1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:17,900 Welcome to Veterans Radio. 2 00:00:17,900 --> 00:00:20,560 I am Jim Fausone. 3 00:00:20,560 --> 00:00:22,880 I'm the officer of the deck today. 4 00:00:22,880 --> 00:00:24,760 We've got some great programs for you. 5 00:00:24,760 --> 00:00:27,760 I think you'll find very interesting. 6 00:00:27,760 --> 00:00:34,640 We always want to remind you you can find more about Veterans Radio at its Facebook site 7 00:00:34,640 --> 00:00:37,280 or at the web. 8 00:00:37,280 --> 00:00:43,680 VeteransRadio.org is our new URL, VeteransRadio.org. 9 00:00:43,680 --> 00:00:48,880 Where we're on the web 24-7, you can find a lot of our podcasts there as well. 10 00:00:48,880 --> 00:00:55,520 We post new ones every Tuesday, so you can get a new story, a new interview, something 11 00:00:55,520 --> 00:01:00,120 you didn't know before by going to VeteransRadio.org. 12 00:01:00,120 --> 00:01:04,600 And before we get started, we want to thank our sponsors. 13 00:01:04,600 --> 00:01:13,860 First up, we want to thank National Veteran Business Development Council, NVBDC.org. 14 00:01:13,860 --> 00:01:19,520 It was established to certify both service disabled and veteran owned businesses. 15 00:01:19,520 --> 00:01:26,040 You'll find out how they can help your business by going to NVBDC.org. 16 00:01:26,040 --> 00:01:29,600 We want to thank Legal Help for Veterans. 17 00:01:29,600 --> 00:01:35,100 Legal Help for Veterans fights for veterans disability rights all across the nation. 18 00:01:35,100 --> 00:01:45,800 You can reach them at 800-693-4800 or on the web at LegalHelpForVeterans.com. 19 00:01:45,800 --> 00:01:53,000 We're going to hear from two extraordinary Americans talking about, is the United States 20 00:01:53,000 --> 00:02:01,400 ready on a national security stance to deal with what's coming? 21 00:02:01,400 --> 00:02:07,280 And we're going to look at it both from the Air Force standpoint and from the Navy Fleet 22 00:02:07,280 --> 00:02:09,600 standpoint. 23 00:02:09,600 --> 00:02:13,320 Our first guest has the handle Lucky. 24 00:02:13,320 --> 00:02:18,320 Her name is Heather Penny, she'll tell her story about flying. 25 00:02:18,320 --> 00:02:23,840 And then we're going to talk to Admiral Green about the Navy Fleet. 26 00:02:23,840 --> 00:02:29,040 So I think you'll get really informed about what we need to be doing as a country to make 27 00:02:29,040 --> 00:02:35,520 sure that our freedoms remain protected both here and around the world as we're in July 28 00:02:35,520 --> 00:02:40,400 of 2024 in the shadow of Independence Day. 29 00:02:40,400 --> 00:02:44,920 We want to welcome to Veterans Radio today Heather Penny. 30 00:02:44,920 --> 00:02:51,040 She is a senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Studies. 31 00:02:51,040 --> 00:02:56,960 We have her on because of her extensive pilot and deep thinking about the Air Force. 32 00:02:56,960 --> 00:02:59,560 We've got an interesting topic to talk about. 33 00:02:59,560 --> 00:03:03,160 But Heather, welcome to Veterans Radio. 34 00:03:03,160 --> 00:03:04,160 Thank you so much. 35 00:03:04,160 --> 00:03:05,320 I'm so pleased to be here. 36 00:03:05,320 --> 00:03:10,840 Well, let's start at the beginning because your whole life really has been centered around 37 00:03:10,840 --> 00:03:14,600 flying and things related to flying. 38 00:03:14,600 --> 00:03:22,920 But how did a nice girl from Reno, Nevada end up with such a passion over aviation? 39 00:03:22,920 --> 00:03:25,720 I'm afraid I came by it honestly. 40 00:03:25,720 --> 00:03:27,960 My daddy is a fighter pilot in Vietnam. 41 00:03:27,960 --> 00:03:30,120 He flew A7s as a Sandy. 42 00:03:30,120 --> 00:03:35,280 So we did the combat search and rescue mission picking up down pilots and air crews. 43 00:03:35,280 --> 00:03:44,080 And then when he got out, he continued to serve by flying for the Reno Air National 44 00:03:44,080 --> 00:03:47,040 Guard doing the rec emission in our Air Force. 45 00:03:47,040 --> 00:03:52,040 So I grew up around military aviation and I just loved the fighters. 46 00:03:52,040 --> 00:03:53,040 They were fast. 47 00:03:53,040 --> 00:03:55,120 They were mean looking. 48 00:03:55,120 --> 00:03:58,240 And they just felt so strong and purposeful. 49 00:03:58,240 --> 00:04:01,960 But I also fell in love with the community. 50 00:04:01,960 --> 00:04:09,840 The pilots in my dad's squadron, they were full of purpose, the brotherhood, the connection 51 00:04:09,840 --> 00:04:11,920 and community they had. 52 00:04:11,920 --> 00:04:16,080 And they were focused on excellence and doing their mission well. 53 00:04:16,080 --> 00:04:20,080 And plus, when they would tell their stories, it sounded like the greatest adventure story 54 00:04:20,080 --> 00:04:21,080 that you could go on. 55 00:04:21,080 --> 00:04:24,280 So I was hooked on aviation from a very young age. 56 00:04:24,280 --> 00:04:29,360 And of course, being in Reno and my dad racing, I grew up around all kinds of aviation. 57 00:04:29,360 --> 00:04:32,080 So it's just something I couldn't get out of my blood. 58 00:04:32,080 --> 00:04:37,600 Well, I've read a lot about you online, but that part of the backstory isn't generally 59 00:04:37,600 --> 00:04:38,600 told. 60 00:04:38,600 --> 00:04:42,960 So I figured there was a family connection to military aviation. 61 00:04:42,960 --> 00:04:44,280 So thanks for telling it. 62 00:04:44,280 --> 00:04:47,960 But here's a better story that you're not going to find anywhere else listeners. 63 00:04:47,960 --> 00:04:50,040 And we're talking to Heather Penny. 64 00:04:50,040 --> 00:04:55,080 I asked Heather earlier, hey, how did a nice girl like you end up at Purdue University 65 00:04:55,080 --> 00:04:59,920 where you picked up both your bachelor's and your master's degree? 66 00:04:59,920 --> 00:05:03,560 And there's always a story too, how that happens. 67 00:05:03,560 --> 00:05:05,560 How did that happen here? 68 00:05:05,560 --> 00:05:08,520 I can't believe you're making me fess up. 69 00:05:08,520 --> 00:05:09,520 I am. 70 00:05:09,520 --> 00:05:10,520 I am. 71 00:05:10,520 --> 00:05:12,760 They won't take back your degrees at this point. 72 00:05:12,760 --> 00:05:15,520 Oh, thank goodness. 73 00:05:15,520 --> 00:05:19,280 It was the school with the latest application date. 74 00:05:19,280 --> 00:05:22,000 I was terrified about the process. 75 00:05:22,000 --> 00:05:26,480 I didn't really understand how to navigate college applications. 76 00:05:26,480 --> 00:05:28,200 And it was the school with the latest application date. 77 00:05:28,200 --> 00:05:31,360 So I am so fortunate they took me in. 78 00:05:31,360 --> 00:05:34,280 But I am very much a proud Boiler Maker. 79 00:05:34,280 --> 00:05:38,120 And I'm happy to say that my youngest daughter is following in my footsteps, not in the 80 00:05:38,120 --> 00:05:39,120 aviation realm. 81 00:05:39,120 --> 00:05:41,600 But she has been accepted into Purdue. 82 00:05:41,600 --> 00:05:43,440 She accepted her admission. 83 00:05:43,440 --> 00:05:46,520 And she'll be attending Purdue as a rising freshman this next year. 84 00:05:46,520 --> 00:05:47,840 Oh, that's great. 85 00:05:47,840 --> 00:05:50,400 We in the Midwest think highly of Purdue University. 86 00:05:50,400 --> 00:05:53,120 It has a great engineering school. 87 00:05:53,120 --> 00:05:56,520 And we know a lot of proud alumni from there. 88 00:05:56,520 --> 00:06:01,320 But from there you went on and said, OK, I've got my degrees. 89 00:06:01,320 --> 00:06:03,160 Let's get into aviation. 90 00:06:03,160 --> 00:06:05,760 Tell us about your time in the service. 91 00:06:05,760 --> 00:06:11,120 Well, actually, part of the reason why Purdue was on my list was because they had the ROTC 92 00:06:11,120 --> 00:06:12,120 department. 93 00:06:12,120 --> 00:06:14,320 And I wanted to be a fighter pilot. 94 00:06:14,320 --> 00:06:20,640 And when I arrived on campus and I contacted the artist, they were like, no, no, no, girls 95 00:06:20,640 --> 00:06:22,120 can't be fighter pilots. 96 00:06:22,120 --> 00:06:26,440 Because at the time, in 1992, they couldn't. 97 00:06:26,440 --> 00:06:34,480 The combat exclusion for aviation had not been lifted by Congress until later. 98 00:06:34,480 --> 00:06:39,360 So that's when I ended up going into the humanities into the College of Liberal Arts 99 00:06:39,360 --> 00:06:41,800 where I got my bachelor's and my master's. 100 00:06:41,800 --> 00:06:46,720 So I was in the middle of my master's degree studying American studies, which is an interdisciplinary 101 00:06:46,720 --> 00:06:52,520 field, when I learned that Congress had indeed removed that exclusion. 