All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
And now your host for today's program, Dale Throneberry.
And welcome to Veterans Radio.
My name is Dale Throneberry, CW2 helicopter pilot in Vietnam 1969.
Welcome to our program and happy New Year everybody out there.
2024.
Just let that number sink in.
2024.
That sounds impossible.
Hey, we're really excited to have you here.
Our guest has become kind of a tradition with us is Dr. Rebecca Grant.
He's going to be here to talk about what happened in 2023 and a few projections into what may
happen in 2024.
So I want to make sure that you have the phone number if you'd like to ask her a question.
The number is 734-822-1600.
734-822-1600.
We have a lot of things that we're going to be talking about in just a little bit.
So I want to make sure that you are ready with your questions.
I was looking back at in our archives of veteransradio.org and I think the first time that Dr. Grant
was on our program was in 2012.
So you know, sort of like the Saturday Night Live thing where she's been the guest the
most times on our program.
So as I said, we're excited to have her back on again.
And we're going to be talking, as I mentioned, about all kinds of different things that are
going on out there.
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All right, we're coming up here with our guest and let me read her incredible credentials
here.
So this is Dr. Rebecca Grant is a national security analyst and the president of Iris
Independent Research.
Iris is a woman-owned business that specializes in defense and aerospace research and consulting.
Dr. Grant has been the president of Iris for over 18 years now.
Iris Research is involved in different projects, including the analysis of the autonomy of
the future battlefields and tier one suppliers in the defense industrial base for the U.S.
Air Force.
On top of that, Iris has worked on the assessment of long range strikes, evaluation of surveillance
and reconnaissance, recapitalization for industry clients and evaluation of intelligence
for clients.
Dr. Grant began her professional career with the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California.
Likewise, she has worked at the Pentagon as the Air Force, on the Air Force, chief of
staff and on the chief of staff of the Air Force, getting my words mixed up here.
Apart from that, she's a guest speaker on air power and technology at different venues
from active duty Air Force units to Wall Street investors.
She's also lectured at the United States Air Force Air University and to the Air Forces
of the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Italy, Turkey, Australia.
I'm doing all this to make it know that this woman knows what she's talking about.
And not only has she been on Veterans Radio many, many times, she's also been on Fox News,
CNN, MSNBC, Fox Business.
She has written also written over 100 articles for Air Force Magazine.
So welcoming back our expert in foreign policy and all things military, Dr. Rebecca Grant.
Welcome back.
Dale, I'm so glad to be back and speaking with you on Veterans Radio.
Speaking at 2024, there are just flash points at every point on the compass.
And I know we're going to talk through a lot of the big topics from China, Ukraine, technology,
all that.
I'm delighted to be back with you.
Well, we are always delighted to have you on the program because you are our expert source
of what really is going on out there.
So let's take a look back in time just a little bit to see where we stand at the end of the
year.
So we're going to talk about the 2020-23.
2023.
These numbers are astronomical to me.
You can think about 2020-21st century.
So what do you think was the biggest news story or story as far as our foreign policy
was in 2023?
Was it China, Korea, Ukraine, Israel?
Where would you like to start?
I'll deal all of those are good contenders.
I'm tempted, of course, to start with Israel.
But if I had to say what's the number one ongoing story and driver of instability, and
that is China.
Talking about the year 2023 going into 2024, we are well into the 21st century.
And I think in Washington, DC now there's no question, but that the driving global issue
is the role of China in the world.
They've formed this alliance with Russia that started back in 2022.
China buys oil from Iran and gives them free reign to conduct a lot of mischief.
And then China's own military has just advanced so far in a short time.
So luckily, China doesn't have any recent combat experience, and we sure want to keep
it that way.
But there's no question that China is really the source of so much of the instability in
the world.
Not the only one, but it's the one that's on the rise.
And it's funny you mentioned Wall Street, I actually just got back from New York a few
days ago and speaking with at an investor conference on Wall Street.
And there again, no question about what they're really looking to see what the confrontation
with China holds for the defense sector.
And may I also say that 2023 was the year that China took back its pandas from the national
zoo in DC.
Everyone was sorry to see them leave.
But China has built a big panda reserve in China where pandas will live in the wild.
But if you think back to the 1970s, the reason that China gave us pandas was to be friends
with the United States.
And they don't care anymore.
There are still a couple pandas at the Atlanta Zoo, but the era of panda diplomacy is over
and it just shows you that China is in a completely different place.
They are not our friends.
