WEBVTT - War in Iran is Chewing Through American Missile Stockpiles 0:00:02.720 --> 0:00:16.520 Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:21.680 Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Laws podcast. 0:00:21.800 --> 0:00:24.160 I'm Joe Wisenthal, and I'm Tracy Alloway. 0:00:24.520 --> 0:00:27.319 Tracy, you know, I think we're roughly maybe a little 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:29.840 bit less than two weeks into the war in Iran. 0:00:29.960 --> 0:00:33.519 We are recording this March twelfth, twenty twenty six, and 0:00:33.640 --> 0:00:35.920 there are of course extraordinary number of questions about the 0:00:36.000 --> 0:00:39.479 timing and the duration of the war. We know already 0:00:39.520 --> 0:00:43.080 that the economic impact has been quite significant, particularly if 0:00:43.080 --> 0:00:46.120 you just look at commodity markets. But one of the 0:00:46.240 --> 0:00:49.800 questions that sort of may help determine timing or outcome. 0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:52.159 I guess you know when we talked about this in 0:00:53.560 --> 0:00:56.800 after the war in Ukraine started. Wars are about supply 0:00:56.920 --> 0:01:01.560 chains in large sense, and quite obviously, wars are about 0:01:01.920 --> 0:01:04.280 size and the scale of the arsenals and how fast 0:01:04.319 --> 0:01:05.319 they can be replenished. 0:01:05.400 --> 0:01:08.960 Right, Two things I know wars logistics, yes, and also 0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:10.600 war is a racket. And the only reason I know 0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:12.920 that is because I just literally downloaded the book, so 0:01:12.959 --> 0:01:14.440 I'll know more about that in a second. 0:01:14.520 --> 0:01:16.080 But you're absolutely right. 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:19.520 I do not like talking about war or conflict or 0:01:19.760 --> 0:01:22.600 military stuff in general, but I do enjoy talking about 0:01:22.600 --> 0:01:23.440 supply chains. 0:01:23.560 --> 0:01:25.520 And there's one crucial supply. 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:28.919 Chain that we haven't really discussed in detail ever before, 0:01:28.959 --> 0:01:31.600 but it keeps coming up more and more in this conflict. 0:01:32.000 --> 0:01:35.399 Yeah, that's right. So obviously, you know, you see these 0:01:35.560 --> 0:01:37.880 numbers and I don't know how real they are, but 0:01:38.000 --> 0:01:41.840 their extraordinary. You know, that's like Iran can launch an 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:46.520 attack against a military base and in nearby country, et cetera. 0:01:46.800 --> 0:01:50.120 So I'll just talk about the extraordinary efficacy of cheap 0:01:50.280 --> 0:01:52.560 drones and so forth, and then you hear about the 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:55.320 extraordinary cost of basilid defense, right. 0:01:55.120 --> 0:01:59.480 So putting on our old international relations hat. Yeah, A 0:01:59.520 --> 0:02:01.320 lot of what we used to study was this idea 0:02:01.320 --> 0:02:04.320 of asymmetric warfare, right, And the classic examples that would 0:02:04.320 --> 0:02:07.120 come up would be guerrilla warfare, where you know, you 0:02:07.200 --> 0:02:12.840 have a less well equipped army that is engaging in 0:02:13.280 --> 0:02:18.360 exhausting skirmishes against like a better equipped, larger army, and 0:02:18.400 --> 0:02:20.919 it's a way of like offsetting their own weaknesses against 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:24.720 the strengths of another force. Nowadays, we don't really have 0:02:24.800 --> 0:02:28.480 that kind of ground conflict knock on wood, but you're 0:02:28.520 --> 0:02:31.560 seeing it, some people say, play out in this arena 0:02:31.600 --> 0:02:34.160 of missiles, which is really where all this conflict is 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:36.520 playing out is in the missile space. So you hear 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:39.880 these stories about like Iran is launching these drones that 0:02:40.000 --> 0:02:43.480 cost I think twenty five thousand dollars upopo some of them, 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:46.800 or putting minds in the Strait of Hormuz, which are 0:02:46.800 --> 0:02:50.320 also very cheap relative to some other tactics. And meanwhile 0:02:50.400 --> 0:02:53.240 you hear things like, well, the UAE's missile defense system 0:02:53.440 --> 0:02:57.880 costs like millions of dollars per pop literally per pop 0:02:58.120 --> 0:03:01.040 against a drone. And meanwhile the US is firing you know, 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:04.720 interceptor missiles or whatever that cost again millions and millions 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:05.240 of dollars. 