Air force

The pictures sent to us by active service members who we are not naming.

A destroyed Air Force jet hit by Iranian fire on March 27th at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.

Buildings ripped apart at that same base.

A US Army base in Kuwait, extensive damage from an Iranian strike.

Houthi Red Sea dominance also poses major risks to Israel, which has had to defend its cities against Houthi missiles.

With Hamas to the west, Hezbollah to the north, and Iran to the east, Israel doesn't want an expended threat, expended threat to the south.

Okay, so all of this argues for a regional military res- response to the Houthis, but who will lead it? Saudi Arabia spends 70 billion bucks a year on defense and has a capable air force, mostly.

But it can't defeat the Houthis alone or just from the air.

So two days ago, um, a rather worrying development, uh, caught everybody's attention.

Uh, so US Air Force Secretary Troy Mink publicly acknowledged for the first time that the United States has what he called an orbit space-controlled weapons.

So what it means is that US has, for the first time, acknowledged that it has put some counter space weapons in, um, uh, the space, in the lower, uh, the orbit perhaps, and Washington has not yet disclosed precisely what these systems are.

But the acknowledgement itself is rather significant because capabilities that were previously discussed largely through ambiguity are at least now being spoken about openly.

And, you know, going back to, you know, the, the GATE program or you tagging along with them, a similar thing happened in my school.

I didn't tag along with them, but the Air Force came in to our classroom in fifth grade, and they wanted all the children to design an aircraft, a spacecraft.

And they said, "Young minds have the best ideas," and we all had to basically invent.

They said, "Use your imagination.

ABC News obtaining these images, sent to us by active service members who we are not naming, show the extent of some of the damage.

Here you see this Air Force jet blown in half, destroyed by Iranian fire on March 27th at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.

Buildings torn apart.

This image shows extensive damage from an Iranian attack at a US Army base in Kuwait, the date unclear.

I don't think that's arguable.

You know, the Air Forces of the Red Army had over 23,000 aircraft, over 3,700 of which were considered to be cutting edge fighters.

The Red Army had close to 150,000 artillery pieces.

The Red Navy, including a substantial fleet of surface ships of varying types, they had close to 300 submarines and submarines are expressly offensive there are no defensive submarines and this meant as hoffman raises in his book the soviets not only had a larger fleet of submarines than any other country in the world but they outnumbered the royal navy more than fourfold in terms of their number of subs I mean, this is the most powerful offensive military element the world has ever seen.

And my father liked to think that part of his job was to take a flashlight to go to those dark edges and see if he can find out a little bit more.

And did he start out as a skeptic, but then he worked as an advisory or something similar to the US Air Force? But he must have discovered something that changed his mind because he didn't die a skeptic, did he?

Yeah, you're right.

know people will say he went from a skeptic to a believer and that's not quite right but he went from a die-hard skeptic because in the 1940s most astronomers thought that flying saucers as they were called at the time were just kind of post-war hysteria and they're little green men with ray guns on the comic books so the air force asked him to help explain cases and he i'm sure he thought well that will take a couple weekends worth of work well You know, he worked for the Air Force for 20 years and over that time came to the realization that, OK, there's a lot of silly things happening.

The Air Force and Space Force understand what they need to do.

The question now is whether the nation is willing to resource them at the level necessary to do it.

From the Defense and Aerospace Report, this is the Air Power Podcast.

And I'm Vagamirati.

And every September, the AirPower World focuses on the Air and Space Forces Association's Airspace Cyber Conference and Trade Show outside Washington, D.C. Our team spent all three days at the conference and will review the show on this extended broadcast.

J.J. and I will be joined by our space guru, Laura Winter, who edits the Downlink podcast, Tobias Nagley, the editor of Air and Space Forces Magazine, one of the world's leading aerospace and defense journalists, and air power legend, retired United States Air Force Lieutenant General Dave Deptula, the dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

Plus, we'll have this week's headlines in air power.

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But I grew up kind of poor.

I grew up in an airport town and I didn't know an airport town was kind of a poor town until you get into the Air Force and you're flying to different towns.

And every town you fly into, that little

Everything around that's not real nice.

Has the house been marked? Is it prepped properly? Where's the bathrooms go? Where's the truck washout? My product data sheet shows that.

I've got every question I could ever think of.

So I was a Minuteman II missile technician in the Air Force.

So standard operating procedure is very important, right? It was neat to take a poor guy like me that knew nothing and put me in a position of excitement.

I don't think that's arguable.

You know, the Air Forces of the Red Army had over 23,000 aircraft, over 3,700 of which were considered to be cutting-edge aircraft, fighters.

The Red Army had close to 150,000 artillery pieces.

The Red Navy, including a substantial fleet of surface ships of varying types, they had close to 300 submarines.