Heather “Lucky” Penney: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Aerospace Advantage Podcast, brought to you by PenFed. I’m your host, Heather, lucky Penny. Here on the Aerospace Advantage, we speak with leaders in the DOD industry and other subject matter experts to explore the intersection of strategy, operational concepts, technology and policy when it comes to air and space power.

So folks, on the first Saturday of every month, we normally do the rendezvous, but given the recent events, what we’re going to do now is focus on Epic Fury because Saturday morning a week ago, everyone in the US awoke to news flashes on their phones. A massive air campaign had been unleashed on Iran, US and Israeli forces were striking a broad range of targets.

Everything from leadership and air defenses to munition storage sites and command and control centers. The US is calling their activities Operation Epic Fury, while the Israelis are using the title Roaring Lion. While this air campaign is a new development in many ways, it’s been over four decades in the making, so we’ve gathered key members of the Mitchell team to [00:01:00] discuss Operation Epic Fury through a broad range of highly experienced perspectives. So with that, I’d like to introduce Lieutenant General David Deptula. Sir.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Hey, great to be here. Heather

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Brigadier General Houston Cantwell.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Morning Heather.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: JV Venable.

John “JV” Venable: Great to be with you all.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Charles Galbreath

Charles Galbreath: good to be with you

Heather “Lucky” Penney: and Doug Birkey.

Douglas Birkey: Hey guys.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Okay, and just for the record, we’re recording this on Wednesday, March 4th, so that’s the baseline for our comments.

So General Deptula, let’s start with you. This past Saturday when the air campaign began, you were speaking at an event commemorating the conclusion of the Desert Storm air campaign 35 years ago to the day. You planned the air attacks for every day of that war.

How do you go about architecting this kind of effort?

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Well, Heather, to cut to the chase, it starts with the end state in mind. That’s what you have to do. What are the political and strategic outcomes that you’re trying to achieve? And then once that’s defined, you work backward from that end state.

The [00:02:00] methodology that was used began with identifying the strategic level centers of gravity. Those critical sources of power or influence that enable the adversary to achieve their objectives. Then those strategic centers of gravity are decomposed to the operational level, which become the target systems or the target sets. And from there you break those down further into tactical centers of gravity or the individual targets that forces will actually engage. At each level, you have to determine the desired effects that you wanna achieve. And it was great listening to the press conference with the Secretary of War and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff today because he very specifically talked about effects and the effects that we want to achieve here.

Now, too often, destruction or damage [00:03:00] is often the default way people measure success in conflict, but those are only some of the means to accomplish outcomes. Force application is just one option along a broader spectrum of options. So if you focus on effects or the end of strategy, rather than simply force on force engagements, you open the door to different and sometimes more effective ways to accomplish campaign objectives.

So let me kind of summarize this. The key to success is a top down process where strategy is translated into specific objectives at each level of war, ultimately all the way down to concrete tactical level tasks. And there are two principles that are critical. First, every tactical level task has got to be directly linked to the highest order objectives of the campaign. And second, if you fail to maintain that [00:04:00] linkage, then what happens is you end up with random attacks against discrete enemy elements that don’t actually contribute to achieving the ultimate political objectives. And that, unfortunately is very much what happened in Vietnam. So to prevent that, you need a system that clearly ties political objectives to tactical actions.

So back during the Desert Storm air campaign, we used the center of gravity model to ensure that every target or target set being engaged directly contributed to achieving the desired political outcomes. Center of gravities were identified at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels, and those were translated respectively into target systems, target sets, and individual targets.

And then for each target set, I would identify specific effects based objectives. So whenever a new target came into the planning cell for consideration, [00:05:00] we evaluated it according to how well it contributed to achieving those objectives. So the planning process wasn’t driven by the number of targets struck or the degree of destruction achieved. It was driven by the effects required to accomplish the strategy, and that’s the essence of designing a successful air campaign.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: That’s really crucial. Getting that synergy from the targeting plan to ensure that every single mission, every single attack is going to build upon itself to be able to deliver the desired effects. But then core to that is you’re not just measuring, as you mentioned, the destruction, but actually the effects and how you measure that is gonna matter. So given the context, what are your key takeaways regarding the strategy that you’ve observed of Epic Fury? I mean, is there a method to how the US and Israel are selecting and striking their targets?

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Well, based on what we’re seeing publicly. There does appear to be a coherent strategy behind Operation Epic [00:06:00] Fury, and it actually aligns quite closely with the framework that I described. First, if you look at the strategic level objectives, the United States and Israel appear to be focused on three major outcomes. Prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, destroy its missile and long-range strike capabilities, and weaken the regime’s ability to project power through its military and proxy networks.

Those objectives point to what I would describe as the strategic centers of gravity for Iran, the regime’s leadership structure, its missile and drone enterprise, and the military organizations that enforce and export its power, particularly the Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

Then if you look at the operational level, the target systems being struck appear to be consistent with that logic. The early waves focused on command and control facilities, air defenses, [00:07:00] missile production, and launch infrastructure, naval forces, and elements of the nuclear enterprise. Those are the classic operational target systems designed to blind isolate and paralyze a military apparatus. Now, at the tactical level, the individual targets flow from those systems, specific missile launchers, IRGC command modes, air defense sites, naval installations, leadership compounds, and so on and so forth. And as you’ve heard, hundreds of such aim points were reportedly struck in the opening phase.

Now, another notable aspect is that the operation also appears to have begun with non-kinetic effects, cyber and information operations, disrupting communications and infrastructure well before the large scale physical strikes.

That sequencing reflects an effects based [00:08:00] approach where the goal is not simply destruction but systemic paralysis. There also appears to be a division of labor between Israel and the United States that reflects comparative advantages. Israel is reportedly concentrated more on leadership and decapitation strikes while the United States is focused heavily on large scale capability degradation missiles, naval forces, and infrastructure and the like.

So if you step back and look at the pattern, it does not appear to be just simply random bombing of stuff. It looks much more like a campaign designed to systemically dismantle the regime’s ability to command, defend itself, and project military power. Now, whether that ultimately achieves the desired political outcomes is another question entirely, but in terms of campaign [00:09:00] design, the evidence so far suggests there’s a deliberate effort to link strategic objectives to operational target systems and tactical strikes, which is exactly the discipline required to run an effective air campaign.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, sir, you had mentioned political objectives. So I’d like to switch over to Doug to walk us through the broader regional context that was involved within the decision to strike.