0:03:05.560 --> 0:03:07.960 Yeah, and you hear and you know, again the math, 0:03:08.160 --> 0:03:11.320 the sort of missile math, seems very lopsided. And then 0:03:11.400 --> 0:03:13.880 of course the question is just the pure numbers and 0:03:13.919 --> 0:03:16.559 how many do you have? And what is the capacity 0:03:16.639 --> 0:03:20.440 to ramp up production, et cetera. All huge questions that. 0:03:20.400 --> 0:03:22.919 Are where do missiles actually come from? 0:03:23.040 --> 0:03:23.679 Where they made? 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:24.079 That's right? 0:03:24.080 --> 0:03:26.880 Anyway, we have a ton of questions and we don't 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:28.600 have the answers, but we're going to learn a lot. 0:03:28.639 --> 0:03:31.519 We have the perfect guest, someone who knows about this intimately, 0:03:31.560 --> 0:03:34.280 someone who focuses on this entirely. We're going to be 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:37.840 speaking with Tom Kerrico, Senior Fellow and director of the 0:03:37.880 --> 0:03:41.440 Missile Defense Project at CSIS, and he's going to walk 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:43.120 us through all of this and how to think about 0:03:43.280 --> 0:03:46.040 the supply chain of these armaments. So, Tom, thank you 0:03:46.080 --> 0:03:47.520 so much for coming on odd Lacks. 0:03:47.880 --> 0:03:49.000 Hey, great to be with y'all. 0:03:49.440 --> 0:03:51.360 Thank you so much. What do you tell us just 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:53.240 to begin? What do you do? What is the focus 0:03:53.240 --> 0:03:53.680 of your work? 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:56.400 CSIS Center for Strategic International Studies, I would say, is 0:03:56.400 --> 0:03:58.600 the main defense think tank in Washington, d C. It's 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:01.680 been around since you know, I think the sixties in 0:04:01.680 --> 0:04:06.000 the Cold War. And within CSI asked, there's sort of 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:08.800 the department that focuses on hard power to focus on 0:04:08.840 --> 0:04:12.839 defense department centric things, and within that I run the 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:19.120 Missile Defense Project And so basically think mud to space, uads, 0:04:19.400 --> 0:04:23.400 cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, space sensors, you know, everything in 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:26.880 that window, both offense and defense is what my team 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:31.040 kind of studies, writes about, comments upon and hosts just 0:04:31.440 --> 0:04:32.839 a lot of events and commentary. 0:04:33.839 --> 0:04:36.240 Actually, before we even get into missiles, this is a 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:38.160 question I wanted to ask, but why do we have 0:04:38.440 --> 0:04:41.360 defense think tanks anyway? 0:04:41.520 --> 0:04:42.440 Like why do these exist? 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:44.880 Because if you think about military conflict in the US, 0:04:45.160 --> 0:04:49.360 presumably there should just be one actor engaged in military 0:04:49.400 --> 0:04:52.160 conflict with other states at any one moment of time, 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:54.960 and that's the actual US government, the Department of Defense 0:04:55.000 --> 0:04:58.320 slash Department of War. Why do we need private actors 0:04:58.440 --> 0:05:04.760 opining on military Harry tactic strategy, supply chains at all. 