Episode Operation Prosperity Guardian in the Red Sea

greetings folks from very cold and snowy Salt Lake City Welcome to the 76th episode of the lessons from the cockpit show I'm your host Mark herera and for over 60 years my passion has been everything Aviation am an airplane nerd and for over 24 years flew KC 135s in the United States Air Force passing gas all over the world on the lessons from the cockpit show we interview some of the most intrigu and fascinating Pilots air crew members maintainers and Aviation enthusiasts from all over the world we want to hear their very unique stories but more importantly what did they learn from these extreme and extraordinary military commercial and even general aviation flying events our purpose is to show how does the aviation world really work and increase critical thinking skills both in the air and on the ground and some of the stories you're going to hear on our show are being told for the very first time this episode of the lessons from the cockpit show is brought to you and supported by the book tanker pilot lessons from the cockpit found in all four formats on Amazon hardback softback Kindle and audible there are 32 incredible pictures that were taken during the events that are talked about in some of the chapter our show is also financially supported by wall pilot Custom Aviation art for the walls of your home office or hanger these are four six and 8ot profiles of famous aircraft printed on vinyl that you can peel off and stick to any flat surface and we found out they're weatherproof so go to wall pilot.com and purchase couple of these prints to help support our show we are getting great reviews not only of the book but also these profiles that are extremely detailed they even have the arming handles on The Sidewinder missiles on the f-15s on today's show want to spend some time talking about what's going on in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aiden between the US Navy battle group and what's going on with these houy Rebels and give you some pretty shocking numbers of the amount of Commerce that goes through that area and folks back in 2002 got called into room to do contingency plans for Somalia and Yemen and we're going to talk about that so grab an adult beverage of your choice sit down strap in and let's begin the lessons from the cockpit show and talk about operation Prosperity Guardian this is the first show back from the holidays hope all of you had Merry Christmas and Happy New Year we did here as well and realize it's been month since I've published an episode and of course took some time off over the holidays to spend with family had all my kids in the house at one time which as you know during the holidays is blessing unfortunately during this same time period we had family emergency it is not life-threatening it involved surgery it did not involve me but member of my family and we've had to do the hospital rotation and now the rehab facility rotation and it's caused little bit of stress as you can imagine but the person that was involved is in good spirits and in good health and on the road to recovery so my apologies for not publishing an episode for over month on the 18th of December 2023 United States Secretary defense Lloyd Austin created security Force to end the block Aid that houthi rebels in Yemen had created to stop shipping going through the Red Sea through the bad elmb straight to end this blockade 20 nations are now part of this Joint Task Force combined Joint Task Force 153 that is now floating in the Gulf of Aiden and in the Red Sea this has become known as operation Prosperity Guardian well what exactly are we guarding let's take look at the economic impacts of what is going through the Red Sea and these statistics are going to amaze you folks there is $1 trillion annually of Commerce that goes through the Gulf of Aiden and the Red Sea this is why you have all this piracy along Somalia and Yemen Coast there is lot of money that goes through here on daily basis 50 to 60 ships per day go through the bad al-mandeb straight 12% of shipping traffic in the world goes through the Gulf of Aiden in the Red Sea 12% 30% of the world's shipping containers go through the Red Sea and eventually through the SU canal through the Mediterranean Sea and obviously to ports in around Europe This blockade had caused the container price to go from $22,000 per container to $144,000 per container now my brother-in-law owns tent company and he has confirmed to me that the price of containers has astronomically gone up and he told me that he's paying about $18,000 per container for his tents now coming to Utah there's been pause by several of the larger shipping companies from going through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea they're now taking the long Route Around the Horn of Africa through the Indian Ocean and then into the Pacific this has added 1 million in fuel costs per ship in almost 10 days days of Transit time for each ship that is carrying these containers and is delivering stuff around the world they have to add the cost of approximately three container ships day because of the extra 9,000 miles that the trip is now going Around the Horn of Africa this has also had an effect on Brent crude prices which have gone up from $71 barrel to $78 per barrel the bottleneck at the bad al-mandeb straight has caused all of these problems and the houthis know this this is why they're doing it it's only 16 miles across and you know what dab aland means it means gate of Tears gate of lamentation or gate of Tears going through this straight and this is the straight between Yemen and jibuti 16 mies and of course all of these costs are passed on to us as consumers you don't think the houthis know this and the houthis are backed by of course Iran Iran is giving them all of this military equipment and material and Iran is buying it because now they have all of this money some of which the American government has given to them to buy these missiles and arms from North Korea for very long time the Spanish Navy was in charge of the combined Joint Task Force in December of 2002 and they were trying to stop all of this piracy that was going along the Gulf of Aiden and the coast of Somalia and we got really good Intel that there was ship that had left North Korea with with arms on board and if I'm not mistaken we had one of our submarines that had been tailing this thing from the Pacific through the Indian Ocean and finally it was approaching Yemen and Somalia and the Spaniards said we're going to take it down we're going to taking this thing down and remember watching the UAV video of the Spanish Navy Commandos boarding this North Korean ship well they get on the ship they get all of the crew up to the bow and are holding them there and of course they begin the process of going through the ship initially they didn't find anything but then uncovering some stuff that were in the bottom in the hold they found scud missile parts and fuel tanks and all kinds of things for scud missiles that was bound for Yemen so this stuff has been going on for 20 years folks now let's talk about well who are these houthis the houthis was actually family in Northern Yemen and they are Shia Islamic family and they wanted to throw off all the oppression of the current president of Yemen and these Rebels