They don't care to be our friends.
And we've really got to keep an eye on them.
There are a couple glimmers of hope in China that we can talk about later on, but no question.
I'd say the number one story remains the rise of China and China, of course, enabling Russia
to carry on its illegal invasion and horrible operations in Ukraine.
Right.
But the Chinese economy is not doing too well, is it?
The Chinese economy is not doing as well as it was a few years ago.
A couple of factors there, their COVID recovery, their overheated property market, some demographic
factors that are catching up with them.
But when we say not doing as well, what we mean is that they're not seeing the double
digit yearly growth.
Now their economy, the numbers they report to us are a little bit smoke and mirrors,
but their rate of growth has slowed.
Another interesting trend is that there has been a decline in foreign direct investment
in China.
There's still a lot of US dollars and other Western currencies flowing into China for
investment, but some of that has stopped.
But you wouldn't know it to look at their political destabilization.
Real big things they did in 2023.
They added more countries to what they call the BRICS Initiative, which used to stand
for Brazil, Russia, blah, blah, blah.
It's sort of an alternate economic form where China is attempting to use their own currency
as a reserve currency for payment of certain transactions.
And this is real technical Wall Street stuff, but it's a direct challenge to the primacy
of the American dollar, which is something that Dale, in the years that you and I have
been alive, we've never lived in a world where the dollar wasn't king.
China is attempting to make some dents on that.
And they've also continued to work hard with their own Belt and Road Initiative, which
is the investments that China makes in a big range of other countries.
They like to buy up infrastructure and fund infrastructure development projects.
China has an ownership share in about 90% of Europe's port facilities.
So that's one example of their Belt and Road Initiative.
So although their own economy is cooling, their global reach and their global economic
activity is still very much on the rise.
Well, I know here locally in the state of Michigan, there was a conductor, some sort
of conductor plant that they wanted to build here in Michigan.
And that's been toned down quite a bit.
The people in the area where they wanted to build their plant kind of got riled up about
it.
And I'm not sure if they completely pulled out or not, but I know that the whole thing
was scaled back dramatically.
Yes, that's a great example.
And we're only just beginning to look around and say, wow, look, there's some Chinese ownership
in that.
As an open capitalist society, we transact business.
If you got the money, you can meet the regulations, you can do business here.
We do have a group in Washington that screens the top level investments.
If you tried to sell a major defense contractor to the Chinese, the government would say,
no, stop.
It's called the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US.
But they have typically only screened for a certain range of products.
No one's been looking at manufacturing facilities, farmland purchases, and other things that
seem innocuous.
And in the era of a few years ago, where we were still trying to be friendly with China,
that was no big deal.
Now, it's a great concern.
And of course, there was a big controversy over Chinese investment in North Dakota.
They wanted to build a wet corn milling facility in a really odd place.
And it happened to be near an Air Force Base, where the government is intending to set up,
among other things, a hypersonic vehicle test range.
So you know what?
Chinese wanted to buy that.
They bought up land around another Air Force Base on the West Coast.
So it's really time for everybody at the local level to look for that second layer of Chinese
ownership.
And question, is this really what we need to do?
You know, of course, China already owns Smithfield, the major pork producer.
And in fact, they control about 30% of worldwide hogs and hog production.
So that just shows you that the economy may be cooling, but their economic power and their
march to be what Xi Jinping, their leader wants, which is for China to be the number
one world power.
He hates the United States and doesn't like our way of life and wants to defeat us on every
level, including local investment.
Which is kind of interesting when you think about what they're doing is kind of a capitalistic
type of thing to do, is to purchase it all and raise prices depending on supply and demand
and so on and so forth.
Lots of the Southeast Asia was something I was just thinking about while you were talking
is, you know, when Vietnam fell and became, quote, a communist country, if you go over
there now, which I have not, but what my reading is, is that it's kind of this mix of, I don't
know how you can do it, but it's kind of a mix of communism and capitalism because there
are condos all along the South China Sea now.
There's manufacturing going on.
And even the hats that we get for the Vietnam veterans of America are made in Vietnam, a
little ironic, I think.
It has changed so much.
And the way that China does it is they do use capitalist business practices, but they
have a lot of laws that state that there has to be communist Chinese party ownership of
all the business ventures.
And they don't have the same kind of privacy and intellectual property protection laws
that we have.
As you know, it's a one-party state.
It's run by the Chinese communists ever since they won the war back in 1949.
It's the same outfit that is run in the place.
