Heather “Lucky” Penney: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Aerospace Advantage Podcast, brought to you by PenFed. I’m your host, Heather “Lucky” Penney, 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.

Folks, today we’re bringing you a special edition of the Aerospace Advantage to discuss Saturday’s strike on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities at Fordow Natanz and Isfahan. Everyone’s read the news by now, the story of the seven B-2s flying from Whiteman Air Force Base, numerous aerial refuelings along the way, air superiority aircraft joining the raid, Tomahawk missiles fired from a submarine, and significant support from space assets.

But what we wanted to add to this conversation were the insights and key observations from our team members, each of whom brings unique operational expertise to the mix. We’ve heard enough from the talking heads, it’s time from air power and space power practitioners to join the conversation. And I wanna say this upfront, our airmen, guardians, and [00:01:00] sailors and everyone involved with this mission performs spectacularly.

We’re gonna talk about some of the broader challenges, but make no mistake, we are so proud of these folks who engage in this mission. They answer the call. Part of our discussion centers around ensuring that we back them up with the resources that they need for a future fight. So with that, I’d like to welcome Lieutenant General Dave Deptula.

Sir, great to have you back.

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

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Mark “Gonzo” Gunzinger.

Mark “Gonzo” Gunzinger: Thanks for listening everyone.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Brigadier General Houston Cantwell.

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

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Slider, great to have you. Charles Galbreath,

Charles Galbreath: Great to be here.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And for a Washington perspective, Doug Birkey.

Douglas Birkey: Hey, pleasure.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So General Deptula, you’ve been tracking Iran’s nuclear program for years.

Why is America’s direct involvement in conducting airstrikes against Iran such a big deal?

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Well, Heather, let’s start with the big rocks. The President took the correct step in committing US Air Power to critical, absolutely critical, but limited strikes against Iran. First because its setback, [00:02:00] Iran’s progress in acquiring nuclear weapons. Second, and a very important byproduct, is it was fundamental to restoring U.S. credibility on the world stage after years of perceived indecision and strategic uncertainty created in part by the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and then seeing the US being deterred by Putin, from giving Ukraine the weapons and the authorities to use them effectively. Just to name two examples.

Now, direct strikes reinforce U.S. credibility with allies and adversaries alike. Regional partners like Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates see this as a sign of American Resolve and then adversaries like Iran, Russia, and China. Take note that the US is once again willing to act decisively to uphold its strategic red lines.

Now, make no [00:03:00] mistake, the Iran we’ve known for the last 45 years no longer exists as a result, the U.S. and Israeli airpower actions. I think that the audience is familiar with, but I’ll just remind them that Iran’s followed a pretty linear path for those 45 years seeking to expand its power by violently destabilizing the Middle East for decades.

And multiple administrations from both parties as well as foreign leaders have tried to negotiate with Iran, but it’s been a constant pattern of talk and take by Iran. You know, they opportunistically take advantage of negotiations only to advance their nuclear aims. And frankly, their violent track records bad enough with conventional weapons.

Imagine if they had nukes and that would be intolerable. So consequently, [00:04:00] that’s why Israel and the United States decided enough it’s time to halt their progression toward a nuclear reign of terror.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Sir, thank you for that roll up. Doug. What are some of the other big issues at play.

Douglas Birkey: No, the boss hit the big rocks.

I mean, fundamentally after Afghanistan and Iraq, which those did not go well. I mean, just we all know the images from Kabul and all, is very difficult for US Credibility. We’ve misplayed our hand constantly in Ukraine. Recently it’s gotten very weak. Putin is running the table on that and look at Yemen. That operation was not great. We’ve got China being aggressive. There came a point where US credibility is on the line and we had to act in a decisive fashion. And if you look at the scale and scope of the threat that Iran has presented for so long, for Israel to roll in this hard, and if we didn’t come in with the capabilities that only we possess to try to net this desired effect with the nuclear program. It would’ve been very, very disastrous for [00:05:00] our allied confidence. And I wanna make a very, very clear point here. Only US Air Force Air Power could do this. We talk about it all the time in the podcast and the importance of investing in the Air Force. The Navy couldn’t do this. Our allies couldn’t do this. Only the US Air Force had the range, the payload, and the survivability to execute this mission, which is why we have to invest in those capabilities. And credit to all those aircrew, they did amazing things, but in reality, that was strung together with some pretty thin miracles because of how stretched thin in our forces right now.

I mean, 19 B-2s , yeah, I don’t think we’ve ever seen that many B-2s in the air at one given time between the primary mission aircraft and, the backup airframes ’cause of how small the fleet is and readiness and all that. So there’s just a lot online and to bring this back in a big picture.

If Iran went nuclear, I would argue you probably see the rest of the Middle East go [00:06:00] nuclear very fast, Saudi Arabia, and it would cascade from there. I don’t think we could tolerate that. So for those that argue, what happens if we did this? I’d ask what happens if we don’t? And there’s way more on the line that way.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And let’s just be clear, diplomatic talks have failed over the past 20 years. It’s not as if giving Iran more time or continuing to engage in nuclear conversation was going to achieve the desired effect. It was not going to stabilize the region and really disarm them as a nuclear aspirant. We had to take this unique moment in time.

Douglas Birkey: Yep.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: But I’d like everyone else’s thoughts.

Mark “Gonzo” Gunzinger: Yeah, Gonzo here, real quick.

 I just want to stress, it’s important to Acknowledge that we now have a president who follows through honest promises, a president who will reinforce red lines and not back away from them. As we all know, deterrence is a matter of the capability and the will to act. And the latter has been in deficit for far too long. That’s no longer the case.

Douglas Birkey: But I’m gonna be honest, [00:07:00] Gonzo how he is acted with Ukraine and Putin, he had a hold to dig out of on credibility.

Mark “Gonzo” Gunzinger: Fair point. Fair point. But this does send a very strong message to , both Russia and to China.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And also to our allies, right? I mean, ’cause we’ve seen a lot of that credibility erode our allies trust and our willingness to either be an umbrella for them in terms of security or to really strongly partner with them, especially when it comes to Russia as well as China.

Right? So our willingness to stand by Israel and execute this operation, which was core to our national security interests as well as I would argue the western world, was absolutely crucial.

Charles Galbreath: So what struck me about this was the similarities to an operation back in 1986, El Dorado Canyon.

So Libya was a sponsor of terrorists and terrorism in the eighties.