went to war against the yeni government and were able to take over part of Yemen to include its capital the houthi Shia are of course aligned with the Shia of Iran you know some of you have may have seen this Banner that they have on their airplanes and not too long ago they had said in their press releases you know we're going to make the Gulf of Aiden and the Red Sea graveyard for American ships and they made this commercial of this f5e fighter taking off and flying low over Yemen and all the troops are hooting and hollering and it has this kind of banner on the side written in Arabic and that Banner says first line God is great second line nothing new here death to America third line again nothing new here death to Israel fourth line curse upon the Jews last line line Victory to Islam this is all the same kind of barbery pirate stuff that goes back to the 1800s and Captain Steven deor on the USS Constitution this is how long this has been going on and the houthi realize that they can kind of strangle the supply chain of the world because of the amount of Commerce that goes through the bad al-mandeb straight and up to the Suez Canal now and of course their blockade is causing problems on the world economy now we may not be feeling it now but some of the articles read says maybe in six months certainly 12 months we may be really feeling the price of crude oil and all of these containers that are carrying all kinds of consumer goods not only from Europe into Asia but the other way around now let's look at some of the history of this particular area remember the USS Cole was in the port of Aiden when Al-Qaeda drove small ship into the side of it and exploded killing bunch of our Sailors and all of you remember the pictures of the hole that was left in the USS coal and if it wasn't for the just tremendous acts of bravery and heroism of the crew to save the ship which they did that Destroyer would be sitting on the bottom of the Gulf of Aiden but the crew was able to save the ship and we were able to put it on barge bring it back to the States and of now of course the USS coal is back out doing its thing as Arley Burke class destroyer I've been looking at lot of maps of piracy in this area and of course in about the 2004 through 2008 time frame piracy was at its height and billions of dollars were being spent in Ransom as Somali pirates and yeni Pirates went out and took over ships and just said okay give us million $2 million and we'll release this thing back to you because they knew that these shipping companies had lot of money and that the manufacturers that had their stuff on the ship would pay the money well we created combined task force Naval task force called task force 150 that really knocked the piracy back in this area there's been rise of it recently but most people think that it's not going to get to the level like it was during the 20042 2008 time frame there's another the other part of this is of course al- Qaeda and Yemen I've told all of you go and read the book Hunter Killer by Mark McCurley he was the commander of one of the Drone squadrons in the United States Air Force they're flying Reapers and predators at the time and he goes through the air strike with drone and Hellfire missile on gentleman by the name of anoir alaki who was an American Al-Qaeda leader in Yemen and when you read that book book he goes through how that strike took place and the Intel they got and of course the launch of the Hellfire that kills anoir alaki the other thing that we've got going on in our history of course is in Mogadishu Blackhawk Down all of you have seen the movie based on the book by Bowen and what happened down there so we have history of fighting piracy and Islamic extremists down here in this area and one other thing forgot about the Saudis went to war against the yeni government during this houy rebellion and when you go to Google Earth and and folks Google Earth is great great intelligence tool they have this thing that you can go look at certain areas look back at timeline back into the history of certain spot and I'm going to talk about that here in little bit but when you go and you look at Google Earth you'll find that we have some pretty incredible airbases throughout this area which brings me to my next point think it was in February of 2002 the master air attack plan cell leader at the time at the Prince Sultan kok was B2 weapons officer by the name of Mel deal his call sign was sideshow show has the distinction of flying one of the longest if not the longest B2 Mission ever during the war in Afghanistan Sideshow and another pilot took off from Whiteman Air Force Base and headed East toward their targets in Afghanistan once they dropped on all of their targets in Afghanistan they flew out and continued flying East circumnavigating the globe and think Sideshow said they had eight refuelings and if remember right the total flying time for the mission was think 44.2 hours with two pilots and of course how do they do that well you know there's couple really intense periods during refueling and obviously over the target area but about every 5 hours they would get gas from tankers and both of them have to be in the seat during that time but after refueling one would stay in the seat and one would sleep on their Chase lounge chairs that they bought at the local Walmart and then the next refueling they'd both be in the seat and they'd swap out then but Sideshow says Hey Sluggo need to talk to you and said okay what's up Sito and sure enough he gives me another mission planning exercise I'm like great he goes Sluggo need to know what the gas bill would be if we had contingencies in Yemen and Somalia said sichel what's going on in Yemen and Somalia reading some intelligence reports found out that lot of the al-Qaeda folks that were injured or just wanted to get away left Afghanistan went to an island off of the coast of Somalia can't remember the name of it we called it Gilligan's Island for lack of better term for it and then they would go into the camps the al-Qaeda camps and terrorist training camps in Somalia and Yemen and Sideshow told me hey we're going to go after these guys too and said okay so what are your requirements he says need to know what the gas bill is going to be and said okay what are your requirements what airplanes are we using need to know that he goes well don't know well Sideshow need to know what we're going to use he says well use what we're using now over Afghanistan said okay well that's that's Fighters coming out of alluded and that's of course bombers out of Diego and we've got carriers he says yeah that sounds like pretty good mix you know like okay so went with the first plan all show we had b1s and B-52s that were flying out of Diego Garcia which of course they could come right up into the Gulf of Aiden and and across Somalia if needed and they were going to take on about 60,000 lb each refueling their missions were going to be think it was about 9 to 11 hours long so they would require three to four refuelings and at the time period we only had tankers at Diego Garcia and this was our kind of foot in the door to see if we could get tankers and possibly bombers into thumb rate Oman which eventually we did we actually passed around letter that says hey if we're going to do this can we get the Omani approval from