And Xi Jinping, his dad was in that.
So they mix the capitalist tools and use their very favorable exchange rates and their foreign
investment leverage.
So they do well with it, but it doesn't go back down through society.
It stays very much within that communist party elite.
Of course, for a long time, they also had a one-child policy.
So families can only have one child.
Makes them actually largely a nation of only children.
So there's been a real trend to pass and to keep that elite within the elite.
And honestly, to a great extent, a lot of the students that we see in Western countries
there are about 295,000 Chinese students here in America.
I'm telling you, these are not the kids off the street of Guangzhou, right?
These are the elite of the Communist Party.
Right.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
It's just frightening to think about what China is up to and that we allow them.
It seems like we're allowing them to get away with some of this stuff when they do make
their purchases of land or equipment or factories or whatever it is here.
I think we need to be a little bit more cognizant and aware of what is really going on.
I think we have to be more careful.
Yes, my single favorite example is, don't forget, President Xi Jinping, his daughter
went to Harvard under a different name.
So we look at that as, oh, great.
Maybe they'll be more friendly to us.
No, no, no, no.
That's not really, that's not really how it works.
So we have to be much more aware that China is our number one rival.
The Biden administration has done a good job in some ways with that.
They kept a lot of the tariffs.
They've been very supportive of changing semiconductor manufacturing, the CHIPS Act
and all of that.
On the other hand, they've really said, oh, you know, we're going to keep the national
security stuff under careful watch, but they've been very solicitous of China.
All the major cabinet officials traveled to China this year, or most of them anyway.
So we're waiting to see, and I think we just need to have a little bit of a tougher policy.
Again, talking about what I was hearing in New York, I mean, the question is really how
much do you decouple from China's economy or de-risk?
And China itself has been very aggressive.
They've rated a couple of U.S. firms that do business.
They're 1,100 U.S. firms in China, and they've had their records rated under some weird laws.
So, you know, there's a risk ultimately to shareholders, too.
So the American business community has a lot to think about going forward.
Right.
I just think it's another one of those examples of we got to make, we got to pay closer attention
to really what's going on around not only the world, but especially in our local areas.
All right.
So moving off from China from last year, we'll come back to them a little bit later on.
I guess the big news item, of course, is the Hamas and Israel war that's going on currently.
So where do we see that going?
Or where do you see that maybe going?
Well, Israel has announced just in the last day or two a plan for the governance of Gaza.
You know, as you know, Israel has conducted its operations in the northern part of Gaza
and is, I think, completed a lot of their objectives there.
They've swung their attention now down south.
Their goal is to eliminate Hamas military capability.
The plan that they've talked about would have Israel control a lot of the access in
Gaza, have a multinational group, you know, quote unquote, led by the U.S. but with a lot
of other participation and particularly Arab state participation that would deal with
the day to day in Gaza, Egypt would monitor and control the Ra'f-a-Gate, which frankly
they already do.
And so, you know, what we see here is Israel, I think, way more than halfway to completing
their military objectives.
Of course, the conflict itself was, it took everybody by surprise.
You know, our national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, had stated a week before the attack
that the Middle East had never been so quiet as it was.
And of course, Israel's forces were surprised by the scope and the tactics of the attack.
And what's followed since has been a tragedy on so many levels.
U.S. policy has been very clear, though, from the beginning to support Israel's military
efforts to restore their security.
You know, previously the Israeli-Hamas conflicts had largely been missile exchanges back in
2021.
In the spring, there was about a two and a half week missile war.
We saw shots of iron dome picking off a lot of the Hamas missiles.
And that came to an end when Egypt negotiated a ceasefire.
And while there was considerable loss of life, it was nothing like on the scale that we've
seen this time.
So this attack and then Israel's massive response has been just in a whole other order.
I think if there is any good coming out of this, it is that behind the scenes, a lot
of the Arab states don't like this either.
You know, Hamas is not super popular in that region.
A number of the Arab states have, you know, funded Hamas off and on.
But I think they've all been privately horrified at the chaos this has created.
And so that's why you've really seen the nation of Qatar in particular stepping in as a very
active intermediary, helping to secure the initial hostage releases that we saw several
weeks ago and still negotiating there under, you know, really very tough circumstances.
Anyway, the officials in Qatar said something I thought was pretty significant, that they
want to see this set of ceasefire negotiations be the basis for a more lasting peace.
And it also, there was a little incident that really caught my eye when in the middle of
the hostage releases, some negotiations had broken down and emissaries from Qatar actually
flew into Tel Aviv, which has never happened before.