Douglas Birkey: Yeah, I think clearly the US and Israel had a combined set of reasons that I would say taken at the macro view are irrefutable.

This has been four decades in the making. Iran has long pursued a national policy of destabilizing the entire Middle East. I mean, they’ve toppled governments, you know, just like at Lebanon, that was a really positive balanced government as democracy. And they put in toxic proxies and you look how Hezbollah, which is a shadow element of Iran and how, what they do in that country, it’s wrecked it. You look at what they did in Syria, [00:10:00] you look at what’s gone on in Yemen, you look at the influence they’ve had in Iraq. They fundamentally were forming this crescent shape of power in the Middle East to go after Israel and other powers. And it was done in such a horrific, I’ve used the word before but I’ll use it again, toxic fashion where the only point of it here was to put Iran in a position of power by shredding everything else around it. It was wrecking lives, it was wrecking countries, and you put nukes in the middle of that and you just could not trust Iran with nukes given their demonstrated value set. I mean, they are a terror harnessing nation and you think about long range ballistic missiles and all of that. And it wasn’t too long ago that their power build out was so aggressive and, so strong that it really looked like it was gonna be fait accompli that they were gonna get the [00:11:00] nukes. It was just gonna happen and it was gonna be a nightmare we were gonna have to live with. So I’d say in this case, the administration in Israel did what no other administration had the guts to do. This decided to go because the moment in time happened where the defenses were degraded, largely thanks to what Israel did last year, and they decided to go for it.

Now the challenge is, the end state here isn’t real clear because you can throw a lot of military power at something, but getting a real regime change is tough. But I would say even an Iran hyper weakened, just focusing on keeping themselves solvent versus attacking the rest of the Middle East is a positive outcome.

And I also wanna point out another thing. I would argue that the Iranian leadership really couldn’t negotiate. They weren’t willing to negotiate because as a despotic regime, look what happens when others follow that, that example, you end up [00:12:00] dead like Muammar Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein. And so they needed to maintain this power through an iron grip, simply to keep themselves alive.

And so at that point, you look at what was being offered on the table by the Trump, administration and others in past eras. Come on guys. You’ve had a lot of good offers and time had come.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, and I think it’s important to note that not only we could not allow Iran to have nuclear weapons because of the protective veil that would provide the regime. But we also need to understand that Iran could have potentially used that and was likely to use any kind of nuclear capability in conjunction with a lot of their terrorist activities. So rather than just holding it back and maintaining power, I think they could have been far more nefarious with that.

So speaking of leadership, Houston, you’ve got significant experience going after high value targets, and the opening strikes against Iranian leadership match that kind of criteria, help us understand how much work goes into gaining the intelligence necessary to execute that sort of mission, and then [00:13:00] the challenges involved with what has to be a very complex set of attack variables.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Yeah. Lucky, I think this is a tremendous success story and it plays right into the overall construct that General Deptula alluded to in his opening remarks. Tremendous success story. Several HVIs have been taken off the battle space, whether it’s the supreme leader, head of Iranian intel, several senior general officers have all been killed.

These are difficult targets. They require very fine intelligence. And here’s the good news. Allies are a great thing to have, and this is one of the reasons is that the sharing of the intelligence. No one knows the Iranian regime better than Israel. And so working closely with Mossad, their intel agency, working with our national level intelligence agencies to combine those views, to combine what they understand about the regime was absolutely critical to get the intelligence not only the location, but with HVIs it’s the location and a specific time. Which makes it even more difficult than targeting say, a building or a server. [00:14:00] And so that has been a very good success story for the overall campaign moving forward. And one other thing I wanna mention about the value of intelligence as we look at all of the weapons that we have at our disposal, back in the day we would carpet bomb just to get rid of a bridge or a building or a factory. And now well with very precise weapons, whether it’s the Lucas Drone or a small diameter bomb or a Hellfire missile, these don’t have hundreds of pounds of explosive. These have 10 to 20 to 30 pounds of explosive. Which means you require very precise intelligence if you wanna get the weapons effects that you want.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. A near miss isn’t good enough.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Near Miss is gonna do absolutely no good. So there’s an increased requirement on the overall intelligence agency in this battle.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): To have that fine intelligence so that our weapons can reduce collateral damage and still get the effects that they need.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So JV, you’ve flown missions in the Middle East. Walk our audience through what that’s like. I mean, because it’s a very [00:15:00] unique, area of responsibility, AOR, help our listeners understand the scale of those Middle Eastern operations, where the bases are, how long it takes to get there, because we’ve operated in and around Iraq, but that’s a very small world compared to Iran, which is a huge landmass.

John “JV” Venable: That’s a great question, Heather. T he whole process begins basically with what General Deptula said, that planning process of being able to figure out what targets that the operators are gonna 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 as a big b asing option and we likely have, our bed downs within Saudi Arabia and one or two other countries in the region. And [00:16:00] so you disseminate what your targeting scheme is for the next day through what’s called an air tasking order, and folks will know what they’re going after, generally speaking, at least the day prior. Targeteers, if you’re gonna go after a fixed site, will actually go through the build process of giving you a package that you can actually brief off of and then go and fly and strike your targets. Where you don’t have to do the planning that’s associated with weaponee ring and the likes.

But all of that is brought out of the air tasking order. As a fighter pilot taking off out of Kuwait you have a drive time that’s associated with getting into Iran. N ow Iran’s about four times the size of Iraq and so when you think about taking off out of Al Udeid, it’s about an hour and a half drive to get over Baghdad.