And President Reagan at the time decided it was time to strike Libya. And, so it was a air campaign, a limited strike against specific targets. [00:08:00] And it didn’t result in the United States invading Libya or occupying Libya for decades. Right. And so I, I think it’s important to put this strike in historical context.

And I think El Dorado Canyon is a much more relevant, example than Iraq or Afghanistan in the past, 20 years.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: That’s a really good point because there’s a lot of folks right now that are in hysterics thinking, we’re gonna have to go invade Iran, that now we own the war, as opposed to thinking this is a limited strike.

This has got limited objectives. We need to achieve those objectives and then be done.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): But to be fair to the situation, it’ll be interesting to see what the response is.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: That’s true. The enemy always gets a vote

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Because there’s no telling what branch plan we’re gonna go down after that.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So, Gonzo, in addition to your time as a bomber pilot, you’ve held senior positions in the Pentagon and on the National Security Council.

So, build on this, talk to us about these sorts of decisions, how they’re made and what it’s like to be inside those meetings.

Mark “Gonzo” Gunzinger: Yeah, three quick points. Opsec opsec, it’s paramount. So those meetings are restricted to the very [00:09:00] few really need to know those who are critical to planning a missions such as this one.

So within DOD, the SECDEF, Dep SECDEF, Joint Chiefs of course, and in the Air Force, the top four plus 83 and possibly some planners in checkmate. So undoubtedly the president asked the SECDEF there for options and several were offered along with a recommendation for the option that would have the highest probability of success.

And by that I mean the ability to create desired effects on designated targets with an acceptable level of risk. And that’s why the Air Force, , actually acquired B-2s , as Doug said, and will soon field the B-21 radar stealthy bomber. Because no other aircraft in the world can deliver our largest penetrating conventional weapons with great precision and do so with a very low probability of being detected and tracked by an adversary.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, I think this is key what you mentioned about the B-2 . There are only three nations, the world that hold bombers, [00:10:00] right? It’s US, Russia, and China. And the whole point of that bomber fleet is to be able to do strategic strike by denying the adversary sanctuary. That’s the whole core of what those aircraft are intended to do.

Douglas Birkey: Now, put it more directly, the entire free world depends on 19 B-2s with range payload survivability. That is not acceptable. We need more.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So, Gen. Deptula, you participated in the earliest stages of conceptualization design and convincing the Pentagon leadership of the rationale that ultimately became the Desert Storm Air campaign.

What would you add?

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Well, Heather we, we’d need several hours to adequately do that. Let me offer that every military option to use force or construct a more complex use of air power for an entire military campaign is gonna be different. So the circumstances change. There’s not just a single template.

In the case of Desert Storm, the CENTCOM commander was not [00:11:00] happy with the options that his staff presented him. So he called the Air Force Chief of staff to ask for help. And that gave the small group of air staff planners that were already thinking about the problem, the authority to proceed with a a non-traditional plan that optimizes the use of air power in the design of the entire Desert Storm campaign plan.

But, that required selling the plan. To both the air staff, , I’m sorry. Yeah, the air staff, and other people in the Air Force, believe it or not, the joint staff and the Office of Secretary of Defense leadership before then getting that plan in front of the president. Now we had an advantage because we had an inside person on the National Security Council staff, and in the interest of time, I’ll cut to the chase.

Our small planning group built the objectives of the campaign and got our contact to feed them to the president, who then [00:12:00] adopted them as his own in providing direction to the combatant command combat as his objective from our perspective. We already knew what we wanted to do. Those became the objectives and then were fed back to us.

So that’s how you make things happen to your advantage in Washington.

Douglas Birkey: Well, there’s a key point here, sir. You guys came up with a strategy that was effects based and occupation and attrition. Warfare is a choice and that is bad strategy. And those are bad decisions that normally don’t work out well for us.

We have some pretty big choices right now about not getting sucked down that rat hole. And so far, you know, we haven’t, but it’s very important to understand we don’t have to end up with 20 year occupations.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, exactly. I mean, that attrition and occupational warfare, that did not go well for us.

Douglas Birkey: And it wasn’t effects based for what we really wanted.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Absolutely. And to go back to your earlier point, Doug, like if you don’t have the capabilities you [00:13:00] need, the entire free world rests on 19 B-2s . Then the National Command Authority, the president does not have options. And so that’s why it’s absolutely crucial that we maintain those B-2s within the inventory because they provide opportunities and options that no other aircraft within the US fleet or our allies, fleets provide us.

Yeah, and that’s core.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Yeah. I’d also add, don’t forget, you’re right, Doug, but don’t forget in 1991, that was not the decision. All right? It wasn’t until 10 years later. That the decision was made to use large numbers of forces, in an occupation perspective. And part of that was driven by the reality is it was driven by an army that was seeking relevance.

And that’s part of the reason we went down this wrong path.

Douglas Birkey: No, I’m agreeing with you. I’m just contrasting what you did in Desert Storm with what happened 10 years later.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. ’cause Desert Storm, you collapsed, the entire Iraqi military. You didn’t need to have that kind of occupation as well as the [00:14:00] massive forces and attrition campaign.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): That’s why we need a couple hours to talk about this. ’cause the point was made, let’s finish this now. But the leadership at the time said, no. We accomplished our objectives of ejecting Iraq from Kuwait. We’re done. We’re outta here.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Okay. So back to the topic at hand, president Trump makes the decision to launch, General Deptula, talk to us about how the involved forces are generated because crews don’t just climb into airplanes and launch, there’s a serious enterprise behind all of this at work.

So can you walk us through that process?

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Yeah. First Heather, as you know, and everyone here, but you know, for our audience there’s a big difference between planning a single strike and planning an entire air campaign. But there are also similarities in both cases. Planning starts with the desired outcomes.

In other words what are the objectives of the operation? Because the answers will define then what has to be accomplished, and that will drive elements specific to the number and type of aircraft and weapons [00:15:00] involved. Fundamental to all of this is intelligence. In this case, intelligence is, developed over many years.

On the two B-2 targets that were hit in this case Fordow and Natanz. But intel is also critical to the tactics involved with the attack approach. How can exposure to the air defense threats be minimized? Where the acquisition radars, does Iran have any functional interceptor capability left?

What’s the status of these defenses relative to the previous nine days of Israeli Air Force attacks? So the answers to these questions drove the fighter escort requirements and tactics to assure appropriate air superiority conditions were established to minimize the risk to the B-2 and increase the probability of mission success.