the government to put b1s and tankers in thumb rate now this would have been ideal for Yemen and for for Somalia cuz the b1s and B-52s were only like 60 minutes away from the places that they were going to hold and wait for targets where were they going to hold well of course had postured this thing saying look let's have the strikers just hang out with the tankers and when they get tasking they just come off the tanker orbit and head to their target area drop their bombs do their thing and come back to the tankers we called it being on the nipple we created air refueling airspace and Highway systems to move off the coast of Yemen not over Yemen because they had Mig 29s and some Fighters and older sa3s that weren't derel but Somalia was completely different there was no air defenses over Somalia whatsoever and we pretty much could put bombers and tankers anywhere we wanted had two guys working for me the Tims and I've talked about them before Tim and golfing Tim who were NASCAR fans so we named all of the air refueling areas off the coast of Yemen over the Gulf of Aiden and all of the air refueling anchor areas over Somalia over these terrorist training camps after NASCAR drivers we named the roads and highways after NASCAR circuits Talladega Daytona and that's what we went with we did hybrid of this also not only did we have the all bomber show but we did the same thing that we did in Anaconda and this was the plan that helped us wrap our heads around the planning for Anaconda which came like week later we said okay here's the all bomber show so we knew what the bombers were going to require to fly these missions over Yemen and Somalia and we did 2.0 plan with which was bombers and carrier airwing that carrier airwing was going to be placed off of the coast of Mogadishu so we had another air refueling area about 20 miles east of Mogadishu so even the tankers could see the conflagration that we were going to cause in Mogadishu or as we nicknamed it the dish because of Blackhawk Down we were going to go in there and wipe these places out and one of the other reasons said okay let's put all of the air refueling areas over Somalia right over the top of these camps at 28,000 ft because knew that above 25,000 ft looking at the weather that the B-52s and b1s that we were refueling and the KC 135s would have contrails behind them and wanted those people in those camps to see the bombers filling up on their energy drink conning above them and see the tanker and the bombers in their orbits causing these contrails so that they knew they're about to get shacked now we didn't have name for this air War contingency plan and we shelved it because we felt that our Focus needed to be of course on Afghanistan and focus on the invasion of Iraq in March of 2003 so that plan stayed on the Shelf remember B-52 guy coming to me and goes hey we're thinking about going down and shacking some of these camps in Somalia and said got you covered here you are handed him the plan the air refueling plan and remember him looking at me going you can't possibly be this good and said this is question that we've been asking for long time if we could get permission to go after some of these places in Somalia and of course Yemen and so we kept that plan in safe we didn't name it it was just in the safe in manila folder with top secret cover in case we needed it there was one thing we really wished we had at that time period which we have now in Spades and that was jaib boti the airport at jibuti in the country of jibuti at that time period we had discussed hey can we like put some of our forces at this airport here right on the coast of jibuti in the capital city and if we could get forces in there man the gas bill would go way down but we didn't have the infrastructure there the Airfield was an international airport it's got about 10,000 ft Runway if remember right but we didn't have the ramp space or the taxiway space and we certainly didn't have the taxiways and Runway capable of taking like heavyweight airplanes like c17s and c5s to keep the place going so we would have mogged the place out by MOG mean maximum on ground of airplanes particularly big airplanes but now that has changed again this is where you go to Google Earth and go and look at the international airport at jouti and there's another Airfield to the West called Chad belly and look at the history of these things during about the 2011 2013 time frame we started building up jibuti like crazy and I'm talking big ramps large heavy weight ramps that can take c5s fully loaded to the gills and things like that we didn't have that in the 2002 2003 time frame like we do now and I'll speak to this more in just little bit the Yemen plan we were obviously going to hit the air bases real hard they had Mig 29s F5s and some older migs it of course that wasn't that air defense wasn't going to last long and then we were going to go after all of the camps and everything that supported those terrorist training camps all out in the middle of the desert the Somalia plan as mentioned was again the same thing we could see all the derc Sam sites but they they weren't going to make any difference they were all derc they didn't operate and we could operate over Somalia with impunity think it was about this time too that there was another Al-Qaeda aligned group think they're called al-shabab and of course they've been in the news the last couple years too and they were just growing so we were looking at this area again 20022 2003 time frame and finally as mentioned in 2004 2008 2015 this became very important area and we started building things up what was really fascinating was we began doing really hard intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance soak of Yemen and Somalia we started looking at putting of course Reaper and predator drones down in the area and Mark McCurley covers this whole buildup in this area in his book hunter killer that's why this book is on my reading list folks it really gives you tremendous look on how the UAV World works and what their requirements are and what they need to be able to operate so please go out and grab that book also it's always been on my reading list it's been on my reading list ever since the book came out read it in like two days it was just fascinating fascinating read on how uavs operate remember one thing that came from this and that was the amount of dots and King Cab trucks that were running around in Somalia and Yemen some of them had guns bolted to the floors you've heard of the technicals obviously in the movie Blackhawk Down you see some of these technicals Dotson white King Cab trucks seem to be the al-Qaeda Transportation choice and don't know why guess they're cheap and easy to work on alls we had to do was follow where all of these dots and King Cab trucks were pooling and sure enough we were able to find where all these Al-Qaeda and al-shabab folks were hanging out these lot of these trucks were pooling in these three or four camps in Somalia during our deliberations over this contingency plan of course we asked the question what if we do major air campaign down here and asking ourselves of course you know what are the intelligence trip wires that would cause us to go into Yemen and Somalia and start bombing these places and the economic impacts of ships going through the bad