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:07.600 Yeah, that's a good question, that's a fair question, and 0:05:07.680 --> 0:05:11.320 I think I would answer it with what folks coming 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:15.160 out of d D always say, which is is the 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:20.440 world's largest bureaucracy, and quite literally, they don't have time 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:23.280 to think that. That is what senior officials say all 0:05:23.320 --> 0:05:25.520 the time. And when you go in you also tend 0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:28.440 not to have new ideas, and so it's kind of 0:05:28.440 --> 0:05:33.360 an opportunity for idea generation. And this is not my formulation, 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:35.120 this is what you frequently hear from people who go 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:38.719 in and out of government that they need those idea 0:05:38.800 --> 0:05:41.920 generation in a way to be contracted out by those 0:05:41.960 --> 0:05:44.320 people who have time. And so, having said that, a 0:05:44.320 --> 0:05:46.440 lot of people who go into government come from the 0:05:46.480 --> 0:05:49.479 think tank world, come from the policy worlds, I think 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:52.240 I would put it rather, and they go out. I 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:56.880 think they write some things, they reflect on things, and 0:05:56.920 --> 0:05:59.000 study things, and then they kind of perhaps go back 0:05:59.040 --> 0:06:01.320 in to together. 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:05.359 Let's talk about from the outside perspective. You know, you 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:09.200 try to estimate the size of the arsenal various different 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:13.120 weapons that the US has. How transparent is the government 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:17.159 about the size of stockpiles? And how much is one's 0:06:17.240 --> 0:06:20.200 job from the think tank world from the outside an 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:24.280 exercise and triangulation, inference and so forth to be able 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:27.359 to understand these things. And then just like after besides 0:06:27.440 --> 0:06:31.080 this sort of approach you take to measuring these things, 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:33.040 what are some of the numbers that we're talking about 0:06:33.080 --> 0:06:33.440 right now. 0:06:34.600 --> 0:06:38.200 Yeah, So, look, it's got a very case to case. 0:06:38.640 --> 0:06:40.599 But I would say in many respects, although it's the 0:06:40.600 --> 0:06:45.039 government's job to keep a number of things secret so 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:47.560 that the bad guys don't know exactly what we have 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:50.600 or how many we have, rather I would nevertheless say 0:06:50.600 --> 0:06:54.560 that to a very large extent, we are a democracy, 0:06:54.920 --> 0:06:58.320 and a lot of detail is available in the budget 0:06:58.320 --> 0:07:00.240 books that go over to Congress every year. One of 0:07:00.240 --> 0:07:03.279 the budget request, the annual Lune request, comes out and 0:07:03.360 --> 0:07:07.360 so there is a pretty good amount of tracking. If 0:07:07.400 --> 0:07:10.160 you want to understand what kind of defense department you have, 0:07:10.240 --> 0:07:12.840 look at the money, and so there's a there's a 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:15.840 decent amount of information out there about you might say, 0:07:15.880 --> 0:07:20.480 the garden variety missiles, the garden variety capabilities that have 0:07:20.560 --> 0:07:24.920 to be you know, deliberated, appropriated by Congress, and then 0:07:25.000 --> 0:07:29.320 also built by industry. And so while exact numbers are 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:33.160 kept sensitive, you can get pretty close in terms of 0:07:33.600 --> 0:07:37.440 these dollars and this number of rounds you can get. 0:07:37.920 --> 0:07:38.760 You can get pretty close. 0:07:38.960 --> 0:07:41.000 Can you For those who haven't been following this as 0:07:41.040 --> 0:07:44.600 intensely as you have, can you paint a schematic of 0:07:44.920 --> 0:07:47.800 the kind of missiles where we're talking about when we 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:51.200 talk about the situation in Iran right now? And what 0:07:51.360 --> 0:07:54.840 exactly are the different missile types being used for I know, 0:07:55.400 --> 0:07:58.640 guys love talking about missile names right and being like 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:01.920 armchair militaries. So some people might know this already, but 0:08:01.960 --> 0:08:03.960 for the benefit of those of us who have it, 0:08:04.160 --> 0:08:06.360 you know, we just see a missile and it's a missile. 