So combining the mission objectives with the intelligence about the targets threat arrays and [00:16:00] their locations drove the suppression of enemy air defense plan, which included electronic warfare support as well as all the associated details. Now, similarly the communications methodologies need to be identified to assure effective command and control.

And then there’s the issue of coordination with partners and allies to include overflight of other countries. And of course, the diplomatic notifications involved or not, meaning the question of balancing surprise and security with diplomacy. This also included coordination with the Israeli Air Force and what we saw is they cleared out of Iran completely during the time that the US was in.

So there’s a lot that goes into a plan like this. Even though it was only about 125 aircraft versus the nearly 3000 of the opening 24 hours of Desert Storm.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, and I think this was a really unique moment in time [00:17:00] because in order to be able to execute that, this Israeli Air Force opened up that opportunity by attacking their air defenses, by attacking their combat aircraft, and really creating an environment and an opening that allowed us to be able to go in with that kind of limited strike.

Douglas Birkey: Yeah. Can there be a better advertisement for F- 35?

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, I mean,

Douglas Birkey: for all the naysayers about that jet, there is no clear picture about why it’s crucial in today’s environment.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. And their effectiveness against advanced, missile threats, against that air defense, against the, the aircraft, their ability to layer effects because they’re not just fighters.

It’s not just strike. It’s also electronic warfare and intelligence. So everything the F 35 brings to the table was really crucial to empowering and enabling this operation.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Let me just jump in there, Heather, because. It ain’t just the, well, I just want to put an exclamation point behind what you and Doug said.

The Israelis would not have achieved the degree of success as they had without the F 35. And the piece that we’re talking about here is the inherent [00:18:00] stealth or low observability features with the F 35 in conjunction with its information sensor suites. But don’t forget, what’s an inherent characteristic that enabled the US that succeeded in this event? Well, it was the inherent stealth and low observability of the B-2. So, for those naysayers out there that think stealth is dead, think again. We just saw a visible demonstration of its value and low observability is an entry level prerequisite to any future advanced aircraft, period.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: I think that’s really key because if you aren’t stealthy, you make the problem set so much easier for the adversary.

There might be emerging phenomenologies like IR and EO that can create additional threats for the aircraft, but RF is the most lethal element of the kill chain because of the fidelity that gives you for your weapon systems. So it remains that foundation of being able to, to go into bad guy land.

Douglas Birkey: No, and those, those pieces you’re bringing about, they’re additive.

You don’t give up on the [00:19:00] on the RF stealth. You have to add the other things on top.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And we have to acknowledge that the work that we’ve done in stealth, not just for shaping, but materials is really important, is what’s providing, the advanced, stealth capabilities and low observability for the B-21.

Now gone. So I wanna bring you back and pull on the thread that, a key element that General Deptula mentioned when he is describing building this strike. It’s the readiness, right? There’s no secret that chronic underfunding and hard use has eroded air force readiness across this entire aircraft inventory.

So how the, how does the Air Force go about surging specific elements of these aircraft? ’cause we can’t lose sight of the fact that we only have 19 operational B-2. Remember, they were prematurely terminated before the actual full program of record was acquired. And at any given moment, one or two were down for depo level maintenance.

Another’s probably at Edwards helping develop future capabilities as part of the modernization and test fleet. And maybe two or three are down for distort of standard maintenance. And that means we basically had to [00:20:00] launch the entire remaining B-2 fleet for both the aircraft, had to do Iran and the decoy tails, right?

So add in fifth generation and fourth generation fighters, tankers, ISR aircraft and everything else involved with the mission. This was no small lift because all of those aircraft are also facing their mission capability challenges. So can you speak to us about how the Air Force and industry supports, generating this kind of surge?

It’s also a risk that we’re taking by not carrying higher everyday readiness levels.

Mark “Gonzo” Gunzinger: Yeah, Heather, you’re absolutely right. This, likely required Whiteman to use all of us combat capable B-2s, not just the birds that actually flew the. Also had engine running, hot spares, arm crude and ready to launch, replace any aircraft that had to abort before takeoff or shortly thereafter due to equipment malfunctions. Now that was exactly the case for the El Dorado Canyon strike on Lybia in 1986. My brother was [00:21:00] crewing an F-111 hot spare on a hammerhead ready to go in case, a mission aircraft aborted.

But the larger point is that Air Force now has the smallest and oldest bomber fleet in its history, and its readiness levels are bouncing off historic lows. And that’s the result of the chronic lack of spares and other capabilities due to insufficient funding. So the hard truth is the Air Force now has 141 total bombers, and maybe it can get 40, those aircraft to engine start at any given time. You can surge your readiness for a special mission like this by eating into war reserve materials. But those materials have been chronically underfunded as well, again, due to undersized budgets. So, I’m very concerned about the readiness of the bomber forces as well as our fighter inventories should they have to deploy to fight a major conflict in Pacific or another region and conduct extended operations.[00:22:00]

Douglas Birkey: Uh, Gonzo, you nailed it. Wars are won or lost based on sustaining the right mix of capabilities. The capacity and readiness and what they pulled off our crews pulled off on Saturday was a hell of a party trick. It was amazing. But it was one mission. If we were fighting a real war against China or anybody else, it is what can you do day after day?

And that is what we’ve got to rebuild at an emergency surge level right now because it is too thin. It’s dangerous.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, and also to bring in the notion of mass and concentration. We still have yet to really understand what the final battle damage assessment, the functionality, and the destruction levels of, the nuclear sites in Iran are.

But what if it was the number of B-2s and the number of munitions that was limiting the full potential of that strike? So could we have, and should we have launched more if we had had them available?

Douglas Birkey: No, excellent point. And I think General Kane really said it well, where he was [00:23:00] cautious about what the bomb damage assessment was actually gonna reveal.

And we don’t know, are there gonna be more restraints? It, those are very complex targets. I think politically certain people were doing the, high five. And certainly it was executed very well, but the BDA still has gotta come in on this.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, and I mean, think also about what the cost of additional strikes might be because now you’ve got to consider your diplomatic, consequences and it becomes more problematic to revisit targets because the adversaries there waiting for you.

So we don’t know yet what kind of support Russia and China might be sending to Iran to boost their air defense capabilities. So going back and revisiting those targets might be more difficult. And if we’ve depleted some core munitions inventories that we don’t have enough of, there’s not a hotline of, we can’t surge that kind of production, that becomes even more problematic.

