commander

As Epic Fury grinds into a second month, the Air Force continues to rely heavily on its fleet of aerial refueling tankers, the majority of which are over 60 years old, to gas up aircraft attacking Iran and those still pouring into the Middle East. The strain on the force has been exacerbated by the loss of a KC-135 Stratotanker and damage to another after a collision over Iraq and several more tankers being destroyed and damaged on the ground by Iranian long-range weapons. Meanwhile, given this large commitment of aircraft and personnel, there are questions about how the U.S. tanker fleet can respond to a fight in the Pacific should one break out tonight. To get a better sense of that, we spoke to retired Air Force Col. Troy Pananon, who flew tankers and commanded a tanker wing.

In the second installment of our two-hour, wide-ranging exclusive interview – the first centering on Epic Fury’s strain on the force – Pananon offers insights into whether there are enough tankers and crews to sustain combat in two theaters more than 4,000 miles apart, the challenges of flying long distance over contested airspace and what, if any, countermeasures tankers should be given to survive.

Some of the questions and answers have been lightly edited for clarity. 

Q: Given the heavy use of aerial refueling for Epic Fury, how concerned are you about the ability to fuel a fight in the Pacific, if one should break out tonight or in the near term?

A: There is a high demand on the tanker community. We retired the KC-10s, so that is a void that can’t be filled as quickly as we would like. But the tanker force is robust, and even though we have a contingency of aircraft in the Middle East region and parts of Europe, we still have tankers that are all over the world, to include the Pacific. Kadena has its own wing of tankers there. And so the ability for our tanker fleet to pivot or to surge and scale to another region – there is not another military out there that can do it – but it puts that demand on the total force.

I think that we could do it, sure, but it would put a significant strain if we were trying to operate in two different parts of the globe, especially if it was involving major combat operations. And not to mention, there’s an element of protecting the homeland as well. Tankers are required to do that too. So you can’t just say, ‘Oh well, we’ll deplete the entire force and focus abroad.’ There’s an element required to support homeland operations as well.

Q: Does the need to do all those missions at once worry you?

A: At my level, when I was at the tactical level or the operational level, I always felt that we were adequately supported. There was certainly a stressor involved with trying to manage all that. But whenever there was a concern, you always would go up to your higher headquarters, and say, ‘Hey, here’s the current situation. We don’t need help now, or we do need help, and this is how you can help.’

It was their ability to resource those needs that really made my job easier and made the jobs of those who worked with me easier, knowing that they had support from above. But it’s not an unlimited resource. It’d be hard for me to say what would be required if we needed to pivot, or if we needed to support two operations in different parts of the world. But I would say that we were certainly capable of doing it. 

I just don’t know the duration of that, and unfortunately we always tend to think of these things in short-term snippets. But there are long-lasting impacts to things where high operations tempo means higher strain on the resources, higher strain on the aircraft.

Looking at the long view, if you have to increase your operational tempo on a particular platform versus what you had planned for that, it is going to put a strain on the acquisition process. It’s going to put a strain on the supply system. All these things, they do have an impact, not only in the short, but in the long-view as well.

Q: Considering how long it took to build up forces in the Middle East, how concerned are you about being able to fly long distances to protect Taiwan from attack by China? Can the current fleet sustain a major conflict with China, where fighters will need to fly thousands of miles on each sortie just to get to the effective fighting range?

A: I can’t completely comment on this for various reasons. There are certainly war plans in place. There have been studies that have taken place that are certainly higher classification levels, and we can’t discuss in this session or in public, right? It’s been looked at. I would say that there are plans in place that would prove that we could support operations in the Pacific region.

Is it complex? Yes. Does it require certain things to be successful? Yes, There are certain dominoes that need to fall into place in support of an operation like that. 

Q: But from a tanker pilot and wing commander perspective, what are the challenges of flying over these long distances through a very robust Chinese anti-aircraft, area denial environment?

A: I like to use the term, it’s a young man’s or woman’s game. It’s fatigue that is the enemy here, because when you have to operate at these distances and for the duration that is involved, it is certainly a physical stressor. Often, we’re operating in multiple time zones, and we’re not probably getting adequate rest, and that’s a cumulative effect, as you are asked to operate for these long durations. 

I’ve been on a cruise where we operated for 24 hours straight, and to do that over a sustained length of time – I don’t know that you can do it. In order to do that, it means you need more personnel. And so where an operation might be successful with – and I’ll just use easy numbers here – with 100 personnel that don’t have to range like you would in the Pacific or in Europe or even in the Middle East, depending on basing. Well, you’re probably going to need maybe twice as many to operate in the Pacific, because of the human element. You don’t want personnel to be fatigued to the point where they are not operating in a safe manner, and so you need to give them the appropriate rest. 

It goes all the way down the line, from air traffic control to ground personnel to maintenance to logistics. You need more personnel to support that effort at the distances and the range that you’re talking about. And the Pacific is a challenge, and it would require more personnel to just operate the aircraft, let alone the logistics tail required to support those aircraft. It is a significant challenge. And I’ve certainly endured operations where you bring in multiple energy drinks or keep the coffee brewing for long periods of time.

Q: What about the addition of robust Chinese air defenses into that equation? How much additional concern does that raise?

A: Tanker aircraft are not inherently survivable from enemy aircraft or missiles. There are upgrades or updates that could help in certain ways. The [AN/AAQ-24(V)N Large Aircraft Infrared Countermeasure] LAIRCM is one of those technologies that would certainly help some of those aircraft. But, again, that means that we’ve got to stay out of harm’s way. Typically, we’ve got to set our tanker orbits up further away from the enemy’s reach and their engagement zone. 

It is a team effort, right. The role of our strike aircraft and joint partners to eliminate that threat is probably more important than our ability to add protection to these aircraft. I think they go hand in hand. It would be nice for tankers to have protective measures in place to make sure that they are survivable if we need them to operate in a contested environment, but in their current state, I would be definitely worried about pushing tankers closer to that engagement zone, because they don’t have the survivability or protections that maybe even aircraft like the F-22 or F-35 might have. 

