean to summarize the problem you with
Ukraine as an analyst is that everybody now takes it
for as seen in Ukraine. You really have to go
through the evolutions of the different two and a half
now three plus years of fighting. I specifically got on
the ground immediately after the Russians were defeated at Kiev,
right the capital city, and had Russia developed a plan
(11:44):
and war test all militaries to take Kiv very deliberately,
then we might not be having the war we have now.
You might have an urban insurgency or something like that.
But Russia invaded Ukraine in twenty twenty two with over
two hundred thousand forces. That sounds like a lot, but
if you really look at the force ratio is required
(12:05):
to take a city in general versus the size of
the city, let alone the defenders, and will the population
that is present, which most militaries discount, resist help or.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Be neutral and just hide.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
That's what we saw in the first six months or
so of the wars that Russia attempted a kupd ata.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
It tried to take Ukraine as a nation.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
To include the President's statement, so a lot of people
have done in rebusioness history and why Putin invaded Ukraine
and what he wants. I mean, he said it on
the night of the invasion. He wanted to take the nation,
illegitimate government, to denouncify it whatever. As an analyst as
you with military history will know, I also I looked
at okay, that's the goal, how.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
You're going to do it?
Speaker 4 (12:51):
And he used over two hundred thousand Russian forces that
hadn't been tested in a long time, and he tried
to take seven separate cities simultaneously. I got on the
ground in Kiev immediately after the Russians withdrew in April
twenty twenty two, to see why couldn't they take this
capital city. Yes, it's a city of three million, but
other cities like Baghdad of six million and others had
(13:12):
been taken with much less forces. And there were a
lot of contributing factors. But you know, the population centers
got in the way, the murphy got in the way.
Things didn't work out the way that the Russians wanted
to to take Key, and the civilians resisted. So when
you have tens of thousands of former Soviet soldiers conscripts,
(13:33):
Ukrainian civilians that have AK forty sevens, then it doesn't
matter what your fancy little brigade of mechanized forces is doing,
it's going to run into problems. And that's what you
saw in even mariopl fell. But you saw Sumi, Harkiev,
all these cities holding and the cheer geography of Ukraine
and what was attempted was also not discussed as much
(13:56):
as people thought. As we studied wars and you have
millions of soldiers. Most militaries of the world have shrunk,
and there are a lot of ideals about what can
be done with a smaller, more technological, advanced, more lethal,
more firepower force. But if you're going to take a city,
you still need troops and Russia found that out. Now
(14:20):
that once Russia was defeated in April twenty twenty two,
then they changed their objectives. They pulled out of all
of the major cities and redirected their forces for eastern
and really southern Ukraine and started an offensive there After
they regrouped Ukraine went into basically counteroffensive in the spring
(14:42):
of twenty twenty three leading into the summer, and they
had some successes, but then Russia, using very Russian Soviet
doctrine went into building defensives, massive defensive lines to hold
the ground that they had seized in the eastern portion
of Ukraine. And this is what we've seen now evolve
(15:03):
into a very positional World War One esque trench lines.
But there's so many variables going on in Ukraine. It's
still about city fights. I mean the Battle of bak Moot,
Russians lost forty thousand plus soldiers to take a city.
There's really no tactical or operational advantage. But that's the
history of urban warfare as well, is that they can
(15:25):
come they become outside political objectives and what everybody talks about.
And there are some urban battles happening in Ukraine right now,
but those defensive lines, which are really hard to penetrate
when both sides don't have airpower, so there's no airpower
on either side, nobody can get air supremacy air superiority,
(15:46):
which really changes everything in warfare. Right the whole concept
of World War II breaking of the trench lines, maneuval warfare,
the blitzkrieg, the combination of the tank, the airplane, radio
communication and storm to tract no neither side can do that,
so you have very protracted fights. You also saw Ukrainian
military go from one hundred thousand forces basically in twenty
(16:10):
twenty two to a million in order to fight at
this scale in the terrain of the Russian forces which
started at two hundred thousand, and then they started feeding
hundreds of thousand of forces into these defensive lines they
were building rapidly mobilizing, taking people out of prisons and
off the streets to build this war in flight basically.
(16:33):
But of course everybody likes to talk about the drones, which,
as somebody who studies more than one conflict at once,
I mean, drones are an evolution of air power, you
can call it the chief Man's Air Force. Ukraine had
been invested in drones before, and they actually used some
very powerful drones in the early parts of the war,
and then rapidly increased their production of drones. But in summary, Jesse,
(16:59):
I mean all the casualty figures are hidden. You have
over a million casualties, is what they believe. If you
take up both sides, your Russians four hundred thousand likely
taken more casualties than the Ukrainians. But this is also war.
This isn't warfare. I can talk about all the different
(17:20):
urban fights that have happened in Ukraine. War is the
pursuit of political objectives using all forms of national power.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Your allies do matter.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
The fact that Ukraine has over fifty allies Russia has
very few, the fact that Russia's had to dip dip
into Iran Iran artillery rounds from North Korea North Korean soldiers.
It isn't the great power that people like to believe
it is. And even fighting in Ukraine, and until you
have some breakthrough that isn't seen so far, you have
(17:55):
a protected contest over a very giant piece of geography
with relatively small armies compared to the history of warfare
in this type of fighting.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
All right, John, I have a feeling you and I
could discuss this all day long, and I would greatly
enjoy that, But sadly we are limited, and I still
haven't gotten to the other conflict. It's even more emotional
for people for a variety of reasons, and I totally
understand all those reasons, But I don't care about all
the emotions. I want to know about the combat. The
modern but small Israeli army went down into Gaza and
(18:31):
then had to go underneath Gaza to fight a terrorist
force in tunnels, and ninety nine point nine nine percent
of people don't have any idea what the combat was like,
what were the tactics, because of all.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
The emotions around it. John, once again, my show is yours.
What happened in Gaza?
Speaker 4 (18:51):
So what happened in Gaza is somebody who studies urban
warfare for a very long time, over a decade, hundreds
of articles, case studies, the idea faced in Gaza something
that no military has ever faced in the history of
urban warfare, and I'm talking going back to ancient antiquity,
is in Gaza, while it's a relatively small piece of
(19:13):
ground twenty five miles long, five or seven miles wide,
there's a military in that area, a very large military
of over forty thousand Hamas fighters broken up against five
brigades all across the Gaza Ship, the Gaza Strip, in
twenty five different battalions. Now, Gaza is not the densest
(19:36):
place on Earth, but it's a heavily urbanized area with
twenty four cities, five cities over three hundred thousand, Gaza
city of a million, just the scale of the urban
terrain was going to be a lot for the idea
to face, So that really matters. If you look at
the history of urban warfare, most of the urban fights
(19:57):
are meeting engagements.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Stalin grad you have a.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
Million man military versus a military and mariante that meet
in the city. In Gaza City, you had something very unique,
which is every inch of that ground prepared for war
twenty plus years of preparation, yes, and an underground network
that nobody's ever seen in the history of war either, right,
So over four hundred if not up to six hundred
(20:23):
miles they're still discovering it every day of tunnels in
Gaza underneath every structure. I've now been into Gaza six times.
A bet it with the idea, and it was more
likely than not every step I took there was a
tunnel underneath me. And these tunnels run from just underneath
almost every building to over two hundred feet underground. Some
(20:46):
are five miles long, a mile long. Just basically cities
underneath cities, and like a spider web or what's the
right analogy, Because nobody in the world has even a
transit system, a metro system, not New York City sold
nobody of this scale underneath such a small area of ground.