So Gonzo, the crews begin to launch and I take that obviously that begins with B-2s and you’ve got refueling aircraft launching out of other bases. They’re meeting up, they’re testing their refueling capabilities. The air spares are [00:24:00] are going away and others are moving forward. This was really a dramatic mission, 37 hours.

Now you’ve executed ultra long range bomber flights during your career as well, so can you help us understand what the crews faced with this kind of sortie? I mean, the US is one of the few nations that can really pull this off, if not the only.

Mark “Gonzo” Gunzinger: Yeah, Heather, this mission started months ago. Without a doubt.

the air crews involved flew a number of sorties and simulators that include multiple airings penetrating bad land, country, and, and then, conducting bomb runs that intense mission planning rehearsals likely supplemented by training flights. On a more personal level, bomber crews coordinate in advance of these long duration sorties, which, things such as, which pilot will fly different legs of mission, how they’ll share, area fueling duties, and other critical mission tasks.

They even coordinate details like when they’re gonna take a rest break. So crew management is absolutely critical to [00:25:00] mission success. Now, my longest story lasted a little over 33 hours nonstop, and I know firsthand you have to be in great shape mentally and physically. To fly 12 to 14 hours, deliver weapons on target within seconds of your planned target times, and then fly 14 hours to home base.

Now our, our bomber crews know that’s their job and they prepare every day for it. They know they might be tasked to deploy the war with little prior warning, and they may have to even fly their initial strike sorties from their home bases in the U.S. So that’s why Global Strike Command regularly exercises its crews for those long duration missions.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, there is no doubt about it. The air crew that executed these operations are real heroes and they deserve a huge recognition and Pat on the back for what they’ve done, not only for national security, but also for the personal toll readiness heroism and endurance that they demonstrated.

Douglas Birkey: No, and those tanker guys too, we’re talking [00:26:00] a lot about the CAF, but the math is pretty important here.

Bingo.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: No one kicks ass without tanker gas, that’s for sure. So, Charles, let’s bring in a space equation. ’cause as Doug mentioned, we focused a ton on the aircraft and so have the media, but we all know that modern air power demands robust space power. So talk to us about what was in play, because the capabilities for navigation and communication and high levels of command and control plus I’m guessing space, played a huge part in planning the mission as well.

Charles Galbreath: yeah, Heather, you’re absolutely right. The planning for this mission probably started with intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance of the target sites. Understanding what the pattern of behavior was there, what their locations were, et cetera. When the aircraft launched, they didn’t launch blindly. I’m sure they had weather forecasts of the entire route and over the target locations. That was probably updated in real time as the mission progressed. That was all relayed probably to them via SATCOM, satellite communications. That also enabled the coordination with tankers as well as other support aircraft and the fighters to [00:27:00] meet up, GPS absolutely guiding the aircraft to meet at rendezvous points, to conduct missions as well as get them over the theater and over the targets. So, it is really a holistic view of a lot of space capabilities being integrated into this strike package.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: and I think we don’t appreciate enough how much we rely on space for the admin. Like you’re talking about the weather, the data links, the satcom, but also the lethal effects element of that.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah. The lethal effects element. And you know, we’ve talked about the battle damage assessment. . And certainly we’ve from satellites of the targets to before and after, so that there’s some, initial battle management assessment. I don’t think that all of that BDA is gonna come exclusively from imagery.

There may be other phenomenology that we’re looking at as well.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. Space is there from, well before left of launch and I’m talking launch of the aircraft Oh, absolutely. To, well post post attack. Yep. So, um, as I understand it, GPS was likely jammed over Iran and the aircraft probably needed to use alternate means to navigate.

So this is probably why it’s important for us. So [00:28:00] this is gonna be a major reason why it’s important that we always possess multiple solution pathways to avoid single points of failure, both within the aircraft, but also within the weapons as well.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah, absolutely. Heather, you talked about having multiple dilemmas for adversaries to consider, right?

This is another one of those examples where we can’t just put all of our eggs in, in the GPS basket. It has to be in, a multiple approach. And, and we know the B-2 also has inertial navigation systems . As well as the the massive ordinance penetrator. It is a GPS guided or aided munition, but it is not exclusively GPS guided.

Right. So they also use INS systems. I don’t know what the GPS jamming environment look like over Iran. We know that in Ukraine and in the Middle East, there is significant GPS degradation from jammers. I don’t know how much Israel already took out some of those jammers potentially in their earlier strikes.

But it is safe to assume that Iran possessed GPS jammers and would’ve used them if they could.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And we have to assume in our planning as well as when we design and produce requirements for aircraft systems as well as [00:29:00] munitions, that we have to anticipate those capabilities.

Charles Galbreath: Absolutely.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So General Deptula, putting your commander hat back on. Walk us through what’s happening in the CENTCOM CAOC as the B-2s are crossing the Atlantic. How are the other force elements being integrated?

We talked about the tankers and launching escort fighters. how are you working this?

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): well, Heather listening to your question that takes me back and. My first thought is when I was the commander of the CAOC for the opening stages of operation Enduring Freedom in 2001, because the first missions that I incorporated in the plan and then launched were B-2s from Whiteman Air Force Base.

And in fact, that first mission became the longest B-2 mission in history, 44 hours.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Wow.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Those B-2s came nonstop from Whiteman, but instead of going east as they did this time, they headed west, flying to Afghanistan. They delivered their payloads on multiple targets per aircraft and then [00:30:00] recovered on Diego Garcia switch crews, leaving the, the engines running and then return to Whiteman.

So over 70 hour missions on those airplanes with engines running. And, by the way, I got a bunch of stories about that, that I’ll, in interest time, I’ll save, but maybe I’ll share with you after this. Now back to this Saturday’s mission.

the CAOC is generally where the master attack plan is designed, organized, assembled, and then translated into an air tasking order, and then disseminated to the units participating.

The individual unit commanders are then responsible for assuring their mission elements are launched and arrive in the right place at the right time. The CAOC Commander is mainly monitoring the plan that’s already in play and only gets involved if there’s an operational level decision that needs to be made due to some sort of anomaly in the mission or new [00:31:00] information.