We don’t have chaff or flares. We don’t have other measures that would protect our fleet, and so I think it’s the role of the warfighting commander to protect those assets and to ensure that they’re operating in a safe zone. And if they’re moved closer to that Weapon Engagement Zone, then they have the ability to retrograde or the connectivity and communication ability to ensure that those tankers can move back or retrograde away from the threat. There are some technology solutions out there, but I don’t know if that’s the sole solution. It is a comprehensive solution that is required to kind of go after that challenge.

Q: How difficult is to get, say, an F-35 into effective combat range and to fuel them up outside of the Chinese Weapons Engagement Zone?

A: It’s layers, right? In order for those aircraft to move into those high threat areas, it will probably require preparation of that environment. I think there are other elements of our military that would go to great lengths to create lanes or passageways to allow those aircraft to move closer to wherever they’re trying to get to their objective. 

The preparation of the environment that’s required probably is not the F-35 – the shorter range aircraft. There are other elements that would be used to prepare certain areas to allow our aircraft to move closer. There are other aircraft that would probably be capable of penetrating those air defenses and eliminating some of those threats.

Q: Which aircraft?

A: You have highly capable B-2A Spirit bombers and maybe in the future, B-21 Raider aircraft. There’s other non-manned platforms that I would assume could be used to help eliminate some of the threat, but not all of it.

The Chinese have a very, very robust air defense environment and system of systems in place. But I think that we as a military certainly have capabilities that could give us moments of opportunity. And I think once we find an opportunity, our trained airmen and joint force can leverage that. I don’t think that we want to go toe-to-toe right now. I don’t think we ever want to go toe-to-toe with an adversary like China. I hope that we don’t have to do that, but I know that our joint force is preparing for that if it ever happens.

Q: What about giving tankers self defenses? We have heard about everything from just better situational awareness to providing electronic warfare pods to having their own collaborative combat aircraft (CCAs) to putting mini-interceptors under their wings capable of taking down incoming threats. What is the best avenue for making the current tankers we have more survivable? 

A: Prevention is the best cure here. Not putting them in harm’s way would be the best way for them to survive. But I think it would be certainly comforting to know that they have onboard systems or bolt-on systems that would help them at least have a chance against some of these threats. There are certainly a lot of opportunities out there. I’ve heard of efforts where you would outfit certain aircraft with certain defensive measures. 

If you got into a situation and we needed to do it, I think the KC-46 Pegasus is a great platform to utilize for this, because it has so much advanced avionics architecture already on board. Trying to do it on the KC-135? That is because you’re trying to answer a scale problem. We don’t have enough KC-46s and we need more. And I know that they’re trying to procure more and and they’re coming, but they’re not to the scale that we have with the KC-135. And so the problem with trying to work with that is that now we’ve got an older airframe, and we’re trying to bolt on new technology that may or may not be compatible, and so we’re gonna have to upgrade other elements on board the aircraft, just to make sure that it can work.

We have an old aircraft. We have some things that have been updated, like the avionics have been updated. But is it the same technological advancement as what is going to be required to bolt on to protect that particular aircraft? Well, no, because it probably – from a data infrastructure set – is not going to operate at the same speed. It’s not going to operate in a similar fashion. There’s some latency that gets introduced if you’re trying to onboard new technology with older technology.

Q: What about adding electronic warfare pods, CCAs or mini interceptors?

A:  I think nothing is off the table. I think those are fantastic ideas, and I know that there are people that have probably experimented or modeled to and then probably proven that it’s a successful option. But you have to resource it. We have a lot of mouths to feed here – it’s not a limitless pot, and there’s the research and development and then product production of that. 

It doesn’t happen overnight and with every new technology that is offered to the warfighter, it is a challenge to make sure that all the personnel are trained and learn how to leverage these resources, not just individually, but collectively, as a team, as an organization, to really harness that and make sure that anything that’s introduced is successful.

You can’t just say, ‘Oh, well, look, I got this bright, shiny object. I’m just going to bolt it onto this aircraft, and everything is going to be working beautifully.’ No, there’s a whole host of problems that creates because you don’t have personnel that are all collectively trained, that have all operated with it, that have all that is integrated with it, that ensures that when you add this to that platform, that it is operating the way it was designed or intended to be operated. You can’t just snap your fingers and think that it’s gonna work right away.

Q: As a flight commander, would you like to have been able to have air-to-air interceptors under the wings of your tanker?

A: The one thing about airmen, and I would say Air Force in general, is that we tend to like new technologies. We’re not afraid of technology in general. We embrace it. The people that we attract into our service are people that embrace technology, that are innovative themselves. So, yeah, sure if I could roll back time, and that technology was introduced to me, I’d be first in awe. And two, I’d say, ‘Okay, well, how can we make this work? How can I integrate? How can I be able to leverage that and exceed expectations, and ensure that we meet the potential for that new technology?’ 

Q: There’s been a great deal of discussion about the importance of improving communications connectivity on the tanker fleet. We’ve already talked a little about it. Why is connectivity an issue? And what’s your advice to improve it?

A: Connectivity provides us situational awareness, and that situational awareness improves our ability to operate. It’s a team effort, and in order to do things collectively as a team, we have to be connected. And then the challenge is deciding, well, how should we connect? What sole-source platform should we be all collectively using because it does us no good to be connected as an Air Force, but not be able to talk to a Marine Corps or Navy, or Army or a coalition partner. 

And so the challenge is not only do we need to find the right technological solution, we have to ensure that it is able to integrate and communicate harmoniously with all our other partners, because it is not just an Air Force by itself, game. It is a joint force coalition game in terms of what we’re doing right now and what we’ll do in the future. 