(21:07):
So the idea of as a combatant force who is
moving into enemy held cities. Let's not forget the rockets,
because Hamas launched four thousand rockets at Gaza, and you
are at Israel, and if you haven't been there, you're
talking like a couple of football fields away.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
You can see it.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
Hamas launched four thousand rockets on the opening morning of
October seventh and never stopped. Really, I mean over thirteen
thousand rockets since the war began coming out of Gaza,
some of those landing inside of Gaza, killing civilians. But
just the enemy sit temp or the enemy situation of
a twenty year prepared defense, not just the underground, but
(21:48):
every building in some way being militarized as a connector
as a cachet for weapons, every hospital being used by
direction of Hamas. This is a form was called lawfare.
Back to those restrictions on the use of warfare that
I talked about, Hamas reverse engineered the laws of war
to try to hide not just in the population but
(22:12):
in the protected sites like hospitals, schools, mosque and everything else.
And lastly, and this is on I'm talking October eighth.
The one thing that the idea faced in Gaza that
nobody else's face is a trapped population. On the opening days,
Egypt initially thought they were going to let civilians out
of Gaza, strip the two million civilians, which it sounds
(22:34):
like a lot, but I fought in the Baghdad neighborhoods
called Soater City of two million just within the city.
But because Egypt said that no civilians could come out
of Gaza, you had two million civilians, some of those
involved in the hostilities as in either are Hamas or
a part of the Palestinian Islamic Jahadan and many other
terrorist groups that are in the city and they're trapped.
(22:58):
So the idea of had to move forward or stop
the rockets, try to retrieve their two hundred and fifty hostages,
all entering an environment prepared for defense and offense with
this super tunnel network, but also twenty thousand rockets and
years of supplies, militarized supplies, RPG, sniper rifles, heavy machine guns,
(23:22):
all of that, and now you have to go in
as a military, like you said, a relatively small military.
They initially used three three divisions to attack this massive
enemy while you're trying to protect your hostages and move
civilians out of harm's way. That's what the Idea faced.
(23:43):
And on the opening days they started getting criticized for
even going into the environment, as in going into Gaza
to retrieve their hostages, to destroy the military force that
just invaded Israel, and to make sure that a new
situation is created so that a threat like that never
happens or an attack like that never happens again. Now,
(24:05):
because I was the urban warfare guy, I became the
guy who started saying what you mainstream media, United Nations
Human Rights Group are saying isn't right about the history
of urban warfare or even what the Idea are doing.
Like the fact that I can say, and I can
still say today that the Idea of have done more
(24:27):
to protect civilians in urban warfare, as in more what
we call civilian harm mitigation measures than any military in
the history, to include the US military, to be frank
in the about not just how they do evacuations as
in giving notice to everybody to get out of a
certain city or a neighborhood because that's where the hamas
(24:49):
are that I need to attack, but the way they
do the roof knocking, the way that they do daily
pauses during the battles, the way that they targeting. Just
this long list of over twenty things that they do
called civilian harmed mitigation measures that no military has ever
tried before. Yes, we've all dropped flyers on cities and
(25:12):
told civilians if we have the time, and it doesn't
disadvantage the military objective, because when I invaded Iraq in
two thousand and three, we didn't give advanced notice and
time for civilians to get out of cities. We of
course follow all the laws of war, but that's not
a requirement. But because of the context of Gazla, that
was a necessity to get the civilians out of harm's
(25:34):
way and at least get some of the areas where
the Idea weren't initially maneuvering towards.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
And this is what we've seen.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
And despite all of these never seen before in urban
warfare history variables, the idea prosecuted the war very discriminatively,
and I think actually less than we would have had
there been in October seventh on our border based on
the sky, the size of our military, our national interest
(26:04):
to achieve those same goals of returning our hostages, defeating
that military, and making sure they don't ever get the
idea to do it again. The Idea doesn't have that
type of combat power, so they did it methodically, area
by area and surprisingly despite that, underground cities, despite the
fact that every neighborhood is a trap basically of IEDs
(26:27):
and cachets and fighters popping suicidal fighters popping up everywhere.
This is what the Idea faced on a day to
day basis. They still succeeded using very creative tactics, techniques, procedures,
but also just resolve to destroy the Hamasa's military. Now
Hamas is also an ideal, but from a military perspective,
(26:51):
Hamasa's military doesn't exist anymore. There's no leadership that was
a part of October six that's still alive.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
There may be one brigade commander.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
I think is that most of the formations can't conduct
military operations at all, not organized as they went into
gerrilla warfare during the war, which is not surprising. But yes,
they've increased the recruitment, but this goes back to what
are the tactics of Hamas. Of course, the tunnel warfare
is the tactics, but also the deployment of child soldiers.
(27:23):
The average Hamas recruit right now is fifteen to sixteen.
The use of human shields, the use of information operations,
which is really what we've seen, not new as well,
it's just the amount of production of media that Hamas does,
the daily counting of anybody who's died for any reason,
and blaming on Israel, but also just make up numbers
(27:45):
and statistics and statistical warfare. But despite all of that,
Israel has actually had a lot of success. I mean,
as we're talking, there's one hostage body remaining in Gaza.
Hamas doesn't have a military as a course of power
over the population for now, it doesn't have a vast
array of supplies. It's been cut off. The Egypt border
(28:09):
has been sealed. But what's been surprising about this whole war,
unlike even Ukraine war, because Russians attacked mary Opal and
attacked hospitals and everything, the population of course moved and
had a way to move and then moved into other countries.
Has been the misinformation about the war in Kaza. You're right,
(28:31):
we shouldn't do emotions. That's normal in this evolution of
the history. Of urban warfare too. There's never been a battle,
let alone a war that's been fought at this amount
of transparency or even propaganda misinformation capability because of TikTok
(28:53):
and other algorithm driven mediums of that Hamas fed so
Maas had like Hamas, that wing of its military, the
propaganda wing that had Hollywood crews that would go out
and create capture they call it Gaza Wood or Pollywood
and create scenarios of dead bodies either real or not,
(29:14):
of starvation and everything, and feed the algorithm based on
what was trending. That's unique in war, while information operation
has always been their war.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
But you know, war is hell.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
War is awful, destruction and killing and no matter how
many civilians you try to get out of harm's ways,
civilians and other young women, children, everything. Had other wars
been fought like the Korean War where two million civilians
died in thirty seven months, that's fifty four thousand civilians
a month, every month of the war and just awful scenes.
(29:50):
Had that been fed to the phones of every living individual, billions,
wars might have went in a different direction. So that
there is an Israeli standard to war. That aspect of
the information operations, and everybody's saying, well, look at this
dead body, John Spencer, what do you say about this
dead child right here?
