What made you want to actually do a closer analysis this past spring?

It was really strange to me.

The level of, you know, attacks, I think CENTCOM reported, you know, 6,000 strikes or something in the opening week or two of Epic Fury, and they had put a cost estimate on it of $11 billion.

And those are eye-watering numbers, for sure.

But it was trickling out through credible open source intelligence as well as soldier videos, the kinds of which you have referenced, which Central Command later asked soldiers to stop posting.

There was a variety of credible information, including in foreign media outlets like Italian news media.

showing the extent of the damage, but not here in America.

I mean, how do you how do you untie that knot, Mackenzie? Yeah.

What can the US Navy do to get bigger? Does a lot of this have to do with unmanned?

It does, and I share your assessment.

You know, I've been screaming into the void for years.

We have a one-war military, and it's really a, it's a, it's a three-world problem set our military confronts on any given day to keep the balance of power across Eurasia and the Middle East, uh, in three separate theaters.

So this was, again, sadly kind of knowable that the Navy wouldn't be able to prosecute a, a really long, intensive multi-mission set against a, what the Pentagon calls a middle power.

That should concern all of us.

It takes about, you know, four ships to put one on station at, on any given moment on the high seas, and so the Navy's clearly too small.

And why was that, do you think?

and other

buckets of money, whether that's discretionary or mandatory.

And so in this case, what One-time infusion does is it jumpstarts necessary investments that have been kicked.

The can has been kicked down the road, like I mentioned, for 20 plus, you could argue 35 years now.

And all the bills are coming due at the same time.

Machines age out at the rate you purchase them.

And you can extend them and you can put Band-Aids on them.

colleague at AEI, Bill