I know that it’s a huge discussion about, okay, what platform do we use? How do we get it to our airmen right away? How do we make sure that it can integrate with the joint force? And then, ok, now we’ve got the solution. Where’s the money, right? There are so many elements to ensure that we can do this at scale and at speed. I trust that our leadership has been advocating with Congress and with other elements of the administration to get this in place. I don’t know how long it’ll take, but it certainly will help from a situational awareness perspective.

Q: Is there any particular system that you think would help improve situational awareness?

A: I think there are some age-old systems that have been in place. Link 16 architecture comes to mind. There are probably other modern solutions out there, but I don’t want to say that ‘this is the right system,’ because I’m not in the position to really argue for that. There are some systems out there that help, that are already in place, that would help us immensely, if we were to have that particular system across all platforms, right where the AOC [air operations center] can talk directly to the tanker element, who is also receiving data from other elements in the air, whether it be fighter aircraft, bomber aircraft, reconnaissance aircraft, and then, feeding that through our platform – maybe a KC-46 – back to the AOC, instantaneously. I know there are efforts out there to enhance that pipeline, but it’s not my place to say one system’s better than the other.

I just know that’s the panacea. That’s where you have to get to. You have to get to where the shooter is, all the way back to where the decisions are being made, and harness that data and then allow that data to help inform a decision, so that now you can give that decision over to the activity that’s operating. And so this constant cycle, and they use the term OODA loop, right? This constant cycle of observe, orient, decide, act – it’s got to happen faster than the enemy cycle for us to be successful. Connecting those points with technology can help us do that faster.

Q: You’re in the aircraft, you’ve got a receiver coming up. You don’t necessarily know where everything is. How does it help a pilot and the crew to have better connectivity?

A: Let me just put a hypothesis out there as an example. Say we have a receiver that was coming up, and they’ve got a really good understanding of where the threat rings are, what enemy positions are, where our friendly forces are, and that’s all in a data packet on board their aircraft. And if you don’t have a secure connection over the air, but you do have a secure connection once you’re connected with the boom, that data packet can then be uploaded to our aircraft and then displayed for our airmen to see, right? Because now, it’s like that whole moving map idea, like you may have a navigation system in your car that says, ‘hey, where’s the nearest gas station?’ and then it pops up and it tells you where the nearest gas stations are.

Same thing can be said if you’re operating a tanker aircraft, and now you get a data packet that gives you the full display of what the battlefield looks like in front of you. You now know, okay, here’s where I want to go, and here’s where I don’t want to go. So, if the technologies in place or are available now, it’s just a matter of connecting the dots. And this is a huge situational awareness improvement, if we can get to the point where the tanker crew on board has the ability to see exactly what is taking place, where the threats are, where the green zones are, where it’s safe to operate. And if they can do this in a secure manner that’s impenetrable by enemy forces, that is where we need to get to.

In our next installment, Pananon talks about drone incursions, the challenges of creating a new tanker fleet and whether single-pilot operations are a good idea.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

When it comes to understanding air and missile defense, especially in the Middle East, David Shank has few peers. The retired Army colonel served as Commandant of the Air Defense Artillery School at Fort Sill, Oklahoma and as the 10th Army Air Missile Defense Commander in Europe, back when Israel was defended by U.S. European Command. He also commanded a Patriot battery that deployed to Qatar, Bahrain and Jordan.

In an exclusive, hour-long, wide-ranging interview on Sunday, Shank offered some unique insights into the challenges faced by the U.S. and its partners in the region after four weeks of defending against Iranian missile and drone barrages. He is now a consultant for Orion 360 Consulting, his family-owned company which works with prime contractors on counter missile and drone capabilities.

Some of these questions and answers have been edited for clarity.

Q: Are you surprised with how many drones and ballistic missiles are getting through U.S. and allied defenses in the region?

A: I am not surprised based on Iranian overmatch with regards to the vast numbers of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, long range rockets and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The only surprise to me were the attacks on Gulf nations’ population centers and the reported 1,500-plus [missiles and drones fired at] the UAE.

There’s no system that’s 100% guaranteed. As a former U.S. Army air defender, we’ve planned, we’ve studied, we’ve exercised against an Iranian threat, where we clearly understood that they possessed thousands of long range ballistic missiles, long range rockets, cruise missiles. And then, of course, in the last 10-plus years, the use of unmanned aerial systems. It’s not just the Iranians, but their proxies also, which are across the region from Iraq to Hezbollah and Lebanon to Hamas that we’ve seen recently, down to Yemen and the Houthis.

Q: There have also been a lot of drone attacks in Iraq from Iranian proxies there.

A: Yes, they’ve targeted some U.S. footprints in Iraq and across the region. And on that note, across the Middle East, we’ve had U.S. and coalition forces forward deployed for decades. They didn’t just show up there last week or two months ago. We’ve been occupying some of the same terrain for decades. And so this goes back to one of your initial questions of, why do we think Iran is able to penetrate the U.S. and Israeli and other coalition defenses. It is because 1.) they’re known targets for the Iranians, and 2.) because of the vast number of missiles and now drones and long range rockets they possess along with their proxies.

Q: What is your observation of how these systems and personnel are performing?

A: Well, you know, the American soldiers are the very best. And as a former air defender, yeah, I’m a little biased. I think they’re performing extremely well. From an Israeli perspective – and I’ve spent many, many days and weeks on the ground in Israel during my time as the 10th Army Air Missile Defense Commander from 2017 to 2019 while stationed in Europe. U.S. European Command at that time had the responsibility for the defense of Israel, and so I’ve made a number of trips in and out of Israel during that two-plus-year period. I’ve walked the ground. We exercised. We deployed Patriot capabilities. We deployed [Terminal High Altitude Area Defense] THAAD capabilities during that time frame, primarily as an exercise, but it was a rehearsal for what’s taking place today. 