al-mandeb straight into the Red Sea was of course one of the biggest triggers that wasn't happening in 2002 and 2003 like it is now but we knew at some point in time this place was going to heat up because we were able to establish patterns of life in the 2003 2005 time frame of who was moving into this area and how these Islamic groups were growing the only way that we could combat this is it was going to have to be joint fight where the Air Force had intelligence surveillance reconnaissance airplanes tankers MC ac130s bombers possibly Fighters that were down here based at some place we didn't know where and again this is what caused us to look at expanding the infrastructure at jibuti and we looked at of course the three pillars of air power and that is as I've always told you joint integrated fires persistent intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance and continuous humanitarian operations because there was huge humanitarian crisis that was going on obviously in Yemen and how could we use that humanitarian crisis to win the hearts and minds of the ameni population by bringing in food water medicine and so forth to help change the hearts and minds of those people there those three things were prevalent in our minds as we're putting this plan together we already knew that they had scud missiles so we already knew all right we're going to have to fight mobile theater ballistic missiles again we found cruise missiles Parts on that North Korean ship we're going to have to deal with mobile cruise missiles and these are all the same Target sets we're dealing with now that the operation Prosperity Guardian Naval task force and the Coalition Partners these 20 Coalition partners are having to deal with now this is really interesting because it actually mirrored something we did at the weapon school and report that came out on website called The Intercept and it was series of Articles called the Drone papers and it really uncovered and lifted the lid on Obama's administration drone assassination program and some whistle blowers came to the intercept and gave them top secret classified information on how that drone program worked to include where everybody was located at the time and where we were putting drones and bases throughout the area the last two weeks of the US Air Force weapons school which is 19 weeks almost 6 months long they have what's called at when went through Mission employment it's now called Advanced integration during the sequestration period they didn't have classes for year we have two classes that go through and during that year that no weapon School classes were going through in the 18 different divisions the comedon of the weapons school at that time period an A10 pilot said you know what Colonel Mike drowley said let's take look at how we do Mission employment and advanced integration and let's do our scenarios based on historical scenarios from our past and so they had this kind of rewrite of advanced integration when school was out of session and they came up with kind of new way way of doing Advanced integration and believe if I'm not mistaken that's when it became known as advanced integration instead of mission employment with these new scenarios that come out now again this goes for two weeks and it follows typical major air campaign in some location and the first thing that we always do is what we call intelligence preparation of the battlefield and the first scenario was designed for our reconnaissance ISR folks the UAV folks to be in scenario where they really have to do hard look and collect on what is the battlefield going to look like in this upcoming mock war that we're about to have over the Nellis range complex so the first scenario for all of the the weapon school students when they begin Advanced integration is the very first thing right out of the box is this intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance soak and the intelligence preparation of the battlefield so that we can build for advanced integration this is what the air order of battle looks like this is what the ground order battle looks like and it's really intense because you've got the jars you've got the rivet joint you've got all the uavs you've got all of these intelligence analysts that are pouring over all of this information that's coming in from and think they even have uos and other aircraft that are involved and they do this huge intelligence surveillance reconnaissance soak the Nellis range what kind of Sams are out there what kind of Fighters are going to be up against what's the enemy ground order of battle look like all of these different kinds of things and that's the very first scenario that all of the students face in the weapon School Advanced integration one of the other scenarios for advanced integration is designed for the students to in three-hour period go out and find Mobile theater ballistic missiles mobile cruise missiles out on the Range and the historical context for this actually comes from World War II and it's called operation crossbow and that was our war plan contingency plan during World War II to go find all the German V1 and V2 Doodlebug launch sites and Destroy them and how do you find those things of course intelligence surveillance reconnaissance plays big role but these targets are what we call time sensitive targets because they're mobile and you have to find these things these V1 V2 sites and Destroy them and get rid of them just like we had to do with mobile scud launchers during Desert Storm and that's also what this operation crossbow Advanced integration scenario mimics think it was in the 2003 time frame went to conference on worldwide strike and attack and can't remember the name of it but gentleman from Montgomery Alabama one of our Air Force 60lb brain folks got up and gave great speech on what he called the Afghan model those of you have watched the movie 12 strong know what I'm talking about that is the Afghan model you have air forces tied to your special operators that are running all over some country the communications equipment and the laser and rangef finding laser spotting equipment that can call out targets just like you see in the movie 12 strong and remember during the Iraq War there was one group that you find very little about I've gone and Googled task force 20 numerous times and there's not much you can read about these it was special forces task force made up of Delta Force seal team6 and British SAS folks and it was led by the legendary Delta Force Commander Lieutenant Colonel Pete blabber and he talks about it in his book The menend the mission in me and there's another book think all of you should go read it's called jawbreaker it's about the CIA station Chief in the very opening air strikes of Afghanistan and again it's special operators running around with laser designators and radios calling out targets to b52s and Fighters overhead and this Air Force 60 pound brain guy that was working down at either the air War College can't remember what was talking about we'll never fight Wars the same way again now that we understand this Afghan model of tying Special Forces to Air Forces and task force 20 had its own Air Force they actually took f14s off of the USS Kittyhawk out of Japan they were Black Knight f-14a models from VF 154 and put them at aled and they