Again thinking back to early Enduring Freedom days you know, there are critical targets that sometimes pop up, that require a orchestration of changing assets and redirecting strikes, that were already in the plan. In this case it was a pretty set plan. All the players understood where they needed to be, when they needed to be there and it proceeded , exactly as it was planned.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: I think that’s great because what you’re speaking to is really that notion of centralized command, but decentralized execution. where you’re trusting your mission commanders to go do the JOB. And you’re not doing that micromanagement, that thousand mile screwdriver that many of us personally experienced during, , the later stages of OAF and OEF.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Well, that’s right. Micromanagement is a disease. Unfortunately, modern telecommunications have provided operational and strategic leaders to be able to reach down into your cockpit. And that needs to be [00:32:00] avoided.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And also in terms of risk, right. That allowed us, or enabled us to become more risk averse as opposed to trusting that our air crew and our mission commanders had the maturity and professionalism to assess risk on their own based off of what the commander’s intent was.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Yep. Again, this is another one we could talk about a long time. But, we’ve gotta unlearn a lot of bad lessons that were learned during, operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So, let’s talk about the submarine that launched the Tomahawk cruise missiles, because coordinating that crew to ensure synchronized timing of effects is really important.

Who is in charge of that? Is that the JFAC? Is it the, the Maritime Commander is, ’cause as I recall, you used Tomahawks in Desert Storm, so you’ve got experience on that front as well.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, and you’re spot on. Look, there are always doctrinal fights over command relationships, but the fact of the matter, the CJ fac, all right, that stands for Combined and Joint Force Air Component Commander is the one who should [00:33:00] have control over that function.

And in the case of Desert Storm, we did, I’m the one that planned the timing of in the targets for those cruise missiles. And that’s all inherent in a planning function. It’s not about what’s written, what service or nation is written on the side of the airplane, on the side of the ATACMS, on the side of the cruise missiles.

It’s all about integrated planning on what’s necessary to achieve the desired effects or outcomes of a particular mission. So you know it is the JFAC’s function. His or her organization’s function to determine how the times on target are established based on how and why those cruise missiles are being used in the first place.

So all that coordination occurs will in advance execution and actual implementation is then delegated to the subs doing the launch.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So Houston, let’s bring you in here, because not only do you have a ton of experience as a fighter pilot, but you also commanded nearly every [00:34:00] one of the Air Force’s unmanned, airborne ISR assets during the course of your career.

How did they integrate into these kinds of operations and what kind of, what would they be doing to gather Intel prior to the raid? Or are they doing more BDA post battle damage assessment?

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, Heather, I’ll make a couple points on this. Number one, the boss did a great job highlighting how critical intel in general is gonna be to the overall success of this mission.

Charles did a fantastic job going over the role space does, in terms of gathering a lot of that intelligence. but sometimes space is gonna be insufficient. There’s gonna be seams, and you need the aircraft. They’re gonna be able to collect that intelligence to make the mission success, or fail.

And so, many folks are gonna say, and the boss has talked about how important stealth is, and so MQ 9s, not gonna be important for this kind of mission. But I wanna highlight that before a mission like this occurs, there’s gonna be months, if not years of preparation of the battle space. And no asset has proved more capable of collecting important [00:35:00] intelligence to determine what the enemy is doing, what their intentions are, patterns of life than the MQ 9. But every now and then, like we saw over the weekend, you have to penetrate the IADs. You have to go downtown and penetrate the threat. The MQ 9 is not gonna allow you to do that. That’s why we have aircraft like the RQ 170. And that aircraft’s gonna be able to go either ahead or behind the package and be able to collect the intelligence that space may not be able to collect and penetrate using its stealth characteristics and get that BDA.

Now, I wanna point out that in this case, as Charles also said, BDA on a deep buried target kind.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, and I, I’m glad that you mentioned both the MQ 9 and the RQ 170. ‘Cause the MQ 9 has been the workhorse. And as we look towards the future, even though folks might think, oh, well that’s an old asset.

There are so many mission opportunities where there that aircraft, and others similar to it. So, follow on versions will be absolutely [00:36:00] critical because of the persistence, the flexibility, the payload that it has for, you know, not just something like this, but for example, the Arctic, , Northern Tier defense base defense and other opportunities.

But that penetrating capability, when you mix that with space really layers a really great, intelligence because of the airborne capabilities to be flexible to move around, to go to the point of need in ways that space doesn’t always have that flexibility to do as we’re following the mission thread, let’s say the B-2s are getting near Iran, defense leaders have explained that they were joined by fourth and fifth generation fighters.

So sir, you’ve commanded these strikes before. Why are fighters important?

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Well, it’s a great question. I’m sorry,

Heather “Lucky” Penney: I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. Why are fighters important? But go ahead.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Well, you know, given, I’ll just answer the question

Heather “Lucky” Penney: just Yeah, just

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): we’ll talk about why later.

first, air superiority is fundamental to any successful mission. And what I’d tell you [00:37:00] is Israeli Air Campaign over the last week, nine days, offers a powerful reminder of the advantage of a, of achieving air superiority in securing campaign success and providing strategic alternatives and options.

Israel can now operate over Iran with little, if any, interference by Iran. The side that dominates the air dictates the terms of the battle. This is a lesson that every military and defense strategist must internalize. Air superiority is not an optional condition in modern war. It’s the foundation upon which victory is built.

So back to this specific mission. While the B-2 is highly St stealthy, reducing risk to the mission. Success means we needed to do everything possible to suppress any potential threat. Now, here’s where F 22s [00:38:00] add value well beyond their air superiority roles. They are able to fly undetected into hostile airspace and act as electronic warfare enabled sensor rich multi roll aircraft.

My point here is they can do a lot more than just shoot down other airplanes if they need to escorting the B-2s into an out of the target area while gathering details about the enemy systems and then spreading intelligence to the other networked aircraft that were supporting. This mission was critical to providing overall situation, awareness for the entire mission.

so that along with, you know, there are other airplanes that were involved in this that provided a suppression of enemy air defense capabilities that were also integrated are all elements. That basically get to the answer to your question why fighters are important,

Douglas Birkey: Sir, there’s a key [00:39:00] point where one of your taglines you always talk about, it’s not just an F 22 or an F 35, it’s an F-E-A-R-C, you, the list goes on

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): F-E-A-R-C-E-W-A-W-A-C-S, 22s and 35s .

