Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. You're listening to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week with Carol Masser and tim Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Well on Saturday afternoon, when news broke that B two
Speaker 1: bombers these are the only jets that are capable of
Speaker 1: deploying those thirty thousand pounds bunker busting munitions. We're heading
Speaker 1: west from their base in Missouri across the Pacific. I
Speaker 1: spoke to my dad on the phone. He's an aviation enthusiast,
Speaker 1: he grew up on Air Force bases, and we're both
Speaker 1: kind of puzzled, like, why would bombers be heading west
Speaker 1: in order to mobilize for a strike on iron. It
Speaker 1: seemed like, h hm, the wrong way. Well, it turns out,
Speaker 1: as we know now, these were decoy B two bombers.
Speaker 1: Well those planes got all the attention. Another group of
Speaker 1: B twos flew east, literally under the radar. For more
Speaker 1: on the operation, we bring in Tony Capasio, Bloomberg News,
Speaker 1: Pentagon and National Security reporter. He writes about the thirty
Speaker 1: seven hour operation so called Midnight. He joins us from
Speaker 1: our Washington DC bureau, We're gonna get to the operation
Speaker 1: details in a second, and the planes, the aircraft that
Speaker 1: were use, the submarine, the ordnance in a minute. But
Speaker 1: I want to get to what the President said on
Speaker 1: True Social a couple hours ago. He said, the sites
Speaker 1: that we hit in Iran were totally destroyed. And everyone
Speaker 1: knows that only the fake news would say anything different
Speaker 1: in order to try and demean as much as possible.
Speaker 1: Is that what our reporting tells us that the sites
Speaker 1: that were hit in Iran were totally destroyed. Do we
Speaker 1: know that yet?
Speaker 2: No, we don't know that yet. Battle damage assessment takes
Speaker 2: sometimes weeks for a measured, informed analysis. He was shooting
Speaker 2: from the hip. There's no way he would have known that.
Speaker 2: General Kane, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, sound excuse me,
Speaker 2: was pretty measured in that in his assessment. The President
Speaker 2: was exaggerating. There's no way he know that totally obliterated.
Speaker 2: It's just off the charts wrong at this point and
Speaker 2: maybe in two weeks from now. But he was blowing smoke,
Speaker 2: and you know, it takes a shot at the fake media.
Speaker 2: But some of us remember the Iraq War going in
Speaker 2: the reasons why and all the intelligence was kind of
Speaker 2: leaning in George Bush's favor. Maybe possibly could be they
Speaker 2: have it. It turns out they didn't. So there's always
Speaker 2: a measure of skepticism when somebody claims battle damage assessments
Speaker 2: were spectacular, Like an hour or two after the operations.
Speaker 1: I was watching the press conference yesterday live Tony on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Television, our special coverage, and I think I saw
Speaker 1: you in the audience at the Pentagon. Were you there?
Speaker 2: I was there. I had a off purple shirt in
Speaker 2: the front row next to Jennifer Griffin of Fox.
Speaker 1: So you heard it straight from the horse's mouth essentially
Speaker 1: about the battle damage assessment, right.
Speaker 2: It's very nascent though it was like hours after the
Speaker 2: operation he was measured. I thought his answers were good.
Speaker 2: I thought Defense Secretary hexit while he gave an advertisement
Speaker 2: for Trump early on, he did a good job of
Speaker 2: stage managing and fielding questions.
Speaker 3: So to be fair, right, like, I always wondering, like
Speaker 3: how good is really our intelligence in terms of where
Speaker 3: things are where they are on the ground. And I
Speaker 3: also do think about Tony what's going on behind the scenes,
Speaker 3: because nobody wants nuclear material floating out in the atmosphere,
Speaker 3: and so I just wonder again going to kind of
Speaker 3: the orchestration of the moves that we are seeing this
Speaker 3: fine dance, you know, Israel, Iran, the US Iran back
Speaker 3: and cutter. So, I don't know, how are you looking
Speaker 3: at how all of this has kind of been carried out.
Speaker 2: Well, it's been carried out moderate, fairly flawlessly in terms
Speaker 2: of the mechanic of command and control and a combined operation.