read the Tomcat guys and some of the f-15e guys and gals into all of these special programs that task force 20 was doing and task force 20 had its own Air Force and they were devastating to the Iraqis with these mobile soft teams running around finding leadership targets ballistic missile targets and other tasks that they were given and they were really really good at it matter of fact Pete blabber gave the task force 20 folks nickname based on the movie Red Dawn they they called themselves the Wolverines just like in the movie Red Dawn with Charlie Sheen Patrick sey you know it's great Great Patriotic movie if you've never seen it but that became the model for the Air Force according to this gentleman that we have special forces on the ground running around with radios and designators and calling out targets to the fighters and Strikers above now as you know just recently the United States Navy and the Brits struck Targets in Yemen and just saw graphic on this there was like 22 f-18s and four typhoons that were involved in this along with the British tankers the E2 Hawkeye radar command and control planes submarines launching Tomahawk land attack missiles same thing coming out of all these destroyers and they're attacking command and control lot of these mobile cruise missile and scuds and I'd be willing to bet that they use this Afghan soft tied with air power model to to do this and it's extremely effective and if you read the book jawbreaker think for 52 hours this one CIA Special Operations team is up there in the mountains of torbor and they're just raining down fire in torab Bora also want to give shout out to one of the helicopter squadrons that is on the USS Eisenhower some Iranian Patrol boats four of them with small arms on them were out attacking some of these commercial ships and the helicopters from the USS Eisenhower intercepted them and sank three of them one of them got away and understand from Ward Caroll on his great podcast he talks about how this went down where they were actually firing Hellfire missiles and using 50 caliber machine guns to destroy these Patrol boats that brings me up to very interesting subject because we've been looking at how do we take on these Iranian swarms of Patrol boats and Dows if they are ever to launch in the Persian Gulf and of course now down here in the Gulf of aen in the Red Sea in the operational test and evaluation world there's thing that we call jctd and it stands for joint capabilities technology demonstration and we'll have commanders that'll come to the operational test evaluation Squadron which was my last assignment in the Air Force and they will write these papers going hey here is problem that we face on the battlefield is there some type of solution that we can come up with in the Air Force or as Joint Force and we do what's called joint capabilities technology demonstration and have some knowledge of this during my last assignment at the operational test and evaluation center headquarters when got there the general that was the commander there two store by the name of Scotty Scott says welcome to apotech Sluggo you got all joint weapons and said sir I'm tanker guy I've never shot missile never Dropped Bomb never shot gun at anything I've passed gas into lot of people that have but I've never done this and he goes but yeah you're weapon School grad even though your school hasn't been validated yet you know this stuff because you've been through all the core classes and you know how this works and by the way don't know of anybody in this building that has the joint joint experience that you do that's been on aircraft carriers Cruisers destroyers even submarine so you have all joint weapons which Sluggo is going to be the funnest job in the building so don't knock it said all right boss got to my desk and my boss had put on my desk after this meeting okay Sluggo here's your programs when you've got like seven or eight folders on your desk how do you pick the first one you want to go through well that's easy you pick the thickest one and there was one particular folder in this pile had secret cover sheet on it because it had intelligence data in it and pulled it out and started going through it and the very first thing see is letter from then Lieutenant General Dave deula and he was the current Vice Commander of Pacific Air Forces and he had problem that he wanted us all to look at and that was what happens if China invades Taiwan how are we going to deal with all of the troop ships that are coming across the fosa Straits and invading Taiwan is there some way that we can take these great new bombs these jam satellite guided weapons and make them hit not only stationary targets but moving targets and the Air Force's program was called Amy Amy stood for affordable moving surface Target engagement and we had Detachment that was down in Melbourne Florida that handled all of the E8 joint star programs that worked for the Air Force operational test Evaluation Center headquarters at Albuquerque both of these gentlemen were E8 joint star folks and they had this program and they were trying to answer the mail from General Depp tula and thought you know what need to go down and talk to these guys went into my boss Jim Ashley and said hey Jim need to go down and talk to these Melbourne folks about this amsty program he goes okay what are you thinking and said said Jim there is no doubt in my mind that the Navy is looking at this same problem in some way shape or form and what I'm proposing is we go talk to the Navy and find out if the Air Force and the Navy are looking at how we can attack moving surface targets and go through the whole weapon cycle the whole killchain cycle find fix track Target engage and assess moving ships with satellite guided weapons said Jim know that this letter from General Depp Tula has made it to the Navy and I'm sure this is something they're looking at anyway and probably have been looking at for long time he says yeah okay go ahead you know get yourself trip down there talk to those guys and see what they say get down there on Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning meet with major and Captain can't remember their names and said okay I've got joint weapons you guys are working on this Amy thing talk to me about what it is and what you're trying to do here and they went through everything that they were trying to do with the E8 joint Stars what they call jeries messages to Joint direct attack munition satellite guided weapons in flight so that they would hit moving surface targets and asked the question at the end of our discussion when they told me what the program was who have you talk to in the Navy about this well Sluggo we don't know if the Navy even has program for this and said do you have any navy contacts that you have talked to and they go well again I'm joint Warf fighter and have big joint Rolodex so call one of my F-14 Buds and say hey know that you have the whole air Warfare piece there's got to be surface Warfare group that looks at new technology new tactics and so forth who is it and where they located and rolls tells me that would be surface Warfare Development Group on Island in San Diego California and said Do you happen to have contact there that can talk to and he says you know don't but can make phone call real quick and they're in the