transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Mick Ryan is back on School of War today to conduct what we thought might be a post-mortem of American military performance in the war with Iran. But of course, that begs the question. We don't really know if it's a post-mortem, so call it a mid-mortem if you like. But we're gonna talk about America's performance at the strategic, the operational, the tactical level, talk about what this war means for affairs in the Pacific, and speculate a bit about what might come next. Let's get into it.

Speaker 2:
[00:26] It is a prescription for war.

Speaker 1:
[01:00] Hi, I'm Aaron MacLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I am delighted to welcome back to School of War Major General Mick Ryan, Australian Army, retired. He's a regular guest here on the show. It's been a little while since you've been back, Mick. How are you doing out there?

Speaker 2:
[01:13] Yeah, I'm very good. I'm coming to you from Taipei today where I'm doing a visit for a week, doing a bit of research and a book launch. So it's really nice to be talking to you again.

Speaker 1:
[01:22] Well, you're an adjunct fellow here at CSIS in DC. You're also the inaugural senior fellow for military studies at the Lowy Institute in Australia. We've talked about a number of your books on the show. Which one are you out there promoting today?

Speaker 2:
[01:36] This one is my first one, War Transform, which talks about how war is changing before our eyes, how the character of war is evolving, but also how many things including the centrality of humans to war is not changing, and why we need to really focus on their development.

Speaker 1:
[01:51] Well, it seems that you and I, Mick, have both picked a good line of work if we want to constantly have a stream of things to talk about it, because there's no shortage of matters to discuss in either the war or the war transformation business of late. I want to start us with Iran, but I think as we zoom out, the Pacific will be encompassed within that. You obviously live in Australia. Here in the United States, we talk a lot about this ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and you do see elevated gas prices here and some, I think, impacts of that closure. My impression is out in the Pacific, things are more acute, more accelerated. How does this play in Australia? What does it look like from there?

Speaker 2:
[02:33] Well, obviously, we're all paying a lot more for our fuel, although it's not a huge amount more than I thought. In fact, at the moment, I'm not paying too much more than I did before the war. But there are certainly parts of Australia where they're running low on gas. Diesel fuel is the big problem for farmers, and you've got a massive economy based around farming. That is an issue, but also a lot of South Pacific countries are facing fuel limitations, and they're obviously close partners of ours. We're working with them, but also Australia is working with regional countries, Japan, Indonesia, and others to guarantee supply, things like fuel, fertilizer, and these things to get us through this period.

Speaker 1:
[03:17] I apologize. I know you're not the economic and trade guy. You're the war transformation guy, so no worries if you don't have command of the numbers here. But I am curious just to what extent Australia is dependent on the Persian Gulf, or these other partner countries that you're referring to are actually dependent on the Persian Gulf.

Speaker 2:
[03:34] Well, we don't get a lot of fuel or oil from the Persian Gulf. What we get is fuel refined by others who rely on the Persian Gulf. So it's an indirect, but still very much an impact. Last week, Australia released its new National Defense Strategy, and it did cover this in a degree by enhancing, at least the language, around national resilience. We don't appear to have learned the lessons of COVID. Hopefully, we'll learn the lessons of this crisis to enhance national resilience.

Speaker 1:
[04:06] So I want to do a bit of an overview of how the war with Iran has gone and hit it at every level, the strategic level, the operational, the tactical level, and get your take on each. I keep, as we've been discussing this episode, I've referred to it a few times as a post-mortem, but I suppose that sort of begs the question, doesn't it? It could very well be a mid-mortem. We just don't know right now. And we're recording this, I should say, this is Washington time, about six o'clock in the evening on Monday, April the 20th. So these things obviously change very quickly. But we have this tale of two blockades. We have an Iranian blockade in the Strait of Hormuz itself. We have an American blockade operating out in the Gulf of Oman on ships coming and going from Iranian ports. And we may have negotiations this week. We can talk about that. That seems like where we're headed, but it's not 100% certain. But if we go all the way back to February the 28th, Mick, and you'll go top down or bottom up, I'll leave it to you. So start with strategic or start with tactical. How would you assess... Let's just stick to Americans at the moment. How would you assess the American performance in this war vis-a-vis Iran?

