Lieutenant General, I want to start with how important were the events over the
weekend from your vantage point? Well, Tom and Lisa, thanks very much.
First, what I would tell you, what we've seen is pretty incredible, an incredibly
significant. The bargainer revolt is an opportunity
for the Iranians, on the one hand, from both a military and a psychological
warfare perspective, particularly if bargainers, combat hardened troops
remain out of Ukraine, that could tip the fight in Ukraine's favor.
But there's just so much uncertainty regarding just what is happening out
there that, you know, the fact of the matter is that
Mr. Putin is still in power.
And his priority now is staying in power.
He's seen is a chink in the armor, if you will.
And now he wants to avoid a spark that weakens and turns public opinion against
him. And that has gone into this whole notion
of what happened over the weekend. But there are lots of rumors running
around. There's one that that promotion captured
a nuclear storage facility in Russia, which would explain his decision is
suddenly in the queue, which was proceeding, frankly, quite well.
Moscow may never have been his final destination.
The nuclear storage facility might have been.
So if, in fact, that happened, which again, it's a rumor.
But once he got where he was going, he ended
the operations because his objectives were achieved.
We just don't know. Well, let me sleep here.
Key questions for trial, attorney general.
At a time when a lot of people are talking about how this likely does
benefit Ukraine, but raises the uncertainty about the nuclear arsenal,
as you just said, the state in general. What are you curious to know?
What would you be looking for to get some sort of sense of whether this is
positive in terms of ending the conflict or negative in terms of nuclear
proliferation? Well, excellent questions in the answers
or what I'd be looking at. Where is he?
What were his objectives? Is he operating out of
Belarus now? You know, there's also a possibility
that this so-called volcanic revolt was a ruse to open up a northern front from
Belarus into Ukraine. So one needs to understand that
deception is a fundamental element of Russian operations.
So there's a lot of speculation, but few facts just yet.
And that's what we need to do is hear some of the facts or at least verify
some of the facts, and then we'll be better prepared to understand just
what's going on. Lieutenant General, an honor to have you
with us. And it goes back to Colorado Springs and
long before Colorado Springs and Billy Mitchell, many people have linked you to
the heritage of the advent of airplanes in America, in military.
And David Deptula is clearly associated with drones and all the development
we've had in drones. Lieutenant General, do these events in
Russia and Belarus, do they allow for a better use of airspace by Ukraine,
either aircraft or drones? It's a wonderful question, Tom, and I
much appreciate it. First, lesson number one, coming out of
what's happened with this Ukrainian Russian conflict is the value of air
superiority because neither side has it right now.
And what air superiority is, is essentially the ability to operate
freely in airspace. One wants to operate at any time in any
location. Without that, what you've seen is this
conflict devolved to a World War One style spread, false trench warfare.
So that's a huge lesson in it.
I don't want to take a lot of time because I know we don't have a lot of
time. But one has to ask why the Russians
performed so poorly with respect to using Air Force is it's understandable
on the part of the Ukrainians because there's such a small air force relative
to the Russians. What's your lieutenant general is the
offense, if you will, given this opportunity, given this chaos of, for
example, the expansion of the drone system, which basically you invented
with full credit to a huge part of our air force against Crimea or to weaken
Crimea or to signal that Ukraine wants to have a greater dominance in the Black
Sea over to Crimea? Is this now the opportunity to use
drones to free up that geography? Well, that's.
Part of it, but once again, we you know, a drone is not a drone.
That's why some of us prefer the term remotely piloted aircraft.
Excuse me. Because there are small ones.
There are large ones are ones that have the capacity to carry weapons, to carry
other systems that can impose desired effects.
A good example is that is you've seen the small quad copters and they do have
their role in value. But if you look at systems like the MQ 9
Reaper, that's incredibly capable and that could accomplish the kinds of
things that you're talking about. But we've got 48, 50, 60 of them just
sitting in crates here in the United States that could be in the hands of the
Ukrainians. But there are policy issues on that part
of the United States government that are currently holding those up.
And we'd like to free those outside those get into the hands of the
Ukrainians.