So while some of the war plans have changed and been adjusted, as we do over time, the outcome remains the same. That’s U.S. forces standing shoulder to shoulder with the Israelis in the State of Israel on ground. As for the rest of the region, we’ve had Patriot battalions and THAAD batteries rotating in and out for probably going back to the mid-to-late 2000s. I was a Patriot battalion commander in 2013. I deployed with my battalion to Qatar, Bahrain, and then was tasked to put Patriot capability in Jordan at the time, because of what the Assad regime was doing to the civilian population – those chlorine gas bombs. That was under the Obama administration. So this has been ongoing for decades.

Q: What makes you say these systems and personnel are performing well?

A: The Army has rehearsed this. We’ve exercised these requirements for decades. The Israelis fight every day against proxies who consistently lob or launch long-range rockets or some type of device, either from the north or from the south, or even by the Houthis. It’s been a constant. So it’s easily, if not every day, at least once a week. And Israel has been enduring this for decades.

And so we are a trained force. We’re a capable force. The forensics continues, battle-tracking continues, the number of interceptors launched, the number of hits to kill, what that battle damage looks like. And then, of course, when, when a ballistic missile or cruise missile or even a drone is able to penetrate the defenses, at least from an American perspective, we roll up our sleeves and we determine, ‘Okay, why did that happen’?

When a ballistic missile or cruise missile or even a drone is able to penetrate the defenses, we conduct these very detailed and sometimes challenging after-action reviews to do our very best to ensure that that doesn’t happen again. 

Q: Speaking of which, Israeli media outlets are reporting that a THAAD system failed to intercept ballistic missiles that attacked the southern Israeli cities of Arad and Dimona, the site of Israel’s unacknowledged nuclear weapons program. These claims are unverified, with suggestions that it could have been an Israeli David’s Sling system that missed, but what would the U.S. after-action investigation into a potential THAAD failure look like?

A: The investigators will try to determine whether it was a system malfunction. It starts with the network. It starts with the communications piece, both voice and data. All part of this integrated network. It starts with sensing. There are sensing radars for long range specifically, and how they’re interconnected on this network. And then, of course, passing those tracks to an effector. And then there’s the human in the loop, the decision maker. There’s a decision maker that ultimately directs a subordinate echelon to engage a specific target. So the investigation will look into all these aspects. It could be human error, or it could be a technical glitch. And they’ll determine that.

Q: What makes drones like the Shahed-136 so hard to target and successfully engage?

A: Radar cross section. Let’s look at one radar versus one Shahed-136. If you’re not looking for that size and that speed of a target, you’re not going to see it. And so you’ve heard the cliche, there’s no silver bullet, right? And this drives the importance of a layered defense, and that layered defense includes radars. So very elementary nonetheless, but it’s radar cross section. 

Q: What’s being done to calibrate sensors to be able to pick up these Shaheds? And is it working?

A: I think we’ve had a great deal of success against some of these Group-3 drones, specifically the Shahed-136s. From a technical standpoint, the industry is continuing to work and make adjustments to their sensors, especially those that are programs of record, but also sensing capabilities that are non-programs of record to the Department of War and U.S. forces. So yes is the answer. And again, it goes back to layering. 

And one other point worth mentioning – you can probably tie this into some of the other comments I made. From a U.S. air defense perspective, and really, probably any coalition or friendly force, we’re not defending dirt. If a ballistic missile is going to land somewhere in the desert – if it’s uninhabited – it’s not an area that we need to be concerned with defending. We’re going to let it impact. And so sometimes people get lost in those types of impacts. 

Now turn around, and we talked a little bit earlier about Dimona, right? Whether the Israelis have nuclear capability or not, when you know if a ballistic missile is targeting a population center – or, let’s say, an air base, a logistics center, or maybe even oil or naturl gas fields – those are deemed critical assets and would have some type of defensive capability to prevent any type of strike against those assets. Hope that helps.

Q: What Iranian ballistic missile technology have you seen during this conflict that is concerning in terms of Iran’s ability to penetrate even the best defense?

A: Well, I think that [attempted] strike against Diego Garcia got everyone’s attention because of the range. Reports were that there were two ballistic missiles, one broke up in flight. I think [the other missile reached a distance of] 3,800 kilometers [about 2,400 miles], and our expectation was that they had a ballistic missile they could travel 2,000 kilometers [about 1,240 miles]. Maybe they decreased the size of the warhead in order to travel further. I’m not an engineer. I own a set of post hole diggers, and that’s my PhD, by the way.

We’ve known for decades that Iranians have possessed thousands of ballistic missiles, long-range rockets and cruise missiles. And in the last 10 to 15 years, the evolution of drones has changed the character of war. It’s clearly evident that Russians are assisting the Iranians, not just with missile technology, but now with drone technology. And so the Russians have a lot of lessons learned. Ukrainians have a lot of lessons learned unless you’ve had your head in the sand. The Ukrainians are also assisting in the region to provide not just awareness but expertise in both offensive and defensive actions, using drones and defeating drones.

Q: The U.S. and allies are expending a large amount of interceptors, batting down a variety of missiles and drones. How concerned are you about America’s magazine depth of these critical defensive weapons? 

A: Very, very concerned. Clearly, I recognize the efforts, at least in the last several months, of increasing production, for example, of the Patriot interceptor. And we haven’t talked about the cost curve, but Patriot PAC-3 interceptors are not cheap. You know, $3 million, $4 million, $5 million each. That THAAD interceptor, I’ve heard numbers anywhere between $8 million and $12 million per and that’s just from a U.S. perspective. So not cheap at all, especially when you’re engaging potentially a $200,000 target. So you can recognize the cost curve very quickly.

And these munitions are limited, hence, the aggressive movement towards effectors that have an unlimited magazine, or a very deep magazine, such as directed energy. Are we moving fast enough to get to directed energy? Maybe, maybe not. There are some use cases and the one in El Paso was not so well coordinated. In fact, it wasn’t coordinated at all, in my opinion. And it showed a very concerning disconnect between departments here in the U.S. But, the US Navy possesses some directed energy capability.

Q: From what you’re seeing on this conflict, do you think the proper planning was in place in terms of magazine depth of defensive weapons?