102 00:06:52,520 --> 00:06:56,320 And I could apply to become a fighter pilot. 103 00:06:56,320 --> 00:06:59,720 And so there I went to the Air National Guard Route, not the active duty. 104 00:06:59,720 --> 00:07:06,720 And the reason why is in the mid 1990s, the Soviet Union had fallen. 105 00:07:06,720 --> 00:07:08,880 It was the end of history. 106 00:07:08,880 --> 00:07:13,200 The Berlin Wall had crumbled years earlier. 107 00:07:13,200 --> 00:07:16,320 And so our nation was trying to reap this peace dividend. 108 00:07:16,320 --> 00:07:20,000 They didn't think we were the only superpower on the globe. 109 00:07:20,000 --> 00:07:21,680 So why do we need to have a military anymore? 110 00:07:21,680 --> 00:07:24,560 And they literally cut our air force in half. 111 00:07:24,560 --> 00:07:29,320 And so the active duty, their planes cut in half. 112 00:07:29,320 --> 00:07:31,200 They were doing a reduction in force. 113 00:07:31,200 --> 00:07:37,440 So they were actually forcibly exiting pilots from the service saying, thank you very much, 114 00:07:37,440 --> 00:07:39,880 but next year you're not going to be in the air force anymore. 115 00:07:39,880 --> 00:07:41,360 Go find a job. 116 00:07:41,360 --> 00:07:45,760 And so because I wanted to fly fighters, it was really high risk to go into the active 117 00:07:45,760 --> 00:07:46,760 duty. 118 00:07:46,760 --> 00:07:51,400 So because my dad had been in the Guard, I knew that if I was hired by the Guard, if 119 00:07:51,400 --> 00:07:56,920 they had fighters on their ramp, and if I was good enough, if I was qualified and I passed 120 00:07:56,920 --> 00:08:02,240 all the check rise, if I was good enough, I could control my destiny and go fly fighters. 121 00:08:02,240 --> 00:08:03,480 So I was hired. 122 00:08:03,480 --> 00:08:04,480 It's important. 123 00:08:04,480 --> 00:08:05,480 I want to point out, Heather. 124 00:08:05,480 --> 00:08:10,840 It's important to this 1990 experience that you went through about that reduction, because 125 00:08:10,840 --> 00:08:16,360 it's going to come back when we talk about the issue on which you're quoted in the Defense 126 00:08:16,360 --> 00:08:18,800 News article that caught my attention. 127 00:08:18,800 --> 00:08:25,200 But that's why you got yourself into the Guard and tell us about your time in the Guard, 128 00:08:25,200 --> 00:08:27,000 your overseas deployments. 129 00:08:27,000 --> 00:08:28,000 Yes. 130 00:08:28,000 --> 00:08:33,880 I was fortunate to be hired by the DC Air National Guard, the 121st Fighter Squadron 131 00:08:33,880 --> 00:08:38,440 in Washington, DC, and they fly F-16s. 132 00:08:38,440 --> 00:08:44,680 So I went through NJET, which is the Euro NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training in Texas. 133 00:08:44,680 --> 00:08:50,360 My qualifications got me above the threshold to attend this undergraduate pilot training, 134 00:08:50,360 --> 00:08:51,640 which is pretty exclusive. 135 00:08:51,640 --> 00:08:54,360 If you graduate from there, you're going to get a fighter. 136 00:08:54,360 --> 00:08:56,400 It's kind of an all or nothing gamble. 137 00:08:56,400 --> 00:09:00,640 And then I went through my F-16 training and showed up to my fighter unit and became combat 138 00:09:00,640 --> 00:09:04,280 mission ready in early 2001. 139 00:09:04,280 --> 00:09:07,160 Well, guess what happens next? 140 00:09:07,160 --> 00:09:08,160 Exactly. 141 00:09:08,160 --> 00:09:18,520 So on 9-11, Mark Sassabill and I were sent in unarmed F-16s on a suicide mission to Flight 142 00:09:18,520 --> 00:09:19,520 93. 143 00:09:19,520 --> 00:09:26,040 As you can imagine, this was unprecedented times for our nation. 144 00:09:26,040 --> 00:09:31,600 And we are very fortunate that the passengers on Flight 93 are true heroes. 145 00:09:31,600 --> 00:09:36,880 I mean, they took their fate into their own hands to protect our nation. 146 00:09:36,880 --> 00:09:42,560 But this led to the last several decades, couple decades of the long wars in the Middle 147 00:09:42,560 --> 00:09:43,560 East. 148 00:09:43,560 --> 00:09:47,440 And I've got two combat deployments underneath my belt. 149 00:09:47,440 --> 00:09:54,240 One was initial combat operations to Iraqi Freedom, where my unit, our wing, we were 150 00:09:54,240 --> 00:09:56,080 tasked with hunting scuds. 151 00:09:56,080 --> 00:09:58,920 So I was primarily a nighttime scout hunter. 152 00:09:58,920 --> 00:10:03,200 And we went back and then did more F-16s. 153 00:10:03,200 --> 00:10:07,560 And then I transitioned from the fighter, I had to leave it as a single mom with two 154 00:10:07,560 --> 00:10:10,200 little girls that couldn't sustain the deployments. 155 00:10:10,200 --> 00:10:13,520 And so I was fortunate to be able to fly the DV airlift mission. 156 00:10:13,520 --> 00:10:17,080 And then I retired out of the Pentagon, out of the National Military Command Center. 157 00:10:17,080 --> 00:10:24,400 But during that time, I also, as a guard man and then as a reservist, worked within the 158 00:10:24,400 --> 00:10:25,400 defense industry. 159 00:10:25,400 --> 00:10:28,280 So I understood the defense industry. 160 00:10:28,280 --> 00:10:31,400 And I'm now a senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, which is 161 00:10:31,400 --> 00:10:36,080 a think tank that focuses on air power and air force issues. 162 00:10:36,080 --> 00:10:39,520 And that's really what got us to this article on MeTrack. 163 00:10:39,520 --> 00:10:45,440 And you down to talk about, you mentioned the defense industry and you had various positions 164 00:10:45,440 --> 00:10:50,280 with Lockheed Martin as the director of different air force programs. 165 00:10:50,280 --> 00:11:00,440 So you had both the military service, the contractor, defense contractor information 166 00:11:00,440 --> 00:11:05,600 experience and now this think tank experience. 167 00:11:05,600 --> 00:11:11,520 And that kind of gets us to this article that I guess I hadn't thought about and probably 168 00:11:11,520 --> 00:11:15,560 many veteran radio listeners have not thought about. 169 00:11:15,560 --> 00:11:23,040 And that is the stress both on the fleet and the force that the air force has experienced 170 00:11:23,040 --> 00:11:26,120 because of these long wars that you mentioned. 171 00:11:26,120 --> 00:11:27,120 Set this up for us. 172 00:11:27,120 --> 00:11:33,840 Tell us what the looming problem is as you see it. 173 00:11:33,840 --> 00:11:41,120 The looming problem is that our air force is, I'm just going to say, it's in a death 174 00:11:41,120 --> 00:11:43,400 spiral. 175 00:11:43,400 --> 00:11:48,760 So in the 1990s, we cut the force in half and like for example, the fighter force literally 176 00:11:48,760 --> 00:11:51,000 cut in half just divided by two. 177 00:11:51,000 --> 00:11:58,160 So you've got 50% of what you had and then we go into operations in the Middle East. 178 00:11:58,160 --> 00:12:04,320 Well now you have fewer aircraft but the demand signal has gone up dramatically. 179 00:12:04,320 --> 00:12:09,240 Now even though we had been doing operation Northern Watch and Southern Watch, so everyone 180 00:12:09,240 --> 00:12:12,960 else got to come home after a desert storm, the air force did not get to. 181 00:12:12,960 --> 00:12:19,840 We conducted airspace control operations over Iraq, both the southern side and the northern 182 00:12:19,840 --> 00:12:24,880 side to protect the Kurds and also to prevent further aggression from Saddam Hussein. 183 00:12:24,880 --> 00:12:26,840 So the air force never came home. 184 00:12:26,840 --> 00:12:29,720 But now suddenly they're doing more with less. 185 00:12:29,720 --> 00:12:34,120 And so not only do you measure the age of aircraft in terms of chronological years, 186 00:12:34,120 --> 00:12:38,160 but you measure it in terms of flight hours. 187 00:12:38,160 --> 00:12:43,720 So we are just flying the hell out of these airplanes and they are dying sooner than they 188 00:12:43,720 --> 00:12:45,480 had been planned. 189 00:12:45,480 --> 00:12:50,040 Most of the aircraft that were built in the 1980s, now you remember the Reagan era build-up, 190 00:12:50,040 --> 00:12:53,000 he didn't actually grow the air force tremendously. 191 00:12:53,000 --> 00:12:56,800 What he did was he did a complete turnover of the air force. 192 00:12:56,800 --> 00:13:03,640 So all of the Century Series fighters and Vietnam type fighters that we had, he recapitalized 193 00:13:03,640 --> 00:13:10,000 with the modern 4th generation fighters that we're familiar with, the F-15, the A-10, the 194 00:13:10,000 --> 00:13:11,920 F-16. 