They had to apply.
It was so odd that the plane had to go out to Cyprus and come then back to Tel Aviv
to get the diplomatic clearance.
So at least there you had Qatar and Israel talking.
So there is, I think, at least a chance that we may see a more solid framework come out
of this.
There had been, of course, the encouraging progress on the Abraham Accords with several
countries normalizing their relations with Israel and Saudi Arabia and Israel getting
closer to taking a step towards being in a better relationship.
The Hamas attack derailed all that.
But the one glimmer of hope is that this may, you know, this is really, this has gone way
too far in so many ways.
And there could be a stronger ceasefire basis.
The U.S. policy, of course, is still very firm on a two-state solution.
And it's been interesting to watch how closely the Biden administration has worked with the
Israeli government and Israeli defense forces.
It's clear they're talking on a regular basis.
And the Biden administration insisting on Israel sticking with the rules of war, but
also giving Israel extensive support, everything from intelligence down to small arms ammunition.
We're talking with Dr. Rebecca Grant here on Veterans Radio and while we're in the Middle
East, we might as well continue on, what is going on with Iran?
Iran, do we have three or four hours?
No, we've only got about 20 minutes.
20 minutes.
So think of it, it's not just one Iran problem.
There's a bunch of layers.
You know that Iran, of course, supports numerous terrorist organizations throughout the Middle
East, including the Houthis, including Hamas, all the missiles that Hamas likes to fire,
they get from Iran.
Of course, Iran supports Hezbollah up in Lebanon.
Luckily, they are pretty much staying on the sidelines.
But there's another layer to this as well.
It's not just about Israel.
Iran has a longstanding ambition to push the U.S. out of the Middle East.
And the way that they carry this out is the attacks on our U.S. forces.
Remember, we still have U.S. forces working in multinational coalitions.
We have them in Syria, where they are guarding a couple key points and the oil fields to
make sure ISIS can't come back.
We have forces in Iraq under Operation Inherent Resolve and in various other places throughout
the region, of course, a huge airbase at Al-Udid and Gutter.
So with Iraq and Syria, Iran has sponsored a range of groups that target U.S. forces
there.
And so just last week, we saw that the – actually, a drone strike carried out against a terrorist
figure, he was a leader of an Iranian-sponsored militia in Iraq.
There are about 80 of these.
They've been there a long time.
Any of the veterans who are veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria, they – you all
know this really, really well, right?
I mean, you've had that incoming fire, a lot of it from these groups.
So this drone strike was a little bit unusual in that it was a very targeted taking out
of this Iraqi militia terrorist target.
And this is not government of Iraq, right?
These are the roving bands that are supported by Iran.
So – and then, of course, there's the peace in the Red Sea, which is – honestly, really,
it's a whole other discussion.
But you have the Houthi rebels who have a very fragile ceasefire down in Yemen.
They took over Yemen years and years ago now and took over the capital.
UN doesn't recognize them.
But Iran has sponsored and enabled a lot of the attacks on our Red Sea shipping.
We had, I think, a total now of 33 attacks against international shipping in the Red
Sea.
Most of it has been countered by our U.S. Navy forces there.
So the destroyer USS Carney has, I think, probably taken out the most – drones, missiles, you
name it – a number of other destroyers have moved into the Red Sea to continue doing this.
So the rules of engagement say if something gets within 10 miles of one of our destroyers
at the wrong heading, well, it's fair game and it can be taken out.
But what Iran wants to do with this overall, they have managed to shut down most of the
shipping in the Red Sea.
And this is somewhere between 15 and 25 percent of global shipping.
So you've got your major companies, Maersk – heck, even the Chinese won't go up in
there.
There's too much risk of the attacks from – that Iran has trained and sponsored the
Houthi rebels of Yemen to attack global shipping.
And Iran even said, oh, next we're going to go up in the Mediterranean and close the
straits of Gibraltar.
Well, good luck with that.
They're not the best naval warfare tacticians.
But they are having an impact.
And so this is part of Iran's multilayered policy not only to combat Israel's presence
but to push U.S. forces out.
And I think, certainly in Washington, I hear a lot of speculation about the need for the
U.S. with our allies to strike a bit harder.
And we actually have not struck back at any of the land-based Houthi missile sites and
things where they're launching this stuff.
So I wouldn't be surprised to see that type of attack place take place in 2024.