same building with some other folks of ours and get back to you and said great rolls can you do that for me and sure enough he called back day day later and said Sluggo this is the group you want to go talk to surface Warfare Development Group and Lieutenant Commander Russ and now my jars guys are looking at me like okay what did you just get us into said look this is going to be great because you have to understand when we move this from an Air Force program to joint program it comes out of different pot of money and if we're going to do joint capabilities technology demonstration that bucket of money money is pretty big and it's pretty deep and said we have to look at how not only we're going to do this with bombers but our own fighters and how we're going to integrate with the Navy because when we're attacking ships the combined forces Maritime component Commander is the hammer we support him and there's lot of doctrinal things that we're going to probably have to fix when we do this and they say okay great come back from that trip and tell Jim said need to go to San Diego to talk to surface Warfare Development Group they're called sweds are on Coronado Island in this building he goes okay he goes why and said you need to see how the Navy works and I'm going to get you on bunch of different ships while we're down there so that you can experience this and understand how this is going to work well we get down to Coronado Island and again it's all about your customers folks even in the military and even in the business world how are you going to satisfy your customer requirements but more importantly how are you going to find out what they even are and that's what this meeting was all about Lieutenant Commander Russ took this meeting think with some fear and trepidation like what in the world is the Air Force guys want to come down and talk to me about hunting ships and we had about 2hour long discussion with Lieutenant Commander Russ with Jim my boss in the room and it was great discussion and come to find out sure enough the Air Force amsty program and the Navy's joint surface Warfare initiative were working in parallel universes the Air Force had program the Navy had program and said Russ we got to combine our assets for this and our resources because as you know if we can set up joint capabilities technology demonstration of jctd this comes out of whole different pot of money and we're going to be able to dip into that because it's joint and and Russ was all over that so right there in Lieutenant Commander Russ's office we took out white sheet of paper out of his printer and started writing things down what are our resources what are our assets here's the Air Force assets we've got B-52s we got f-15e we've got the E8 joint Stars we've got the rivet joint we've got of course all these other assets that we can use in this joint Warfare fight and by the way we're working on new long range joint standoff missile called AGM 158 jasm and he looks at me and smiles he goes yeah our version of is called lrasm long range anti- ship missile left apot and the air force before this actual joint surface Warfare joint capabilities technology demonstration took place was told it was extremely successful B-52 dropped three 2,000lb satellite guided bombs that hit an ex-navy ship that was being towed think at 10 knots or something like that and the bombs hit for midship and aft and blew the ship into like three pieces and it sank in like under 10 minutes and so now we had way to do that not too long ago on my Tik Tok page put this up they now have another guess joint capabilities technology demonstration that was called quick strike where an f-15e dropped jdam on ship and it literally blew it in half and we were able to go back and say to General Depp tula and the pacaf and paccom folks think we got way to deal with all of these Chinese ships that are coming across that initiative has gone long way and we realized that it wasn't only good for just ships it was good to handle lot of Target sets both on the water and on land one of my apotech buddies told me that this initiative went quite ways and now of course we have capability of dealing with that well there was another test that was done again in joint environment where they said okay well how are we going to handle all of these swarms of Iranian boats that are coming out and attacking our Navy ships going through the ster huz and they did another one of these joint capabilities technology demonstrations and this one included the A10 Hogs and they found out from this jctd the A10 warthog is fabulous they also found out that using the CBU 105 sensor fused weapon is also great tool against swarms of boats that are coming out to attack Navy ships and recently saw an article in the US Navy times or something like that where the USS steam which is an arle Burke class destroyer the p8 Poseidon maritime control airplane think it was in September in the Middle East had joint exercise where the a10s were working with the USS Steam and p8 Poseidon Maritime Patrol airplane the houth out in these Patrol boats are the perfect Target for this joint surface Warfare A10 attack now we call it close air support the Navy calls it Ma Mas maritime air support and they're synonymous with each other and now we have a10s that are in the gulf and we have the infrastructure to put them really close to the bad Al mandab straight and have them operate out of place like jibuti guess the lesson learn here is we have commanders that have very specific and unique problems that they will bring to the test and evaluation community and say what kind of solution can we come up with this what kind of solution can we come up to attack this problem we did it for the cave complexes in Afghanistan too they did weapons test modeled after the caves in Afghanistan and found out hey we can fill GBU 24 bunker Buster laser guided bomb with fuel air explosive and skip it into the back back of cave and take it out because the fuel air explosive fills the cave and ignites it and of course the PSI and temperature increased like 100 fold that actually was one of the weapons programs that was on my hard drive at apotech it had cool name it was called Divine Kingfisher whenever the Air Force has weapons tests that they do it always has the Divine prefix but we were able to take these Commander problems and figure him out and we were given the latitude as captains majors and Lieutenant Colonels to put our Collective brains together to come up with some really incredible solutions to some really hard problem that was one of the great Leadership Lessons of my Air Force career was having colonel that work for at apotech say all right let's come up with solution see if we can figure it out then finding out the Air Force has program the Navy has program combining them and it working out very well when you come home from one of these trips like had with service Warfare Development Group and Lieutenant Commander Russ you always have to write up an after action report and send it to your boss you know hey what did you do on this trip and believe it or not still have that report and keep it in notebook with all of my oprs and my transcripts from BYU and my Master's Degree and was reading through it the other day it was just kind of interesting number of the issues that we're going