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Like that? I say that's terrible.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
I also say that the algorithm is now driving every
one of those images to you, and not all of
those are real. But this is the unique Not only
is there a misinformation, there's an access to this war
at a scale again unprecedented in the urban environment that
nobody's seen, which has led to emotions being fed by
(30:36):
real concern but also being fed by misinformation, disinformation and
all this other unique creative things of like trying to
use statistical warfare, but you were saying how many people died,
irrelevant whether they were particular participating in the hostilities, whether
you call them a combatant or just involved or not,
(30:57):
or their age, their sex, and just trying to fight
these moral equivalency war against Israel, who of course has
the legitimate right to defend itself, to retrieve its hostages,
but also to execute the war in a very just, humane,
law abiding way. But then for the entire kind of
(31:21):
global misinformation thing to try to say they're not even
when they don't have the access to the information, which
is really again.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Where I came in is like I don't want to
listen to anybody.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
I want to see it from my own eyes and
bed with the idea and see what's going on.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
John.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
That was freaking awesome man. Thank you brother. I wish
I could keep you for longer. I appreciate you very much.
We're not done yet. We have someone else next. Let
me lay this out for you three months, ninety days.
What if in three months you could have great energy
all day long, not just in the morning after a
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to do it without needles in your arm or pills
or something. Try it ninety days is all I'm asking.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Try it.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Chalk dot Com, slash Jesse TV. The future of warfare
as we've been talking about. I find it to be
fascinating horrifying, of course, but I'd like to try to
know what might be coming. Joining me now somebody who's
(33:05):
all over this stuff, Open source intelligence analyst Ryan McBeth
would highly highly recommend his YouTube channel if you nerd
out on this stuff like I do. Ryan McBeth Programming, Ryan,
I can't help it.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
I'm a huge nerd for this stuff.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
I look back at past wars and I see how
things change and it gets people.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Killed, and you're all over this stuff. In fact, you
have a video out, Yes.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
I watched it talking about how war in twenty twenty
six does it look like what you think it will
look like?
Speaker 1 (33:33):
What do you mean?
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Absolutely.
Speaker 5 (33:37):
I mean we tend to think of conflict in the
terms of people shooting at each other, but there is
another type of conflict, the Gerassimov doctrine or hybrid war.
This is something that Russia pioneered where they use lawfare,
legal methods, they use information warfare, and they use different
(33:57):
kinds of kinetic actions to create effects on target. And
good example is let's say you don't want to send
you don't want the US sending one hundred and fifty
five millimeter shells to Ukraine. Well, one way of preventing
that might be to use a bomber and launch a
cruise missile against the factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania. That would
(34:20):
be a way of.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Destroying the factory.
Speaker 5 (34:23):
And now you can't send one hundred and fifty five
milimeters artillery shells to Ukraine, but that would get the
United States involved in a war with Russia, and Russia
doesn't want that because we would probably end it in
about thirty six hours. So what you could also do
is put information out on social media and say half
(34:44):
of all one hundred and fifty five millimeter shells are
actually going to cartels in Mexico. Ukraine is selling them
to these cartels. Now I haven't seen any cartels one
hundred and fifty five millimeter cannons, but.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
If enough people believe it, they call.
Speaker 5 (34:58):
Their congressman, and the congressman gets or prevents more shells
being sent to Ukraine. So the effect is the same,
which is why I've always said information warfare is a
weapons effector.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
I love that, although it does terrify me, especially when
I consider and I'm learning more about this stuff from
my kids. I'm technology stupid, but every day they tell
me about there's some new app, there's some new thing,
and I'm serious. There's always something new that I'd never
heard of before. There's so much information, so many social
media sites out there. It is scary to think about
(35:35):
bad regimes figuring out ways to weaponize it.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
But they're all in on this, aren't they, I believe.
Speaker 5 (35:41):
So right now I am looking for information. I have
software running on Renee Nicole Good, who is the woman
who was shot by ice agents in Minneapolis. And what's
kind of interesting is that a very specific word keeps
popping up, the word legal observer, And so I've been
tracking that word and seeing who is repeating the word
(36:05):
legal observer, because it sounds like that is something that
is scripted, and that might be scripted internally, or there
may be external influencers such as Russia or China or
Iran that are trying to get Americans angry at each other.
And the word legal observer kind of sounds like someone
who's holding up a cell phone and auditing the police,
(36:26):
you know that kind of thing. And if everyone is
on the same page, well, that kind of tells you
that someone has either seated this information or is directing
this information. And there is a term that I callkership,
And I've often said that there are some people in
Congress that practice likership, not leadership. And that is when
(36:49):
they say they give their hot take on Twitter or
on whatever, people like their comments. They go, oh, yes,
I must be really smart because people liked my comment.
I got a thousand likes on this and getting that like,
getting that validation is a very powerful incentive for a
lot of people. So if someone sees the word legal
(37:11):
observer trending, they might think, oh, that might get me
a lot of likes too. And now this information keeps
flowing and flowing, and more and more people could get fooled.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Told you this guy was fascinating, Ryan. What are semiconductors?
It sounds like something I would hold up to get
lightning to strike it. What are they and why should
I care?
Speaker 5 (37:33):
Well, I can say microchips.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
Right.
Speaker 5 (37:36):
So, Taiwan, and one of the reasons that we're very
interested in defending Taiwan. We just sold them more high
mars systems, more missile systems. Semiconductors are in the device
that I'm talking to you on right now. My camera
is an old iPhone. My computer has semiconductors. My cell
(37:58):
phone right here has semiconductors in it. This microphone that
I'm using has semiconductors. So if we enjoy our American
way of life with all sorts of tech, I mean,
my washing machine plays a little song when it's done. Now,
that isn't an advanced semiconductor that you might find in
a computer, but it is still a semiconductor and Taiwan
(38:19):
produces ninety percent of semiconductors that are used by technology
that we have in our computers that we use in
our everyday life. So having semiconductors and the ability to
manufacture semiconductors is crucial for defending your nation. Semiconductors today
are the steel of World War Two.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
So how many do we make?
Speaker 5 (38:47):
We don't make that many. Taiwan makes about ninety percent
of our advanced semiconductors. I can't really give you a
number in the millions. We just recently opened up a fab,
or we're starting to open up a fab, and I
belie believe it was Arizona that was an Intel fab,
and I think in Nvidia wants to man create a
fab here as well. That was part of the Chipsack
(39:07):
which was a bipartisan act that was passed to kind
of subsidize that. The problem is that it takes a
lot of startup time and a lot of skill, and semiconductors,
when you look at how they're manufactured, it is incredibly
labor intensive, incredibly water intensive, incredibly power intensive, and it's
not easy. People have said that some of the semiconductor
(39:31):
manufacturing machines from ASML, which is a Dutch company, that
there's explosives inside the fabs in Taiwan, So if the
Chinese invade, they'll just cut off the you know, set
off the explosives and destroy the building. And you can
probably stop semiconductor manufacturing by just blowing on the machine
wrong because these machines are highly calibrated, and ASML contractors
(39:57):
they fly to Taiwan periodically and they maintain the machine.
So if you shut down the machine and correctly, you
might not be able to start it up again with
an SML contractor coming over and rewiring the machine, checking
it to make sure it's okay. So Sunday. Conductors are
incredibly important to America's wartime strategies and our ability to
(40:20):
build weapons.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
They need a lot of water, so we put it
in Arizona. Okay, that makes a lot of sense, all right, Ryan.
Drone capability, Obviously, drones are something that even normies know
about drones and how much drones are being used in
places like Russia, Ukraine. My interest is in countering them. Eventually,
every weapons system gets a counter to it. What is
(40:44):
the counter to drones? Is there one yet?