There was a new coalition called Operation Prosperity Guardian that is – was put together
by our fifth fleet out there in Bahrain to combat some of this.
And there's some allied destroyers and other ships up in that area.
Oh, and of course, a Chinese, quote-unquote, anti-piracy task force that sits right down
at the entrance to the Red Sea off Djibouti, where China has a big base, and watches all
this going on.
So Iran is – has not managed to widen the Gaza war, but they are carrying out through
proxies a pretty heavy campaign against international shipping up in the Red Sea.
Well, you never really think about those things.
You read the news, oh, the Middle East is exploding here and exploding there.
And as we mentioned before, we went on the air.
They've been exploding for over thousands of years, it seems.
And they just can't get along for whatever reason.
But the interesting thing was, was it last week when somebody dropped a missile or a drone
in on Iran?
Yes.
So, add one more layer, which is actually these were two IEDs that exploded in Karan
city near a shrine in Iran.
The death toll was unfortunately of civilians, it was pretty high, somewhere between 80 and
90 people.
They blew up a shrine, and they, in this case, was a group that your listeners will recognize,
none other than the Islamic State.
None of the Islamic State factions that has been able to infiltrate into Iran, either through
the Afghanistan border, Iran and Afghanistan have a long border, and that we think that's
probably how it happened.
They had carried out, IS had carried out some attacks in Iran back in 2018, and they actually
did a small one back in late in August of 2023.
But this one was much bigger.
The issue here is these are Sunni groups, and of course Iran is Shia, and that's why
they're attacking Iran's shrine, so ugly, ugly all the way around.
But I think in a sense Iran sort of holds a losing hand here because they aren't able
to counter US military forces.
When we sent the two carrier strike groups back in October, ambassadors all around the
region registered, wow, that's a really strong signal.
Turkey was very impressed, others were very impressed.
And Iran, talk about economy, Iran's economy is terrible.
If it were not for China buying their oil, they would just be nowhere at all.
Yet, China is very reluctant to invest, you know, China likes to do all these infrastructure
investments, but they really hold back on Iran because it's a mess.
Very unfortunate Iran, you know, incredible culture, but I think they hold a losing hand
in the long run.
And I think that's one reason that they're so desperate to get the hoodies and Hamas
going because really the trend was toward more Arab reconciliation with the state of
Israel and Iran doesn't like that one little bit.
Well, we're talking with Dr. Rebecca Grant here.
We've kind of dissected what's going on in the Middle East and we're going to take a
quick break here for our Medal of Honor segment.
And when we come back, we're going to be going to take a look at Korea and what's happening
there and in Taiwan and all the elections that are going to be occurring in 2024 all
around the world.
And I did not forget Ukraine will be coming back to that.
So you're listening to Veterans Radio.
We'll be right back after this short message.
The Medal of Honor is the highest award for valor in combat, given a member of the Armed
Forces of the United States.
There have been over 3400 recipients of the nation's highest award.
This is one of them.
Lieutenant J.G. William Hall pressed the attack, although seriously wounded during the Battle
of the Coral Sea.
Details after this.
If you have a VA claim denied by the Board of Veterans Appeals, contact legal help for
veterans at 1-800-693-4800.
They're experts in handling cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.
Their number again, 1-800-693-4800.
Hall was the pilot of a scouting plane in action against enemy Japanese forces in the
Coral Sea.
In a determined attack on 7th of May, 1942, Hall dove his plane at an enemy Japanese aircraft
carrier contributing materially to the destruction of that vessel.
On the 8th of May, facing heavy and fierce fighter opposition, he again displayed extraordinary
skill as an airman and the aggressive spirit of a fighter in a repeated and effective counter
attacks against the superior number of enemy planes in which three enemy aircraft were
destroyed.
Those seriously wounded in this engagement, Hall succeeded in landing his plane safe.
The Medal of Honor series is a production of Veterans Radio.
Military veterans touch everyone's life.
I'm guessing right now you're thinking of a veteran, a close friend, relative, maybe
it's you.
Even the toughest of us sometimes need help, but don't know where to turn for support.
We don't need special training to help a veteran in your life.
We can all help someone going through a difficult time.
Learn how you can be there for veterans.
Visit veteranscrisisline.net.
Veteranscrisisline.net.
A message from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
We are back here on Veterans Radio with Dr. Rebecca Grant, National Security Analyst
and President of Iris Independent Research.
We just got done dissecting the Middle East and now we're going to kind of, let's go north
toward Ukraine and see what is happening there.