0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:09.160 What are the different types that are currently being deployed? 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:15.040 Basically, there's platforms and there's projectiles. You know, aircraft, ground vehicles, 0:08:15.400 --> 0:08:17.680 ships and this sort of thing. But basically, since the 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:23.160 nineteen sixties there's been a high, high degree of emphasis 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:28.320 on essentially guided missiles, precision guide of munitions of various kinds, 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:35.000 and also standoff capability and so you know, indirect fire cannons, guns, 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:38.840 this kind of thing began to be replaced by much 0:08:38.880 --> 0:08:41.760 more over the horizon capabilities that could fly out of 0:08:41.760 --> 0:08:44.160 good ways come back down, and especially in terms of 0:08:44.240 --> 0:08:46.760 terminal guidance, could then find a ship on the ocean, 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:51.000 or find using terrain mapping or what have you. So basically, 0:08:51.040 --> 0:08:54.600 since the kind of the precision guidance revolution in the 0:08:54.640 --> 0:08:58.960 seventies especially, just been an enormous amount of progress. And 0:08:59.040 --> 0:09:02.720 so frankly, this tech technological progress is no longer that 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:05.920 a monopoly of the United States as it perhaps once was. 0:09:05.960 --> 0:09:09.400 It's ubiquitous even folks like Iran, North Korea and that 0:09:09.480 --> 0:09:13.240 kind of thing habit. And so that's the baseline. And 0:09:13.320 --> 0:09:16.800 so there's Look, there's different kinds of missile ry, and 0:09:16.880 --> 0:09:20.000 a missile etymologically speaking, is simply that which is sent. 0:09:20.679 --> 0:09:26.120 There's ballistic missiles, the fly gravity's rainbow mostly unpowered for 0:09:26.240 --> 0:09:29.600 most of their flight, cruise missiles that are essentially aerodynamic 0:09:29.679 --> 0:09:32.840 and use lift and drag to travel, some kind of 0:09:33.040 --> 0:09:35.920 jet engine or what have you. And then there's these 0:09:35.920 --> 0:09:38.200 new classes of things that are kind of blending. You know, 0:09:38.240 --> 0:09:41.600 people talk about hypersonic gliders that may start off with 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:44.920 a ballistic push, but then have the maneuver the speed 0:09:44.920 --> 0:09:49.360 of a ballistic missile, but the maneuverability of a cruise 0:09:49.400 --> 0:09:51.719 missile or aircraft, you might say. And so it's a 0:09:51.760 --> 0:09:55.680 it's a rich and diverse spectrum that has emerged over 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:59.400 the years. And as a former Biden administration officials said, 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:02.360 and I like to repe missiles truly have become weapons 0:10:02.400 --> 0:10:05.640 of choice. It's the thing for which we reach early 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:08.280 and often in a conflict, and largely because of the 0:10:08.320 --> 0:10:12.280 combination of that precision guidance and that standoff capability. And 0:10:12.320 --> 0:10:15.440 so when the first Trump administration wanted to go hit Syria, 0:10:15.920 --> 0:10:18.440 you know, they sent fifty nine Tomahawks, that's a cruise 0:10:18.520 --> 0:10:21.719 missile to go get them. And in this conflict there 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:24.960 has been enormous, and I would say a scary amount 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:27.520 of missiles expended on the part of the United States, 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:30.040 hundreds and hundreds on the part of Iran lashing out 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:33.680 basically all of their neighbors with the combination of ballistics, 0:10:34.200 --> 0:10:38.000 and a lot of these drones are essentially cruise missiles. 