Well, it’s about the same flight from Al Udei d to get up to the Teh ran area. And so you would have to have at least one tanker in [00:17:00] between yourself and where you’re going, in order to basically top off and have gas to execute your mission once you’re up there and then you’ve got basically two different thought processes of what your mission is gonna be. If you’re going after a fixed target, then you basically know what that is. You’ve got a timing associated with it, and the likes and the opening stages of this conflict, particularly when you go back to Midnight Hammer last summer, timing was very critical. Where you’re going to be, when you’re gonna hit the tanker, and then when you’re gonna push, across the fence we call that crossing into bad guy territory is crossing the fence or fencing in, and then you’re in a hostile environment until you come back out. And so the drive time associated with going out of, let’s say Al Udeid to get to Tehran’s about an hour and a half. If you’re going after a fixed target, then you go after it.

But then there’s the second side of this, and that’s about where we are right now. Where most of that fixed process where you’re taking out threats, you’re [00:18:00] taking out comm nodes, most of that has already been accomplished now. And so as a flight lead, you would go in country, you would check in with a command and control element. When we were going into Iraq, generally that command and control element was a tanker because that was the radio relay that would get you back to the Air Operations Center, in the Baghdad area. But now in this conflict, it’s much broader, much larger. You’re going to have to have a command and control element that’s really good at knowing where, actors are and being able to give them direction on where they need to go. And that’s where AWACS comes in. And we do have AWACS in the area. And that command and control element would actually tell you where you need to go. Sometimes it’s basically loitering over a point waiting for tasking on a pop-up target or a mobile target, such as a S cud site, during Desert Storm one, or, when you’re gonna go after, something like a TEL, transporter [00:19:00] erector launcher, for one of these ballistic missile systems.

And that whack-a-mole thought process is alive and well. That’s one side of this where you’re going to have to have a lot of fighters that are on call and can go in the various directions that you need to go within Iran. Heather, when I was flying over Iraq in 2004, 2005, there was very oftentimes where we were the only two ship that was flying over the entire country.

But with the intensity of this fight right now, you’re talking about numbers are very important. Having the, number of two ships or four ships that are required to go out and strike these tails. You’re gonna have to find them, fix ’em, and then strike ’em, and then having that command and control element that’s always present where you can talk to that C2 element and get either authority to strike a target or to tell them that you’ve got a popup that you’ve found and then get directions on what you’re gonna do again. [00:20:00] So it, again, going back to 2004, 2005, we didn’t have any AWACS you had about a 50 mile circle around Baghdad where you could talk to that AOC individual on the ground, and then it was basically radio relay between flights of fighters and tankers that would get you what you need.

But in this conflict, you actually have to have that entity that’s airborne, AWACS that’s orbiting and being able to give you that direction and be able to give you the strike authority that you need. All of that stuff, when you’re talking about coordination, about an hour, hour and a half to get where you’re going. And then you can have station times that are upwards of four or six hours depending on your ordinance, and how your demand signal is with regard to dropping that ordinance. On the average sortie, you would refuel at least twice, more like four times. And there was one sortie where I refueled my wingman and I refueled 10 times before we were done [00:21:00] with our mission and turn tail and then fenced out and headed home.

But that whole process is dynamic. You’re trying to eat when you can. You’re trying to make sure you’ve got the coordination either in the air or with a ground entity that you know where you’re going to strike. And then it’s a high, I wouldn’t say it’s a high threat, but it’s certainly a very risk centric game because you can’t afford to hit the wrong target. There are times where these, our airmen right now are being tasked against mosques because that is basing element for the regimes entities, the mullahs and the armed forces that leave to go and execute the mullah’s direction in these little locations. And striking a mosque has gotta have, basically a great deal of approval behind that. So the give and take of this, there’s really critical elements. One, gas is really, really important. Having those airborne takers where you can get [00:22:00] ahold of them, and then the commanding control element. All important in this and the number of AWACS that we’ve got that are rotating in and out of that area. Y ou might be able to cover the entire airspace with one AWACS, but more likely it would take at least two airborne and in CAPs, actually 24 hour CAPs as you’re going out and executing these missions. And so all of this is reliant on the threat, between Israel and the United States. There is no surface to air activity with regard to radar guided missiles. T here’s very little command and control or, their ability to actually know where you are, the Iranians, to know where you are, to be able to target you. And so we have free reign. You would call this air supremacy in any other facet, and that’s a great gift. And now what you do with it is reliant on mass and your ability to see to those assets into where they need to be.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So Charles airstrikes are getting a lot of [00:23:00] attention, but we all know that sort of power projection doesn’t occur without space power. What paradigm should our listeners build when they think of the mission sets that are being harnessed on orbit? Because I’m guessing it’s a huge range of functions. Everything from missile warning to weather.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah. So Heather, first I’d like to adjust the narrative a little bit.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: All right.

Charles Galbreath: All right. This is not just an air campaign. This is a multi-domain campaign. We heard from Secretary Hegseth and we heard from Chairman Caine that some of the initial actions were actually done in space and cyberspace. So these are domains delivering effects that help knock down the door prior to the engagement with kinetic weapons. Now this may be in some cases suppressing adversary Iran’s air defense or confusing their command and control in order to allow the fighters and the bombers to come in and strike and take ’em out permanently. But I would suspect that there’s also an ongoing element of space EW and cyber still going on in this campaign. So it’s a [00:24:00] multi-domain campaign.

But to your initial question, which is how does space support the air campaign? It’s very similar to what we’ve seen before, over the past 35 years, starting with Desert Storm, but getting better year after year.

Slider talked about the need for intelligence. Absolutely. And that some of that intelligence comes from the air, some of it comes from the ground, some of it comes from other sources, but some of it does come from space. And so the location, the geolocation, the pattern of life, of air defenses, of radars, of ground forces is all provided via space. Additionally, when you’re planning a campaign, you want to know what the weather’s gonna be along your route. So there’s gonna be weather support as well as positioning, navigation and timing, PNT, from GPS from space. Not just where you are, but where the adversary is. But also in many cases, GPS guided munitions. Communications for us, right, throughout the campaign. When you’re conducting a long range strike, you need to maintain communications across that [00:25:00] entire range of operations. Let’s just assume that there are friendly forces in the area that we wanna maintain communications with. We might be doing that via satellite communications. And so if there’s jamming capability that the adversary has, we wanna know where that is, geolocate it, take it out via whatever means. And then finally, missile warning. Alright. We know that, Iran has had, missile capabilities and are striking using space assets to track the location of where those are launching from, where they’re projected to impact and what flight path they’re taking in order to cue our interceptors. T hankfully it looks like that has decreased a bit but it’s still a threat that we need to be cognizant of.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And so then also if we can determine the point of origin, we can then also go attack that point of origin. Trying to get that launcher before it disappears.