Speaker 5 (40:47):
Well, there's a number of different counters to drones. The
first is electronic warfare. You're jamming the signal that that
drone is using to be controlled. So if I set
off off a drone, I fly that drone. I can
use electronic warfare to override that signal and the drone
will theoretically.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Fall out of the air.
Speaker 5 (41:07):
Another way is with anti drone jammers that are handheld.
In that case, I point a thing it looks like
a gun, I pointed out the drone, and I pull
the trigger and I essentially send every single shutdown code,
every single transmitted shutdown code in memory to that drone.
Eventually the correct one hits and that drone shuts down
(41:27):
and falls out of the sky. Then there's other kinds
of interceptors, such as you can use counter drone drones,
and these drones will either crash into the drone directly,
shoot at the drone with essentially a modified shotgun, or
fire a net at that drone. The net method might
(41:48):
actually be a good way for police to take down drones.
Well that's a little shaky because the FAA considers drones
to be aircraft, So imagine the police shooting down an aircraft.
The FCS or the fa doesn't really have a consider
a difference. And of course the fourth way would be
through kinetic action, shooting it down with missiles or shooting
(42:11):
it down with gunfire, and there's issues with that. If
you're using a regular missile. Many of those missiles are
extremely expensive. If you fire one hundred thousand dollars missile
at a twenty thousand dollars drone, you're on the losing
end of that economic equation. And if you shoot it
a drone with a gun, I mean, that's great, but
(42:32):
you might not be able to hit it and that
bullet has to come down somewhere. So really, the most
effective way of countering drones is using other drones.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Gosh, I want a drone that shoots nets so bad now, Ryan,
Thank you, brother, I appreciate it as always, come back
soon please, all right?
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Final thoughts next. I love chips.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Everyone who knows me would describe me as not just
being a rogue guy, a chip guy.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
I just have a chip freak.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
But that's a problem, you see, because I'm also forty
four and I'm not twenty four anymore, and chips generally
are terrible for you. I've always been that guy gas
station grabbing some chips, grocery store grabbing some chips. Can't
do that anymore. Have you read the ingredients? Have you
read the ingredients on the back of your chip bag?
Speaker 1 (43:22):
Horrifying? So what to do? What to do? I'm not
giving up chips. I don't have to give up chips.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
I have massive chips, now, massive chips, chips I can
eat gilt free. Look at the back of a bag
of massive chips, no seed oil, fils, tallows corn, and
they're fantastic to crunch. They're so crunching. You want a
perfect snap bag of massive chips. Little thing of hot Sauce,
(43:47):
Little dab on there all you need go try them
Massive chips, dot com slash JESSETV. War is terrifying, but
it's also interesting. Let's be honest. We're interested in it.
(44:08):
I am, you are, and.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
Not just the past, the future.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
When the next major war breaks out, and there's always
going to be one, what is it going to look like.
I'm glad we're a little bit smarter now than we
were an hour ago. This is not the last time
we're going to do something like this. Because I geek
out on it. I know you geek out on it,
but I enjoyed it, and we'll do it again.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Let's see it
Modern warfare.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
The wild thing is if you go back to World
War Two, let's say they were learning how to fight
modern warfare, modern for its time. And something that's always
fascinated me, maybe I'm just a huge nerd probably am, is.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
How fast warfare changes.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Speaking of World War two battleships, what's cooler than a battleship? Right,
And before World War Two, battleships were everything. And world
War Two, yes they were used, but battleship not near
as important as an aircraft carrier. If I have an
aircraft carrier full of planes and you have a battleship
with all these guns on it, you're going to die.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
But fast forward to today.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
We've had recently two major conflicts, one still going on
in the globe Russia Ukraine is Rio Gaza. I want
to know how those wars were fought. I want to
know the advance dances in technology. We have AI now
coming into play, drones counter drone technology. I want to know,
or at least I want some idea what future wars
(01:12):
will look like. And the reason I'm fascinated by this
is when I look back at all these other wars
that we fought throughout history, it seems that major powers
most of the time, in certain ways get caught with
their pants down because they weren't quite ready for the
new thing in warfare. So what is the new thing?
(01:35):
You can say, well, we fought in Iraq, we fought
in Afghanistans twenty years ago. Things have changed, all right,
and things have change tomorrow. We thought it would be interesting,
We thought it'd be interesting to bring a couple experts
on and break some of this down for us. So
how have these wars been going, What does the future
look like? What's happening in places like drones online, Russia, Ukraine.
(01:58):
Let's dig into that. We'll talk to you on Spencer next.
I love my cell phone company. I am so big
on hiring Americans. As we wake up every single day
and we look at the news and we find out
about this corporation fired one thousand americans, hired one thousand foreigners,
this corporation gets busted for having all these illegals. I
have grown more and more aware as I age about
(02:22):
companies that prioritize hiring Americans, American jobs for Americans.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
That's what pure talk does.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
When you make the switch to pure talk, when you
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(02:50):
priority to keep American jobs in America, and I love that.
Make the switch save some money prioritize America pure talk
dot com slash jessetv.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Well, as I.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Mentioned in the Open War, changes have you Anybody who's
read any history at all about the history of warfare
knows that it changes, and those changes can be jarring
when you find yourself in a new conflict. And we've
had two real, fairly major wars still have I guess
in the case of Russia Ukraine recently and I have
been banging my head off the desk trying to get
(03:35):
some actual analysis of the combat on the grounds.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
War is so emotional.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
All you get is this person's propaganda and that person's
probably I just want to know what's happening. I want
to know what happened in Godza. I want to know
what's happening in Russia Ukraine. Joining me now, somebody who
can actually give that to us John Spencer, executive director
of the Urban Warfare Institute. John, before we get to
the conflicts, tell us about you.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Sure well, thanks for having me.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
Jesse So I spent twenty five years in the US
Army as an industry soldier. I did my own combat
deployments in the invasion of Iraq and later during the
sectarian biolence and Baghdad. So I have my own urban
warfare experiences. But over a decade ago I was working
in the Pentagon for Forstar General started focusing academically looking
(04:22):
at the history of urban warfare, urbanization around the world,
population growth. I transitioned them to be teaching strategy at
West Point, where I created a research center called the
Modern war Institute. Started focusing for over a decade on writing, researching,
visiting urban battlefields and really becoming the guy. And interestingly
(04:46):
that the world doesn't have people that study specifically urban
warfare nowhere for many reasons. We'll probably talk about the
evolutions of urban warfare. People don't want to do it,
so we haven't invested in really the study of it,
the experts in it, and everything. That leads me to
my current job, which is continuing to build the body
(05:08):
of knowledge on urban warfare and traveling into war zones
with a unique type of research I started doing in
twenty eighteen when I retired from the military, but kept
working on different research projects.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Okay, well, let's dig into that right now before we
get into these other two conflicts, specifically urban warfare. I've
only done a little bit of it in the Marine
Corps training for doing a little bit of it, I've
done enough of it to know it's freaking awful, absolutely awful.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Why it's a great question, and I have I actually
stood up a course in this evolution as well to
teach the only division level course to teach why is
urban warfare hard? And how whenever we met success or
not success? And each one of the services, each military
the world has their own different history street with urban warfare,
(06:01):
and the Marine Corps and like Way and Fallujah and
other places, the US Army as well in World War
Two and Akhan and other places.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
I mean, it's so hard.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Across the evolutions of warfare, really, I mean, urban warfare
really dates back as old as the warfare itself, and
some of the earliest writings on warfare in general and
Egypt are about fighting outside of cities and evolving too,
you know, castle siege warfare, where the objective is the
city inside of the castle, and continuing to involve to
(06:36):
why we have militaries is to move forward of our
cities and attack the military that's approaching. So we don't
have a fight in our city because that's where the
costs are, that's where the political capital is, that's where
the economic engine of nations is. There's many reasons why
the objective has always been urban. But we don't have
a long history of fighting in cities. We have a
(06:58):
long history of fighting four cities. Of course, as warfare,
like you said, changed, so did where did warfare occur
start to change?