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:40.320 When you're over one thousand colinars in range, you know 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:44.200 it's essentially a cruise missile, these heads, for instance. And 0:10:44.240 --> 0:10:48.040 so then you have the missile defense world. And you know, 0:10:48.120 --> 0:10:50.640 it wasn't that long ago when in polite society it 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:53.720 was conventional wisdom that it was impossible to hit a 0:10:53.720 --> 0:10:57.880 bullet with a bullet. Over the past especially five years, 0:10:58.559 --> 0:11:03.640 that has been completely utterly refuted, and in conflict after 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:07.320 conflict in Ukraine, in the Red Sea operations, in the 0:11:07.360 --> 0:11:10.240 defense of Israel a couple of times now we've seen 0:11:10.240 --> 0:11:15.559 an extraordinary degree of missiles being defeated by a combination 0:11:15.600 --> 0:11:18.360 of effects, not just missile on missile, but a combination 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:21.239 of effects. And now you know, we're kind of surprised 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:24.400 when we miss at some of these things. And what 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:27.640 was once an American idiosyncrasy, the pursuit of this missile 0:11:27.679 --> 0:11:31.920 defense capability is now very much a global phenomenon. After 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:36.960 the Ukraine conflict, especially in Europe, the European Sky Shield Initiative, 0:11:37.280 --> 0:11:40.680 Germany buying and Israeli Aero three system for ballistic missile 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:44.120 defense has been a sea change. The demand signals, the 0:11:44.160 --> 0:11:47.680 supply and demand signal of long range standoff and the 0:11:47.760 --> 0:11:50.280 means to contend with it is very much a global phenomenon. 0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:53.439 I'll say that the top two priorities for aid for 0:11:53.559 --> 0:11:57.400 Ukraine over the past four years were what long range fires, 0:11:57.679 --> 0:12:02.120 missiles and a defense. They went so fares to put 0:12:02.120 --> 0:12:05.280 the Patriot launch rot on their currency because it has 0:12:05.400 --> 0:12:08.240 basically kept them kept them sovereign. And these are the 0:12:08.240 --> 0:12:09.040 top I didn't know that. 0:12:09.440 --> 0:12:09.840 It's fun. 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:11.319 I've got one on my office. 0:12:11.840 --> 0:12:13.520 Right, the currency, not the missile. 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:16.359 Right. I'm still trying to buy a Patriot for they 0:12:16.400 --> 0:12:18.200 won't again working on it. 0:12:33.000 --> 0:12:35.600 That was already extremely helpful. But just to go back, 0:12:35.760 --> 0:12:38.319 use the word scary to talk about the sort of 0:12:38.440 --> 0:12:41.560 volume of activity that the US has or how much 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:44.520 we've fired already. What did you mean by that? Unpacked 0:12:44.559 --> 0:12:45.600 that statement a little bit. 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:49.840 Yeah, So let me just say that missile defense will 0:12:49.840 --> 0:12:52.600 not win a war for you, but its absence will 0:12:52.600 --> 0:12:55.400 lose one, or could lose one pretty quickly. And so 0:12:55.480 --> 0:12:58.319 I said a moment ago that Ukraine the missile defense 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:02.360 has helped keep Ukraine sovereign right. If not for being 0:13:02.400 --> 0:13:06.160 able to thwart these incoming era and missile attacks, it 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:09.439 would have been a very different situation. Let go back 0:13:09.440 --> 0:13:13.120 to the last summer in the hundreds of missiles six 0:13:13.240 --> 0:13:15.920 hundred and fifty projectiles from multiple parts of the Middle 0:13:15.960 --> 0:13:18.720 East coming at Israel all at once during the Twelve 0:13:18.800 --> 0:13:22.120 Day War. If those hundreds and hundreds of objects had 0:13:22.240 --> 0:13:24.559 arrived all at once as they were intended to do, 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:26.800 in a place the size of New Jersey, it would 0:13:26.840 --> 0:13:31.920 have been catastrophic. Surprisingly enough, almost everything was defeated. And 0:13:31.960 --> 0:13:37.040 so it is missile defense buys time to