Ukraine, in February, we're coming up on two years of war.
I was just privileged to hear Ukraine's defense at Deshae, who is a major general based here
in the United States to hear him talk.
It was at a time when there had been a number of Russian airstrikes and there had been,
in fact, 10 Russian hypersonic missiles launched against Kiev and other targets.
Fortunately, the air defenses of run by Ukraine had taken all of them out, which is quite
amazing.
Now, those air defenses include U.S. defenses and a lot of things contributed from Europe.
Sort of all clued together, Patriot and Hawk, everything, attempting to intercept these
missiles.
But what's unfortunate here is Ukraine is still really fighting for their very existence.
Their front is 800 miles long.
And that's, then of course, without the airstrikes that are going on.
I think we were disappointed in 2023 not to see a follow-up success in the south with
the offensive done by Ukraine.
And you know, what I think what really happened here is that Russia had gone in and placed
a lot of landmines in late 2022.
And it was just more really than Ukraine could do with the weapons at hand.
So remember, this is like a World War I battlefield, but with drones and much better surveillance
and much better connectivity.
But Ukraine, we have not given them any significant enhanced aircraft.
So this is a war being fought without air power for the first time really in 100 years.
And we've been rather slow, although we've given a lot of good systems.
It's been slow and in probably smaller numbers than what they really need.
Ukraine is still in a position where if they can break through the minefields around Kherson,
which is down in the south, I think they still have a good opportunity to wrap up and move
around and envelop some of the Russian forces there.
The other key is they've been able to do two things.
One they've really disabled the Russian Black Sea fleet.
It just doesn't move anywhere anymore and could a bit of it's on the bottom of the
Black Sea, thanks to Ukraine.
Also just in the last few days, we've seen an increase in strikes on Crimea, which of
course is the area that Russia took over in 2014, stuffed with military bases, big airfield,
all of that.
Putin really wants to keep it by law.
It belongs to Ukraine.
And we've seen attacks on Crimea.
I think if those step up, those could possibly influence Putin as well.
But we're still waiting to see the one, the ability of Ukraine to hold in the east around
the Donbas, which is what they really spent most of 2023 doing, and then whether they
can take back more of their territory.
On the good news side, they have been able to maintain transit out from Odessa, although
Odessa's been attacked.
It's one of their major Black Sea ports.
It is still in Ukraine's hands, and that gives them somewhat of a potentially viable economy.
But Ukraine's attaché to the United States has made so very clear that Ukraine, they
will never give up.
They do not want American ground forces.
They don't want Europe's ground forces.
They want to do what he said with our own hands.
And if they lose and don't run out of weapons, they will fight with sticks.
And if they lose that, well, Putin will come for the West.
And I think it's a fair assessment.
Question now about the aid packages.
There is still an amount of the aid that's already been appropriated and not yet drawn
down, but Congress is wrestling with aid for Ukraine, along with a couple other big national
security issues, including military assistance to Israel and the status of the southern border.
It will be at least February 2nd before that gets resolved, and it could go a bit later.
So it could get a little bit darker before it gets lighter with Ukraine.
But Ukraine still, I think, has a very good chance.
Nothing will happen until after the Russian elections in March, I reckon.
But I think there is a chance after that for Ukraine to retake some more territory of their
own territory, take it back, and end up with a more viable position and economy and a more
long-term viability.
Well, when you're fighting for your own house, you would just fight to the end, and you would
end up fighting with sticks, if need be.
And I think it's really important that we continue to support the Ukrainian people and
their military.
And I do like the idea that they don't want our troops on the ground or anything.
And it's almost like a lend-lease type of thing.
If we have the weaponry that we can lend them or give them, why not?
We're still, America is still the premier, I think, country in the world.
People keep looking at us for help, because we still are the only ones that have, not
the only ones, but we're the ones that have an assemblance of freedom in our own land and
that we have the abundance of our economy being able to help other people.
And that's what we've done for 75 years.
And I don't know.
There are people around that don't want to do it anymore, and there are people that say,
we know we have to continue this, because if we don't help them, as you mentioned earlier
on, if he takes over the Ukraine, he's going to continue moving into all those satellite
countries that used to be part of the USSR.
Yes, and lend-lease is the perfect example.
And some of the good points, we have a group of 50 other countries, including Colombia,
Ireland, South Korea, of course, all the NATO allies, that's the Defense Contact Group,
and that's the group that aids Ukraine.
We've seen some really, really positive things with that.