Charles Galbreath: Right.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: The shoot and scoot.

And I’m really glad that you mentioned the paradigm of space and cyber having their unique effects within the battle space. That is a paradigm shift I think that a lot of people need to make.

Charles Galbreath: Absolutely. And, if this would’ve happened 10 years ago, we would [00:26:00] not have been talking about this today. Only in recent years have we got to the level of maturity where we’re able to talk as a nation about space superiority, cyber superiority, and some of the effects that the Space Force and our cyber warriors are able to bring forward.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Combat effects.

Charles Galbreath: Combat effects.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Okay, so this one’s for everyone because we always talk about the Air Force being small and old, but let’s face it between Midnight Hammer, operations in Venezuela, Epic Fury, Airmen are executing some amazing things.

So, are we crying wolf here? Are, are things good enough? I know the answer to this, but General Deptula let’s start with you.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): First, Heather, that’s a great and a very appropriate question. L et me repeat what we’ve said many times before. Our Airmen and Guardians are performing extraordinarily well. If you look at the last several air operations, as you mentioned, Midnight Hammer, Absolute Resolve, and now Epic Fury, the execution has been [00:27:00] remarkable. These are incredibly complex missions integrating stealth aircraft, tankers, cyber effects, intelligence, space assets, and precision weapons employed across great distances. For example, during Operation Midnight Hammer, B-2 bombers flew missions of more than 13,000 miles with multiple aerial refuelings supported by dozens of tankers and more than a hundred other strike aircraft in the strike package. That level of integration, precision, and timing is something no other air force on the planet could even attempt, let alone execute successfully, including China. So the short answer is no. We’re not crying wolf about the quality of the force. Our Airmen, operators, and planners, and Guardians are extraordinary, and the operational results show it, but that’s actually not the [00:28:00] issue.

When we highlight the fact that the Air Force is the oldest and smallest in its history, the concern is about capacity and sustainability, not competence. What you’re seeing in these operations is a small force doing amazing things. The problem is that we’re asking that same relatively small force to cover multiple theaters simultaneously, Europe, the Middle East, the Indo-Pacific, Homeland Defense, nuclear deterrence, and global strike. While the Air Force today is smaller and older than at any point in its history. The demand for air power keeps growing because air power is the first option policymakers reach for in the context of lethal force application. You just heard Charles talk about the non-lethal effects that are conducted through cyber and space.

So these operations actually prove two [00:29:00] things simultaneously. First, the quality of our Airmen and our operational concepts is exceptional. Second, they’re succeeding despite the force structure challenges, not because those challenges don’t exist. In other words, the success of these missions shouldn’t make us complacent. If anything, they demonstrate just how much strategic leverage a relatively small number of Airmen and Guardians and aircraft are generating. The real question going forward is whether we want to keep relying on a small force performing at extraordinary levels, or whether we build a force that actually matches the global demand we continue to place on it.

Douglas Birkey: Hey Heather, I wanna jump in.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: You bet.

Douglas Birkey: Agree with what General Deptula is saying, but bottom line, you can only be extraordinary at one place at a time. And we have concurrent responsibilities around the globe. All of them serious. It starts with defending the homeland. [00:30:00] I’d argue that air and missile defense, the homeland is a growing mission like none other when you consider the range of offensive systems. We’ve got a very aggressive Russia in Europe, you’ve got China in the Pacific, and you ‘ve got the Middle East, always something going on there. And what we’re doing is a regional operation at a certain tempo that while it appears high, that’s only because we’ve been slow boiled with small scale contingencies for 20 years.

General Deptula, you know the numbers better than me, but as I recall, you had 40,000 aim points for Desert Storm and if we look at a China fight, it’s over a hundred thousand aim points that we’d be looking at. And…

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): And that’s on the low end.

Douglas Birkey: Yeah. Okay. So they talked about in two days they did two thou …yeah two thousand strikes. I mean, that is a small fraction of…

Heather “Lucky” Penney: and that’s two days of the

Douglas Birkey: Yeah. Of all we’d have to go after. Yeah. And you to be successful, you have to [00:31:00] wage overwhelming decisive force to completely strain and break an adversary’s ability to defend and react. And you gotta take down the target sets fast and deny them maneuver space of decision making and moving defenses and all that.

And so what we have now is such a boutique, small scale force that, of course we’re proud of what they’re doing now, but you put that in a China fight and it is going to simply not be able to execute at the scale and scope we need. Especially when you layer in real world attrition. The dominance we have now is largely thanks to what Israel secured last June. And that changes number of requirements a lot. And of course Venezuela was impressive, but I would not exactly put Venezuela on where I wanna index a threat environment.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. And by the way, when I said two days, that’s a long time. Two days is a long [00:32:00] time for those initial strikes.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah. So just to borrow Doug’s phrase of bottom line. Venezuela and Iran are not China. They’re not even Russia. So we have to be mindful of the entire threat spectrum that we might face, and we have to be able to deliver sustained intensity until our political objectives and our military objectives are achieved. We’ll see how long it takes to do that in Iran. I have no doubt that we will achieve them. But it will take time and we’ll just see how long it takes and if we could deliver with greater intensity, maybe it would take less time. But we have to figure that into our calculus and just remember that China is a much more robust threat and a more capable adversary.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So Charles, I’d like to spin that initial question over to you regarding space power, because we talk about space as a contested domain, but things are clearly appearing to be amazing in the present. So we say we need to put more resources into the Space Force to grow the Space Force to grow their war fighting capacity.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah. So Airmen and [00:33:00] Guardians are gonna get it done when they’re asked to.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah.