end the 0:13:37.080 --> 0:13:40.640 threat by other means, it does not end the threat itself. Now, 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:43.600 what I said last summer after that conflict ended the 0:13:43.640 --> 0:13:47.880 Trump administration basically through the Iranians a lifeline and said, hey, 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:50.880 we're going to stop. I said, that's going to be 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:53.400 a mistake, because what's going to happen is the Iranians 0:13:53.440 --> 0:13:55.480 are going to rebuild, and then we're going to come 0:13:55.520 --> 0:13:57.320 and we're going to do this again in a year 0:13:57.440 --> 0:13:59.160 or so. And I was wrong because it didn't take 0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:02.360 a year nine months. And why that matters, and why 0:14:02.360 --> 0:14:06.640 it's scary is because it's about capacity. Capacity of defensive 0:14:06.640 --> 0:14:09.800 interceptors buys time, but it takes a heck of a 0:14:09.800 --> 0:14:12.640 lot of time to produce that capacity. And so this 0:14:12.960 --> 0:14:16.640 gets to the specter an ope coming out on this, 0:14:16.960 --> 0:14:20.960 the specter of going Winchester, of running out of defensive interceptors, 0:14:20.960 --> 0:14:22.960 and that would be a very bad day. And so 0:14:23.000 --> 0:14:25.080 when you talk you hundreds and hundreds of missiles are 0:14:25.080 --> 0:14:28.520 going to require hundreds of interceptors. That was last year 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:30.800 again this year, and so that's the scary part is 0:14:31.120 --> 0:14:34.560 is the massive expenditure of these things. And I want 0:14:34.560 --> 0:14:38.280 to quote General Kaine, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, 0:14:38.280 --> 0:14:40.400 who said, who's asked do we have enough? And he said, 0:14:40.600 --> 0:14:43.280 we have enough for this conflict. That is not the 0:14:43.320 --> 0:14:46.160 same as saying that we have enough for the other 0:14:46.240 --> 0:14:50.440 tasks that we have around the world, most significantly deterring 0:14:50.680 --> 0:14:53.840 a conflict with China. And so we have now cut 0:14:53.840 --> 0:14:58.920 in very substantially to our total inventory of missile defense interceptors. 0:14:59.440 --> 0:15:02.080 The numbers, complete numbers are not not been released. We've 0:15:02.120 --> 0:15:04.520 done a study on this from what it was last year, 0:15:04.560 --> 0:15:08.120 and it was a lot. And so why that matters. 0:15:08.640 --> 0:15:12.080 Right now, we're moving patriots and perhaps some FADO those 0:15:12.160 --> 0:15:15.040 missile defense systems from South Korea and Japan to the 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:19.440 Middle East. That's significant because their job is to be 0:15:19.640 --> 0:15:23.440 in the Pacific and to deter to provide a defensive 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:28.520 deterrent to Chinese adventurism or to North Korean adventurism or 0:15:28.560 --> 0:15:31.000 what have you. And so you know, we've been saying 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:33.920 different administrations have been saying that we're going to pivot 0:15:33.960 --> 0:15:36.800 to the Pacific since the Abomba administration. We're still kind 0:15:36.800 --> 0:15:40.200 of waiting for that to happen. We keep lurching back 0:15:40.480 --> 0:15:43.720 to Europe and to the Middle East. And in fact, 0:15:43.760 --> 0:15:47.200 a lot of the administration officials in this Pentagon have 0:15:47.320 --> 0:15:49.040 been among those who said, hey, we got to focus 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:51.320 on China, we got to focus on the Pacific. And 0:15:51.440 --> 0:15:55.280 what they're doing right now is presiding over an extraordinary 0:15:56.080 --> 0:16:00.600 vaporization of our inventory in a very short win of time. 0:16:00.640 --> 0:16:03.320 And so what I worry about. You've heard of the 0:16:03.400 --> 0:16:06.800 Davidson window, the former head of Indo Pecon, who said, hey, 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:10.360 he worries that China would be ready to move against 0:16:10.400 --> 0:16:12.560 some of their neighbors by twenty twenty seven, what I 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:16.800 worry about most is that this extraordinary expenditure of stuff 0:16:17.600 --> 0:16:20.440 is not going to be replaced in a year, absolutely not, 0:16:21.000 --> 0:16:22.920 and that, in fact, this may kind of be a 0:16:22.960 --> 0:16:27.120 self fulfilling prophecy of encouraging, of tempting China to do 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:28.160 something very bad. 0:16:28.480 --> 0:16:31.800 Joe, I haven't heard the term going Winchester. I'm Winchester 0:16:32.280 --> 0:16:34.120 for years and years and years. 