to have to solve to make this work and hopefully the command and control issues how you're going to guide the weapons who's going to guide the weapons who's going to be the supported Commander who's going to be the supporting commanders all that's obviously been worked through and it's all come together down here in the Red Sea in the Gulf of Aiden with the battle group Admiral on board the USS Eisenhower obviously as the hammer for all of this mentioned earlier in this podcast that had read the book Hunter Killer by Mark McCurley and gained huge insight and admiration remotely piloted aircraft whatever the buzzword is now that they call drone Warfare not too long after read the book somebody told me hey you need to go to the intercept and look up the series that they've just done and it's called the Drone papers and it was describing during the Obama Administration was basically the Drone assassination program that helped us get anoir alaki and lot of these other Al-Qaeda bad guys there was some missteps during this thing understand that where we hit some targets that we shouldn't have based on some bad intelligence but after reading Mark mccurley's book hunter killer and then reading think it's five articles on how they do the Drone assassination program it just fascinated me told you Google Earth is great intelligence tool and went through the Drone papers and looked up every one of the Drone locations that the US Air Force and our other government agencies ogas as they're called were working from jibuti obviously was one of the big places in the Drone papers Mark McCurley talks about deploying there and operating from there and the Drone that actually shoots and kills anir alaki is jouti based and launched drone but as you go around that area of Yemen and Somalia you find out that there are other places they were doing this from there had been number of crashes of drones US Air Force predator and Reaper drones at jibuti the government of jibuti was kind of getting upset hey look guys we have to close this airport down every time you guys wreck one of your little toy airplanes we need you to move and they move to an Airbase that's called Chad belly and if you go on Google Earth and go west of jibuti you'll find this place and it has lot of drones there and is all built up and when you use the little history tool where you can go back and look at pictures that were taken previous to whatever is the latest picture of Chad belly you can see when it was created all the way up to think the last was in November of last year and see where all of these drones are operating out of and it's got long Runway it's got 9,000 foot runway in do's jibou and think djibouti's Runway is 97 or 9800 ft which means it can take F-15 now let me talk about F-15 for just moment think it was about year and half ago the Iranians were jacking up some of our ships going through the straight of hermuz which of course is narrow between Iran and is it the UA believe and that bottleneck was causing some problems we had at the time F-15 that were deployed to alluded remember going through some of the news articles and it said hey f-15e from Laken Heath are flying in Maritime close air support against against Iranian Patrol boats and gunboats and it had pictures and in the pictures it had f-15e on the boom getting gas and it had really unique Loadout it was carrying four gb2 500lb laser guided bombs on the right CFT and three CBU 105 sensor fused weapons on the bottom row of the left conformal fuel tank but on the center line was this new tool that strike Eagles are carrying and it's called dragoni asq 236 dragoni and it's like this allseeing actively electronically scanned array radar inside this pod that does synthetic aperture pictures synthetic aperture radar and they can data link all of the information off this pod there's not lot of information out there about this pod they found that the f-15e is also great tool for maritime air support loaded this way and found the picture the other day I'll link it into the show notes so that you guys can see it you know all you plastic model Builders out there now have new weapons load that you can put on an f-15e Strike Eagle model model kit with GBU 12s the dragon iPod and CBU 105s and apparently these CBU 105s are really good at even hunting down all of these Patrol boats me personally if I'm flying hog I've got that big gun out in front of me the f-15e also has gun don't think it holds lot of rounds though but these are all tools that we can use in this Maritime fight in the Red Sea as went went back and looked at jibuti and the history of jibuti and the Airfield there see MC 130s on the ramp see ac130s on the ramp there's tankers on the ramp six of them to be exact wing tip to wing tip there is lot of MV 22s there's lot of u28 there's also what they called MC1 12s that were on the ramp there there is now the infrastructure at booty for our forces to deploy in there and to fight here don't know if we've had any deployments into that Airfield or not but now we've got the infrastructure to do that from The Intercept that found one more really fascinating place that is out in the middle of the South Saudi desert away from nowhere when first saw the name I'm like okay this is isn't like Somalia or Yemen where is this place and it's called elmela and it's Border guard Airfield with 98,000 ft of Runway and when looked at it on Google Earth and did timeline on it where went back to like 2201 or something like that and went forward well now it is one of our big UAV bases sure enough on Google Earth there was picture of Reaper drone being refueled the satellite that took the picture of uml Mela caught Reaper drone with gas truck behind it being refueled and you can see all of the they call launch and Recovery elements they're like trailers that have two command and control stations inside them at each end of the trailers and there's lot of them and you see the same thing at Chad belly Chad belly has now become our big UAV base there in jibuti again because the government of jibuti says you guys got to move and they move there so when talk about the three pillars of air Power Joint integrated fires meaning joint weapons what tools and assets do we have down there or potential assets that we can have for this Red Sea fight well it includes f-16s which have been on the rampid JY it includes French Rafal Fighters which saw on Google Earth and all of these other airplanes that can operate out of there that what maybe 10 minutes flying time from the dabel mandb straight into the Red Sea and you combine these jointly with the airwing on the USS Eisenhower it's got four F18 Super Hornet squadrons one's two- seat Squadron and three single seat Squadron vf-32 swordsman is the two- seat Squadron think 83 the rampagers is one of the single seat squadrons can't remember the other ones off the top of my head two helicopter squadrons an E2 Squadron all on this deck and to integrate all of those together that brings lot of Firepower to the region and as you saw the Brits had their typhoons down there don't know where they were operating in from and of course 20 some odd F18 super Hornets off of the USS Eisenhower striking all these Targets in Yemen and it wouldn't be anything to go south into Somalia although don't think that's in the cards right now E3 E8 joint