Charles Galbreath: But we shouldn’t make that job of theirs any more difficult than it needs to be. The biggest challenge they should face is the adversary, not the equipment that they have, not the political will that’s backing them, not the sustainment or support at home. When we look at the need for the Space Force to grow, we know that it’s on a growth path. And we can get it done here in CENTCOM right now. We talked with some of the CENTCOM space leadership in the past and they started with like 30 people. They might be up to 60 now. What that does is it limits the ability of us to integrate our space effects into the planning of the cyber effects and the air effects. It also limits the capacity to sustain that intensity that we just mentioned. So we need to increase the presence of our space components within each of the regional combatant commands, including CENTCOM, including INDOPACOM, and Europe and Africa Command, [00:34:00] SOUTHCOM and NORTHCOM as well. That is gonna require additional personnel within the Space Force. And it’s gonna require personnel that have experience, that have the operational experience, the intelligence background, the cyber expertise, et cetera, to then integrate those effects with that knowledge into ongoing operations. So there’s a multi-phase path that we need to be on in order to continue to smartly grow the Space Force so that we can integrate more fully.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. So what I’m hearing from you is it’s not just about resourcing the satellites and the constellations and the capabilities of the Space Force, it’s also really about ensuring that they can grow the people to be able to do that kind of integration, that war fighting, that planning and so forth.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah, absolutely. and if we’re gonna continue to purchase weapon systems, whether they be kinetic or non-kinetic within the Space Force, we’re gonna need personnel to execute those.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So speaking of kinetic effects, the F-35 takes a lot of hits in the press, in Congress, and also with a p undits and so forth. [00:35:00] But it has been a linchpin for current operations from Midnight Hammer through Venezuela to today. So Doug, I’d like to hear your thoughts on this.

Douglas Birkey: No, I agree with your word choice of linchpin, and I’ll just go back to what the Air Force’s recent fighter report said when they declared that the F-35’s the foundation of the Air Force’s fighter force structure, and we’re seeing it here. And that’s because it is a combat aircraft that combines stealth advanced electronic warfare capabilities, sensors, information processing, the ability to collaboratively team with other assets in theater and fighter performance. And it’s got this at greater scale than other elements of the force which are far smaller, like the F 22 and all of that.

This is really round two, as we’ve discussed for the F-35. Israel used this to take Iran down last June in ways in which I would argue most [00:36:00] people didn’t think was possible. The Iranian air defense network was very sophisticated and capable. The F-35 has made taking it down look easy. That is anything but the case. And I would argue that legacy technology, gen four aircraft and such could not have done it at a risk tolerance we would accept. And so it was the absolute, like you said, linchpin airplane to make this happen. And the real thing that we’re seeing here is we just don’t have enough of them. W e have half the inventory we were supposed to have based on initial acquisition projections. And when you look at the fact that the Vermont Air National Guard was getting quick turn from supporting the Venezuela operation to all of a sudden deploying to the Middle East to support Epic Fury, that’s an indicator about how thin our capacity is.[00:37:00]

Now I’d also say that’s one way out of getting out of win ter snow shoveling if you’re from Vermont. So, they had that benefit. But seriously, if we are spinning the guard that hard to support what are frontline operations of the highest priority, that’s a big indicator. Also shows why concurrent and proportional modernization between active duty guard reserve is so important because the Air Force is so small right now, we need ’em all, and they’ve all gotta be equipped with frontline assets.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, and I would also argue if you take a look at sort of the how things work with personnel and fighter squadrons, a lot of your experience you’ll have also have a disproportionate number of weapons school graduates in the guard.

And so I think that’s another piece of it too, but I totally agree with you. We also saw though Strike Eagles, F-16s, operating in Epic Fury. What does it say about folks that say the stealth is dead?

Douglas Birkey: I think, you can use those assets after the threat has been degraded.

We cannot underestimate what was done [00:38:00] by Israel in June. US subsequently added to it with Midnight Hammer, and then obviously we went in again and went after it. And so you really have to have an asset that is capable of taking down that threat. I would argue that for a larger, more sophisticated adversary like China, it is questionable how far you can take down the threat for a sustained period of time that would allow safe haven for some of those non stealthy assets. And so it’s very important that we understand they might value and important mission application, but it might not be over downtown.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Okay, short answer to the question is no. Stealth is not dead and it will never die. Period dot okay. There may be technologies that will improve detection capability, just like there’ll be technologies that will reduce observability, but the fact of the matter is and will always remain that low [00:39:00] observability increases the probability of penetration.

And it increases the probability of survivability. Those probabilities might change, but they will certainly be to our advantage relative to a non stealthy aircraft.

John “JV” Venable: Yeah, if I could pile onto what, both General Deptula and Doug said there. It’s the MC rates associated with the US F-35s have taken large hits, across the press and media, and many have gotten the idea that it’s not a sustainable aircraft.

But you go back to Midnight Hammer. What the Israeli Air Force was generating was on the order of 92 to 94% mission capable rates on their fleets because they had the spare parts they needed to fix their aircraft. The airplane absolutely dominated during that summertime engagement as it did [00:40:00] again, during this Epic Fury.

But the one thing that the other platforms that people talk about is just as good. Don’t have is the capability to go in and be the door kicker when you need absolute stealth and then to be a bomb truck when you’ve knocked down the threat. And that’s where we are right now. And the Air Force has got to be actually parent mounting, munitions on the F-35 so that they can engage more threats, that are available to them now.

So this ability to generate mass is really huge. And you go back to Heather’s question on the A-10, the MQ-9, the loiter time, the ability to engage in this environment, we need mass and having those assets available, right now is critical. And thank goodness they’re still in the inventory.

We need to be able to project more aircraft over that airspace right now and this [00:41:00] relatively low threat environment. But then when you turn your sites on someplace like China, we’ve gotta have mass and that’s gotta be stealth. So that you can both be the door kicker and to provide that munitions bomb truck capability when that time allows.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, I mean, what you said JV about, MQ-9 and the A-10, I mean, those platforms have been on the divest-to-invest strategy for so long. I mean, the E-3 is also one of those, but we cannot afford to give up that kind of capacity because the Air Force and frankly they haven’t been resourced to be able to do this, they’ve not been able to recapitalize at least a one for one rate.

And we’ve heard the Air Force say that they need to buy fighters as just an example at a rate of 72 to be able to maintain their age. But you know what, that’s not maintaining the inventory. And now because they have slow rolled their recapitalization, I’d say that that pace, would be even greater, not just to maintain the age, but also to be able to sustain and then ultimately grow to the mass JV that [00:42:00] you’re talking about.