195 00:13:11,920 --> 00:13:17,540 During the 1980s, we were buying these aircraft at 200 to 300 a year. 196 00:13:17,540 --> 00:13:26,160 So now they're 20 years old as we go into operation in Iraqi freedom and during freedom. 197 00:13:26,160 --> 00:13:31,240 And not only are they at least 20 years old, but now suddenly we're flying them much harder 198 00:13:31,240 --> 00:13:32,400 than they were planned to be. 199 00:13:32,400 --> 00:13:38,080 So instead of 4,000 hours, we're now flying these aircraft to 8,000 hours. 200 00:13:38,080 --> 00:13:42,360 So you can imagine how sort of long in the tooth and tired they are. 201 00:13:42,360 --> 00:13:47,600 As a matter of fact, in I think it was 2015, and you could probably double check the actual 202 00:13:47,600 --> 00:13:55,360 year, but an F-15 is flying over St. Louis, it's doing a normal training sortie and it 203 00:13:55,360 --> 00:14:01,120 just breaks in half because it was the metal was the biggest. 204 00:14:01,120 --> 00:14:02,680 Metal stress, yeah. 205 00:14:02,680 --> 00:14:03,680 Fatigue. 206 00:14:03,680 --> 00:14:04,680 Yeah, yeah. 207 00:14:04,680 --> 00:14:05,680 It was so fatigued. 208 00:14:05,680 --> 00:14:10,040 So even though we can modernize these aircraft with new widgets and new radars and new data 209 00:14:10,040 --> 00:14:14,640 links and all that good stuff, the airframes are still old. 210 00:14:14,640 --> 00:14:19,840 And while numbers don't tell you the whole story, the numbers here kind of do give you 211 00:14:19,840 --> 00:14:28,200 a little shocking view of this is it's predicted that the fleet is going to drop, the Air Force's 212 00:14:28,200 --> 00:14:38,520 fleet is going to drop below 5,000 fighters, bombers, tankers, the whole thing in 2025, 213 00:14:38,520 --> 00:14:42,520 and it's never been that low if I understand it. 214 00:14:42,520 --> 00:14:47,200 It's never been as low as it is today and it's getting even smaller. 215 00:14:47,200 --> 00:14:52,800 The Navy has actually bought more fighters than the Air Force has in the last 20 years. 216 00:14:52,800 --> 00:14:57,280 And even since we started Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, and we've been 217 00:14:57,280 --> 00:15:02,240 continuing this combat operations, the Air Force has continued to get smaller even though 218 00:15:02,240 --> 00:15:05,360 the demand signal is going up. 219 00:15:05,360 --> 00:15:12,440 Somebody in Congress must be looking at this and saying, hey, we're paying attention to 220 00:15:12,440 --> 00:15:18,440 how many ships we have in the Navy because of the China situation. 221 00:15:18,440 --> 00:15:23,480 Are we paying, is Congress paying any attention, is the public paying any attention to what's 222 00:15:23,480 --> 00:15:25,680 happening to the Air Force? 223 00:15:25,680 --> 00:15:33,400 I don't think there's as much attention being paid to this as it should be because now fortunately 224 00:15:33,400 --> 00:15:38,520 we do have some members in Congress that are blocking the Air Force from divesting more 225 00:15:38,520 --> 00:15:41,960 aircraft without a plan. 226 00:15:41,960 --> 00:15:47,360 But if you think about it, the United States military has operated under a veil of air 227 00:15:47,360 --> 00:15:51,360 supremacy since 1954. 228 00:15:51,360 --> 00:15:56,880 They haven't had to worry about enemy bombers, enemy fighters, enemy missiles, or things 229 00:15:56,880 --> 00:16:00,680 like that since 1954. 230 00:16:00,680 --> 00:16:03,400 And so I think they take air power for granted. 231 00:16:03,400 --> 00:16:08,320 They just assume that the Air Force is going to continue to be able to completely control 232 00:16:08,320 --> 00:16:09,880 the skies. 233 00:16:09,880 --> 00:16:15,320 And I wish there had been more of a wake-up call when our base in Iraq was attacked this 234 00:16:15,320 --> 00:16:21,280 past year by Iranian ballistic missiles because that should have had people go, whoa, whoa, 235 00:16:21,280 --> 00:16:25,680 wait a second, maybe we need to pay more attention to air control. 236 00:16:25,680 --> 00:16:30,680 Because if you think about what's going on in Ukraine, which feels a lot like World 237 00:16:30,680 --> 00:16:37,760 War I, with the way that the lines are, it's just a battle of attrition and atrocity. 238 00:16:37,760 --> 00:16:38,920 Yeah, ground pounding. 239 00:16:38,920 --> 00:16:39,920 Yeah. 240 00:16:39,920 --> 00:16:48,120 Yeah, I mean, and that is primarily because neither side has real air power in the way 241 00:16:48,120 --> 00:16:54,120 that we have shaped our joint force to employ. 242 00:16:54,120 --> 00:16:58,760 And so it is at the end going to be just a matter of who has bigger numbers of bodies 243 00:16:58,760 --> 00:17:01,720 and bullets the way they're fighting Ukraine. 244 00:17:01,720 --> 00:17:05,200 And what a horrific way to fight war. 245 00:17:05,200 --> 00:17:11,080 Well, sometimes when we have these discussions, people say, well, we don't need to be as big 246 00:17:11,080 --> 00:17:17,360 as we have been or are to maintain, for example, air supremacy because we have allies, we 247 00:17:17,360 --> 00:17:21,880 have friends, that's part of the argument about the Navy and Australia is going to be 248 00:17:21,880 --> 00:17:24,400 there for us and Japan is going to be there for us. 249 00:17:24,400 --> 00:17:25,600 We'll see. 250 00:17:25,600 --> 00:17:31,760 But is that the argument that the U.S. Air Force doesn't need to be of its size because 251 00:17:31,760 --> 00:17:33,840 you've got NATO or something? 252 00:17:33,840 --> 00:17:41,360 What's the explanation for letting the Air Force fleet wither on the vine? 253 00:17:41,360 --> 00:17:47,520 I would say there's three factors and one is just simply budgets. 254 00:17:47,520 --> 00:17:54,400 The Air Force has not been provided the necessary resources to recapitalize the way that it 255 00:17:54,400 --> 00:17:56,240 needs to. 256 00:17:56,240 --> 00:18:03,120 And some of this is if you look at the last 20 years, the Army has been the preponderance 257 00:18:03,120 --> 00:18:06,880 of forces in the Middle East. 258 00:18:06,880 --> 00:18:15,760 And so the Air Force has been funded, as a comparison, $1.3 trillion less than the Army 259 00:18:15,760 --> 00:18:18,320 over the last 20 years. 260 00:18:18,320 --> 00:18:24,920 At the same time, that has forced them to cut their recapitalization plans. 261 00:18:24,920 --> 00:18:29,040 So where the Air Force is right now is they basically have to recapitalize every single 262 00:18:29,040 --> 00:18:34,920 major weapon system they have now because they have been limping everything along as 263 00:18:34,920 --> 00:18:36,520 long as they possibly can. 264 00:18:36,520 --> 00:18:41,280 So they have to recapitalize helicopters, strategic deterrents. 265 00:18:41,280 --> 00:18:45,720 So this is they have to recapitalize and replace the Minuteman 3, which has been our ground-based 266 00:18:45,720 --> 00:18:49,840 nuclear deterrent for the last 70 years. 267 00:18:49,840 --> 00:18:51,560 They've got to recapitalize bombers. 268 00:18:51,560 --> 00:18:53,080 They've got to recapitalize fighters. 269 00:18:53,080 --> 00:18:59,880 They've got to recapitalize their specialized, what we call them, HAVAs, the high-value assets, 270 00:18:59,880 --> 00:19:05,840 everything from AWACS to JSTARS to Rivet Joint to all of these other aircraft, all at the 271 00:19:05,840 --> 00:19:07,800 same time. 272 00:19:07,800 --> 00:19:12,480 So that's a huge bill because they've been deferring this for so long because of budget 273 00:19:12,480 --> 00:19:13,480 pressures, right? 274 00:19:13,480 --> 00:19:17,320 Yeah, that catches up to you and that's what's happening, right? 275 00:19:17,320 --> 00:19:20,480 Well, yeah, and there's two more pieces. 276 00:19:20,480 --> 00:19:25,800 So that's a main causal root cause. 277 00:19:25,800 --> 00:19:30,040 But there's also this belief in third offset technologies, that's the buzzword for your 278 00:19:30,040 --> 00:19:31,040 listeners. 279 00:19:31,040 --> 00:19:37,280 And that's one of the side-ders where the more exquisite and the more sophisticated the technology 280 00:19:37,280 --> 00:19:41,280 is, the more effective we can be so we need less stuff. 281 00:19:41,280 --> 00:19:43,800 But that only works to a point. 282 00:19:43,800 --> 00:19:48,440 And that's, for example, one of the reasons why air power is able to be so dominant in 283 00:19:48,440 --> 00:19:53,240 desert storm that the Army was just basically able to walk right up to Baghdad is because 284 00:19:53,240 --> 00:19:57,640 of these advances in technology and how we employed that. 285 00:19:57,640 --> 00:20:03,560 What the problem is is that twofold, one, technology is no longer the unique domain 286 00:20:03,560 --> 00:20:06,360 of the free world and specifically of America. 