Douglas Birkey: And so you think about what Israel had been bringing in with those F 35s for many, many days. And then we bring in another tranche of it and the number of mission effects that were secured there, especially on the information dominance and the electronic warfare spectrum of it. Nothing else could have done that. And yet those are vital to bring in over the target area, or we wouldn’t have been able to do this.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: You have to be able to layer those effects, and you also need to have enough aircraft to be able to position those effects where they’re effective, whether or not that’s a particular access or range of formation or targeting other elements that Iran may have had in its air defense systems, whether or not those are aircraft or radars, missiles and so forth.

Forth, so forth. There’s a element where the numbers matter. The maneuverability matters in addition to the range and the payload. We cannot [00:40:00] forget that geography and mission and threat will define the requirements of the particular aircraft’s performance in aerodynamic capabilities. It’s not just all about the sensors.

Those have to be there. We have to have those information capabilities. We have to have the payload, we have to have the range, but we also need to have the maneuverability and the fore size to achieve the right layered effects. General Deptula, I think you probably have some thoughts on this, given that there are a few pundits who have written about the need to move beyond air superiority and embrace a more defensive minded thinking since their proposed air littoral is so con congested with small drones.

And these ideas are coming out from folks with no major theater war planning experience, and they’re watching the Ukraine fight. They’re learning the wrong lessons.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Yeah. Well, Heather, the short answer is these are curious novelty propositions that have found absolutely no acceptance by Air Force leaders. And it’s clear to see why victory can never be attained by just focusing on defense.[00:41:00]

You don’t win a football game by only playing defense and wars don’t work that way either.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Amen.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): You know, the air littoral is a cute name for low altitude airspace. Those who understand Air Force history, know that low altitude operations have always been challenging. And today, even more so with the proliferation of portable precision, gut munitions in the form of small drones. But changing the name of low altitude airspace adds no value. Nor, does it provide any solution for the procedures that are already established for de conflicting this airspace. So look, today, Israel prevails over Iran with air superiority, and that’s key to achieving their objectives. None of the superficial propositions that have curiously emerged have any relevance to the reality of the very effective air campaign that Israel, has imposed over [00:42:00] Iran.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: We’re at Houston. Talk to us about the notion of offensive counter and defensive counter.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, Heather, absolutely critical to mission success today and it goes right to what the boss was talking about with air superiority. Without the offensive counter air and the defensive counter, the mission does not succeed. One day we will find out what exactly was the Israeli Air Force able to accomplish leading up to this, and I think that’s a critical part of this overall mission success. But General Cain spoke about HARM missiles coming off rails and striking targets on the ground the only aircraft in the US Air Force inventory that carries that is the F 16 CJ. And so the F 16s yet again played a key role in executing this mission and performing mission success.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So really incredible offensive counter air and defensive counter air, not just in terms of US operations, but as you mentioned, the Israeli operations in order to be able to enable fourth generation fighters to be able to execute their mission sets [00:43:00] within that battle space.

And I think it also goes to show that for now fourth generation aircraft can still have relevance in these contested environments based off of the support and the layered effects that we provide them. A lot of folks think that fighters are all about white scarf operations, but what’s crucial is also going after the threats on the ground, those surface to air missile threats, the radar sites, the command and control sites to be able to blind and paralyze, the adversary to prevent them from being able to launch those counter air operations.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah, air superiority is a lot more than a dogfight.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: It is absolute. It is absolutely coming from our space guy. Thank you Charles. So Gonzo, this all brings up a really key point we executed this raid after is Israel’s Air Force and a huge shout out to the F 35. As we said before, after what they gained, what appears to be air superiority over Iran.

So from a bomber perspective, can you talk to us about why this is so crucial, both for the US to project power, but also to limit Iran’s retaliatory options?

Mark “Gonzo” Gunzinger: Absolutely. So [00:44:00] B-2s are getting the headlines of the strike. And as a bomber guy, I’ll say rightly so, but it really is a team effort. It’s a combination of, fifth gen.

In the future, six gen fighters and bombers are going to reduce risk for air, our air crews and guarantee mission success. So looking into the future, the Air force’s F 47 NGA fighter and the B-2, 21, they’re going to be an unbeatable combination and they are two parts of the long range strike family systems.

The Air Force envisioned some 15 years ago. They’re gonna be able to go anywhere to deny operational sanctuaries to pure adversaries. And, and that brings us the other point you mentioned, A war fighting strategy of denial is now envisioned by some of the Pentagon will not be enough to defeat Chinese aggression in the future.

It’s very high risk to assume that. We’ll be able to defend Taiwan by fighting on China’s periphery because that would give the PLA [00:45:00] sanctuaries within China’s defendant interior to generate massive missile attacks against our forces and our bases throughout the Pacific. So we must have the capability in the capacity to take the fight to PLA, deny them sanctuaries and suppress the tempo of their long range attacks.

If we don’t, we’re gonna lose our ability to generate enough combat sorties to succeed. We’ll lose our aircraft and our airmen on the ground, and that’s why we need the F 47 and B-21 to deny sanctuaries to PLA. That’s what Israel has achieved against Iran. It’s not some airman’s theory, it’s a reality.

And we can see proof of that reality as the size and frequency of Iran’s missile attacks against Israel diminish because of what, its forces have done.

Douglas Birkey: Gonzo, I’m glad you mentioned that last point. Wall Street Journal published a really interesting chart looking at how many missiles Iran is firing [00:46:00] into, into Israel, and you can really see the drop off and it begins exactly when the offensive air campaign begins.

It’s ’cause they’re going after the archers and the stores of the missiles. And when we are terrified about missile barrages coming after us in the Pacific and taking out our bases and all that, we cannot just be there with the catchers mitt. We have got to go after the source of those missiles. That is the only way we’re gonna be able to effectively fight and stay in theater.

And we gotta get used to that and play to win.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So slider, another part of the survival equation is electronic warfare and cyber effects. And we’ve talked about this, before in this conversation as well as other podcasts, but I know that you’re a big fan of these capabilities.

What would you like to add to the conversation there?

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, I’ll say, cyber is a proven actor in this area. For those of you who have not read about stuxnet, I encourage you to go read about that. Where an entity actually used cyber to target these centrifuges. And it’s hard to believe that story is almost 20 [00:47:00] years old.