John “JV” Venable: Yes ma’am, but you expand that across the board. How many AWACS do we have in the fleet right now? I believe it’s 18 is the number, how many are deployed to the Gulf right now? If you look at the mission capable rates of the E-3 it’s about half of the fleet that’s available. And my guess is right now we have six to eight jets that are deployed, which is the entire operational fleet.

We need to recap that with E-7s right? As fast as we can. And we need the numbers associated to where you can actually sustain multiple CAPs, multiple 24 hour CAPs of these assets. But, move into tankers, tankers was a limiting factor during Midnight Hammer, jets were landing at unusual locations because they didn’t have the gas to make it all the way back.

During Desert Storm when, when General Deptula had the ability to build that air bridge and then sustain the fight with tankers, we had more than 600 tankers available to us and the [00:43:00] entire, Air Force. Now we’re down into the 480s, and you would be I think very accurate if you thought that one third of the entire tanker fleet is employed in either the tanker bridge or in fighting that fight.

And that’s not including a strategic withhold or servicing the needs of the rest of the globe. We need to recapitalize and grow across the board. And that is absolutely with the low threat, long loiter capability, that the MQ-9 brings about. But also, we need more tankers than we’ve got more capabilities with those tankers and that command and control element that’s associated with the E-3, we’ve gotta grow that or regrow that back with E-7.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So JV, thank you so much. And that tanker bridge is doing so much to support the flow of supplies, the flow of additional aircraft and personnel in. And when we talk about supplies, munitions is a huge piece of that. So [00:44:00] General Deptula the topic of munitions inventory depth comes up a lot.

How much do we have stockpiled? What are your thoughts? Because this is a really complex subject given the different types of munitions that are necessary for certain effects, because it’s not a one size fits all, whether it’s the effects or what you can hook them onto what you, what jet you can load them to.

And you’ve lived these challenges in past campaigns. What’s your take?

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Heather, it’s really important issue, and you’re right, it’s a heck of a lot more complex than just asking, do we have enough bombs? First, munitions are not interchangeable. Different weapons are designed to achieve different effects against different types of targets.

A weapon optimized to penetrate hardened underground facilities is very different from one design to disable and air defense radar, crater a runway, or strike mobile missile launchers. So when we talk about munitions inventory, it’s not just about quantity. It’s about having the right mix of weapons for the effects that we need to achieve.

And that’s something that we dealt with [00:45:00] in past campaigns as well. But when we planned the Desert Storm Air campaign, the objective wasn’t simply to drop bombs. It was to achieve specific operational and strategic effects. So that meant matching the right munition to the right target to accomplish those effects as efficiently and effectively, more importantly, as possible.

The challenge today is that as Houston mentioned earlier, modern warfare increasing relies on precision munitions, and those weapons are technologically sophisticated and some of them are expensive. As a result, we tend to buy them in relatively small numbers during peace time because Air Force underfunding forced trade-offs, as well as the fact that there really are no constituencies for buying munitions during peace time.

But when a conflict actually begins, especially a high intensity campaign against a capable adversary, those [00:46:00] inventories can be consumed much faster than people expect. And the military industrial base remember, was intentionally reduced after the collapse, the Soviet Union. And as a result, today cannot surge production quickly enough to replace them in the middle of a serious operation.

So the real issue isn’t simply, do we have enough munitions, but rather three related questions. First, do we have the right mix of munitions to achieve the range of effects required in a campaign? Second, do we have sufficient depth to sustain operations beyond the opening phase? And third, does our industrial base have the capacity to replenish those stocks at wartime rates?

Historically, air campaigns have often been short and decisive, which masked some of these issues. But if you’re contemplating a prolonged campaign against a peer [00:47:00] competitor, and I tell you what, if you’re going up against a peer competitor, it’s gonna be a prolonged campaign. So my takeaway is that we need to think about munitions the same way we think about campaign design effects. First, identify the kinds of targets and effects required, determine the weapons needed to achieve them, and then ensure both the inventory and the industrial base are sufficient to sustain the campaign.

Because at the end of the day, air powers only effective is the weapons it has available to deliver those effects.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Okay, so JV, we’re running a small set of air crews, hard to sustain these operations. If take a look at the Vermont Air Guard, as Doug mentioned, they went straight from Venezuela to this. What are your thoughts on what that means for our folks? Everything from air crews to maintainers and the rest of the unit.

John “JV” Venable: Yeah, the predictability side of life is really important to everyone in the service, and outside the [00:48:00] service. And having these back to back operational demands is a strain on that.

I will tell you as an operator, when you’re going from one combat operation to another combat operation it can be very exciting and that can carry you over through that time. It’s the families back home that become the issue of trying to sustain their morale. But when you look at this as a whole. We should, as a force, have the capacity to not have double dipped on Vermont to send them both to the Venezuela operation and into this fight because this fight’s gonna last likely four or five more weeks.

We ought to have the ability to rotate other fighter squadrons in, and because of our lack of capacity and the associated capability that comes with Vermont because of their F-35s, we had to tap into ’em twice. In order to [00:49:00] sustain a military, in order to sustain the morale and the retention that you need to keep people even in the gard and reserve, that predictability has gotta be a big factor.

And we’ve got to, build a force back up. The Air Force we need was a great, number for us to look at, to where we had the number of units that we’re ready to go, that we could move into harm’s way when we needed them. And we could rotate others out of harm’s way when that time came. And right now, we had 55 total force fighter squadrons probably, three years ago.

We’re now down into the high forties. And when you take into account the number of squadrons that are in transition right now, the number of active duty and guard and reserve fighter squadrons, operational squadrons that can deploy is on the order of 42. My bet is that we’ve got half of those deployed right now, and so [00:50:00] our overarching capacity has got to grow because this demand is not nearly as large of a demand as we will have should a China fight develop.

It also doesn’t cover the rest of the world simultaneously. So we need to have the capacity to execute a major regional contingency and then cover the rest of the world, which is going back to the two MRC capacity that we plan for back during the Cold War.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: I think you’re totally right. The fact that they’ve had to swing their operations just demonstrates how little strategic depth we have within our combat air forces.