287 00:20:06,360 --> 00:20:10,680 There's a lot of really smart engineers and software coders and technologies out there, 288 00:20:10,680 --> 00:20:11,680 right? 289 00:20:11,680 --> 00:20:14,760 And two, one thing can only be in one place at one time. 290 00:20:14,760 --> 00:20:16,480 It doesn't matter how effective it is. 291 00:20:16,480 --> 00:20:19,800 So that's sort of like the Battlestar problem, right? 292 00:20:19,800 --> 00:20:27,160 Is that you have one widget, it might be incredibly effective, but you cannot cover the entire 293 00:20:27,160 --> 00:20:29,320 breadth of the Pacific with it. 294 00:20:29,320 --> 00:20:35,440 You cannot cover, you know, you cannot feel the force of the small amount of things. 295 00:20:35,440 --> 00:20:44,160 So scope and geography is now, and also now that we're facing more, I would actually call 296 00:20:44,160 --> 00:20:46,800 them peer threats, right? 297 00:20:46,800 --> 00:20:52,880 Where China, Russia, and other nations are becoming, they're getting better at what they 298 00:20:52,880 --> 00:20:53,880 do. 299 00:20:53,880 --> 00:20:57,960 And they might begin to account for attrition as well. 300 00:20:57,960 --> 00:21:04,640 So that's really, and so Secretary Kendall right now is, he is embarking and has been 301 00:21:04,640 --> 00:21:09,520 divesting older platforms so he can invest in research and development. 302 00:21:09,520 --> 00:21:14,840 But the problem is it creates this bathtub where you're getting rid of the aircraft 303 00:21:14,840 --> 00:21:20,880 that you have to a very, very small force in the hopes that future technologies will 304 00:21:20,880 --> 00:21:25,760 arrive in the 2035 timeframe that will be relevant to that timeframe. 305 00:21:25,760 --> 00:21:31,400 So Kendall is trying to transform the Air Force, and I don't disagree with his intent, 306 00:21:31,400 --> 00:21:39,400 but what I'm deeply concerned about is this, the next decade of how the Air Force is becoming 307 00:21:39,400 --> 00:21:48,920 so small that we will not be able to meet the demands of our national security interests. 308 00:21:48,920 --> 00:21:53,880 We won't be there for our joint partners, and how do we grow when we've gotten too, 309 00:21:53,880 --> 00:21:54,880 too small? 310 00:21:54,880 --> 00:21:55,880 It's a death spiral. 311 00:21:55,880 --> 00:22:02,040 Yeah, trying to ramp back up every business, every team, every whatever you've ever been 312 00:22:02,040 --> 00:22:08,000 in understands the idea of how much more difficult it is to ramp back up after you've gotten 313 00:22:08,000 --> 00:22:09,000 that small. 314 00:22:09,000 --> 00:22:17,560 And we've moved cyber into a new segment, and we have things, you talk about technology 315 00:22:17,560 --> 00:22:23,560 offsets, I think, do people think drones are, you don't need the Air Force of old because 316 00:22:23,560 --> 00:22:26,600 you've got drone technology? 317 00:22:26,600 --> 00:22:29,520 Unfortunately, people do. 318 00:22:29,520 --> 00:22:33,600 People are of this belief that suddenly now quadcopters are around and there's drones, 319 00:22:33,600 --> 00:22:38,360 there's artificial intelligence, we just put these little unmanned vehicles up there. 320 00:22:38,360 --> 00:22:45,320 And we're seeing a lot of that in Ukraine, but people are not seeing how these drones 321 00:22:45,320 --> 00:22:49,280 are falling out of the sky there. 322 00:22:49,280 --> 00:22:53,760 And so when we look at Ukraine and what's going on in Ukraine and how they're using 323 00:22:53,760 --> 00:23:00,280 drone technology there, there are uses for these kinds of drones, but then also the Air 324 00:23:00,280 --> 00:23:03,880 Force is looking at what they call collaborative combat aircraft. 325 00:23:03,880 --> 00:23:11,040 And they should be smaller, cheaper, autonomous aircraft that are probably modular. 326 00:23:11,040 --> 00:23:17,200 They can have different capabilities like jamming or sensing or they can be missile trucks 327 00:23:17,200 --> 00:23:18,680 or things like that. 328 00:23:18,680 --> 00:23:24,080 But they should help address the capacity requirement that the Air Force will have in 329 00:23:24,080 --> 00:23:25,240 future war. 330 00:23:25,240 --> 00:23:30,440 And also they have the interesting opportunity to change the risk calculus. 331 00:23:30,440 --> 00:23:35,320 So we did a war game last year at the Mitchell Institute to look at how you might use these 332 00:23:35,320 --> 00:23:38,520 collaborative combat aircraft. 333 00:23:38,520 --> 00:23:47,440 And what we found was that operators wanted to use them in disruptive and sort of chaotic 334 00:23:47,440 --> 00:23:48,440 little ways. 335 00:23:48,440 --> 00:23:53,800 They wanted to be able to use these drones to be able to detonate adversary tactics, 336 00:23:53,800 --> 00:23:58,320 force the adversary to react, to deplete the adversary magazine, and to get them off 337 00:23:58,320 --> 00:24:00,080 their game. 338 00:24:00,080 --> 00:24:05,520 So that basically then would put our manned aircraft in a position of advantage. 339 00:24:05,520 --> 00:24:10,280 And let me tell you why humans in the battle space, especially in aircraft, will continue 340 00:24:10,280 --> 00:24:17,200 to be really important because we don't even have smart self-driving cars just yet. 341 00:24:17,200 --> 00:24:21,800 And that's a two-dimensional problem set with well-known, well-accepted rules of the 342 00:24:21,800 --> 00:24:25,440 road in an unchanging environment. 343 00:24:25,440 --> 00:24:26,440 Fairly unchanging, right? 344 00:24:26,440 --> 00:24:31,000 The roads generally stay where the roads are. 345 00:24:31,000 --> 00:24:38,160 Going into a high-intensity conflict in three-dimensional airspace is not quite so easy of a problem 346 00:24:38,160 --> 00:24:39,400 set. 347 00:24:39,400 --> 00:24:47,240 And so having humans being able to make decisions through uncertainty, ambiguity, and improvise 348 00:24:47,240 --> 00:24:54,800 within the battle space based off of the human mind and imagination and training will continue 349 00:24:54,800 --> 00:24:59,400 to be a critical component of our combat edge. 350 00:24:59,400 --> 00:25:05,760 As opposed to putting a drone out there that we'll call it smart, but still is only as 351 00:25:05,760 --> 00:25:10,280 smart as it's trained and doesn't have the ability to adapt to deception, doesn't have 352 00:25:10,280 --> 00:25:18,080 the ability to adapt to hacking, and could be, depending on what goes on with the adversary, 353 00:25:18,080 --> 00:25:20,560 could be fairly predictable to the enemy. 354 00:25:20,560 --> 00:25:26,920 And I guess we're going to run out of time, and boy, we could have gone a lot longer. 355 00:25:26,920 --> 00:25:31,800 But as you cut airframes, you're cutting the workforce. 356 00:25:31,800 --> 00:25:35,120 Yeah, you're cutting pilots. 357 00:25:35,120 --> 00:25:39,000 And mechanics and everybody in between. 358 00:25:39,000 --> 00:25:41,360 Yep, exactly. 359 00:25:41,360 --> 00:25:47,360 And it's the people that are combat edge, our combat advantage. 360 00:25:47,360 --> 00:25:53,400 And so in the air force, the end strength or the manpower or the number of workers you 361 00:25:53,400 --> 00:25:59,320 have is all based off of how many air planes and how many weapon systems you have. 362 00:25:59,320 --> 00:26:07,120 So for example, in my fighter squadron, we had had a 2.5 to 1 crew ratio. 363 00:26:07,120 --> 00:26:11,080 So we had 2.5 pilots for every single airplane that we had. 364 00:26:11,080 --> 00:26:16,560 And that allowed us to fly full flying schedule, give people crew rest, train the appropriate 365 00:26:16,560 --> 00:26:17,560 levels. 366 00:26:17,560 --> 00:26:18,560 We weren't over manned. 367 00:26:18,560 --> 00:26:23,480 We had the number of training flights and the sorties that they needed. 368 00:26:23,480 --> 00:26:29,040 And that also drove the amount of intel officers that we had and how many mechanics we had 369 00:26:29,040 --> 00:26:31,600 and how many weapons troops. 370 00:26:31,600 --> 00:26:35,160 So the guys that build the bombs and the missiles, how many of those guys we had. 371 00:26:35,160 --> 00:26:39,720 So when you cut platforms, when you cut aircraft, you cut the workforce. 372 00:26:39,720 --> 00:26:44,000 And you're usually cutting your most experienced people. 373 00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:45,840 And experience matters in combat. 