Speaker 3 (07:07):
World War one?
Speaker 4 (07:08):
You have for done World War two, you really start
to see major battles for actual cities as the logistical
hubs or the political capitals. If you're season on nation
and you have major urban battles like Stalingrad, Leningrad, American
experiences in Akhan around Bosstone, and you keep evolving. But
(07:31):
there's something that happens really, you know, post World War two,
even the laws of war changed, we don't although we
destroyed lots of cities in World War two, if you
think of back to like Dresden, Tokyo, others where cities
are targeted to try to compel governments to do the
will of the other force. The law of war changed
(07:51):
as well, but that urban warfare continued and actually increased
for many reasons. Really after the Korean War, which saw
a lot of urban warfare as well, we had some
massive shifts in population and urbanization growth. I mean, it
took until nineteen sixty basically for the world to hit
three billion, but by nineteen ninety nine we're at six buildings.
(08:13):
So four decades later, we double the population of the
entire globe. And we also increased cities. Where we had
in the nineteen fifty fifty cities of one million, now
we have two hundred and fifty. And as warfare evolved,
yes we had Vietnam, and you had Way and Saigon
and a few other urban battles, but you still had
(08:34):
mostly fighting outside of the urban areas. As the world
continued to urbanize and population growth, you saw military shrinking
as well, So that becomes also an issue of why
it's so hard. But the simple answer, Jesse, why urban
warfare is so hard is because it's as we have
(08:55):
evolved as nations and as militaries, and as war has evolved.
It's where the military doesn't want to go because it's
where the civilian population is. And really the laws of
war were created to limit the brutality of war on
those not involved, the civilians and their homes and infrastructure
(09:15):
and everything. So once you enter an urban area, it's
already going to be the place where militaries are constrained.
It's also ready made combat and hell and lots of
US forces, marines and others have annotated that in the archives.
Is that's where your weapons get negated, your ability to maneuver,
(09:36):
your ability to mass, your ability to see and shoot
things to be ambushed in the urban terrain, that concrete jungle.
Whoever's in there already, no matter what size they are,
they already have an advantage and can contest that ground.
But really it's so hard because it's where the restrictions
on the use of force and where the defender, if
(09:58):
they get there first, has such a an advantage.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
And that's what we've.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
Seen as we've seen major peer on peer or non
state actor versus state actor wars increasing in urban areas.
It's for those reasons they are the prize, and they
are also in the way because as we've seen in Ukraine,
you're having urban battles in places where in World War
Two you didn't because there wasn't an urban area there
(10:23):
before even the Battle of Kiev. It's the largest encirclement
in history during World War Two and then becomes the
basically the defeat of the Russian objective in the early
Ukrainian War. So there's a long list of reasons, Jesse,
but it's the main reason is that people don't want
to fight there, so that's where the fighting is starting
(10:43):
to happen.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Then let's go to Ukraine.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Let's go to this Russia Ukraine thing, just like the
other conflict we will get to eventually. It's just I
found it so frustrating because the military tactics and things
like that fascinate me, and I'd like to know what's
coming in future.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
It's hard to get accurate information.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
You have all propaganda from here, in propaganda from there,
and this country's propaganda. I want to know what the
actual combat has been like on the ground and what
lessons have we learned as Russia and Ukraine have been
killing each other.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
John, the floor is yours.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
So it I mean to summarize the problem you with
Ukraine as an analyst is that everybody now takes it
for as seen in Ukraine. You really have to go
through the evolutions of the different two and a half
now three plus years of fighting. I specifically got on
the ground immediately after the Russians were defeated at Kiev,
right the capital city, and had Russia developed a plan
(11:44):
and war test all militaries to take Kiv very deliberately,
then we might not be having the war we have now.
You might have an urban insurgency or something like that.
But Russia invaded Ukraine in twenty twenty two with over
two hundred thousand forces. That sounds like a lot, but
if you really look at the force ratio is required
(12:05):
to take a city in general versus the size of
the city, let alone the defenders, and will the population
that is present, which most militaries discount, resist help or.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Be neutral and just hide.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
That's what we saw in the first six months or
so of the wars that Russia attempted a kupd ata.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
It tried to take Ukraine as a nation.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
To include the President's statement, so a lot of people
have done in rebusioness history and why Putin invaded Ukraine
and what he wants. I mean, he said it on
the night of the invasion. He wanted to take the nation,
illegitimate government, to denouncify it whatever. As an analyst as
you with military history will know, I also I looked
at okay, that's the goal, how.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
You're going to do it?
Speaker 4 (12:51):
And he used over two hundred thousand Russian forces that
hadn't been tested in a long time, and he tried
to take seven separate cities simultaneously. I got on the
ground in Kiev immediately after the Russians withdrew in April
twenty twenty two, to see why couldn't they take this
capital city. Yes, it's a city of three million, but
other cities like Baghdad of six million and others had
(13:12):
been taken with much less forces. And there were a
lot of contributing factors. But you know, the population centers
got in the way, the murphy got in the way.
Things didn't work out the way that the Russians wanted
to to take Key, and the civilians resisted. So when
you have tens of thousands of former Soviet soldiers conscripts,
(13:33):
Ukrainian civilians that have AK forty sevens, then it doesn't
matter what your fancy little brigade of mechanized forces is doing,
it's going to run into problems. And that's what you
saw in even mariopl fell. But you saw Sumi, Harkiev,
all these cities holding and the cheer geography of Ukraine
and what was attempted was also not discussed as much
(13:56):
as people thought. As we studied wars and you have
millions of soldiers. Most militaries of the world have shrunk,
and there are a lot of ideals about what can
be done with a smaller, more technological, advanced, more lethal,
more firepower force. But if you're going to take a city,
you still need troops and Russia found that out. Now
(14:20):
that once Russia was defeated in April twenty twenty two,
then they changed their objectives. They pulled out of all
of the major cities and redirected their forces for eastern
and really southern Ukraine and started an offensive there After
they regrouped Ukraine went into basically counteroffensive in the spring
(14:42):
of twenty twenty three leading into the summer, and they
had some successes, but then Russia, using very Russian Soviet
doctrine went into building defensives, massive defensive lines to hold
the ground that they had seized in the eastern portion
of Ukraine. And this is what we've seen now evolve
(15:03):
into a very positional World War One esque trench lines.
But there's so many variables going on in Ukraine. It's
still about city fights. I mean the Battle of bak Moot,
Russians lost forty thousand plus soldiers to take a city.
There's really no tactical or operational advantage. But that's the
history of urban warfare as well, is that they can
(15:25):
come they become outside political objectives and what everybody talks about.