A: My experience is the number of interceptors were always factored into the war plans, and so recognizing that based on the number of whether it’s Patriot or THAAD or both interceptors on hand, clearly, we would war game. We would rehearse. We would recognize, okay, through modeling and simulation, certain Patriot locations would go what we call Winchester (out of ammo in military parlance). You’re out of ammunition by a specific day in a conflict. That drives the importance of air power and nowadays, cyber strikes, and even the potential for ground warfare. All of that is factored in. I’m sure additional munitions, potentially from other combatant commands around the globe, were moved to the region to prepare for what’s transpiring now.

Q: In addition to interceptors, the U.S. has shipped a lot of air defense systems from Europe and the Pacific to the Middle East. How concerning is that for other regions, specifically Pacific? If a fight broke out in the Pacific tonight, do we have enough systems and munitions there to defend us assets?

A: It’s a really good question. And so hence the importance of our allies and partners possessing their own capability, because it alleviates some of the stresses on the U.S. force and other nations for that matter. And so to answer your question, if a second conflict were to take place today in another part of the world, there’d be some challenges, but there’d also be some reliance on our allies and partners. They provide their capability and become part of whether it’s a coalition or multilateral bilateral agreement, but it would definitely require additional capability from other nations.

Q: Pacific allies have expressed concerns about U.S. air defense assets heading to the CENTCOM region. How much does that concern you?

A: The State Department is heavily engaged when it comes to having those difficult conversations with some of our allies and partners and explaining why, for example, we need to move a Patriot from the Pacific to the Middle East. I’m sure they’re receiving push back. Because there is a concern, whether it’s PRC, or whether it’s the DPRK, there’s always that concern [about being properly equipped].

Q: You mentioned moving air defense assets. What does it take to move a Patriot battery, which can have up to eight trailer-mounted launchers, as well as an AN/MPQ-65 multifunction phased array radar and other fire control, communications, and support equipment, operators and maintenance personnel?

A: It’s very taxing on the airlift, the C-17s and C-5s. One Patriot battery would take eight to 10 C-17s, it’s a lot. And that was just for an initial deployment. So potentially not the full complement of launching stations. These are very large trucks, very large pieces of equipment. You ship the interceptors in a different airframe, because of the munitions aspect. So there’s some synchronization involved as you think through this. If you put a Patriot battery on the ground, and the radar comes in last, it’s no good. You’ve got to synchronize the flow. 

Q: How many flights would it take for a whole battalion, which includes a headquarters element, along with between three and five firing batteries?

A: I’d say about 70 to 75 aircraft. This is why the Army Prepositioned Stocks (APS) stored at a number of locations around the world are so important.

Q: Based on the information at hand, it appears that Iran has been able to destroy one U.S. AN/TPY-2 radar in Jordan and damage the massive American-made AN/FPS-132 phased array radar in Qatar. Reportedly, Iran has hit 12 US and allied radar and SATCOM terminals since the start of the war. How difficult are they to replace and how do their losses affect the overall situational awareness, command and control, reaction time and the overall ability to identify and destroy threats?

A: It’s no different than what we do to an adversary. We conduct some type of air campaign. First thing we want to do is we want to blind, right? We want to take out their communications. We want to take out their air defenses radars so our aircraft can get deep into a country, and strike strategic-level targets initially. The Iranians are doing the same. 

If they can take out our sensing capability, or how we see air threats thousands of kilometers away, that’s one of their targets. A high payoff target for the Iranians is to destroy a THAAD radar like the  AN/TPY-2 you mentioned. The AN/FPS-132 that you mentioned. If they can destroy these types of long range sensors, that benefits the adversary. 

Patriot radars are a target. They emit a signal, and so it drives the importance that they’re not easy to move. It drives the importance of emissions control. When you turn on a radar, when you turn it off, how long is it operating for? Again, you’re not just going to pick up a Patriot, but this is very difficult for some – even American leaders – to understand. You don’t just move a Patriot battery on a dime. I mean, it’s not a tank. And so I know during my career, it was challenging to explain that to senior leaders who were not air defenders. 

Q: How difficult are these radars to replace how are these losses affecting the overall situational awareness, command and control, reaction time and ability to identify and destroy threats?

A: Well, you only have so many radars. There are no radars just sitting around in a motor pool, not being used, except at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where they do the training. That’s the first point. So they’re limited in number. If and when a radar is destroyed, it goes back to that integrated network where there’s potential, depending on proximity and range, that one Patriot battery could actually sense for another Patriot battery. For example, if a radar is destroyed or non-mission capable, say, a technical issue, depending on range, one radar could sense for another battery. 

Same at the battalion level. If you have loss of capability there’s capability where one battalion could provide sensing for another battalion’s launchers. And again, it’s all about being on the network as well – an integrated network of sensors. Coupled with what you’ve probably written and talked to people about – launch-on-remote, engage-on-remote – we have done a lot of that testing and experimentation within the last 10 years. So that is supporting the loss of sensors.

Q: Is there anything we can do to improve defending these systems?

A: Get more systems. We’ve learned so many lessons with what’s going on in Ukraine when it comes to a drone war. There’s persistent surveillance, 24/7. Now you can expect to have eyes on your location if you’re a Ukrainian soldier. Now bring that to the Middle East. You know Ukrainians are producing thousands of drones and counter system capabilities a month and now we’re seeing how that’s impacting the Middle East and the requirements for us and partner nations.

So that’s what we need. We need more capability. There’s always someone that says we need more Patriot. We need more THAAD, we need more Aegis, we need more SM-6s. We need more defensive counter air airframes. I do work in and out of the Middle East. And when you talk to those service members and their leadership, their greatest concerns are Group 3 drones, and we’re seeing it play out in real time.