374 00:26:45,840 --> 00:26:50,440 And we know this from history, whether or not it's in Vietnam or you go back to World 375 00:26:50,440 --> 00:26:51,440 War II. 376 00:26:51,440 --> 00:26:57,520 For example, Germany had some of the most experienced fighter pilots at the beginning 377 00:26:57,520 --> 00:26:59,680 of the war. 378 00:26:59,680 --> 00:27:02,960 And just through statistics and nutrition, those guys died out. 379 00:27:02,960 --> 00:27:08,720 So by the end of the war, Germany was building and producing more fighters than they did 380 00:27:08,720 --> 00:27:09,720 at the beginning of the war. 381 00:27:09,720 --> 00:27:13,400 But the kids they put in there were so inexperienced, they just got shot down. 382 00:27:13,400 --> 00:27:19,160 The same reason why Japan had to come to kamikaze attacks in the end, because they lost their 383 00:27:19,160 --> 00:27:21,160 experienced pilots. 384 00:27:21,160 --> 00:27:29,480 Well, we've been talking to Heather Penny, called Sign Lucky, who has been helping us 385 00:27:29,480 --> 00:27:36,880 understand the challenges that the United States Air Force is facing as its airframes 386 00:27:36,880 --> 00:27:44,960 dip below 5,000 in fiscal year 2025, and the risk that that causes to the nation our national 387 00:27:44,960 --> 00:27:52,400 security, being able to have the up tempo that we are often called to have in the Air 388 00:27:52,400 --> 00:27:53,400 Force. 389 00:27:53,400 --> 00:27:55,680 Heather, this has been a great conversation. 390 00:27:55,680 --> 00:28:03,040 We appreciate your work here as senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace 391 00:28:03,040 --> 00:28:04,120 Studies. 392 00:28:04,120 --> 00:28:08,400 You've given us a great insight into this problem, which is something we all should 393 00:28:08,400 --> 00:28:09,400 be watching. 394 00:28:09,400 --> 00:28:10,400 Oh, thank you, Jim. 395 00:28:10,400 --> 00:28:12,880 It really has been an honor to speak with you. 396 00:28:12,880 --> 00:28:15,880 If you don't have an Air Force, you can't have a joint force. 397 00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:19,080 I hope to, I'll be able to chat with you again. 398 00:28:19,080 --> 00:28:22,520 I hope you found that informative. 399 00:28:22,520 --> 00:28:24,680 Heather Penny is a real patriot. 400 00:28:24,680 --> 00:28:27,080 You certainly got that from the interview. 401 00:28:27,080 --> 00:28:32,800 But you should also know that on September 11, 2001, when she was just a first lieutenant 402 00:28:32,800 --> 00:28:42,720 at the time, she was ordered to, along with another pilot, take her F-16 fighter and head 403 00:28:42,720 --> 00:28:44,440 it to Pennsylvania. 404 00:28:44,440 --> 00:28:51,000 They were ordered to down the United Flight 93, which was heading to Washington, D.C. 405 00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:56,480 Now they were up doing training missions and there was no ammunition. 406 00:28:56,480 --> 00:29:03,000 These two F-16s were flying, but they were not outfitted with live ammunition, other 407 00:29:03,000 --> 00:29:08,720 than maybe 100 rounds of ball ammunition always carried to maintain trim. 408 00:29:08,720 --> 00:29:13,200 So the mission was take down United 93. 409 00:29:13,200 --> 00:29:21,960 And if the passengers on United 93 did not crash that into the fields in Pennsylvania, 410 00:29:21,960 --> 00:29:27,280 it would have been the job of Heather Penny to do just that. 411 00:29:27,280 --> 00:29:32,760 And she was lucky that didn't have to occur and she's still here to tell the stories. 412 00:29:32,760 --> 00:29:39,920 But you can understand how that molded her to her core as a pilot, as a patriot. 413 00:29:39,920 --> 00:29:42,920 So great story, a lot to learn. 414 00:29:42,920 --> 00:29:48,280 Stick around, you're going to learn now what the concerns are with the naval fleet and 415 00:29:48,280 --> 00:29:55,240 what our opposition is doing versus what we're doing here in building out the fleet. 416 00:29:55,240 --> 00:29:57,160 Military veterans touch everyone's life. 417 00:29:57,160 --> 00:30:02,440 I'm guessing right now you're thinking of a veteran, a close friend, relative, maybe 418 00:30:02,440 --> 00:30:03,560 it's you. 419 00:30:03,560 --> 00:30:08,320 Even the toughest of us sometimes need help, but don't know where to turn for support. 420 00:30:08,320 --> 00:30:10,880 You don't need special training to help a veteran in your life. 421 00:30:10,880 --> 00:30:13,760 We can all help someone going through a difficult time. 422 00:30:13,760 --> 00:30:15,840 Learn how you can be there for veterans. 423 00:30:15,840 --> 00:30:22,600 Visit veteranscrisisline.net, veteranscrisisline.net, a message from the U.S. Department of Veterans 424 00:30:22,600 --> 00:30:24,720 Affairs. 425 00:30:24,720 --> 00:30:28,600 If you have a VA claim denied by the Board of Veterans Appeals, contact Legal Help for 426 00:30:28,600 --> 00:30:32,840 Veterans at 1-800-693-4800. 427 00:30:32,840 --> 00:30:36,840 There are experts in handling cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. 428 00:30:36,840 --> 00:30:41,000 Their number again, 1-800-693-4800. 429 00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:47,480 We want to welcome back to Veterans Radio today Vice Admiral Kevin Green, United States 430 00:30:47,480 --> 00:30:48,480 Navy retired. 431 00:30:48,480 --> 00:30:54,960 We're going to talk about the fleet structure and issues related to that. 432 00:30:54,960 --> 00:31:00,920 And then we're also going to get into talking about the Navy's recruiting issue and how 433 00:31:00,920 --> 00:31:04,000 that impacts all these other decisions. 434 00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:06,600 But let me set this up a little bit. 435 00:31:06,600 --> 00:31:14,480 Kevin Green went to Annapolis in 1971 and about 30 years later, 30-plus years of military 436 00:31:14,480 --> 00:31:21,280 service retired as a Vice Admiral has been very active in all things defense and Navy 437 00:31:21,280 --> 00:31:27,960 since then, both in the private government, private corporation world as well as government 438 00:31:27,960 --> 00:31:31,680 affairs and stays very attuned to things. 439 00:31:31,680 --> 00:31:37,320 He commanded the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Group when he was active duty. 440 00:31:37,320 --> 00:31:42,560 And I think his last assignment was Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, Plans and Policy 441 00:31:42,560 --> 00:31:44,120 before his retirement. 442 00:31:44,120 --> 00:31:46,720 Admiral, welcome back to Veterans Radio. 443 00:31:46,720 --> 00:31:47,720 Thank you, Jim. 444 00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:49,600 I'm happy to be with you. 445 00:31:49,600 --> 00:31:55,240 Well we spoke before about something that's going on, which is NATO's 75th anniversary 446 00:31:55,240 --> 00:31:59,960 and we got done and I said, hey Admiral, I got some more questions for you and you were 447 00:31:59,960 --> 00:32:03,960 gracious enough to say, yeah, we should talk about that. 448 00:32:03,960 --> 00:32:10,920 So really what we want to talk about, it starts with acknowledging some of the challenges 449 00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:17,360 that the United States has in its national security around the world on the high seas 450 00:32:17,360 --> 00:32:22,600 and that leads you into thinking about, well, what's the right Navy force structure or 451 00:32:22,600 --> 00:32:26,560 what are the plans that we have to have in place? 452 00:32:26,560 --> 00:32:31,320 So why don't you recap a little bit about what the Navy looks at in terms of strategic 453 00:32:31,320 --> 00:32:36,560 concerns on the oceans around the world? 454 00:32:36,560 --> 00:32:44,160 Certainly and the foundation of all of that is a description of the missions of the Navy. 455 00:32:44,160 --> 00:32:46,000 Why do we have the Navy in the first place? 456 00:32:46,000 --> 00:32:49,560 And what does the Navy do for the country? 457 00:32:49,560 --> 00:32:56,200 More than 50 years ago, the Chief of Naval Operations, the senior Admiral of the Navy, 458 00:32:56,200 --> 00:33:02,720 made out four basic commissions for the Navy, one of them strategic deterrents principally 459 00:33:02,720 --> 00:33:08,280 through our strategic submarine force. 460 00:33:08,280 --> 00:33:14,920 The next was sea control, maintaining control of the seas, projection of power ashore with 461 00:33:14,920 --> 00:33:24,320 our partners, the United States Marine Corps and the Army to be complete and naval presence 462 00:33:24,320 --> 00:33:26,440 around the world. 