I understand here, as Americans discuss, hey, what's really going on in Ukraine?
Should we still be doing this?
I think we should always ask questions, because we are such a powerful nation, but we are
the only ones that can coordinate this.
That said, we've seen some amazing contributions from others in the world.
I want to single out South Korea, which lent about 500,000 artillery shells to Ukraine.
When the Israel-Hemos conflict started, it turned out that Israel had supplied a lot
of 155 ammo to Ukraine as well.
So there's been enormous effort to do that, yet we've only given a ranged, really, it's
the Dutch that are giving F-16s to Ukraine.
We are training the pilots, but it's just eight F-16s, and they won't even be in combat
until later on in 2024.
So we have to do it.
They more than deserve our support.
Ukraine is supposed to have elections in March, and ironically, President Zelensky was elected
all the way back in 2019 on a pro-peace platform to try to negotiate with Russia.
In fact, Ukraine is under martial law, and I doubt they'll be able to hold elections.
Remember, about 3 million Ukraine citizens are actually out living in Poland and other
parts of Europe.
But there's no question.
The former Eastern Bloc countries, anybody who borders Russia or Belarus, they feel that
their security is very threatened.
And I think the real bellwether response here, in a way, has been Germany, which has sent
quite a bit of aid.
I think half the Polish tag force is already in Ukraine, and Poland is restocking.
The Russian threat is here to stay.
That's why you saw Finland and now Sweden joining NATO.
So we really need to not let this drift, and Ukraine does deserve another round of aid.
And then hopefully the weapons that will enable them to take back more of their territory.
Right, certainly helps.
I really hope so.
Well, let's kind of move around to the other side of the world.
You just mentioned South Korea providing a lot of ammunition to the Ukraine.
Their northern border with the North Korea is still pretty perilous, isn't it?
Oh, things are bad over there.
In fact, North Korea just did a series of live fire drills a few days ago.
They do those periodically every so many years, but it's a very bad sign.
2023 was a terrible year with North Korea.
There were multiple missile tests, including a longer range missile.
They did tests of solid fuel missile motors, and that's real bad because the liquid ones
take longer to fuel up and they're easier to track.
They did three attempts at a satellite launch and actually have one up.
And possibly worst of all was the new alliance between North Korea and Russia.
Russia's defense minister visited North Korea.
North Koreans went to Moscow.
Oh my goodness.
And what's come out of that is North Korea supplying ammunition back to Russia to use
in Ukraine.
And you know, North Korea is getting something out of that deal.
And I'm afraid that it is advice on nuclear weapons development.
North Korea wants to have a full nuclear triad like we have with submarine launch missiles,
intercontinental missiles, and possibly aircraft as well.
And they've made tremendous strides.
Back in 2018, the Singapore summit, North Korea actually stopped testing all their missile
testing for over a year.
But now that has resumed faster than ever.
And worst of all, the North Koreans are not talking to us again.
Okay.
This has happened in the past.
You remember the diplomacy with Trump and all the personal diplomacy and cards and all
this.
Well, now it's just complete silence over there.
The good news is this has shifted the Japan-South Korea-US alliance into overdrive.
Remember, Japan and South Korea have some lingering animosity.
Actually, a lot of lingering animosity from World War II.
They have patched it up.
And now we see Japan, South Korea, and the US collaborating on a missile warning system,
an integrated missile warning system.
And that is directly to handle potential threats coming out of North Korea.
Here again, we see China happy to let this go on because it bedevils the South Koreans,
the Japanese, and us.
So they're just as content to let North Korea play its mischief.
Very, very bad year with North Korea.
And can I add, Japan is going through really terrible times from earthquakes and everything
else that's going on over there.
And to have to worry about North Korea with their weapons and so forth.
How armed up is Japan?
How are they planning to prevent all this occurring?
Japan is pretty armed up.
And they still have, in fact, it's called the Japanese Self Defense Force, but they have
a Navy that has the Aegis warning and fire control system that's an anti-missile system.
They're constantly on the picket line along with us up there in the Pacific.
They have a highly capable air force.
They are building a new aircraft carrier, interestingly named the Kaga, which we sunk
one of those by that name at Midway, but that's fine.
They are now a really close, very, very capable military.
But the issue there with everyone is, do you have enough munitions?
Do you have the depth to counter this?
And so the thing I like about the trilaterals, remember in the summer, leaders of Japan and
South Korea and President Biden all met at Camp David to cement this trilateral alliance.