The Pentagon has reportedly drawn up plans to send American troops into Iran, possibly to Kharg Island or far deeper into the country to seize enriched uranium. These moves would represent a huge escalation for Operation Epic Fury. Former CENTCOM commander Joseph Votel offers us exclusive insights into the challenges and dangers of having U.S. boots on the ground in the Islamic Republic, and what it would take to seize Kharg Island or attempt to snatch Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium that could be very challenging to access.

In the second part of our conversation, the first centering on the current situation around the Strait of Hormuz, the retired general, now a Distinguished Military Fellow at the Middle East Institute, also addressed concerns over America’s magazine depth of interceptors and other high-end weapons, what China may be learning from the operation, and how long Epic Fury could last, among other topics.

The interview took place before news broke that a second Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) – with at least 2,200 Marines – was being deployed to the Middle East. As we previously reported, Trump ordered another one to the region in the last week.

Some of the questions and answers have been lightly edited for clarity.

Q: Does a seizure of Kharg Island, or an insertion of SOF to recover enriched uranium from Pickaxe Mountain or elsewhere in Iran, seem feasible? What would either of those operations take, in terms of troops and assets?

A: Both of those things are feasible. Let me just start with Kharg Island. We can put troops on there. We can air mobile them in. We could land them by boat. I guess the comment I have about Kharg is, I’m not sure what the significance is of putting troops there. It’s only about 20 miles off the coast of Iran. So you’re definitely under the threat of their weapon systems. You’d be very, very vulnerable there. And I don’t know that it would give us any particular tactical advantage that we don’t already have or couldn’t get someplace else at an offset location where we have established bases and other things like that. So I’m not sure what the tactical advantage of it is.

I get that it has an informational and kind of messaging advantage against the Iranians that we are on their territory. And it may send a message to the broader energy community that we are safeguarding these vital Iranian infrastructures. That might give them some confidence [but] kind of an odd thing to do. But I just don’t really see the big advantage of going to Kharg. But we could certainly do it if we had to. 

We would be vulnerable. When you start putting troops on the ground – I know there’s some mishmash and words on that – but that’s troops on the ground right there. It also implies that you are going to have to take care of them, you’re going to have to resupply them, you’re going to medevac them, you have to do all the things that keep them in place for whatever period of time. And that requires that you have a logistical tail, and at some point that tail has to be protected as well. So these are not insignificant considerations and they’re often bigger operations.

I would imagine on a little island like Kharg, you would need a battalion sized force of Marines or soldiers could probably do that. So you’re probably looking at 800 to 1,000 troops, kind of size, maybe a little bit smaller, probably not much larger than that.

Going after the fissile material I think is a bigger operation. Again, I think we have the capabilities to do this. Within our Special Operations community, we have people that are trained to do this and have the right relationships and connections and other things to allow us to get in and do that. So you’d have to be able to project that force onto the ground. This would be going to a place like Natanz or Isfahan – probably one of those locations. Those are well inland – several hundred miles into Iran, a country of the same size as the state of Alaska. So it’s big and it’s diverse. It’s largely in an open plain, so you don’t have a lot of natural terrain protection there. That would have to be taken into consideration.

In addition to the kind of operators you put on the ground, you’d also have to bring in a security force, but probably a sizable security force – a brigade size or 1,000 to 3,000 or 4,000 troops to just secure while they did that work. You’d have to do that. You’d have to make sure you dedicated air power. You’d have to put CAPs [combat air patrols] up over, you’d have to have ISR [information, surveillance and reconnaissance] in place.

Again, you’d have the challenge of people on the ground, so you’d have to logistically sustain them and then be prepared to protect that tail. And then you have to have all of the lift, whether it’s rotary wing or fixed wing, to get them in and get them all back out. And then you have the added challenge of handling nuclear material. So about 450-some kilograms. That’s roughly 1,000 pounds of 60% highly enriched uranium. And that’s a lethal material. So ideally, that would be packaged already, but we’d have to make sure we packaged that and moved it and had someplace to actually take it back to. 

So, yeah, could we do a military operation? Sure. I think it would kind of look like I described there. It would be a big operation, and it wouldn’t be something that would be done in a single period of darkness. It probably takes some time. You’d have to have some special capabilities to go in and excavate these things and identify them.

There’s no real open-source discussion of what the conditions are at these things, you’d have to be prepared for the worst, and the worst would be having to dig down and find it. I’m hoping that our intelligence community understands this a little bit more, and I suspect that is the case. But this is a pretty big, pretty significant operation.

An alternative to this would be waiting until there is a cessation of hostilities and then trying to go in in a more semi-permissive environment with elements of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who really have responsibility for this. They would bring expertise in to do this. We – or some other military force – would probably assist with some of that. But that may be another option as well. I’m sure they’re looking at all these.

Q: This is not a job for a Tier One unit like SEAL Team Six or Delta, to go in and grab it, right? There’s a lot of discussion about that.

A: Yeah. First of all, you’re not just going to go in and grab 1,000 pounds of nuclear material and then ferret it right out. That’s not the case. Those unique capabilities reside within the Special Operations community. I won’t identify organizations, but they reside within the tip top of our special operations capability. They’re trained and maintained and normally exercise and rehearse on a regular basis. So, yeah, we have the ability to do that. But it’s unlikely – in my view, my estimate, with what I know – that you just send a few folks in there, grab the stuff and get it out. I don’t think that’s the case. I think it’s going to take more. You might be able to do that in a permissive environment, but I don’t think you want to take the risk associated with that in the environment that we’re seeing right now, or perhaps even in a semi-permissive environment.

Q: Was there proper planning to ensure enough missile and drone interceptors were in place prior to the start of Epic Fury?

A: I have no reason to believe that it wasn’t. Is there pressure on our magazine depth? There sure is. We’ve talked about that for a while. CENTCOM planned – which has been developed and modified over the last 20, 25 years – to do this. Every commander had their fingers involved in it. I do not know the current plan. I’m sure that [CENTCOM commander] Adm. [Brad] Cooper has done that. It was a significant discussion, not only about the targets, but certainly about what was required to execute that and also to protect themselves. So my assessment is, yes, I think we have. And I don’t think we’ve seen an instance where we’ve not been able to defend ourselves because we didn’t have any missiles. 