463 00:33:26,440 --> 00:33:31,400 And by missions, what we're talking about are the outputs of the objectives of having 464 00:33:31,400 --> 00:33:33,840 a Navy in the first place. 465 00:33:33,840 --> 00:33:42,760 Recently the current Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Franchetti, answered the question publicly 466 00:33:42,760 --> 00:33:44,760 when asked what does the Navy do? 467 00:33:44,760 --> 00:33:51,880 And the Navy is here to preserve the peace, to respond in a crisis and to win decisively 468 00:33:51,880 --> 00:33:53,480 in wars. 469 00:33:53,480 --> 00:33:59,440 The Navy operates far forward around the world and around the clock from the seabed to space 470 00:33:59,440 --> 00:34:07,560 and cyberspace and in the information environment, promoting our nation's prosperity and security, 471 00:34:07,560 --> 00:34:12,280 deterring aggression and providing options to our nation's leaders. 472 00:34:12,280 --> 00:34:17,880 We deliver power for peace and are always postured and ready to fight and win as part 473 00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:22,000 of the joint force that is with the other U.S. military services. 474 00:34:22,000 --> 00:34:29,800 And alongside our allies and partners, the headquarters of the Navy is focused on organizing, 475 00:34:29,800 --> 00:34:37,880 training and equipping the Navy in order to carry out the missions that are assigned by 476 00:34:37,880 --> 00:34:40,280 the combatant commanders. 477 00:34:40,280 --> 00:34:46,320 The geographic combatant commanders run various sections of the globe and we, along with the 478 00:34:46,320 --> 00:34:51,880 other services, provide the forces that allow them to carry out their peacetime and their 479 00:34:51,880 --> 00:34:54,080 wartime missions. 480 00:34:54,080 --> 00:34:57,080 So what we do is a really important part of that. 481 00:34:57,080 --> 00:35:05,560 And when we start thinking hard about the force structure, the size of the fleet, one 482 00:35:05,560 --> 00:35:10,080 measure is the total number of battle force ships. 483 00:35:10,080 --> 00:35:19,160 Today, there are 293 battle force ships, meaning what you would think of as warships, aircraft 484 00:35:19,160 --> 00:35:29,960 carriers, amphibious assault ships, destroyers, cruisers, frigates, literal combat ships and 485 00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:30,960 so forth. 486 00:35:30,960 --> 00:35:33,880 293 of them altogether. 487 00:35:33,880 --> 00:35:39,600 When we also count the military seal of command ships, the ships that provide the logistic 488 00:35:39,600 --> 00:35:44,480 support for that battle force. 489 00:35:44,480 --> 00:35:51,480 When you put that in context, give us some indication of the, I don't know, I think most 490 00:35:51,480 --> 00:35:57,520 people don't understand how old the fleet is, maybe how long a ship is good for until 491 00:35:57,520 --> 00:35:59,720 it has to be replaced. 492 00:35:59,720 --> 00:36:07,120 Help the uninformed get a better idea of, is 293 all you need? 493 00:36:07,120 --> 00:36:12,120 Or how does replacement and those sorts of things come into play? 494 00:36:12,120 --> 00:36:21,680 Sure, well, it is a fact that things that humans build don't generally last forever. 495 00:36:21,680 --> 00:36:28,160 And that's certainly true of ships and aircraft that operate in the complex, demanding and 496 00:36:28,160 --> 00:36:37,880 very, very difficult environment of the sea, of the oceans of the world and the literal 497 00:36:37,880 --> 00:36:42,480 areas, that is, the parts of the ocean that are close to land. 498 00:36:42,480 --> 00:36:50,400 Typically we like to keep a ship for 30 to 40 years. 499 00:36:50,400 --> 00:37:02,800 We have an average age on our fleet today of about 24 years and that includes submarines, 500 00:37:02,800 --> 00:37:08,960 the aircraft carriers and the destroyers, cruisers and literal combat ships, some of 501 00:37:08,960 --> 00:37:17,240 them quite new, but you can tell from that average age of in the mid-20s or so that it 502 00:37:17,240 --> 00:37:18,760 is a big challenge. 503 00:37:18,760 --> 00:37:26,840 We are constantly building new ships, bringing them out, putting them into commission and 504 00:37:26,840 --> 00:37:32,680 operating them in order to carry out these missions that are assigned to us. 505 00:37:32,680 --> 00:37:36,200 You mentioned or you asked if 293 was the right number. 506 00:37:36,200 --> 00:37:41,360 Well, the day I entered the Naval Academy in the 1960s we had almost a thousand ships 507 00:37:41,360 --> 00:37:43,160 in the Navy, in the fleet. 508 00:37:43,160 --> 00:37:50,280 Now, a lot of them were, frankly speaking, relics from World War II. 509 00:37:50,280 --> 00:37:52,760 Others were relatively new ships. 510 00:37:52,760 --> 00:37:59,960 They had different kinds of missions and they were nowhere near as capable as the ships 511 00:37:59,960 --> 00:38:01,600 we have today. 512 00:38:01,600 --> 00:38:06,560 So when we talk about the right size of the ship and how one would compare that with any 513 00:38:06,560 --> 00:38:14,960 other ship around the world, it is by consensus in the people who analyze naval forces that 514 00:38:14,960 --> 00:38:20,120 the number one, the top, the most powerful fleet in the world today is the United States 515 00:38:20,120 --> 00:38:21,120 Navy. 516 00:38:21,120 --> 00:38:23,680 There is a little question about that. 517 00:38:23,680 --> 00:38:30,560 The Chinese fleet has more holes in the water, but in terms of capability, in terms of missions, 518 00:38:30,560 --> 00:38:37,080 in terms of modernization, in terms of the things that really matter in the measure of 519 00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:42,160 a ship, we are at the top of the heap. 520 00:38:42,160 --> 00:38:45,920 That doesn't give us a heck of a lot of margin, however. 521 00:38:45,920 --> 00:38:53,240 When we talk about potential operations that the Navy might be involved with in the future, 522 00:38:53,240 --> 00:38:59,240 we only have to consider the kinds of operations the Navy is involved in today around the world. 523 00:38:59,240 --> 00:39:08,640 We look at, in the Red Sea, for example, USS Eisenhower, an aircraft carrier strike group, 524 00:39:08,640 --> 00:39:16,280 every day taking out anti-ship missiles that are endangering the sea lanes, endangering 525 00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:25,760 merchant ships, plying their normal peacetime innocent travel around the world to provide 526 00:39:25,760 --> 00:39:31,120 products and services to the world, to the countries of the world. 527 00:39:31,120 --> 00:39:34,640 We look at threats to Taiwan and the South China Sea. 528 00:39:34,640 --> 00:39:41,800 We look at issues having to do with the Korean Peninsula and concerns there. 529 00:39:41,800 --> 00:39:48,440 We look at areas of the globe, believe it or not, there is still a piracy issue around 530 00:39:48,440 --> 00:39:58,440 the world, whether it's in the South Asia area or in the Western Pacific or it's off 531 00:39:58,440 --> 00:40:04,920 the coast of Africa or either in the South Atlantic or in the Indian Ocean. 532 00:40:04,920 --> 00:40:08,920 It's a genuine mission that continues. 533 00:40:08,920 --> 00:40:19,600 One of the challenges, one of the concerns we have is even with the exquisitely equipped, 534 00:40:19,600 --> 00:40:26,200 crewed, trained and ready ships that we have in that battle force, a ship can only be in 535 00:40:26,200 --> 00:40:29,040 one place at one time. 536 00:40:29,040 --> 00:40:34,560 When there are lots of different challenges around the world, whether it has to do with 537 00:40:34,560 --> 00:40:43,160 Eastern Europe, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the Pacific, you name it, it is a real challenge 538 00:40:43,160 --> 00:40:49,000 satisfying those operational demands of our combatant commanders to provide the fleet 539 00:40:49,000 --> 00:40:52,920 forces that are necessary for them to carry out their missions. 540 00:40:52,920 --> 00:40:57,600 I am very sure that if you were to talk with any of those combatant commanders, they would 541 00:40:57,600 --> 00:41:03,440 tell you, yes, we can do our mission today, but it's a narrow margin. 542 00:41:03,440 --> 00:41:10,280 I here wish I had more forces at hand, ships, aircraft, and this pertains to the other military 543 00:41:10,280 --> 00:41:13,200 services as well. 544 00:41:13,200 --> 00:41:18,360 What's unique though on the Navy mission though is you mentioned it, you can only have that 545 00:41:18,360 --> 00:41:23,360 ship in one spot and it takes a long time to transit somewhere else. 546 00:41:23,360 --> 00:41:31,000 It's not a matter about jumping on a plane and moving folks by air travel. 