So sir, there’s a set of folks out there arguing that fighters and bombers are irrelevant and that we should just toss in the towel on offensive air power and focus on a defensive approach. And they call this air denial. That’s not what we’re seeing here.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Heather, let me be quite candid. The people making these claims are generally academics or individuals who’ve never been involved [00:51:00] in a major regional conflict.

They’re confusing what they’re seeing in the Russia-Ukraine conflict where improvisation was driven by necessity, not preference. Without proper context, there’s a danger that short-term tactical adaptations will be mistaken for long-term operational solutions. They’ve drawn conclusions about the future of warfare that do not hold up when you look at actual combat operations.

The idea behind an air denial strategy is that offensive air power, fighters and bombers penetrating enemy territory, is no longer viable. Instead, their argument goes that we should rely primarily on defensive systems, standoff weapons and denial capabilities to keep our adversaries at bay. Now, the problem with that logic is that war is fundamentally about imposing your will on an adversary, not simply [00:52:00] preventing them from acting.

If your strategy’s purely defensive and it’s based solely on denial, you’re essentially conceding the initiative to your opponent. You’re allowing them to determine the tempo, the geography, and the escalation dynamics of that conflict. What history’s consistently shown is that offensive air power provides the ability to rapidly hold an adversary’s most critical capabilities at risk deep inside their territory, and to do so without having to fight through every layer their military forces sequentially.

And that’s exactly what we’ve seen demonstrated in recent operations. Whether you’re talking about Midnight Hammer the 12 day war with Iran last July, or Epic Fury, the common denominator is the ability to project power rapidly at long ranges and strike strategically significant targets. You can’t do that [00:53:00] through a purely defensive approach.

Now, look, that doesn’t mean that defensive capabilities are unimportant. Air and missile defense, resilience and denial systems absolutely have a role. But they’re compliments to offensive power, not substitutes for it. Because ultimately, if you wanna terminate a conflict on terms favorable to you, you have to be able to impose costs and create effects that convince an adversary they cannot achieve their objectives.

And the most effective way to do that has historically been and continues to be the ability to conduct offensive operations against an adversaries key centers of gravity. So the notion that fighters and bombers are somehow obsolete doesn’t reflect the reality we’re seeing in combat. And in fact, the opposite is true.

What we’re seeing today is a reminder that the ability to conduct offensive air operations remains [00:54:00] one of the most decisive instruments of military power that any nation can possess.

Douglas Birkey: Yeah, let me just add into that. The boss said it, but the only way to fight and to win is go after strategic targets. In fighting with catchers mit, predominantly in defense, it’s bound to fail, especially when you look at the magazines that China has. And even now you just look at the missiles that are getting through and the drones that, that Iran is launching. And again, it’s very small scale, what we’re dealing with. And so it, it takes a lot more capable force that really is a power projection force.

Charles Galbreath: Doug Burkey getting ready for spring training with the catcher mit analogy. Way to go, Doug.

John “JV” Venable: Ooh!

Douglas Birkey: Hey, it’s coming up.

Charles Galbreath: See, I was gonna go with a boxer who only, puts his hands up and guards, but never throws a counter punch or throws a punch in the first place. That boxer’s gonna lose. We call that a punching bag.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Again Charles with the mic drop! Right. Alright. So sir, [00:55:00] what about the administration’s objectives in Epic Fury? Because the media is focusing a lot on that, highlighting the many reasons or explanations that have been stated, and they focused at regime change. What are your thoughts?

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): The objectives of Epic Fury, according to the Secretary of the War are, and I quote, destroy Iranian offensive missiles, destroy Iranian missile production, destroy their navy and other security infrastructure so that they will never have nuclear weapons.

Charles Galbreath: So on the subject of regime change, it’s important to remember that it’s not just leadership change, right? You can have someone in power and then that same form of government, that same ideology can be replaced time and time again. What we need to do is create the conditions that allow for a new type of government to take control of Iran.

That’s what real regime change is. And while we have, eliminated the Ayatollah, there will be another, unless a true regime change takes place. Time will tell whether or not [00:56:00] we’re successful on that front.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Just goes to show the power of bureaucracies, right?

Charles Galbreath: Right.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: I mean, they’ve set up their constitution, they’ve set up their succession plan.

So unless you do something to fundamentally destabilize that, you risk just getting more of the same.

Charles Galbreath: 100%.

Douglas Birkey: So I’ll just add in here. I just go back to what I said at the top of this episode. Iran can’t have nukes. We don’t want ’em to have ballistic missiles and we can’t have ’em destabilize the Middle East anymore, even if you don’t get total regime change.

Iran focused inward, trying to keep it held together is better than Iran focused outward just fomenting, destruction and chaos in a critical region.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. And let’s just hope that that internal focus is not one of a civil war, because that would be just as traumatic and tragic for the Iranian people. And General Deptula, Desert Storm shows that you can have a wildly successful air campaign, but that might not necessarily yield a new regime.

How would you apply that experience to [00:57:00] Iran?

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): First, it’s important to remember that regime change was not an objective of the Desert Storm air campaign. The political objective set by President George HW Bush and the coalition were very clear force. Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, restore the legitimate Kuwaiti government, and reduce Iraq’s ability to threaten the region.

So those objectives are what drove the campaign design. Now, the Desert Storm Air campaign has been cited as the most successful in history, but it did not remove Saddam Hussein from power because that simply was not the objective of the campaign. And that’s an important lesson for discussions about Iran today.

Air power can break the coercive machinery that keeps a regime in power, especially security forces, repression infrastructure, command networks, the economic enablers of internal control. [00:58:00] And it’s important to understand and remember that air campaigns have created the conditions that enabled indigenous forces to overthrow regimes.

That was the case in removing the Taliban from governance in Afghanistan in 2001. And Serbia in 1999 is also an example in that context. This is why clarity of objectives is so important because the military can design commands that are very effective, but they can only deliver the outcomes they’re actually directed to achieve.