There’s no doubt we’ve expended a lot, and that’s put a lot of pressure on the magazines, but the Department of Defense and CENTCOM and Joint Staff, I think, have been able to make sure that they’ve been able to move enough materials into place so we can sustain this operation, now well into its third week.

Q: How concerned are you about America’s magazine depth of these defensive weapons?

A: We should be concerned. I think the challenge may not necessarily be in CENTCOM. The challenge may be in other areas like the Pacific, Korea, you know, Europe, you know this. This could be impacting our ability to send things to the Ukrainians, or through our NATO partners, the Ukrainians. So I think that’s where the concerns are. And by the way, you know, all of our Gulf Arab partners and many of our partners around the world use THAAD [Terminal High Altitude Area Defense] and use Patriot missile systems, and so they require resupply as well, and stocks available to them. 

I think we have long had an issue with making sure we had sufficient magazine depth. We went through this several years ago when North Korea was flexing its muscles and firing missiles towards Guam and over Japan. We had a serious discussion about this. We saw this with the response to Ukraine as well with artillery rounds. The Army’s ramped up production, three or four fold over the last couple of years. But it’s taken a little bit of time. That’s good. But we need to do that with all these other munitions. So a portion of our resources needs to be dedicated to making sure we have sufficient munitions in place for our contingencies and for our partners who have bought our systems they are relying on.

Q: What’s your assessment of Iran’s magazine depth of missiles, operable launchers and drones? How long can they keep presenting a threat?

A: There’s been pretty serious damage done to their missile system and I say the system, because it’s not just the missiles. It’s the launchers, it’s the command and control sites, manufacturing sites, it’s the storage sites. I think we’ve done a lot of damage to that. And you’ve probably heard some of the numbers that have come out of CENTCOM – in the 70, 80% range of destruction. I think we’ve done a lot with the drones as well. I think the concern is the last 15 or 20%.

Don’t pay attention to the numbers. The fact of the matter is, they’re going to have a remnant portion of capabilities, and that’s a portion we’re focused on right now. Iran’s strategy has been to broaden the conflict by hitting a lot of different places, 12 or 13 different countries, and then to extend it by continuing to present this threat to us over a long period of time. They don’t have to shoot large volleys of missiles and drones. They just have to get some across. They just have to launch some every day. And that’s going to keep our focus, and it’s going to keep us occupied doing that. So that’s their strategy on this. 

They’ve taken a significant hit in some of their capabilities, and I imagine some of the magazines, but there’s some left. I think at the start of the war, their missile strength was somewhere in the 2,000 to 3,000 range. Some of the numbers I’ve seen show there are probably over 1,000 that have been launched now, and so that leaves a considerable number. They don’t have the ability to launch these. And now that we have air superiority over those locations, we can go anywhere we want. We see something, we can take it out right away. So the missiles are very, very vulnerable, but the drones are much easier [for Iran to protect]. They don’t require all that much, and they probably got larger stores that it’s important to appreciate. They were manufacturing these things for Russia, so they probably have fairly sizable stores of drones left.

Q: How closely is China watching this? And what are they learning from it?

A: Well, I think they’re paying very close attention to this. They’re learning how we respond to counter fire. They’re very closely following our air tactics and how we are working with the Israelis on that. They’re looking at the targets we are going after, and trying to understand the scheme of fires associated with all of this. 

They will be watching very closely how we deal with the Strait of Hormuz. We’ve got the straits down there – the Strait of Taiwan and all these other ones in Asia – they’ll be paying very, very close attention to this. They’ll be watching what our readiness rates are throughout all of this, and our ability to marshal forces and how quickly we can do this. So I think they’re absorbing a lot about how we are operating. 

But they’re also seeing the use of drones. They’re probably trying to pay attention to how artificial intelligence may be being effectively used. And I would imagine that it is by the US and helping us parse a whole bunch of information and select targets and perform other functions. So, they’re paying a lot of attention. I think they’re also paying attention to what this is doing to our readiness in other areas, frankly. We continue to move resources out of the Asia Pacific, and they certainly are taking note of that.

Q: Do you think China will move on Taiwan given all that?

A: I don’t know. I’m not an expert in that particular area. But what I do know is they’ve had some ambitions of trying to be ready for that in the next year or so. I also know that there’s been a wholesale sacking of their military leadership by President Xi. So he’s putting new people into place, that has an impact. It certainly has an impact on the ability to command and control a major operation to [invade] Taiwan. I don’t think we’re going to see this in the near-term. I don’t know that that’s necessarily the lesson Xi’s taken away from us. I don’t know if they’re actually prepared to do that. But they’re certainly paying attention to how we are doing things here and how that could be used in their types of operations.

Q: So far, the Houthis have been on the sidelines. Why do you think that is and at what point will they get involved?

A: The Houthis – one of the extensions of the Iranian network – have always been much more independent than Hamas or certainly Hezbollah or the Shia militia groups we normally see in Iraq and Syria that are loyal to the Iranian regime. [The Houthis] are much more independent in terms of this. They actually have a governing function, full-on governing function, and so they are trying to make decisions for themselves. 

I have heard a couple of discussions on this one. One viewpoint would be that the Iranians have told them to hold on: ‘We want to extend again. We want to extend this conflict out. We want to buy some time. We’re going to be patient,’ and then we may look to do that. 

Another theory might be that they’re just keeping their powder dry right now and waiting for an opportunity to launch into this. I think there’s probably a variety of reasons why they aren’t doing it. They have an agreement in place with us. They took a pretty serious beat down during our counter-Houthi operations some months ago. So that had an impact on them. They’re probably not anxious to revisit that immediately, because it was pretty devastating for them. So I imagine they’re just being patient.

Q: How likely is regime change in Iran and will it make a difference?