Speaker 2:
[05:14] If I was to start at the top at the political level, within a short period of the first attacks taking place, there was a statement by the president who did outline the rationale for the attacks on Iran. And you can argue about whether they're right or wrong objectives. If there's too many, not enough. But clearly, making sure Iran didn't have nuclear weapons, that it was no longer a state sponsor of terrorism throughout the Middle East and indeed through the world. I mean, they've sponsored attacks in Australia. And regime change were the top of the pile of what were a lot of other objectives, including destroying the long range and medium range ballistic missile capabilities. So, I mean, there was a set of objectives. Whether they were well explained to the American people and the allies is another issue. But at least there were objectives in the President of America's mind and in his cabinet about why they were launching this. I think another element of the political strategy of this was to eschew large amounts of alliance capability and to really work purely with Israel as a regional partner, rather than do the work that would be required to get consensus in NATO for support on this attack. Now, it doesn't mean there hasn't been support from NATO allies. I'm sure there's been a lot of support on the ground at bases and things like this. But you've also seen some NATO allies actively stand in the way of American operations, Spain being the main standout there. So on the political side, there are objectives. But the hard work, I think, politically of selling the war to allies and potentially even selling the war to the American public probably hasn't been done as well as it might. If you then step down as well, what's the strategy for achieving those objectives? The focus clearly has been on military operations. And this is something that clearly the Pentagon has prepared for since 1979. I mean, you can't say there wasn't a plan for this. There's probably 75 different plans and contingencies and branch plans that cover this. But as we both know, the world changes and a plan is only a start for the basis of action. It doesn't govern everything because once the enemy gets involved, your plan changes. So I think at the strategic level, the military, I think, has been extraordinarily effective. We can talk about that. It's been all the other elements of implementing and achieving those political goals, alliances. I think the economic side of things, potentially some anticipation of Iranian responses might have been better or at least plain better.

Speaker 1:
[08:21] Can I pause you there for a second, Mick? I want to linger on the major Iranian response that we're all grappling with right now, which I think is properly discussed at this higher level, which is the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. I remain perplexed in an ongoing fashion with how the United States is handling this challenge. You don't have to be Carl von Clausewitz or Mick Ryan to look at the map and to consider the nature of this regime and think, well, gosh, if we put it at real existential risk, or just if they perceive it to be existential risk, this is a major tool they have to use. This is a major card they have to play, and we should anticipate that they're going to play it and have a plan for that. I assumed in that first week of March, as the Strait basically shut down, that the United States had simply embraced or the Trump administration had embraced the fact that, okay, we could say it's a four to six week war, we can prosecute these other targets and sort of call it good when we consider it good and ready, but we are signing up for what could very well be, in fact, even likely will be a protracted escort operation in the Strait of Hormuz, like Operation Ernest Will back in the 1980s. I just assumed six weeks ago that that must be the thinking because I couldn't, frankly, couldn't imagine the alternative. Well, it does seem like we're in some kind of alternative, and this question of the Strait is driving everything. It has become sort of the central question for the economic reasons that we were alluding to at the start of our conversation. So I am curious your thinking on Washington's thinking on this question.