star size airplanes on this ramp at jibou again it's huge and there's other big ramps there ISR platforms to include the E8 going out of the fleet they've flown their last operational Mission but of course now you've got f-15e and the F-16 to that are capable of carrying this Dragon ey pod on the center line that gives really good synthetic aperture radar pictures of ships on the surface Targets on the surface whatever it might be and can data link that out ac130 gunships MC1 130s are also in the mix and of course the Special Forces bring very unique skill set in helping you fix track Target and engage mobile assets inside of Yemen and of course out in the ocean unfortunately recently two of our Navy Seals are missing we don't know if they're missing if they're dead but we haven't heard from them nor have we found them being on the ground in enemy territory has high risk but it also has very high payoff and we found during the surge in Iraq talking to Taz my good friend who was in the strategy cell said that when we tied full motion video to our ground troops and our sof forces that were running around helping us Focus full motion video and our intelligent surveillence and reconnaissance assets onto specific targets and specific locations we were devastating matter of fact he told me Sluggo we were killing Isis by the thousands even the tens of thousands once we did that the last piece of this want to talk about of course all of this is to the current war between Hamas and Israel and the houthi say once the humanitarian relief is let through into Gaza by the Israelis then we'll stop doing this well the other day Yemen government and the houthi said they shot down an F-22 right there's no f-22s even in the area it is impossible to prognosticate where this is going to go every time we hit something hard in Yemen the Iranians hit hard at our infrastructure and bases in Iraq they've shot missiles and done all kinds of things to the Troops that we have in Iraq and of course that means that they're going to try stuff of course in the Persian Gulf we had US cargo container ship ship that got hit by one of these ballistic missiles fired out of Yemen this is ratcheting up and folks am the last person that wants to see World War III where we have troops in the Ukraine Russia fight we have troops in the Middle East fight and troops and Assets in the South China Sea but I've said here on this before feel that we are in the beginning stages of what could possibly become world war three with some devastating effects not only our enemies but potentially us and have been talking on the news have said we've got Iranians we've got Hamas we've got houthis inside the United States where don't know what are they going to do this is why feel folks that we are in very tenuous situation operations going on in the Red Sea in the Gulf of Aiden and the potential problems in the South China Sea where once again trillions of dollars are going through the South China Sea and now the Chinese have all of these bases on these sandbars with 9,000 ft runways bomber capable and again on Google Earth you can go look at French frot shows excuse me not French frot shs but some shs down in the South China Sea and there it is an su27 on the engine runup pad we are in some very tenuous times folks and think my lessons learned are these we have to understand and our enemy just like sunzu said we know the capabilities of our enemies but we need to be better at figuring out what are their intentions we have been fighting as Joint Force for very long time the troops are tired and recruiting is down which is not good for the American forces another lesson learned we are 30 plus trillion dollar in debt and country cannot survive that and go into series of war or world war with that kind of debt we have an invasion here at home am not anti-immigrant but am against open borders and not knowing who is coming across our borders on the plus side we have the greatest military the world has ever seen we are compassionate military also don't forget that there's lot of Talking Heads out there saying we're bombing civilians and we're supporting the Israelis who are bombing civilians and and doing all these things don't believe any of that never will believe any of that don't believe anything the mainstream media tells me anyway we are compassionate Force but we are the world's most powerful fighting force but worry about how healthy we are right now there is another lesson learned here we have great opportunity to do humanitarian service and humanitarian operations in all of these regions mentioned that there was terrible chronic food shortage in Yemen and hum humanitarian suffering and we have the capacity of the United States to go in and help that yes the houthis are our current adversary not all of Yemen is houthi let's take the opportunity to do humanitarian operations and remember these three things joint integrated fires persistent intelligent surveillance and reconnaissance continuous humanitarian operations all of our air operations and ground operations and surface operations stand on that three-legged stool want to thank all of you for downloading and listening to this and the previous 75 episodes of The Lesson from the cockpit show appreciate all of you who are Avid listeners write to me and tell me hey this is great show when are we going to hear from you again my apologies for taking month off but did it for the holidays coming out of the holidays did not expect member of my family to have medical emergency you know falling at 1:00 in the morning those of you who've dealt with older parents know exactly what I'm talking about the prognosis is very good that person is up and walking in rehabilitation center and is doing extremely well we're on the rotation of visiting as you know taking care of the situation and that's why didn't get this out for two weeks but appreciate all of you staying here with me and listening to this show and previous shows this and previous episodes of The Lesson from the cockpit show can be found on my website at mark.com we are in the midst of building lessons from the cockpit. show website partially up we've got few things more to do to it but you'll be able to download all 76 episodes there this show was sponsored by the book tanker pilot lessons from the cockpit which is found on Amazon in all four formats hardback softback Kindle and audible the Kindle and audible version come with an extra file that you download that have the 32 pictures in it the softback version has the pictures in black and white just heads up and we are also sponsored by wall pilot Custom Aviation art for the walls of your home office or hanger there's 137 ready to print four six and 8T prints that you peel off and stick to any flat surface and you really need to go see these because they're really really highly detailed there's four of us that work on these things and I'd appreciate you going going by and taking look and buying one or two of these we also do custom orders if you want custom f-15e with your name on it from particular unit with particular tail code and weapons load on it fill out the form at wall pilot.com and we can make it for you folks thanks once again for downloading and listening to this episode and we will talk to you once again next week on the lessons from the cockpit show