Speaker 2: Your question is a good one, but I think the
Speaker 2: weapon earring was informed greatly by Israeli intelligence in terms
Speaker 2: of their assessment of what their weapons could do and
Speaker 2: how deeply buried the hardcore nuclear enriched uranium material was,
Speaker 2: and that had to all be factored into the way
Speaker 2: the US calibrated its our bomb drops in terms of
Speaker 2: the GPS coordinates, the aim points, how deep they were
Speaker 2: going to go. I mean, the science of weaponearing. While
Speaker 2: it's a black art, it's pretty precise. Within the Pentagon,
Speaker 2: this is one thing they do pretty well at least
Speaker 2: knowing where their weapons go, Thank goodness for GPS.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely right. What I wonder is how much was
Speaker 3: the US military possibly willing to take the risk that
Speaker 3: they might hit a nuclear facility and that there might
Speaker 3: be you know, uranium or you know, nuclear you know
Speaker 3: it unleashed into the atmosphere. Like, I'm just curious how
Speaker 3: good the intel was that they knew exactly what they
Speaker 3: were doing.
Speaker 2: In this case, I think the intel was pretty good.
Speaker 2: I mean, one indication the Istefan facility was not hit
Speaker 2: by massive ordinance penetrators. It apparently has more sensitive nuclear
Speaker 2: materials in there. And I'm not going to act like
Speaker 2: I'm a total expert on this, but it was struck
Speaker 2: by Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from the Arabian Sea from
Speaker 2: the submarine with the Kyle Vincent group. Those don't penetrate deeply,
Speaker 2: but my assessment is that they at least followed damage
Speaker 2: caused by Israeli weapons and they didn't go as deep,
Speaker 2: but they caused damage at that facility that could have
Speaker 2: been more significant in terms of a release of nuclear materials. Again,
Speaker 2: I don't want to overplay what I know, but that's
Speaker 2: my impression.
Speaker 1: Okay, Tony. The GBU fifty seven's the massive ordnance penetrator
Speaker 1: bombs that have the first time they've ever been used
Speaker 1: in combat that were dropped on four to H and
Speaker 1: other areas. Fourteen of them. Do you know how many
Speaker 1: of the US actually has of these. I've seen reporting
Speaker 1: that indicate that only twenty of these existed. But I
Speaker 1: understand this stuff is obviously classified.
Speaker 2: What do we know, Yeah, it's a handful in the twenties,
Speaker 2: maybe mid twenties. I've been writing about this bomb for
Speaker 2: quite a number of years, and it's very very classified.
Speaker 2: In fact, I've got some of the emails that were
Speaker 2: leaked to me about people not wanting to talk to
Speaker 2: me about the bomb. But interesting enough, there's a base.
Speaker 2: There's an ammunition facility in Oklahoma, michae Alister Ammunition Base.
Speaker 2: They make Army one five five rounds. Well, they're being
Speaker 2: retooled this year to help build more of these mops
Speaker 2: at a more rapid pace so that we can build
Speaker 2: up our inventories. So deep in the heart of Oklahoma,
Speaker 2: I'm sure they're working over time to pull together the
Speaker 2: barrels that will be filled by Boeing in the coming
Speaker 2: months to replenish the supply.
Speaker 1: What is considered a fully replenished supply.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking in the twenties there at twenties, thirties. Okay,
Speaker 2: there's not like hundreds of these things.
Speaker 1: Hey, you know one thing that was puzzling to me.
Speaker 1: Also was why the B twos were or are right
Speaker 1: now based in Missouri rather than at Diego Garcia. The
Speaker 1: trips wouldn't have been as long. And why why didn't
Speaker 1: they land at Diego Garcia. Why did they go all
Speaker 1: the way back to Missouri.
Speaker 2: The whole landing sequence there. They would have been spotted
Speaker 2: there at Diego Garcia. The whole point of this was
Speaker 2: the show along at the long arm of the United
Speaker 2: States landing. They could have done that, but then there
Speaker 2: would have been there would have been pictures of it,
Speaker 2: there would have been more operational security issues. I think
Speaker 2: the brilliance of this one and this aspect of it
Speaker 2: was the faint to the west, while those the B
Speaker 2: twos that actually actually hit Aran, they took off it
Speaker 2: like midnight Saturday morning. The stories about the B twos
Speaker 2: going west start breaking about eleven thirty am Eastern time Saturday.
Speaker 2: So this was the their verse in the Air Force's
Speaker 2: version of while Operation mince Meat in the Sky, you
Speaker 2: guys are off Broadway, so you know the play.