Speaker 2:
[09:58] Well, it was the most foreseeable problem imaginable. I mean, the terrain has not changed for millions of years, right? And I think in any operational anticipation, this would have been the most obvious Iranian response. Now, the fact that the United States sailed its last four minesweepers out of the Gulf a month or two before the war indicates that maybe the anticipation was not as profound as we would have liked. It really is perplexing how people said, well, we didn't anticipate this would happen, or at least there wasn't the preparations in place. But I think that's only one of a couple of areas where the anticipation was not as good as it might have been. I think anticipating Iranian drone attacks against all its regional neighbors. There was some thought that it might happen with air defenses and stuff. But frankly, four years into the war in Ukraine, two years into Ukraine developing cheap interceptors, and we still don't have these things. And being surprised by Shahed drone attacks, I think is unforgivable. That was the ultimate foreseeable event, given Iran exported these things to Russia. And the fact that large numbers of these things we use, we had to use five-year-old tactics and techniques with Patriots rather than latest generation of three to $4,000 interceptors, was a gross failure of leadership and a real failure of learning and adaptation.

Speaker 1:
[11:37] You're very prolific, Mick. You write a lot. I can't cite all of your recent pieces, but you addressed this specifically in a great piece for one of my favorite publications, Engelsberg Ideas, the West's Military Milais, about several things, but the strange lack of curiosity about the war in Ukraine, which would have addressed this counter-UAS issue. But I think other issues that's worth talking about is we're in the strategic level, but as we move into the operational level, just the role of unmanned forces in general, the role of data, these things that are really, really central to the war in Ukraine and Ukraine's fight to survive. But also, frankly, Russia's campaign to squelch it out. It's important on both sides of that war, these issues. I'll lay out a thesis for you here, Mick, and I'm curious to hear you respond. You cite our military's success at prosecuting a lot of these war aims, and I agree with you. But I also wonder if the math of what we're seeing really works if you take it out to the Pacific. That is to say, do we have the right balance as evidenced by how we've just operated for the last month and a half or so in Iran between the survivable platforms, the big expensive stuff, not just F-35s, but also MQ-9 Reapers, which are pretty expensive apparently if you start to lose a bunch of them all at once, which we seem to have. And then attritable stuff that we are happy to have lost. And then just consumable stuff that we know we're going to lose. Do we have that balance right in that we can afford a war that lasts for longer than a few weeks? I worry that the answer of the last six weeks is no, not yet. There's the question of magazine depth as well, which apparently is pretty acute at the more expensive end of it. And then, this is a little bit more opaque and harder to peer in from outside the box, but this question of how well we actually are using data, the Israelis seem to have been using it very well in a lot of their leadership strikes. But I wonder if we're quite on the cutting edge where we need to be, where the Ukrainians and to an extent the Russians too are. So let me lay that out for you. And then I'm just curious your take that for as dominant as the American military has been operationally, there are actually some pretty serious warning signs.

Speaker 2:
[13:52] Yeah, I think, you know, the first thing we should always look at in these kind of operations is, you know, is the return on investment worth the opportunity cost? I mean, it's that balance of we got this, but is the cost down the track even higher? And I think in this war, that will be something we'll study for some time. Was this war worth it, given the potential degradation of readiness of the US. Navy and the Pacific and missile stocks? I mean, even at its most powerful of the Second World War, there were certain things that were limited that drove operational tempo between European and Pacific theaters, LSTs, for example. These days, it appears to be, you know, strategic air defense systems, which drive where and when the US can conduct high-level military operations. And that's all been concentrated in the Middle East now. We've seen stripping out of forces and air defense out of the Pacific as part of the deterrent against Chinese aggression. Now, how profound that is, we don't really know. We don't know how, what the level of reserve stockholding is that Admiral Paparo and the BACOM have out there. My sense is they probably still have some stuff in their back pocket. And we also don't know how quickly the US can step in and make stuff. One of the issues that we got to consider with US stockpiles, which has become the dialing of the media in the last six months, is that the US and other countries have invested in building their capacity to build more, whether it's the United States letting lots of new contracts for different kinds of missiles and long range strike systems. But countries like Australia and in Europe have stepped up production of these things. Australia has just launched its first indigenously built Hormuz rocket. So we need to balance off consumption with the fact that production is starting to step up and that will gain momentum at some point. You mentioned beyond munitions the impact of AI. I think this is a really important takeaway from the war. For some years now, US co-coms have been working very hard on all the different applications of AI, and it now penetrates deeply into all the joint directorates in Indopaycom and Centcom and the subordinate service commands, and they share lessons amongst each other. And we've seen it result in an operational and tactical tempo that is really significant. It's the kind of tempo that we've always wanted to generate to destroy an adversary decision cycle.