And there are some urban battles happening in Ukraine right now,
but those defensive lines, which are really hard to penetrate
when both sides don't have airpower, so there's no airpower
on either side, nobody can get air supremacy air superiority,
(15:46):
which really changes everything in warfare. Right the whole concept
of World War II breaking of the trench lines, maneuval warfare,
the blitzkrieg, the combination of the tank, the airplane, radio
communication and storm to tract no neither side can do that,
so you have very protracted fights. You also saw Ukrainian
military go from one hundred thousand forces basically in twenty
(16:10):
twenty two to a million in order to fight at
this scale in the terrain of the Russian forces which
started at two hundred thousand, and then they started feeding
hundreds of thousand of forces into these defensive lines they
were building rapidly mobilizing, taking people out of prisons and
off the streets to build this war in flight basically.
(16:33):
But of course everybody likes to talk about the drones, which,
as somebody who studies more than one conflict at once,
I mean, drones are an evolution of air power, you
can call it the chief Man's Air Force. Ukraine had
been invested in drones before, and they actually used some
very powerful drones in the early parts of the war,
and then rapidly increased their production of drones. But in summary, Jesse,
(16:59):
I mean all the casualty figures are hidden. You have
over a million casualties, is what they believe. If you
take up both sides, your Russians four hundred thousand likely
taken more casualties than the Ukrainians. But this is also war.
This isn't warfare. I can talk about all the different
(17:20):
urban fights that have happened in Ukraine. War is the
pursuit of political objectives using all forms of national power.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Your allies do matter.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
The fact that Ukraine has over fifty allies Russia has
very few, the fact that Russia's had to dip dip
into Iran Iran artillery rounds from North Korea North Korean soldiers.
It isn't the great power that people like to believe
it is. And even fighting in Ukraine, and until you
have some breakthrough that isn't seen so far, you have
(17:55):
a protected contest over a very giant piece of geography
with relatively small armies compared to the history of warfare
in this type of fighting.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
All right, John, I have a feeling you and I
could discuss this all day long, and I would greatly
enjoy that, But sadly we are limited, and I still
haven't gotten to the other conflict. It's even more emotional
for people for a variety of reasons, and I totally
understand all those reasons, But I don't care about all
the emotions. I want to know about the combat. The
modern but small Israeli army went down into Gaza and
(18:31):
then had to go underneath Gaza to fight a terrorist
force in tunnels, and ninety nine point nine nine percent
of people don't have any idea what the combat was like,
what were the tactics, because of all.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
The emotions around it. John, once again, my show is yours.
What happened in Gaza?
Speaker 4 (18:51):
So what happened in Gaza is somebody who studies urban
warfare for a very long time, over a decade, hundreds
of articles, case studies, the idea faced in Gaza something
that no military has ever faced in the history of
urban warfare, and I'm talking going back to ancient antiquity,
is in Gaza, while it's a relatively small piece of
(19:13):
ground twenty five miles long, five or seven miles wide,
there's a military in that area, a very large military
of over forty thousand Hamas fighters broken up against five
brigades all across the Gaza Ship, the Gaza Strip, in
twenty five different battalions. Now, Gaza is not the densest
(19:36):
place on Earth, but it's a heavily urbanized area with
twenty four cities, five cities over three hundred thousand, Gaza
city of a million, just the scale of the urban
terrain was going to be a lot for the idea
to face, So that really matters. If you look at
the history of urban warfare, most of the urban fights
(19:57):
are meeting engagements.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Stalin grad you have a.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
Million man military versus a military and mariante that meet
in the city. In Gaza City, you had something very unique,
which is every inch of that ground prepared for war
twenty plus years of preparation, yes, and an underground network
that nobody's ever seen in the history of war either, right,
So over four hundred if not up to six hundred
(20:23):
miles they're still discovering it every day of tunnels in
Gaza underneath every structure. I've now been into Gaza six times.
A bet it with the idea, and it was more
likely than not every step I took there was a
tunnel underneath me. And these tunnels run from just underneath
almost every building to over two hundred feet underground. Some
(20:46):
are five miles long, a mile long. Just basically cities
underneath cities, and like a spider web or what's the
right analogy, Because nobody in the world has even a
transit system, a metro system, not New York City sold
nobody of this scale underneath such a small area of ground.
(21:07):
So the idea of as a combatant force who is
moving into enemy held cities. Let's not forget the rockets,
because Hamas launched four thousand rockets at Gaza, and you
are at Israel, and if you haven't been there, you're
talking like a couple of football fields away.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
You can see it.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
Hamas launched four thousand rockets on the opening morning of
October seventh and never stopped. Really, I mean over thirteen
thousand rockets since the war began coming out of Gaza,
some of those landing inside of Gaza, killing civilians. But
just the enemy sit temp or the enemy situation of
a twenty year prepared defense, not just the underground, but
(21:48):
every building in some way being militarized as a connector
as a cachet for weapons, every hospital being used by
direction of Hamas. This is a form was called lawfare.
Back to those restrictions on the use of warfare that
I talked about, Hamas reverse engineered the laws of war
to try to hide not just in the population but
(22:12):
in the protected sites like hospitals, schools, mosque and everything else.
And lastly, and this is on I'm talking October eighth.
The one thing that the idea faced in Gaza that
nobody else's face is a trapped population. On the opening days,
Egypt initially thought they were going to let civilians out
of Gaza, strip the two million civilians, which it sounds
(22:34):
like a lot, but I fought in the Baghdad neighborhoods
called Soater City of two million just within the city.
But because Egypt said that no civilians could come out
of Gaza, you had two million civilians, some of those
involved in the hostilities as in either are Hamas or
a part of the Palestinian Islamic Jahadan and many other
terrorist groups that are in the city and they're trapped.
(22:58):
So the idea of had to move forward or stop
the rockets, try to retrieve their two hundred and fifty hostages,
all entering an environment prepared for defense and offense with
this super tunnel network, but also twenty thousand rockets and
years of supplies, militarized supplies, RPG, sniper rifles, heavy machine guns,
(23:22):
all of that, and now you have to go in
as a military, like you said, a relatively small military.
They initially used three three divisions to attack this massive
enemy while you're trying to protect your hostages and move
civilians out of harm's way. That's what the Idea faced.
(23:43):
And on the opening days they started getting criticized for
even going into the environment, as in going into Gaza
to retrieve their hostages, to destroy the military force that
just invaded Israel, and to make sure that a new
situation is created so that a threat like that never
happens or an attack like that never happens again. Now,
(24:05):
because I was the urban warfare guy, I became the
guy who started saying what you mainstream media, United Nations
Human Rights Group are saying isn't right about the history
of urban warfare or even what the Idea are doing.
Like the fact that I can say, and I can
still say today that the Idea of have done more
(24:27):
to protect civilians in urban warfare, as in more what
we call civilian harm mitigation measures than any military in
the history, to include the US military, to be frank
in the about not just how they do evacuations as
in giving notice to everybody to get out of a
certain city or a neighborhood because that's where the hamas
(24:49):
are that I need to attack, but the way they
do the roof knocking, the way that they do daily
pauses during the battles, the way that they targeting. Just
this long list of over twenty things that they do
called civilian harmed mitigation measures that no military has ever
tried before. Yes, we've all dropped flyers on cities and
(25:12):
told civilians if we have the time, and it doesn't
disadvantage the military objective, because when I invaded Iraq in
two thousand and three, we didn't give advanced notice and
time for civilians to get out of cities. We of
course follow all the laws of war, but that's not
a requirement. But because of the context of Gazla, that
was a necessity to get the civilians out of harm's
(25:34):
way and at least get some of the areas where
the Idea weren't initially maneuvering towards.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
And this is what we've seen.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
And despite all of these never seen before in urban
warfare history variables, the idea prosecuted the war very discriminatively,
and I think actually less than we would have had
there been in October seventh on our border based on
the sky, the size of our military, our national interest
(26:04):
to achieve those same goals of returning our hostages, defeating
that military, and making sure they don't ever get the
idea to do it again. The Idea doesn't have that
type of combat power, so they did it methodically, area
by area and surprisingly despite that, underground cities, despite the
fact that every neighborhood is a trap basically of IEDs
(26:27):
and cachets and fighters popping suicidal fighters popping up everywhere.