Yeah.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. But

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): you, you know, behind the scenes there were other cyber actors going on to enable this overall mission. cause sometimes cyber’s not enough. You gotta get in there with kinetics and that’s what was proven over, over the weekend. second, I wanna say that, when it comes to cyber and it comes to electronic warfare, that all goes back to the boss’s principle of air superiority. And always in the 21st century, going along with air superiority, is always gonna be electromagnetic superiority. Those two are always gonna go hand in hand. What allowed that were our fifth generation fighters who are able to present both the stealth characteristics to degrade the EM spectrum of the enemy, as well as to do their own em spectrum effects while they’re ingressing the target.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. So the self-protection is really important and we’ve provided that self-protection on fourth generation fighters as well.

And continuing to invest in those capabilities is key to be able to maintain the mass. Because right now we don’t have the force size to go fifth, generally we’ve got to have all of [00:48:00] those players. And electronic warfare and electronic attack is a key element to that across all of our platforms.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Exactly. We have to keep investing in systems like the F 15’s, EPAWSS . And other systems and

Heather “Lucky” Penney: I view for F 16. Exactly. Okay. So let’s get back to the mission, right. So B-2s and their fighter escorts have departed the targets, , slider. And Charles, how does that BDA work. I’m guessing we have both space and air options.

We’ve alluded a little bit that it’s not one or the other. It’s probably we need more than just both of those as well.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah. So we talked a little bit about this earlier, but it starts with understanding what the condition of those targets were before the strikes so that you have something to compare against.

I’m sure there was probably some eyeballs on targets, as bombs went off, and there may have been some initial reaction there. But then satellite imagery as well as other phenomenology from space and other domains to monitor those sites to see what activity is, continuing or not continuing.

Any signs of, of radiation, which apparently [00:49:00] there have been no signs of any radiation leaks at at these sites. So that was excellent. But all of that plays in it. It’s gonna take a long time to figure out exactly what the impacts, of these strikes were, to determine a full set of the battle damage assessment.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): And I think using both air and space assets to get the multispectral picture of what happened. We always go straight to the pictures. Because, you know, we’re image very familiar pictures, but there’s always the multispectral and it’s amazing what our Intel experts can come up with when they review those multispectral images

Heather “Lucky” Penney: as well as pattern of life.

So the persistence that space and air can provide to show us that, that pattern of life, because that gives us an insight into how, , Iran is responding to the damage. We can do some inference there, , regarding what the damage actually is and gain some more intelligence there. So, Doug, what’s your take on the aftermath, both here in DC and the world at large?

How are other nations, and bodies responding to this?

Douglas Birkey: Well, first and foremost, I think it’s important that we look at [00:50:00] this. That’s what we’ve tried to do in the episode in a very impartial, strategic, view. And it was a very successful mission. We think that the requirement exists to do it. I listened to the Sunday news talk shows on purpose as a barometer just to gauge where the environment was on both sides. And boy, you can tell we live in a hyper polarized political environment because if you listen to, the Republicans, this was more complex than D-Day. And this was the most amazing thing that has ever happened on the planet ever. And if you listen to the Democrats, this was really inappropriate.

And they’re almost apologizing for Iran and they’re just hammering this war powers thing and congressional notification, and they kind of forget, you know, I looked at it last night outta curiosity. Yeah. Congressional notification didn’t go out when we killed the sum of Bin Laden. Things like OPSEC do matter and, given the level of complexity on this and the lives at risk.

I don’t fault the [00:51:00] administration for just going to execute. This is a problem that has extended past any given political party, any administration, and that’s my real frustration here on the instant polarization take on this, because multiple administrations going back multiple decades have been really, really challenged what to do here.

And like the boss said, Iran has done nothing but talk and take, and their direction was unilateral, it was clear and somebody had to do something at a given point in time. I think when I look at where we sit in a little bit closer term, given we’re in the middle of the budget cycle and all, what terrifies me is that everything that made this mission successful is currently at risk.

Charles has done an amazing job talking about Space Force and what the guardians brought to this fight, and they’ve not gotten a knot for recognition on it. The Space Force is taking a cut in the core budget this year. Yeah. This is insane. Yeah. They’re getting some stuff in reconciliation.

That’s great. But it’s not a guaranteed [00:52:00] passage at reconciliation gets through, but we’re actually cutting space in the core budget. This is nuts. If you look at the fifth gen, we have hammered this so hard. How important It’s, it has absolutely made this campaign. We have cut the F 35 buy to its smallest number ever, when we’ve been in the full scale zone. This is insane. Heather, you’ve done the report talking about fighter squadrons falling off cliffs. I mean the guard units are shuttering right now because we don’t have enough fighters coming online to backfill Cold War aircraft that have to retired ’cause they’re physically exhausted.

Kadina, active duty key location of the most important fighter bases in the world has not had permanently assigned fighter aircraft in multiple years ’cause we’re not buying them fast enough. This is insane. B-21, we cannot accelerate that buy fast enough and we’ve gotta buy more of ’em faster because 19 B-2s is not enough to sustain an actual campaign.

Like I said earlier, this is a hell of a party trick. Very impressive, [00:53:00] but it’s not a sustainable operation. And then, you know, I go across the board. We’re not buying E 7? When we talk about the need for multiple domain pathways to help, make an enemies, calculus harder. And then just back to readiness.

We are way too low. We got our buy our way out of it. I can only imagine the herculean efforts that the airmen at Whiteman and the North of Grumman folks and everybody did to get those B-2s on step. And that had to be a major miracle, not a minor miracle, a major miracle to get them on that step.

I don’t think that many operationally airborne ever. And they’re over 30 years old. Half the vendors that made that thing aren’t in business anymore. This is problematic. So again, every single thing that people are high fiving themselves over right now saying, this is great. Go America, rah rah, guess what? Everything that underpins it, we are under investing in or actively cutting right now.

This is insane. And continuing resolutions don’t help other [00:54:00] congress.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And you had, didn’t even talk about the EA 37B-2or our munitions inventory.

Douglas Birkey: Yeah.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Right. So there are so many things right now that are being cut, sliced in half at risk and future budgets and in this budget. So thank you for that.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah.

Can’t agree more on, the need to grow, especially the Space Force budget. So thanks for that. Shout out Doug. I do wanna circle back on something said about the hyperpolarized . World that we currently live in. You know, , I saw a lot of the, the protests going around the country as well as around the world.

And what struck me, ’cause I looked up, Hey there, there’s a lot of printed signs. Who, made those? A lot of ’em were socialists and communist parties here in the United States. Right? So of course they’re gonna have that particular slant. And anything that the government does is gonna be inherently wrong in their view.