Speaker 1:
[16:33] Can you say a little bit more about that? I think those who are on the inside of this either because it's what their work is, or they study it full time like you do, get what you just said. But to the person on the street who cares about the success of American or Australian arms and knows that AI is important, but thinks themselves AI and tempo, wait, how does AI increase tempo? How does AI increase tempo, Mick?

Speaker 2:
[17:00] Well, at the operational and tactical levels, in intelligence analysis, it greatly compresses the time to build target packages from weeks to hours. It's extraordinary, the compression of time. It does that. It then compresses the planning time for the hitting of targets. Just because it speeds up decision making, it speeds up options generation, it allows you to consider far more information in a much more compressed time. And then it also speeds up the longer term planning as well. So you're not waiting weeks for a plan, you're waiting hours or maybe days. So that's just in the kinetic side of things. But we're also seeing it used for logistics, for personnel management, for airspace management, which is important when you're defending against drones. At the strategic level, we've obviously seen it used in these AI slop videos, which have been used on both sides as part of larger political cognitive warfare campaigns from both America and the United States.

Speaker 1:
[18:06] So having given this assessment of American performance, do you have any thoughts you want to share on either the Israeli or for that matter, the Iranian side of things in terms of how they perform compared to maybe what your expectations were?

Speaker 2:
[18:18] Yeah, I think on the Israeli side, militarily, they've clearly performed very well. They've built a capability over the last few years that would be one of the few that could integrate and work alongside the Americans at the pace that they have, because they've also invested in AI and these kinds of things. So I think it'll be a very interesting case study of how to plug in allies into the US system for Pacific nations and we should be studying that because the US and Israel have not actually integrated operations like this before. And I think that's a really good case study. I think Iran is an interesting case study, again, of a smaller country that should be weaker, having agency and able to really obstruct a large country achieving its political objectives. We saw Ukraine do this and continue to do this. And that's what Iran is doing. It's frustrating America achieving political objectives in the Middle East through a range of things, not least of which is drone attacks and threats of terrorist activity around the globe. This is important for Taiwan. And there's a really good piece, and I think it's the New York Times by Seth Jones and Dan Byman from CSIS that look at what might Taiwan learn from Iran's resistance in this war against the United States?

Speaker 1:
[19:45] That's really interesting. Well, I mean, can you speak to what your colleagues said? What were the highlights?

Speaker 2:
[19:51] Well, the first one is war is two-sided. Just because there's one big player and a smaller one doesn't mean the smaller one lacks agency. It still has options. It can do things to hurt, to frustrate, to horizontally escalate a war, as Iran has done in this case, that are important to understand and to plan for, not just understand they can do it, but anticipate and plan for those kind of eventualities. I think another important takeaway is that political decapitation doesn't work. We've seen what's happened in Iran. What it's done is resulted in a regime that's arguably more hardline and going to cause even more heartache and brutality towards the Iranian people and regional neighbors. And China will look at that, hopefully, and assess that, well, maybe decapitation of the Taiwanese government, which is its plan and its doctrine, isn't the way to go. So they're just a couple of lessons beyond things like drone and drone defense.

Speaker 1:
[20:58] I worry about that one. I'm inclined to push back slightly just to hear what you say. Yeah, I agree it hasn't worked in this case. But I compare it to what the United States did in Venezuela, where at least appearances suggest that Maduro was vacuumed up out of the country. I almost said hoovered up. You're bringing back my British Australian verbal takes, Mick. Hoovered up out of the country. We probably had some prior thinking in relationship with Delce Rodriguez. It didn't shake out totally by chance that she and the gang around her were the heirs apparent. There doesn't seem to have been a similar plan in Iran, where if there was, it obviously didn't come to pass. So I worry that you might need an amendment. It's not so much that decapitation strikes don't work. They could work if they are part of a broader, coherent political strategy. But you can't just kill a few leaders and figure that'll do the job. That's just rolling the dice. And in this case, it seems not to have worked.