This is what the Idea faced on a day to
day basis. They still succeeded using very creative tactics, techniques, procedures,
but also just resolve to destroy the Hamasa's military. Now
Hamas is also an ideal, but from a military perspective,
(26:51):
Hamasa's military doesn't exist anymore. There's no leadership that was
a part of October six that's still alive.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
There may be one brigade commander.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
I think is that most of the formations can't conduct
military operations at all, not organized as they went into
gerrilla warfare during the war, which is not surprising. But yes,
they've increased the recruitment, but this goes back to what
are the tactics of Hamas. Of course, the tunnel warfare
is the tactics, but also the deployment of child soldiers.
(27:23):
The average Hamas recruit right now is fifteen to sixteen.
The use of human shields, the use of information operations,
which is really what we've seen, not new as well,
it's just the amount of production of media that Hamas does,
the daily counting of anybody who's died for any reason,
and blaming on Israel, but also just make up numbers
(27:45):
and statistics and statistical warfare. But despite all of that,
Israel has actually had a lot of success. I mean,
as we're talking, there's one hostage body remaining in Gaza.
Hamas doesn't have a military as a course of power
over the population for now, it doesn't have a vast
array of supplies. It's been cut off. The Egypt border
(28:09):
has been sealed. But what's been surprising about this whole war,
unlike even Ukraine war, because Russians attacked mary Opal and
attacked hospitals and everything, the population of course moved and
had a way to move and then moved into other countries.
Has been the misinformation about the war in Kaza. You're right,
(28:31):
we shouldn't do emotions. That's normal in this evolution of
the history. Of urban warfare too. There's never been a battle,
let alone a war that's been fought at this amount
of transparency or even propaganda misinformation capability because of TikTok
(28:53):
and other algorithm driven mediums of that Hamas fed so
Maas had like Hamas, that wing of its military, the
propaganda wing that had Hollywood crews that would go out
and create capture they call it Gaza Wood or Pollywood
and create scenarios of dead bodies either real or not,
(29:14):
of starvation and everything, and feed the algorithm based on
what was trending. That's unique in war, while information operation
has always been their war.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
But you know, war is hell.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
War is awful, destruction and killing and no matter how
many civilians you try to get out of harm's ways,
civilians and other young women, children, everything. Had other wars
been fought like the Korean War where two million civilians
died in thirty seven months, that's fifty four thousand civilians
a month, every month of the war and just awful scenes.
(29:50):
Had that been fed to the phones of every living individual, billions,
wars might have went in a different direction. So that
there is an Israeli standard to war. That aspect of
the information operations, and everybody's saying, well, look at this
dead body, John Spencer, what do you say about this
dead child right here?
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Like that? I say that's terrible.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
I also say that the algorithm is now driving every
one of those images to you, and not all of
those are real. But this is the unique Not only
is there a misinformation, there's an access to this war
at a scale again unprecedented in the urban environment that
nobody's seen, which has led to emotions being fed by
(30:36):
real concern but also being fed by misinformation, disinformation and
all this other unique creative things of like trying to
use statistical warfare, but you were saying how many people died,
irrelevant whether they were particular participating in the hostilities, whether
you call them a combatant or just involved or not,
(30:57):
or their age, their sex, and just trying to fight
these moral equivalency war against Israel, who of course has
the legitimate right to defend itself, to retrieve its hostages,
but also to execute the war in a very just, humane,
law abiding way. But then for the entire kind of
(31:21):
global misinformation thing to try to say they're not even
when they don't have the access to the information, which
is really again.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Where I came in is like I don't want to
listen to anybody.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
I want to see it from my own eyes and
bed with the idea and see what's going on.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
John.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
That was freaking awesome man. Thank you brother. I wish
I could keep you for longer. I appreciate you very much.
We're not done yet. We have someone else next. Let
me lay this out for you three months, ninety days.
What if in three months you could have great energy
all day long, not just in the morning after a
(32:00):
night's sleep. I'm talking after launch too, when you want
to take a nap of it. What if you just
felt good at work all the time. You're not staring
at the clock. I can't wait to get What if
you just felt good all day long? I'm telling you
right now. A chalk Male Vitality stack or female Vitality
stack is life changing natural herbal supplements. It's been I
(32:24):
think it's been four years. I've been taking in one
every single day. It has changed my life. I'm better
at work, I'm better at home on the weekends. I
don't want to lay around. It's just so nice and
to do it without needles in your arm or pills
or something. Try it ninety days is all I'm asking.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Try it.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Chalk dot Com, slash Jesse TV. The future of warfare
as we've been talking about. I find it to be
fascinating horrifying, of course, but I'd like to try to
know what might be coming. Joining me now somebody who's
(33:05):
all over this stuff, Open source intelligence analyst Ryan McBeth
would highly highly recommend his YouTube channel if you nerd
out on this stuff like I do. Ryan McBeth Programming, Ryan,
I can't help it.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
I'm a huge nerd for this stuff.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
I look back at past wars and I see how
things change and it gets people.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Killed, and you're all over this stuff. In fact, you
have a video out, Yes.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
I watched it talking about how war in twenty twenty
six does it look like what you think it will
look like?
Speaker 1 (33:33):
What do you mean?
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Absolutely.
Speaker 5 (33:37):
I mean we tend to think of conflict in the
terms of people shooting at each other, but there is
another type of conflict, the Gerassimov doctrine or hybrid war.
This is something that Russia pioneered where they use lawfare,
legal methods, they use information warfare, and they use different
(33:57):
kinds of kinetic actions to create effects on target. And
good example is let's say you don't want to send
you don't want the US sending one hundred and fifty
five millimeter shells to Ukraine. Well, one way of preventing
that might be to use a bomber and launch a
cruise missile against the factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania. That would
(34:20):
be a way of.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Destroying the factory.
Speaker 5 (34:23):
And now you can't send one hundred and fifty five
milimeters artillery shells to Ukraine, but that would get the
United States involved in a war with Russia, and Russia
doesn't want that because we would probably end it in
about thirty six hours. So what you could also do
is put information out on social media and say half
(34:44):
of all one hundred and fifty five millimeter shells are
actually going to cartels in Mexico. Ukraine is selling them
to these cartels. Now I haven't seen any cartels one
hundred and fifty five millimeter cannons, but.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
If enough people believe it, they call.