Speaker 1: Well, how do you how do you fly six or
Speaker 1: twelve of these from white men in Missouri at midnight
Speaker 1: without people around the airport plane spotters realizing this is happening.
Speaker 2: There's no planes. This is not a this is an
Speaker 2: isolated base. They're not like sitting in their cars waiting
Speaker 2: for these things to fly off. This is this is
Speaker 2: our chound old bomber.
Speaker 1: And online, and they can't be tracked online because they
Speaker 1: don't use the they don't send out the signal that
Speaker 1: is being tracked. That's right, irrespective.
Speaker 2: Of the radar. The point here is that these plane trackers,
Speaker 2: they were fulled the plan. The crews on those bombers
Speaker 2: going west were talking. They wanted to be spotted, they
Speaker 2: wanted to be detected. That's all part of the mince
Speaker 2: meat groose in this case. Going east, the bombers were
Speaker 2: doing their thing. They're being radio silent and so nobody
Speaker 2: could pick them up. And maybe it's a pretty smart
Speaker 2: move on the air forces.
Speaker 3: Part, you know, I don't know whether it's a I'm
Speaker 3: just thinking a lot about the US military, the military
Speaker 3: parade the President Trump had on his birthday, and I'm
Speaker 3: just thinking about what just happened over the weekend. What
Speaker 3: is it that kind of I think US citizens need
Speaker 3: to understand about US military and our capabilities.
Speaker 2: Well, the capabilities that you spend like one hundred and
Speaker 2: sixty billion dollars a year on procurement often work. While
Speaker 2: the optics of the president and his parade are disheartening,
Speaker 2: the many many the weapons, the weapons that we have
Speaker 2: actually have been working pretty well in the last few
Speaker 2: years all over the last you know, you can fight
Speaker 2: about the war, you could argue about the war the cause,
Speaker 2: but the hardware has been working well. The B two,
Speaker 2: you may remember twenty some aid years ago, it was
Speaker 2: reviled on the myth that it can't fly in the rain,
Speaker 2: it can't do an operation in the rain. Well, the
Speaker 2: Air Force debunked that, you know, so two billion dollar bomber.
Speaker 2: It was criticized at the time every operation that's been
Speaker 2: involved in though it's pretty darn effective.
Speaker 1: It's perhaps going to be continue to be in service
Speaker 1: until the twenty thirties, but it's supposed to be replaced
Speaker 1: by the B twenty one raidar, which had its first
Speaker 1: flight in November of twenty twenty three. How close is
Speaker 1: this to replacing the capabilities of the B two, and
Speaker 1: what are the differences?
Speaker 2: The main difference with the B twenty one, it's going
Speaker 2: to be able to control drones. Basically, it's going to
Speaker 2: have wingman. It's going to be able to have unmanned wingman.
Speaker 2: That's a big difference. It's stealthier. I mean, the B
Speaker 2: two is decades old. Its skin has to be highly
Speaker 2: touched up. It has a lot of problems with skins,
Speaker 2: with the blisters, and stealthy materials, low observable materials. Maintaining
Speaker 2: that the B twenty ones is quantumly better than that,
Speaker 2: and it's going to be able to carry a more
Speaker 2: ordinance than the B two, But it's going to be
Speaker 2: a quarterback in the sky. So the Air Force says,
Speaker 2: we don't know much about it because it's highly classified.
Speaker 2: Every little twist of this thing they keep secret, except
Speaker 2: the some of the broad cost figures and some of
Speaker 2: the very measured of pictures they come out of eight
Speaker 2: flight tests.
Speaker 3: We love getting inside your brain. Man, Come on anytime,
Speaker 3: Tony Capacio. He is Pentagon and National Security reporter at
Speaker 3: Bloomberg News. He's there in our DC bureau. Do you
Speaker 3: want to mention a headline crossing the Bloomberg? A divided
Speaker 3: US Supreme Court lifted a judge's order that required President
Speaker 3: Trump's administration to give people ten days notice and a
Speaker 3: chance to object before they are deported to a so
Speaker 3: called third country over three descents. The High Court granted
Speaker 3: an emergency request from the administration, which said, the order
Speaker 3: from a Massachusetts federal judge you serve presidential authority and
Speaker 3: interfered with diplomatic efforts. Again, that is a win for
Speaker 3: the Trump administration.