A: I don’t view it as particularly likely at this point. There may be some further power shifts there. I think the military component – the IRGC component of the regime, those senior leaders – are having much more influence, and that’s influencing these very angry responses we’re seeing from the Iranians on this, lashing out at the Gulf Arab countries. So I think that the military is definitely ascending in this.

But yet, they have preserved the theocratic side of government by putting a new Ayatollah in place, admittedly, one that’s not well known, that appears to be pretty weak [Mojtaba Khamenei, chosen to replace his father, Ali Khamenei who was killed on the first day of the war]. He actually seems to be very aligned with the hard liners on the military side. There’s not much on him. He doesn’t have a huge amount of religious credibility or anything. So, he could be a figurehead, could be expendable for them, frankly, but their regime is very deep. It has great influence, and it’s pretty much wired everything in Iran, so they can remain in power. And so I suspect that they probably will. Whether a more pragmatic leader arises. I don’t know. I don’t know who that might be.

Q: What’s your biggest worry about how this all winds up?

A: That the regime remains in power. They’re going to continue to try to extend and keep this going for a long period of time, and we are going to have to undertake very expensive and deliberate activities to bring this under control. I mean, we’re already three weeks into what has been touted as a four or five week campaign. That’s pretty reasonable based on my experience and knowledge of what CENTCOM is trying to do, and what that plan basically looks like. It makes a lot of sense to me. 

And then we have to undertake a very deliberate effort to open the Strait. And then we’ll have to stay committed to helping move ships through there, for some period of time, and Iran will continue to have the ability to interdict that. 

My concern is that when we move to a new normal that hasn’t necessarily changed the dynamic all that much, we will have to stay committed to this for some time forward. I don’t know that that was necessarily what we had envisioned at the start of this, or had envisioned for the force long term.

Q: How long do you think this will go on, given what you’re seeing now?

A: I think we’ve got weeks more of operations.

Q: A month? More than that?

A: More than a month, I think probably double digit weeks and single digit months when you throw in a Strait of Hormuz operation, stuff like that. I can see us for a couple of months here.

Q: What kind of strain does it put on the U.S. in terms of readiness, in terms of the troops and equipment?

A: Well, most of these naval vessels were not necessarily anticipated or forecasted to be in the Middle East right now. For the most part, they have diverted from other things that they were doing, particularly the carriers. That defers maintenance. It defers normal training cycles, and other readiness cycles that are built into this. 

Those ships are fantastic, but they have to go into very deliberate maintenance periods and capital ship maintenance has been an area of some concern for us for a while, because we have so many things going on and because we don’t have the infrastructure that we require to take care of these things. So I think there could be some readiness issues with our maritime vessels. It certainly puts a lot of stress on things like THAADs and Patriots, and again, we have a finite number of those. They’re not in Korea, they’re not other places, they’re not in Europe, they’re here. So that’s going to have an impact, and those organizations are going to have to be reset at some particular point on this.

This is putting more and more stress on our air fleet, our tankers, the C-17 movers, and, of course, all the wear and tear on all of our fighters. I think to our readiness, all of those things have to be taken care of at some particular point. And that’s going to have an impact as we try to rebuild readiness and respond to other contingencies around the world. And in addition to returning to our great power competition. So I think there’s definitely going to be some impacts in this.

Q: How much of a difference to Epic Fury does it make that the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford has to leave the theater to undergo fire damage repairs in Souda Bay, Crete? That leaves just the USS Abraham Lincoln as the lone carrier during a major contingency operation.

A: We’ve got a lot of aircraft. We’ve got ground-based aircraft. My understanding is we may be moving another carrier in to replace that one. I don’t recall exactly which one it is, but I think I’ve read at least one or two sources that said it would happen. It takes 80 or 90 airplanes, theoretically, out of the cycle. Now those aircraft can be cross-decked, they can be moved to land. And we may be doing that. I don’t really know. But it takes away a big platform. We lose some flexibility here, and those aircraft carriers are basically floating air bases out in the middle of the ocean, and give us the ability to launch and recover things and project power where we need to. It takes away from some major command and control capability. So, yeah, it creates a void. It’s not impossible to backfill. I suspect we probably will be able to do that, but there’s definitely a diminishment there, and hopefully we’re replacing one with one here.

Q: Anything I didn’t ask that you want to talk about?

A: No, it was pretty comprehensive.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

March 17 (UPI) — Israel said Tuesday it killed Basij paramilitary force commander Gholamreza Soleimani in an overnight airstrike in Tehran.

Specifics on the strike were scant, but The Times of Israel reported the Israel Defense Forces targeted Soleimani at a camp he had recently established in Tehran after the paramilitary’s headquarters were destroyed.

Established in 1980, the Basij is a volunteer paramilitary reserve force under Iran’s influential Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. The force — which the website for Iran’s supreme leader says consists of millions of members — was sanctioned by the United States for human rights abuses in 2011 and designated as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in 2018.

Soleimani was appointed in 2019 to lead the Basij, which has been accused of helping suppress protests inside Iran through violence, mass arrests and force against demonstrators.

“The elimination of Soleimani adds to that of dozens of senior commanders from the armed forces of the Iranian regime who have been eliminated during the operation, and constitutes an additional significant blow to the regime’s security command-and-control structures,” the IDF said in a statement on Telegram.

“The IDF will continue to operate with determination against commanders of the Iranian terror regime.”

Iran has yet to respond to the report as of Tuesday morning.

The IDF said it conducted a wave of strikes Monday targeting military infrastructure in the Iranian cities of Tehran, Shiraz and Tabriz.

Its warplanes dropped dozens of munitions on security force command centers in Tehran, including those belonging to the Basij, the IDF said in an earlier Tuesday statement.

“The completed strikes are part of an ongoing effort focused on deepening the damage to the Iranian terror regime’s core systems and weakening its capacity to threaten the State of Israel,” it said.

Later Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s office published a photo on social media showing him on the phone, accompanied by a caption saying he was “ordering the elimination of senior regime officials.”