So I would summarize that this opening phase is best understood as a campaign aimed at collapsing Iran’s strategic coherence before Iran can fully mobilize its missile forces and nuclear aspirations. Now, whether or not this evolves into regime destabilization, a protracted regional conflict, [00:59:00] or coerced deescalation is gonna depend upon remaining or new Iranian leadership, missile force resilience, as well as US political tolerance for extended combat.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So Houston, it’s not just about bombers and fighters, although we’ve talked a lot about those. JV mentioned, the Air Bridge and how important Air Refuelers are as well as those air lifters. How do those fit into this broader equation of how we make combat operations not only impactful, but then sustainable? Because we heard a lot about that during the Air Power Forum when participants from Midnight Hammer spoke.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, absolutely Lucky. First of all, can you believe Operation Allies Refuge was five years ago?

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Oh man.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): It’s unbelievable.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): But hats off to those professionals that, that accomplish that unbelievable air bridge that everyone saw, for those several weeks that they executed that it was absolutely tremendous. But two points on Epic Fury. Number one, on airlift these large operations, [01:00:00] they always stretch our strategic and our tactical airlift to the limits. Simply put, there’s never enough operations outta multiple airfields across multiple countries are gonna stretch logistics in new and novel ways.

Although we operated outta these airfields for over 20 years, we had a battle rhythm over those 20 years. Yeah. And we optimized that battle rhythm and the logistics formed to whatever the daily battle rhythm was. This is completely new. And so we’re having to form a completely new battle rhythm and a new logistics system.

So-

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, and a surge too, right? It wasn’t the same.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): We haven’t seen this number of aircraft in that region for a very long time. And then the closure of civilian air fields across the region are gonna negatively impact logistics. We rely on some of these airfields. We rely on FedEx, we rely on DHL.

They deliver a lot of the parts that our aircraft are gonna be requiring as we move into the next phase of operations. So sustaining this air campaign for the next few weeks is gonna depend on how well this logistics system comes [01:01:00] into being, and we’ll have to watch that very carefully. And then secondly, let’s talk about refueling.

Absolutely essential to combat operations as these tankers extend the range of tactical fighters and long range bombers coming from the US. Also, most don’t realize how much the aircraft carriers depend on Air Force tankers.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yes.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Due to the long range anti-ship threat. These carriers have to position themselves up to a thousand miles away. When these carriers are positioned so far away, their fighters don’t have the range unless they can hit an Air Force tanker.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: The carrier’s organic air tanking capability can’t get them there either.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Exactly. So our Air Force tankers are being stretched across the joint force and absolutely essential to their success.

Now, our aircraft tankers are gonna be essential for this joint ops, but let’s look at the Air Force inventory that we’ve got. I actually wasn’t tracking this, but the KC-10 was retired about a year ago. So we donated KC-10s anymore. They served us for over 40 years.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, goodbye to those big girls.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): And now we’re relying on our 60-year-old [01:02:00] KC-135s.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Which came in when Kennedy was president and now we’re looking at our growing fleet of the KC-46. It’s great to see the Pegasus cutting its combat teeth. I’ll be really curious to see how it did under these stressful combat conditions.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: All I can say is we need more of them and we need more of them yesterday.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Absolutely.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So, accelerating NGAS, neither of which is really sexy to talk about, but that’s the backbone of any kind of combat operation.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): It really is.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So as we mentioned, bombers and 5th Gen fighters, once again, figures centrally into this campaign. What are y’all’s thoughts on what that means for inventory management and future acquisition?

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, let me just jump in here real quick, Heather. Sufficient funding must flow to the Air Force to reverse its force structure decline and grow it to the point where it can conduct more than one regional conflict at a time. Second, the Space Force needs to double in size, capacity, and [01:03:00] capability over the next three years if in fact we want the Space Force to do the kinds of things the nation has come to expect from it.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So lastly, base defense is a big topic given the Iranian attacks, but it’s troublesome in this campaign that things could be way worse in the Pacific. What are your thoughts on what this means for where we should be bolstering capabilities? Houston, let’s start with you.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, Lucky. So we’ve seen thousands of missiles and one-way drones launched by Iran targeting multiple countries, multiple targets across the region, and as you’ve seen in the news, several of our US bases have been hit.

Now, these threats, they’re low cost, they’re plentiful. Simply put, we need low cost and plentiful interceptors if we want to get at this threat. We’ve seen this going on in Ukraine. It’s matured. It’s not going anywhere. We, as a nation have got to take this seriously. We need a layered defense system across the AOR that detects the threats, identifies the threats, and then can [01:04:00] assign an interceptor to engage these threats.

Now you’ve seen in the news F-15s, F-16s, Carrying the APKWS rockets, and those are a very capable system. But right now, the last thing we need is to take our eagles and our vipers off the front line-

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And make them go do base defense yeah.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): And make them defensive. We need them offensive right now.

So for the folks that are saying, just put rockets on these aircraft, that does not help us in the long run. We have to continue an offensive surge as we’ve discussed, and we gotta keep that offensive surge. And eventually, when we run out of targets, whenever that may be, we can then put them on defense if we absolutely have to.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Yeah. Well, let me jump in here very, very briefly. The Army could do the US military a lot of good if it would stop encroaching on Air Force and Space Force missions and start increasing focus and effort on its mission of base defense.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: All right, folks, well, thank you so much for your thoughts, for your commentary, for your insights.

I’m sure that this will be coming back up [01:05:00] again as we continue to watch how this campaign unfolds. Thanks for showing up.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Well, good discussion, Heather. For all of you, watch for my latest article in Forbes on this topic.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Thanks Lucky.

Charles Galbreath: Thanks Lucky.

John “JV” Venable: What a great discussion. Thanks, Heather.

Douglas Birkey: Appreciate being here.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And with that, I’d like to extend a big thank you to our guests for joining in today’s conversation. I’d also like to extend a big thank you to you, our listeners, for your continued support and for tuning into today’s show. If you like what you heard today, don’t forget to hit that like button or follow or subscribe to the Aerospace Advantage.

You can also leave a comment to let us know what you think about our show or areas that you would like us to explore further. As always, you can join in on the conversation by following the Mitchell Institute on X, Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn, and you can always find us at mitchellaerospacepower.org.

Thanks again for joining us and have a great aerospace power kind of day. See you next time.