Speaker 2:
[22:08] Yeah, absolutely. And when it comes to Maduro, I mean, he was an exquisite scalpel to take one person out, but the regime is still in place. It just is a more slightly more pliable regime at this point in time.

Speaker 1:
[22:23] Yeah. So we've been pretty critical in the course of this conversation about American efforts to learn from Ukraine. And you and I are both advocates that that learning needs to be faster, deeper, better. Talk a bit about, this is a big subject of yours, and I'm always, every time you write something new about it, I always read it very eagerly. But this adaptation and learning block that exists amongst the bad guys, Iran, Russia, China, North Korea. We would have said Venezuela, I think not that long ago. How are they learning and adapting as a consequence of Iran's defense in this war? And also, just feel free to speak to just the level of support Iran may be getting or not be getting from Russia and China.

Speaker 2:
[23:09] Yeah, I think Russia, China, in particular, have helped Iran during this war with intelligence. It's clear now that Chinese commercial firms have passed on satellite imagery. As you and I both know, there's no such thing as a Chinese commercial firm that acts by itself under Chinese law. Every part of the Chinese state must aid the government if called on. And that's probably what happened here. So they've helped Iran. I'm sure that Russia will have passed on lessons about the use of Shaheed drones and the best targets and how to slip through air defences, particularly the same kind of systems that Ukraine users are being used in the Middle East. So there's some active assistance there, but there'll be active learning. The Chinese and Russians will be studying American lessons. They'll be studying their operations very closely, but they'll also be studying political decision making in Washington. How has the Trump administration's decision making informed them about how they might make decisions in a future war in Eastern Europe or in the Pacific? So they're both involved in helping to a certain level beneath the threshold because China knows that Trump would come down on it. They did too much. But they're also learning about military and political insights from this war, that will help them to continue pushing back against America.

Speaker 1:
[24:37] Yeah. Some of these really precise strikes, you've seen the Iranians pull off on aircraft on a tarmac, for example, where we presume the aircraft are not stationary day after day, but they move around a bit. That's where I would be surprised if the Iranians have been able to pull that off single-handedly and indeed, I've seen reports that the Russians in particular have been helping with that kind of stuff. Also, there was a report in the Financial Times the other day about a Chinese satellite essentially being sold to the Iranians a few years ago, ostensibly for purposes of monitoring agriculture and stuff like that. If you can take pictures of a farm field, you can certainly take pictures of a tarmac. So that kind of support seems to be alive and well.

Speaker 2:
[25:20] Yeah, it will continue. I mean, they have an interest in collaborating. They're not allies and they're not fighting like World War II allies together or anything like that. But they certainly have an interest in sharing knowledge about modern warfare, strategic coercion, political warfare, and these kind of things. And the Iran war will be a really good case study for them as they move forward to develop their own approaches and how they're pushing back against the US and other democracies.

Speaker 1:
[25:47] I want to ask you, this is sort of a grand strategic question about China and China's view of the Middle East. I'm curious your thoughts here. A lot of very smart and well-credential people tell me that China's main interest in the Middle East is stability because it needs resources out of the Persian Gulf, et cetera. So it just sort of wants a safe, peaceful neighborhood. There's an implicit criticism of the United States here that actually the United States is a driver of instability, which we can discuss that as well if you like. And what I can't quite square with that assertion that China's sort of sole and most important goal is stability, is China's closeness to the Islamic Republic, which say what you will about the Islamic Republic of Iran, source of stability is not what I would call it. For 47 plus years, it has been the opposite, essentially. So what is China's interest in all this? What does it hope to see out of this war? Is it really just sitting there, ruining the instability and hoping for a peaceful and safer region?

