Mm-hmm

... is what you wanna be able to do, and to where they don't have to ask for the spare part, or they don't have to actually say, "Hey, boss, we've got an issue here." You get that information up front, and you're able to make it happen for them.

Certainly, the well-being of the supply chain is a big part of that, and knowing how you can streamline that process as a boss will bring people closer to you.

It will make them wanna tuck in behind your draft as you move forward, and that's your ultimate goal is to not just build a team but to knot it up and to run as fast and to spin as tight together as you can.

And on the flight line, that means producing aircraft a- and making that flying schedule not just happen, but you got the spares.

You've got the ability to surge and go beyond what the requirements are when and if it's needed.

And so this is, to me, is the biggest thing, is information for a commander is critical.

Sounds like the human and the, the intuition, the judgment, uh, still, their wisdom still remains essential to this process.

Mm-hmm

... very closely.

When you want to talk about a precision-guided munition, many of those are classified, but let's just talk about the Patriot missile, for example.

In a week in, uh, Israel two years ago, w- they went through a- almost 1,500 missiles.

Our production capacity at the time for Patriots was 300 missiles a year.

Today, that's gone up to almost 900.

That's in something that we know about.

JV?

So if you use that as a baseline evaluator and scorecard How do you look at this budget, and what are your recommendations?

Well, there's a couple of goods that are qualified and then a couple of bads.

The, the goods are what, uh, Sledge mentioned earlier, is the increase in readiness and the increase in weapon system sustainment accounts.

While those are both good, if you read the details, the increase, nine point seven billion dollars, is roughly ninety-five percent of what the requirement is to meet the training squares for the Air Force.

It just-- You go, "Well, it's a big increase, but it's still not where it needs to be." Uh, with the General Deptula statement, uh, this was a generational opportunity to go, "We're going to get a hundred percent, and then we're gonna start increasing the flying hours by a significant margin to where we get our pilots the training, our aircrews the training that they need to actually not just fill all the squares, but to master the jet and to master the delivery process." So that's one side.

And then you look at the, um, weapon system sustainment, which is the spare parts required to fulfill the flying hour contract.

And we've increased that, but it's now ninety-five percent of the requirement to fly ninety-five percent of the flying hours our aircrew needs, which means our maintainers will still be cannibalizing jets, and we're still going to, to, uh, have problems meeting the number of flying hours that are actually contracted for.

Iran may be degraded, but the region remains volatile, the maritime situation remains dangerous, and U.S. global deterrence now depends on how quickly we can reconstitute capacity and munitions.

Mm-hmm.

Um, uh, uh, Colonel Eckman was a THUD driver.

Um, I had, uh, Joe Pat McCaskill, which was my first operations officer, w- who was a THUD driver.

And you talk about hard school, uh, they actually were, they played hardball.

And Joe Pat was just phenomenal in the way he went about business.

So the generational thing was, uh, kinda interesting.

Uh, Joe Pat was one of those guys that said, "I'm going to tell you a little, and then you're going to have to learn on your own." That's the way Joe Pat handled things.

[laughs]

In that case, we'd be the rear guard, so we're going in.

So Chuck, we talked a little bit about the threat earlier.

So when you got there, AAA was obviously intense over select target areas.

And then you had SAMS, and then you had the MiG threat.

And you obviously did well against the MiG threat, but we think in large measure that we're always smarter than the enemy.

And when you and I were talking this last summer, we talked about the tactics that the MiGs had and how very effective those became.

Could you talk about those a bit?

They had 200 pre-prepared sites up there for about 30 SAM battalions, and they would move from one to the other as soon as they'd fired and given away their position.

What do you think are the key lessons learned coming out of this fight?

It's a big question.

The Army was given the chore of air and missile defense way back in 1948.

Ground base air defense was their job.

We've had a couple of discussions and MOUs that have bantered back and forth about resources, but those MOUs, if they were in existence back in the 80s, they are no longer in play.

We absolutely need to defend our bases.

We're no longer living in a sanctuary state anywhere we go, and that ground base air defense has got to be in place.

I'm really curious to what's going to happen this year on that front.

But that's a very small world compared to Iran, which is a huge landmass.

That's a great question, Heather.

The whole process begins basically with what General Deptula said, that planning process of being able to figure out what targets that the operators are going to go after.

And so that if it's a pre-planned target where you're going to go in and strike, for example, an S-400 site, if that's required, that would require a large coordination effort between different entities.

And generally those are based at different locations in the Gulf.

We've got a main operating base at Al Udeid, but then several others throughout the Gulf.

Kuwait is a big basing option.

What are your thoughts on what that means for our folks, everything from air crews to maintainers and the rest of the unit?

Well, so I think General Deptula said that

the national defense strategy is a significant change in direction.

I would observe that the only difference between a landing and a crash when you are descending is rate of change.

More rate of change can sometimes result in unwanted consequences.

But I think what resonates throughout the national defense strategy and even what General Deptula was talking about with all respect was deterring China.

And I think we talk about deterring them from what? You know, the obvious answer is, well, deterring them from taking Taiwan.

We don't want them to take Taiwan.

when they're talking about that, they're really talking about changing the global power dynamics.