547 00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:38,840 It's a much slower process and it's not just the number of ships you have, but the types 548 00:41:38,840 --> 00:41:43,720 and the locations where they can be deployed because you just ran us around the whole world 549 00:41:43,720 --> 00:41:52,680 from the mid-east to the South China Sea and everywhere in between. 550 00:41:52,680 --> 00:41:59,480 How do you then, how is the country now planning because a ship has such a long life and a 551 00:41:59,480 --> 00:42:03,520 long time to be, you know, takes to build? 552 00:42:03,520 --> 00:42:05,240 How do you plan for the future like that? 553 00:42:05,240 --> 00:42:09,640 The ship you launched today is going to be around for 35 years. 554 00:42:09,640 --> 00:42:14,720 How do you think about what it's actually going to be used for over that 35-year period? 555 00:42:14,720 --> 00:42:21,000 Well, that's a great question, Jim, and it's the center of why the National Defense Strategy 556 00:42:21,000 --> 00:42:22,920 is so important. 557 00:42:22,920 --> 00:42:31,920 The National Defense Strategy anticipates developments around the world that would make 558 00:42:31,920 --> 00:42:39,880 a big difference in the planning for structure, meaning how many people do we need to have 559 00:42:39,880 --> 00:42:45,400 on active duty, how many aircraft, how many ships, how much ammunition, how many systems. 560 00:42:45,400 --> 00:42:53,960 How do we tie all of those things together electronically in the sense of sharing information 561 00:42:53,960 --> 00:42:58,640 and intelligence and all of that? 562 00:42:58,640 --> 00:43:03,840 Keeping in mind that while we're doing our planning, our potential adversaries are doing 563 00:43:03,840 --> 00:43:11,120 the same, they are designing and building their forces, naval forces, military, air forces, 564 00:43:11,120 --> 00:43:16,800 space, and certainly cyber forces to overcome the strengths that we have today. 565 00:43:16,800 --> 00:43:20,680 And our National Military Strategy leans forward on that. 566 00:43:20,680 --> 00:43:26,680 What do we have to be able to do to maintain our current advantages and avoid a situation 567 00:43:26,680 --> 00:43:31,720 where we're outgunned, we're outnumbered, and we've run out of ideas? 568 00:43:31,720 --> 00:43:37,920 We have got to create the warfighting advantages, and that will dictate what we need to build 569 00:43:37,920 --> 00:43:42,000 and what we need to invest in. 570 00:43:42,000 --> 00:43:51,400 And while we're doing that, one of the issues that is a controlling factor is the defense 571 00:43:51,400 --> 00:43:54,800 industrial sector. 572 00:43:54,800 --> 00:44:02,360 What can our private sector companies, our industry partners, and academia do to help 573 00:44:02,360 --> 00:44:03,360 us move forward? 574 00:44:03,360 --> 00:44:11,280 And I have to tell you that when we look at a battle force of 293 ships, not all of those 575 00:44:11,280 --> 00:44:13,240 ships are available all the time. 576 00:44:13,240 --> 00:44:15,320 They're going through maintenance. 577 00:44:15,320 --> 00:44:20,640 Nuclear propelled ships go through periodic nuclear refueling, which takes a long time 578 00:44:20,640 --> 00:44:22,640 to get completed. 579 00:44:22,640 --> 00:44:24,320 It's expensive as well. 580 00:44:24,320 --> 00:44:32,000 The capacity of shipyards, both federal shipyards, and there are a few of those left, but commercial 581 00:44:32,000 --> 00:44:40,160 shipyards where the ships are built, where the ships are maintained, and the other industrial 582 00:44:40,160 --> 00:44:46,120 firms that provide maintenance and provide the systems, the armaments, the munitions, 583 00:44:46,120 --> 00:44:50,240 and the other systems, it's a big challenge. 584 00:44:50,240 --> 00:44:55,800 So the question at this point comes, well, what are we going to do about all of this? 585 00:44:55,800 --> 00:45:03,000 Seeing what the military leadership and what the senior folks in Congress and what the 586 00:45:03,000 --> 00:45:11,920 administration are dealing with, number one thing for them to keep in mind, and they do, 587 00:45:11,920 --> 00:45:17,920 is that the threats to our nation and our interests around the world are real and they're growing. 588 00:45:17,920 --> 00:45:21,640 It's a changing strategic environment. 589 00:45:21,640 --> 00:45:23,680 We've got to be able to defend the homeland. 590 00:45:23,680 --> 00:45:27,320 We've got to be able to deter strategic attack. 591 00:45:27,320 --> 00:45:33,560 And we've got to be able to deter potential adversaries from moving against us and be 592 00:45:33,560 --> 00:45:41,880 prepared to prevail in the event of a strategic attack or in the event of any conflict with 593 00:45:41,880 --> 00:45:45,640 any of the host of potential adversaries that are out there. 594 00:45:45,640 --> 00:45:50,840 Well, you said one of the four pillars here of the mission is strategic deterrence, and 595 00:45:50,840 --> 00:45:56,560 you can't have strategic deterrence if your adversaries say, well, their fleet continues 596 00:45:56,560 --> 00:46:00,240 to erode and get older and they're not replacing it fast enough. 597 00:46:00,240 --> 00:46:04,360 We just have to wait them out 10 years and we'll have the advantage because there isn't 598 00:46:04,360 --> 00:46:06,520 strategic deterrence. 599 00:46:06,520 --> 00:46:12,960 So I recently was reading in preparation to talking to you the Congressional Research 600 00:46:12,960 --> 00:46:19,640 Services White Paper on March 1st of 2024 on the Navy Force structure and shipbuilding 601 00:46:19,640 --> 00:46:24,920 plans and they say, well, we're going to build 11 ships per year for 35 years and that'll 602 00:46:24,920 --> 00:46:28,600 get us up to something like 355 ships. 603 00:46:28,600 --> 00:46:35,400 And my first reaction was, oh my god, 35 years to get up to that number? 604 00:46:35,400 --> 00:46:40,960 Again, I have just a general layman's view of this thing. 605 00:46:40,960 --> 00:46:46,200 When you look at those kind of projections, and again, we're talking to retired Vice Admiral 606 00:46:46,200 --> 00:46:52,880 Kevin Green, who was the Deputy Chief Naval Operations Plans and Policy Director at one 607 00:46:52,880 --> 00:46:58,000 point, how do you look at those sort of plans and say, well, here's a 35-year plan. 608 00:46:58,000 --> 00:47:00,120 We'll try to build 11 a year. 609 00:47:00,120 --> 00:47:06,720 Well, I'll tell you, Jim, it worries me and I'm not alone. 610 00:47:06,720 --> 00:47:18,080 And we have put ourselves in a situation where in the short term, we have to focus on readiness, 611 00:47:18,080 --> 00:47:22,680 readiness of the force, the platforms, that is, the ships, aircraft, and other systems 612 00:47:22,680 --> 00:47:31,520 that we use, but ensuring that when they deploy, when they leave port to go over and carry 613 00:47:31,520 --> 00:47:33,920 out an operational mission, they are ready. 614 00:47:33,920 --> 00:47:35,640 They are trained. 615 00:47:35,640 --> 00:47:37,840 They are well-armed. 616 00:47:37,840 --> 00:47:39,280 The systems work. 617 00:47:39,280 --> 00:47:46,520 They have the spares and the materials and the ammo that they need to get the job done. 618 00:47:46,520 --> 00:47:52,560 That doesn't solve the longer-term problem, but it solves the immediate problem when we're 619 00:47:52,560 --> 00:47:54,240 able to get enough of them out there. 620 00:47:54,240 --> 00:48:02,000 There's been a lot of focus in the past several years on how many of this battle force, how 621 00:48:02,000 --> 00:48:06,920 many of the battle force ships are fully ready for mission. 622 00:48:06,920 --> 00:48:12,480 And the aviation world, they refer to that measure as full mission capable. 623 00:48:12,480 --> 00:48:20,880 And the FMC rates, full mission capability rates of the naval air force has gone up significantly 624 00:48:20,880 --> 00:48:26,760 in the last several years due to investments and better means of managing that force. 625 00:48:26,760 --> 00:48:31,240 They've done a great job and they have to stay on it. 626 00:48:31,240 --> 00:48:38,240 One of the things that occurs to me is this relationship with the Defense Industrial Base 627 00:48:38,240 --> 00:48:48,000 and expanding the Defense Industrial Base and finding things like disruptive capabilities, 628 00:48:48,000 --> 00:48:52,800 the things that we haven't had in the past, things that make a difference. 