Speaker 2:
[26:54] I think China, talking to people here in Taipei, would be keen for the war to be over and the oil to flow out of the Strait of Hormuz. But on the other side of things, they don't want to step in too far because they're terrified of being asked to contribute to some kind of international force that would keep the Strait open and to escort ships. Not so much because of their relationship with Iran, but I just don't know they have the confidence in the PLA to pull something off like that. So they're kind of walking on eggshells. They want the oil to flow. They want America out of the Middle East or American influence in the Middle East to decline. But at the same time, they don't want to contribute too much to the stability and security of the region themselves.

Speaker 1:
[27:41] Can you say more about why they don't have that level of trust in the PLA Navy yet? I mean, this is a country that the working theory in the United States for some time has been that 2027 is the magic year by which they're meant to be at least capable enough of seizing Taiwan through force. So in 2026, they couldn't contribute to an escort operation in the Strait of Hormuz?

Speaker 2:
[28:04] Well, I think they could. The problem would be if you had a Chinese ship attack that was sunk, that would be a very profound issue for the CCP. It would be a failure in the eyes of the world. And that would be a big problem for Xi. And if you put yourself in his shoes, would you want that kind of problem when it's eminently avoidable? Let's just not put ourselves in that position in the first place.

Speaker 1:
[28:31] All right. So we said a few minutes ago that we're not really in a position to do a postmortem. We don't know. Maybe we are, maybe we aren't. But obviously, on the assumption that these negotiations take place in Islamabad here in the next couple of days, it's easy to imagine how they might fail. The two sides, depending on who you listen to, seem pretty far apart at times. If they fail and there is a return to sustain military operations and not the sort of sporadic violence we see in the Strait and the Gulf of Oman right now. Mick, what do you anticipate the road ahead looking like?

Speaker 2:
[29:05] Well, if we see a failure of negotiations but the ceasefire continues, that would, I know this sounds terrible, that would not be a bad outcome at the moment because at least there is a basis for conversation about getting more ships through the Strait of Hormuz. If the negotiations break down and we start to see more attacks on Iran and Iran resume its attacks on regional countries, I mean, we all know what the price of that will be. It will be the cost of everything for all of us goes up, fuel, groceries, transportation in every country around the world. And the longer it goes, you know, the greater the risks there are of things like fuel rationing in some countries. Everyone wants to avoid that. And even President Trump appears to understand that whilst America might not get its oil from the Middle East, a lot of its allies and trading partners do. So it has a flow on impact. So I think it's in everyone's interest to at least keep the ceasefire going, keep the talks going, and ensure we don't end this war with a situation where Iran is running a protection racket in the Strait of Hormuz.

Speaker 1:
[30:14] Yeah, candidly make I worry that there may not be a peaceful route from here to there. That is to say, they may just never give up through negotiations the protection racket that they seem to have set up over the course of the last few weeks. That's a grim take, I realize, but I just don't see it. I'd love to sit here in a week or two and tell you I was wrong.

Speaker 2:
[30:35] I would too, but I share your pessimism on the trajectory of this war. You have a really awful, brutal bunch of hard-line zealots in control in Iran now, and this is the war they've always wanted to fight against America, and they don't care about their people. They don't care about regional economies. And it's pretty difficult to negotiate with a crew like that.

Speaker 1:
[31:00] Yeah. Yeah, if it were me, my advice to this White House would be, you focus on getting the strait open one way or the other. They're probably not going to do it through a diplomatic concession. So just accept in your heart that you have signed up for protracted military operations in the strait. If you can get the flow of traffic, I mean, you can't reduce the amount of getting, you're going to get shot at. You can't reduce that to zero in the weeks and months ahead, just like you couldn't in 1987 and 1988. But if you can embrace in your heart that you have just signed up for a protracted operation to escort shipping in the strait and then get those numbers up, probably not to 130 a day, but above five, comfortably above where we are so that there is economic blood flowing through that artery again. That takes a lot of the pressure off and it buys you time to do other things with Iran. You could maintain the US blockade, for example, which in time, in weeks and months, not days and weeks, will be utterly punishing to this regime, which you can be as radical as you like. You still have to pay salaries. So that would be my advice is we keep looking for this one cool trick, this silver bullet by which the strait will... I think the president actually said at one point, the strait will naturally open. I'm not seeing it. I would love to be wrong. I would love to be wrong, but that would be my council.