0:16:34.200 --> 0:16:35.200 Do you remember that. 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:37.119 No, it's running out of ammunition. 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:37.760 Yeah. 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:39.720 The only reason I know this is because my dad 0:16:39.760 --> 0:16:43.000 made me watch like an inordinate amount of military movies 0:16:43.240 --> 0:16:47.440 growing up. But anyway, I'm very curious about something you said, 0:16:47.440 --> 0:16:50.880 which is that you can't win a war with missiles, 0:16:51.160 --> 0:16:54.560 and it seems like miss with miss oh, I'm sorry. 0:16:54.280 --> 0:16:55.120 With missile defense. 0:16:55.240 --> 0:16:58.080 But with offense presumably you can, which seems to be 0:16:58.120 --> 0:16:59.560 the strategy right now. 0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:02.280 Well, and so let me speak to that. The joint 0:17:02.280 --> 0:17:06.280 forest are the United States and working with Israel hit 0:17:06.720 --> 0:17:09.000 you know, I think it's up to five thousand targets 0:17:09.000 --> 0:17:11.640 within the first several days of the war. Well, they 0:17:11.640 --> 0:17:14.600 were doing so from Afar, they were doing so from standoff. 0:17:14.880 --> 0:17:17.360 And so while they're not releasing the numbers of the 0:17:17.359 --> 0:17:20.800 Tomahawk missiles of the JASM, of the l rasms and such. 0:17:20.880 --> 0:17:24.240 They not releasing those. One may easily surmise that a 0:17:24.280 --> 0:17:28.360 significant number of those targets were serviced by these long 0:17:28.440 --> 0:17:31.600 range things, of which we have finite quantities, and so 0:17:32.400 --> 0:17:37.000 the offensive strike capabilities is also even more important as 0:17:37.040 --> 0:17:41.560 a deterrent, and we are chewing those up by at 0:17:41.600 --> 0:17:44.320 least the many hundreds, and it may I suspect turn 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:46.760 not to be thousands, and that's also part of the 0:17:46.800 --> 0:17:47.239 scary war. 0:17:47.400 --> 0:17:49.359 Can you give a little bit more detail on I 0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:53.200 guess the procurement process for different types of missiles, because 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:56.119 I'm very curious about the thinking that goes behind, you know, 0:17:56.200 --> 0:17:59.280 someone saying that we want to have this many long 0:17:59.400 --> 0:18:03.240 range defensive missiles versus this many you know, maybe short 0:18:03.400 --> 0:18:07.240 range defensive missiles. How do those decisions actually get made. 0:18:08.960 --> 0:18:11.040 That's a good question. You know. It fundamentally comes down 0:18:11.080 --> 0:18:14.879 to an idea, an idea of the order of battle, 0:18:14.880 --> 0:18:18.119 of how a conflict may play out. And so you know, 0:18:18.200 --> 0:18:20.600 this is the job of the military planners and the 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:23.560 joint staff to kind of think that through. And I 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:26.680 hypothesize this is how many how many missiles we would 0:18:26.760 --> 0:18:28.920 need to have in theater, how many aircraft, how many ships, 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:30.600 And this is how we might be able to marshal 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:33.840 a force, and conversely, how we think the other side 0:18:33.920 --> 0:18:37.359 might be able to marshal their marshal their forces. I 0:18:37.359 --> 0:18:43.320 will say that the Ukraine conflict especially made folks realize 0:18:43.359 --> 0:18:46.240 so that our estimates of what we would likely need 0:18:46.920 --> 0:18:50.119 were dramatically too low. And so I'm just going to 0:18:50.119 --> 0:18:51.800 give one example, but I think you're going to see this, 0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:54.520 and in fact, there are news developments over the past 0:18:54.560 --> 0:18:57.919 year that gratify this in different ways. That in April 0:18:57.920 --> 0:19:03.520 of last year, the US Army quadrupled its objective acquisition 0:19:03.600 --> 0:19:06.639 number of how many Patriot packed three missiles it needed 0:19:06.760 --> 0:19:10.560 to buy over the next coming years. Quadrupled that number 0:19:10.600 --> 0:19:13.320 from like three thousand and something to thirteen thousand and something. 