I am 100% in favor of freedom of speech. I think we should protest when we think we have something to protest about. Absolutely. That’s why it’s the first amendment. But before you get out there in the street and start carrying signs, find out who printed those signs and why they printed them. They may not be [00:55:00] supporting the cause that you think they’re,

Heather “Lucky” Penney: that’s a really good point.

General Ula, same question to you.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): First, I wanna reemphasize what some people have already, implied or said, and that’s it. The US air attacks yesterday deserve an a plus in terms of performance. It was a spectacular demonstration of an extraordinarily well done set of air and space operations. This was a very difficult mission to plan and execute, and one that our very best pilots, weapons officers, and targeters executed flawlessly.

Like most air operations, that are successful, they made it look easy, but it was actually very, very complex and dangerous. Now we’re talking about using over 125 aircraft. The B-2s flying over 7,000 miles one way, entering highly definitive airspace, executing the first operational delivery of the GBU 57 that needed exquisite precision requiring exact [00:56:00] synchronization with the other US combat aircraft to assure tightly timed suppression, of enemy air defenses, all done with minimal communications, and then flying 7,000 miles back in the air, 37 hours.

So, this mission confirmed the unmatched capabilities of the US military and particularly the Air Force. Now, what’s not so evident in this magnificent air combat performance, that you and Doug and others have alluded to is if we had to do this again today, or for sustained period of time, we couldn’t. The US Air Force today is the oldest, the smallest, and the least ready in its history. As Gonzo mentioned earlier, it only has 19 B-2s and they’re over 30 years old. The B-52, which Gonzo flew and which consists of our largest bomber force, just celebrated his 73rd birthday of its first flight. And what we saw on Saturday was, as [00:57:00] Doug pointed out about the maximum operational B-2 force that could be generated for a one day of attack. And here’s the other part, we expended about half of the GBU 57 weapons inventory. So the Air Force is in a force structure and weapons inventory crisis, and it needs attention to be rebuilt if America wants to retain and grow this capability and capacity to perform more than a one and done mission.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Sir.

Thank you. So what are thoughts from everyone else? President Trump ran on the slogan peace through strength, and we saw that strength on Saturday, but I think we’ve made it clear that our bench is very, very thin from a human capital perspective to capabilities to the actual Air Force inventory and readiness.

I’d like to hear from the rest of you.

Charles Galbreath: There’s different types of strength, right? There’s the immediate exertion of force, but then there’s the endurance that has to go along with that. And we need both. that endurance isn’t just a matter of, munitions and depth. It’s also about [00:58:00] national will. And making sure that the United States and the members of Congress that are working with you are in agreement on the direction that the country’s headed in. And so there has to be an element of diplomacy associated with this military action. And, and I think we’re seeing that unfold, as we’re moving out today.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: You know, Charles, I’m really glad you mentioned the national will. ‘Cause this gets back to what Doug said, where the immediate response on Congress was to run to partisanship. And really that sort of polarization for their own political party’s advantage as opposed to understanding that as a nation, all of us, we have core strategic interests and we have that has to be bigger and more important than our own parties.

Absolutely.

Charles Galbreath: I have never seen a political party or a political leader make 100% of the right decisions, in my opinion right ? There’s always room for debate and discussion , but what’s important is what are the core values of this country?

What is the constitution? And we all in the military took an oath to support the constitution.

Right? That’s important.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And what are our national interests, and taking out [00:59:00] Iran’s nuclear capabilities is in our national interests, and that is more important than the political maneuvering. And we have to remember that because coming together at that level is what provides that national will to be able to endure and frankly, deter.

continued aggression across the United States. Yeah. As we

Charles Galbreath: said earlier in the podcast, the Iran’s been a threat for over 45 years, to regional stability as well as global stability. Nuclear armed Iran is certainly not something we wanna consider.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Recognizing that we have strategic interests on national interests that rise above our political parties is really core to being able to deter aggression across the global stage, , and being able to endure and persist when we do have to take action.

Mark “Gonzo” Gunzinger: Heather, you mentioned peace through strength. Now that’s the, , patch I wore on my shoulder for, , a couple of decades in strategic air command. You know, today’s bomber force is a third the size of our Cold War bomber force, and we were deterring a single peer adversary, the Soviet Union back then, and now we have two, [01:00:00] China as well.

And that force is a result of serial cuts over the last 30 years that were driven by insufficient Air Force budgets. But it’s also important to remember the Air Force kept pace for the Soviet Union’s development of new air defense technologies and digital. So throughout the Cold War, by continuously modernizing its bomber force to maintain its ability to penetrate, to strike any target with conventional nuclear weapons, that modernization cycle came to a screeching halt in the 1990s.

And so we’re now playing catch up in our Bomber Force and many of our other military, technologies with China. So that’s another reason why our Air Force, our nation needs at least 200 B-21s . Multiple studies have supported that number and maybe the same number of F 47s because together they’re gonna anchor our long range strike family systems to deter if necessary defeat America’s adversaries.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Come on [01:01:00] slider. I know you got something.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Okay, Heather? I wanna point out current Air Force, air Combat Commander General Wilsbach. Is frequent to say the most difficult and important thing that we do is fly and fix aircraft. And right now we are short thousands of aircraft maintainers and we have a pilot shortage that has been going on for years now.

Yeah. We’ve written papers about it and we’ve got to get serious about getting those professional maintainers, back in our ranks. And we’ve got to retain those pilots because missions like today do not go on, do not succeed without that talent and that professionalism. And certainly we cannot sustain this type of operation without those professionalism.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: What I’m hearing from everyone is we’ve got to modernize and recapitalize the capabilities that are relevant today for the future. We have to have the strategic depth. So we have to have the, force size to be able to persist [01:02:00] in an enduring conflict, not just a one, you know, one and done. And we have to have the human capital, the expertise that people across all of our supporting all those capabilities, whether or not there’s the pilots in the air crew, the maintainers, the battle managers, and we’ve got to be able, and this all this requires dollars.

So we’ve got to resource. It was a fantastic operation. I mean, truly spectacular what those aircrew did, across the entire force package. But we have to resource our airmen. That’s a moral obligation to give them the force that they need to succeed and do what our nation asks. Gentlemen, thank you for being here today.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Hey, great session, Heather. See ya,

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Gonzo.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Thank you, Heather.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Thanks Heather. Great conversation.

Charles Galbreath: Thanks, Heather.

Douglas Birkey: Yeah, I appreciate it.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: 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 [01:03:00] 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.