Speaker 2:
[32:22] Yeah, wars don't naturally end themselves, unfortunately. It takes human intervention on both sides to do that. I think there's one final issue I think that's really interesting that will emerge from this war is, how does it change the Trump administration's approach to conflict and decision-making about future wars? Do they come out of this thinking, we never want to do this again and that will impact their decision-making over Taiwan? And therefore, how does that have an impact on the forthcoming Xi-Trump summit? And what might the United States be willing to accept or not accept as part of the future strategic relationship between America and China that Xi wants to establish during this summit?

Speaker 1:
[33:06] That's a great point. I mean, not to be monomaniacal or obsessive, but I feel like I've become that over the strait in the last few weeks. But to me, it's just, it's so essential to finish this war in a way that is not frankly an objective loss. And to me, the only way to do that is to have the strait open again. Even if it's contested, even if you're escorting ships, even if ships are shot at once in a while, just have traffic flowing through that strait. At which point, you can say, well, we degraded their missile capacity, we sunk their Navy. Not much of an Iranian Air Force left. The nuclear program TBD, but they aren't building any bombs with that stuff buried under the dirt anytime soon. You know, you could make a pretty strong case for yourself that you took them down massive numbers of notches between February 28th and the present if you have the strait open. And that sets the United States up to discuss whatever it wants with Xi from a position of real strength. If the strait's closed, I worry the leverage that everybody has at that point.

Speaker 2:
[34:04] No, I think you're right. I mean, the US has to walk away from this with an unambiguous win. And it can't do that if the strait of Hormuz is being closed and controlled by the Islamic Republic. That would not be good. As well as, you know, the nuclear issue is obviously a big issue. How that's resolved, I just don't have a pathway. It'd be a lot of people better than me have tried that. But there is a resolution necessary for that as well.

Speaker 1:
[34:32] One cool thing about those F-15 pilots or the pilot and the weapons officer getting rescued is the Special Operations Command seized and built that Ford refueling point out in the desert near Isfahan, which I have to imagine, well, I mean, I can confidently assert there's no way that they picked that spot off of Google Maps with a few hours to go and said, we'll do it here. Like that spot had obviously been surveyed very possibly even on the ground. And I suspect for the purpose of a nuclear raid, I suspect that's why it was pre-identified. It just so happened that those F-15 crew members happened to get shot down near it and we used it for that end. So clearly those on the ground options exist even if they're extraordinarily risky.

Speaker 2:
[35:15] Yeah, I mean, US. Special Forces are extraordinarily capable and have been leaning into this challenge for decades and have all kinds of contingency planes for nuclear materials. I think it would be a very difficult mission, but at least there's planes in place and people who understand how the job might have to be done.

Speaker 1:
[35:38] Major General Mick Ryan, you've got a brilliant substack, which I should have mentioned at the top. I'll mention it now, Futura Doctrina, which everyone should check out. Author of numerous books, the one you're promoting in Taiwan right now, you've got War Transformed, you've got White Sun War, the Campaign for Taiwan, the War for Ukraine Strategy and Adaptation Under Fire. You really are one of the most thoughtful voices on how warfare is evolving in the 21st century. And I'm thrilled you keep coming back on School of War.

Speaker 2:
[36:07] That's my favorite podcast and it's always a pleasure to speak with you, Eric.

Speaker 1:
[36:11] Thanks, Mick. Talk to you soon.