Speaker 5 (34:58):
Their congressman, and the congressman gets or prevents more shells
being sent to Ukraine. So the effect is the same,
which is why I've always said information warfare is a
weapons effector.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
I love that, although it does terrify me, especially when
I consider and I'm learning more about this stuff from
my kids. I'm technology stupid, but every day they tell
me about there's some new app, there's some new thing,
and I'm serious. There's always something new that I'd never
heard of before. There's so much information, so many social
media sites out there. It is scary to think about
(35:35):
bad regimes figuring out ways to weaponize it.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
But they're all in on this, aren't they, I believe.
Speaker 5 (35:41):
So right now I am looking for information. I have
software running on Renee Nicole Good, who is the woman
who was shot by ice agents in Minneapolis. And what's
kind of interesting is that a very specific word keeps
popping up, the word legal observer, And so I've been
tracking that word and seeing who is repeating the word
(36:05):
legal observer, because it sounds like that is something that
is scripted, and that might be scripted internally, or there
may be external influencers such as Russia or China or
Iran that are trying to get Americans angry at each other.
And the word legal observer kind of sounds like someone
who's holding up a cell phone and auditing the police,
(36:26):
you know that kind of thing. And if everyone is
on the same page, well, that kind of tells you
that someone has either seated this information or is directing
this information. And there is a term that I callkership,
And I've often said that there are some people in
Congress that practice likership, not leadership. And that is when
(36:49):
they say they give their hot take on Twitter or
on whatever, people like their comments. They go, oh, yes,
I must be really smart because people liked my comment.
I got a thousand likes on this and getting that like,
getting that validation is a very powerful incentive for a
lot of people. So if someone sees the word legal
(37:11):
observer trending, they might think, oh, that might get me
a lot of likes too. And now this information keeps
flowing and flowing, and more and more people could get fooled.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Told you this guy was fascinating, Ryan. What are semiconductors?
It sounds like something I would hold up to get
lightning to strike it. What are they and why should
I care?
Speaker 5 (37:33):
Well, I can say microchips.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
Right.
Speaker 5 (37:36):
So, Taiwan, and one of the reasons that we're very
interested in defending Taiwan. We just sold them more high
mars systems, more missile systems. Semiconductors are in the device
that I'm talking to you on right now. My camera
is an old iPhone. My computer has semiconductors. My cell
(37:58):
phone right here has semiconductors in it. This microphone that
I'm using has semiconductors. So if we enjoy our American
way of life with all sorts of tech, I mean,
my washing machine plays a little song when it's done. Now,
that isn't an advanced semiconductor that you might find in
a computer, but it is still a semiconductor and Taiwan
(38:19):
produces ninety percent of semiconductors that are used by technology
that we have in our computers that we use in
our everyday life. So having semiconductors and the ability to
manufacture semiconductors is crucial for defending your nation. Semiconductors today
are the steel of World War Two.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
So how many do we make?
Speaker 5 (38:47):
We don't make that many. Taiwan makes about ninety percent
of our advanced semiconductors. I can't really give you a
number in the millions. We just recently opened up a fab,
or we're starting to open up a fab, and I
belie believe it was Arizona that was an Intel fab,
and I think in Nvidia wants to man create a
fab here as well. That was part of the Chipsack
(39:07):
which was a bipartisan act that was passed to kind
of subsidize that. The problem is that it takes a
lot of startup time and a lot of skill, and semiconductors,
when you look at how they're manufactured, it is incredibly
labor intensive, incredibly water intensive, incredibly power intensive, and it's
not easy. People have said that some of the semiconductor
(39:31):
manufacturing machines from ASML, which is a Dutch company, that
there's explosives inside the fabs in Taiwan, So if the
Chinese invade, they'll just cut off the you know, set
off the explosives and destroy the building. And you can
probably stop semiconductor manufacturing by just blowing on the machine
wrong because these machines are highly calibrated, and ASML contractors
(39:57):
they fly to Taiwan periodically and they maintain the machine.
So if you shut down the machine and correctly, you
might not be able to start it up again with
an SML contractor coming over and rewiring the machine, checking
it to make sure it's okay. So Sunday. Conductors are
incredibly important to America's wartime strategies and our ability to
(40:20):
build weapons.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
They need a lot of water, so we put it
in Arizona. Okay, that makes a lot of sense, all right, Ryan.
Drone capability, Obviously, drones are something that even normies know
about drones and how much drones are being used in
places like Russia, Ukraine. My interest is in countering them. Eventually,
every weapons system gets a counter to it. What is
(40:44):
the counter to drones? Is there one yet?
Speaker 5 (40:47):
Well, there's a number of different counters to drones. The
first is electronic warfare. You're jamming the signal that that
drone is using to be controlled. So if I set
off off a drone, I fly that drone. I can
use electronic warfare to override that signal and the drone
will theoretically.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Fall out of the air.
Speaker 5 (41:07):
Another way is with anti drone jammers that are handheld.
In that case, I point a thing it looks like
a gun, I pointed out the drone, and I pull
the trigger and I essentially send every single shutdown code,
every single transmitted shutdown code in memory to that drone.
Eventually the correct one hits and that drone shuts down
(41:27):
and falls out of the sky. Then there's other kinds
of interceptors, such as you can use counter drone drones,
and these drones will either crash into the drone directly,
shoot at the drone with essentially a modified shotgun, or
fire a net at that drone. The net method might
(41:48):
actually be a good way for police to take down drones.
Well that's a little shaky because the FAA considers drones
to be aircraft, So imagine the police shooting down an aircraft.
The FCS or the fa doesn't really have a consider
a difference. And of course the fourth way would be
through kinetic action, shooting it down with missiles or shooting
(42:11):
it down with gunfire, and there's issues with that. If
you're using a regular missile. Many of those missiles are
extremely expensive. If you fire one hundred thousand dollars missile
at a twenty thousand dollars drone, you're on the losing
end of that economic equation. And if you shoot it
a drone with a gun, I mean, that's great, but
(42:32):
you might not be able to hit it and that
bullet has to come down somewhere. So really, the most
effective way of countering drones is using other drones.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Gosh, I want a drone that shoots nets so bad now, Ryan,
Thank you, brother, I appreciate it as always, come back
soon please, all right?
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Final thoughts next. I love chips.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Everyone who knows me would describe me as not just
being a rogue guy, a chip guy.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
I just have a chip freak.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
But that's a problem, you see, because I'm also forty
four and I'm not twenty four anymore, and chips generally
are terrible for you. I've always been that guy gas
station grabbing some chips, grocery store grabbing some chips. Can't
do that anymore. Have you read the ingredients? Have you
read the ingredients on the back of your chip bag?
Speaker 1 (43:22):
Horrifying? So what to do? What to do? I'm not
giving up chips. I don't have to give up chips.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
I have massive chips, now, massive chips, chips I can
eat gilt free. Look at the back of a bag
of massive chips, no seed oil, fils, tallows corn, and
they're fantastic to crunch. They're so crunching. You want a
perfect snap bag of massive chips. Little thing of hot Sauce,
(43:47):
Little dab on there all you need go try them
Massive chips, dot com slash JESSETV. War is terrifying, but
it's also interesting. Let's be honest. We're interested in it.
(44:08):
I am, you are, and.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
Not just the past, the future.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
When the next major war breaks out, and there's always
going to be one, what is it going to look like.
I'm glad we're a little bit smarter now than we
were an hour ago. This is not the last time
we're going to do something like this. Because I geek
out on it. I know you geek out on it,
but I enjoyed it, and we'll do it again.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Let's see it
Host
Jesse Kelly
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