629 00:48:52,800 --> 00:48:57,160 The Secretary of the Navy has put together a new disruptive capabilities office that 630 00:48:57,160 --> 00:48:58,880 is looking at just that. 631 00:48:58,880 --> 00:49:05,280 And they're principally looking at things like cyber warfare and use of drones and all 632 00:49:05,280 --> 00:49:06,600 that. 633 00:49:06,600 --> 00:49:13,520 I have observed, I have seen and been present at demonstrations from a lot of different 634 00:49:13,520 --> 00:49:20,360 companies, companies that are not traditional defense firms that are applying new technologies 635 00:49:20,360 --> 00:49:24,240 to things that sound awfully mundane, things like propulsion systems. 636 00:49:24,240 --> 00:49:35,040 I saw a demo recently of a new kind of propulsion system for assault craft, amphibious craft 637 00:49:35,040 --> 00:49:40,040 and so forth that is so different from what's been used before. 638 00:49:40,040 --> 00:49:46,720 And finding a way of connecting the government, the Department of Defense and the folks who 639 00:49:46,720 --> 00:49:51,200 do the acquisition of new systems to connect them with the companies. 640 00:49:51,200 --> 00:49:58,640 I mean, this is good old American know-how and inventiveness and energy, brilliant new 641 00:49:58,640 --> 00:50:02,120 thoughts and being able to connect all of this together. 642 00:50:02,120 --> 00:50:08,120 You really have to count on some of that to stay up with folks, countries who may be 643 00:50:08,120 --> 00:50:17,760 spending more money and attempting to leapfrog you in just numbers of ships at sea. 644 00:50:17,760 --> 00:50:22,400 You have to try to move forward with some technologies, this disruptive capabilities 645 00:50:22,400 --> 00:50:23,400 you mentioned. 646 00:50:23,400 --> 00:50:28,400 And that's one of the ones I wanted you to expand on a little bit because the Navy is 647 00:50:28,400 --> 00:50:37,680 planning on actually quite a number of larger unmanned underwater vehicles for a variety 648 00:50:37,680 --> 00:50:44,000 of work and missions over the next couple of decades and maybe moving that number up 649 00:50:44,000 --> 00:50:48,080 to like, I think I read 150. 650 00:50:48,080 --> 00:50:53,440 Again, help us who aren't in this regularly to think about what does that do? 651 00:50:53,440 --> 00:50:55,440 How does that help your capabilities? 652 00:50:55,440 --> 00:51:01,440 Well, first of all, back to that earlier point that one ship can only be in one place at 653 00:51:01,440 --> 00:51:03,440 a time. 654 00:51:03,440 --> 00:51:11,360 The fifth fleet in the Persian Gulf and the northern Indian Ocean and the Red Sea has 655 00:51:11,360 --> 00:51:18,640 for years now been engaged in a brilliantly successful and extremely innovative program 656 00:51:18,640 --> 00:51:31,080 to use unmanned systems, platforms, principally surface-based boats, if you will, aircraft 657 00:51:31,080 --> 00:51:38,000 also to be able to expand their ability to conduct surveillance and intelligence gathering. 658 00:51:38,000 --> 00:51:44,880 That's been true in the fourth fleet area of responsibility as well in the Caribbean and 659 00:51:44,880 --> 00:51:48,080 around South America and Central America. 660 00:51:48,080 --> 00:51:56,120 They're able to use these systems in a theater where it's hard to get a large number of ships 661 00:51:56,120 --> 00:52:02,480 at aircraft because it's a very large area and there's lots of work to be done. 662 00:52:02,480 --> 00:52:08,320 But being able to use those kinds of systems is extraordinarily powerful. 663 00:52:08,320 --> 00:52:13,320 Evel Poparo, who's the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet now and has been confirmed by 664 00:52:13,320 --> 00:52:19,760 the Senate to be the next commander of the Indo-Pacific Command later this year, has 665 00:52:19,760 --> 00:52:30,160 made a number of public statements concerning the use of thousands of such unmanned systems, 666 00:52:30,160 --> 00:52:38,360 subsurface, surface and aerial, to be able to again expand his ability to gain intelligence, 667 00:52:38,360 --> 00:52:45,680 conduct surveillance and in some cases they can have other kinetic missions as well. 668 00:52:45,680 --> 00:52:55,800 It's a very exciting change and it requires fewer people to be placed at the scene of 669 00:52:55,800 --> 00:53:02,480 action if you will and some of these platforms have extraordinary endurance. 670 00:53:02,480 --> 00:53:10,920 We've got a number of fleet exercises in the last year and a half or so that have demonstrated 671 00:53:10,920 --> 00:53:15,240 the value to the fighting force of what these platforms can do. 672 00:53:15,240 --> 00:53:20,680 Well, it's really interesting and I think in a very positive way for national security 673 00:53:20,680 --> 00:53:29,240 admiral and while I also am very worried that we don't either have the Congressional 674 00:53:29,240 --> 00:53:35,960 Budget for or the Defense and Duffer's drill base to build more ships that are more rapid 675 00:53:35,960 --> 00:53:40,280 paced than we need, I don't want to end this on a downer, I really want to come back and 676 00:53:40,280 --> 00:53:46,480 say one of the things that I think is also going on in recognition of what some of our 677 00:53:46,480 --> 00:53:51,280 adversaries are doing is a greater effort to have naval partners and I'm thinking of 678 00:53:51,280 --> 00:53:57,240 Australia in particular but I suspect this goes on worldwide that the US Navy is working 679 00:53:57,240 --> 00:54:06,160 hard to have naval partners in other countries sort of as a force multiplier and strategic 680 00:54:06,160 --> 00:54:07,200 deterrent. 681 00:54:07,200 --> 00:54:09,960 Can you advise us a little bit about that? 682 00:54:09,960 --> 00:54:17,120 Absolutely and you and I were speaking last week about things, I mentioned that I served 683 00:54:17,120 --> 00:54:21,200 on a German ship back in my midship and days. 684 00:54:21,200 --> 00:54:28,280 Ships that I served on as a commission officer had exchange officers and others and we operated 685 00:54:28,280 --> 00:54:36,840 with NATO ships and with Japanese ships and with Korean ships and others as well. 686 00:54:36,840 --> 00:54:45,960 The British, the French, the Germans, members of NATO, countries in Europe are already engaged 687 00:54:45,960 --> 00:54:53,800 in planning and continuing a series of operations of their ships in the western Pacific because 688 00:54:53,800 --> 00:55:00,520 of their understanding that if there's a serious problem somewhere in the globe it's going 689 00:55:00,520 --> 00:55:10,680 to affect the entire globe and that's a very, very encouraging and positive development. 690 00:55:10,680 --> 00:55:19,360 I have to say that once again the strength of our national abilities is not dependent 691 00:55:19,360 --> 00:55:21,240 on us alone. 692 00:55:21,240 --> 00:55:29,240 We have great partners who have been proven in combat who have made it very clear where 693 00:55:29,240 --> 00:55:35,040 their loyalties lie and we couldn't be more fortunate than to have the friends that we 694 00:55:35,040 --> 00:55:44,160 do and typically the adversaries that we consider for potential concern in the future don't 695 00:55:44,160 --> 00:55:50,440 have that luxury of having strong, capable friends to be able to help them out. 696 00:55:50,440 --> 00:55:59,160 When you get a chance and you bump into your local congressman or senator, you ought to 697 00:55:59,160 --> 00:56:04,680 ask them what are they doing about, how much support are they given to the Air Force and 698 00:56:04,680 --> 00:56:13,520 the Navy so that we have the machinery to defend the country when it comes time. 699 00:56:13,520 --> 00:56:17,560 Well, you're not going to hear these stories anywhere but on Veterans Radio I hope you'll 700 00:56:17,560 --> 00:56:24,160 stay in contact with us through our webpage at veteransradio.org or on Facebook. 701 00:56:24,160 --> 00:56:27,240 I'm Jim Fossone, Dale Throneberry. 702 00:56:27,240 --> 00:56:31,400 We'll be back next week to talk about some of these issues and we certainly appreciate 703 00:56:31,400 --> 00:56:40,400 all of our partners like NVBDC and those Ann Arbor based Veterans Service Organizations 704 00:56:40,400 --> 00:56:45,400 which have been helping us out for a long time and my fellow board members who are always 705 00:56:45,400 --> 00:56:52,480 working to bring you the best we can in Veterans Radio and until next time on Veterans Radio 706 00:56:52,480 --> 00:57:16,200 you are dismissed.