0:19:14.000 --> 0:19:16.560 And I think kind of behind the scenes, you're seeing 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:20.000 a recognition, as we've seen the Ukrainians and the Russians 0:19:20.160 --> 0:19:24.040 use enormous numbers of projectiles or missiles of different kinds, 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:27.320 kind of a sinking in that oh, in an actual conflict, 0:19:27.359 --> 0:19:30.240 this would ramp up dramatically. And so even before the 0:19:30.280 --> 0:19:34.639 Twelve Day War last summer between Israel and Iran and 0:19:34.680 --> 0:19:38.720 are being involved. Even before that, the Pentagon began to 0:19:38.760 --> 0:19:41.600 do a few things, some really important things. The Biden 0:19:41.640 --> 0:19:45.639 administration had been ramping up a number of missiles of 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:49.200 offensive and defensive, of various stripes. You probably remember the 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:52.000 discussion about attackers of whether we could spare any a 0:19:52.160 --> 0:19:55.840 tackles to give to Ukraine, and the Bide administration didn't 0:19:55.880 --> 0:19:58.440 at first, and then they eventually did. That was true 0:19:58.480 --> 0:20:02.200 with a lot of munitions over the past four years. 0:20:03.840 --> 0:20:10.400 Flash forward to last spring. Incoming Deputy Secretary Steve Feinberg, 0:20:10.400 --> 0:20:12.399 who comes out of the private capital world as as 0:20:12.440 --> 0:20:16.000 you listeners no doubt know, came in and began to 0:20:16.960 --> 0:20:20.720 call in the CEOs of a number of defense companies, 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:23.600 and I will say metaphorically grabbed them by the lapels 0:20:23.640 --> 0:20:28.600 and shook them to say, we need to maximize production. 0:20:29.240 --> 0:20:33.240 You know, I respect his respect for hard power. And 0:20:34.000 --> 0:20:37.199 over the next six months, from a basically Memorial Day 0:20:37.320 --> 0:20:39.080 last year, over the next six months you began to 0:20:39.119 --> 0:20:41.920 see a lot of drills and a lot of figuring 0:20:41.960 --> 0:20:44.840 out of just how many Tomahawks and all these offensive 0:20:44.840 --> 0:20:48.479 and defensive missiles and how much solid rocket motor production 0:20:48.560 --> 0:20:50.720 we could do on and on and so over the 0:20:50.720 --> 0:20:53.520 past two months since in January and February of this year, 0:20:54.600 --> 0:20:57.440 all that work was basically publicized, and at least in 0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:03.440 press releases it said that rethum of ramp up five munitions. 0:21:03.480 --> 0:21:05.920 There's more to come. By the way, Lockeyed announced bad 0:21:06.000 --> 0:21:08.560 and Pack three Patriot that they were going to quadruple 0:21:08.640 --> 0:21:12.159 fad and go on the Patriots side from six hundred 0:21:12.240 --> 0:21:15.960 a year to two thousand a year in production. And 0:21:16.200 --> 0:21:17.760 we're going to go from by the way, from tomahawks 0:21:17.800 --> 0:21:21.240 cruise missiles from fifty seven requested last year, which is 0:21:21.280 --> 0:21:25.120 a pittance to their goal is one thousand a year 0:21:25.400 --> 0:21:27.760 of tomahawks. And what I would say is that those 0:21:27.800 --> 0:21:31.160 are all very sensible moves, very belated by the way, 0:21:32.119 --> 0:21:38.240 that are properly allowing the lessons of the past a 0:21:38.280 --> 0:21:41.960 couple of years to be applied. Break that was all 0:21:42.000 --> 0:21:44.639 before we went to war with the Roan. And so 0:21:44.760 --> 0:21:49.359 now the ramp it's called the munition's ramp, hasn't yet begun. 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:51.240 And the other kind of scary thing is it hasn't 0:21:51.280 --> 0:21:54.000 begun because the money wasn't there, and the appropriations bill 0:21:54.080 --> 0:21:56.719 that came out in January, I guess became law in 0:21:56.760 --> 0:22:02.440 early February last month. The language said, oh, by the way, 0:22:03.080 --> 0:22:06.840