And that's going to be a very effective military counter to North Korea and also PS, by the
way, also to China.
Japan and South Korea very much supporting Taiwan's, the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.
So that's the positive side of it is the reinvigoration of this alliance.
I mean, I think that's the U.S. and the Republic of Korea known as South Korea are just in
about the best place that they've ever been.
Oh, fine.
There's so many things going on and so little time to talk about them.
We've got a couple of minutes left.
And one of your suggested topics was to talk about the C5M reverse air refueling test.
Oh, I'm so glad.
I, yes.
So you know the C5M is our biggest cargo plane based out of Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
And you see one in flight.
And it looks like some strange otherworldly animal.
This is a massive, massive cargo plane.
So on December 21st, a C5M plugged into a KC-10, which is an air refueling aircraft,
but they reversed the fuel flow.
So the tanker up in the air here, right?
So fuel from the C5.
And there's a picture and it's just stunning because these are two enormous aircraft they
had to stay joined on the boom for 30 minutes.
And the tanker was able to pick up about 20,000 pounds of fuel.
Now if you're a little fighter and you're refueling up at the tanker, you can get fuel
flow at about 6,000 pounds a minute.
So you're not up there a real long time.
These guys had to fly together for 30 minutes, which is incredible station keeping.
My point here though, Dale, is we got through the entire Cold War without having to have
a C5M reverse fuel a tanker.
The reason they tried this was to see if they can do it because of combat in the Pacific.
So if things really go badly with China, we need to have all this flexibility to continue
to fly in.
Blood, missiles, the logistics, and our air mobility command at near force is preparing
the crews for this type of operation.
But to see them do this, wow, that really told me how serious the threat is from China.
Well, we have a lot of things and we covered a lot of topics today.
We've been talking with Dr. Rebecca Grant here on Veterans Radio and Dr. Grant will
be back in the spring because we like to do this every quarter to see what is going on
in the world.
So Dr. Rand, I want to thank you very, very much for being on Veterans Radio.
As usual, I know we never solve all the problems, but we become a lot more aware of what's going
on in the world.
Thank you, Dale, and thanks, of course, to all our veterans for your service.
Thank you.
Okay.
For those of you out there that were listening, this program will be up on our website probably
a couple of hours and you can review the things that we talked about here on Veterans Radio.
I'm always amazed by the information that we get from Dr. Grant because you know, you
try to watch the news and see what's going on, but they seem to be very much more involved
in politics and who says this and who said what and so forth.
So we really don't get the complete story.
So it's just great that Dr. Grant was available to us.
As you mentioned, there's elections coming up in the rest of the world, but we've got
some pretty important elections coming up here, too.
And I just wanted to make sure that our audience, one of the things our founders said is that
the individual elections are so important to our democracy and how we maintain our form
of government, which is really kind of fragile when you think about it.
So I want to make sure that you all get out there and vote.
And I don't care who you vote for.
Well, I do, but that's for another program.
So I wanted to make sure that you do vote because if you don't vote, you really can't
complain about anything.
And there are many examples out there of elections being decided by only one vote.
And kind of the most famous one, I guess you could say, was Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr,
where Jefferson picked up one vote in the electoral college that beat Aaron Burr.
And that was kind of a big deal.
So make sure that you do that.
And so when candidates, you start thinking about the candidates that you're going to
be looking at this year to put back into the government, I want you to look at the Boy Scout
law.
This is very important to me.
So whoever the candidate is, are they trustworthy?
Are they loyal?
Are they helpful?
Are they friendly?
Are they courteous?
Are they kind?
Are they obedient to the Constitution?
Are they cheerful?
Are they thrifty?
Are they brave?
Are they clean?
And are they reverent?
So just remember, though, that little list of words there and whatever candidate that
you decide to support, make sure that they fit those categories as many of those as possible
because we need to really start getting some really great candidates into our government.
We got to get rid of chaos.
So anyway, that's just my little blurb for the day.
Make sure that you register to make sure that you do vote.
Today's song that we're going out on is Woody Guthrie and he's going to be doing This Land
is My Land.
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all around me a voice was sounding.
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When the sun comes shining, then I was strolling and the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds
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The voice was chanting as the fog was lifting.
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This land is your land and this land is my land.
From California to the New York Island from Redwood Forest to the Gulfstream waters.
This land was made for you and me.
When the sun comes shining, then I was strolling and the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds
rolling.
The voice was coming chanting and the fog was lifting.
This land was made for you and me.
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