Transcript: Webinar – The U.S.-Israel Air Campaign Against Iran
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PANELISTS
Lt Gen Thomas Trask, USAF (ret.)
Hybrid Warfare Advisor, JINSA; Former Vice Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command
MajGen (ret.) Amikam Norkin
Distinguished Fellow, JINSA; Former Commander, Israeli Air Force
The discussion was moderated by JINSA Fellow for American Strategy Jonathan Ruhe.
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TRANSCRIPT
Transcript has been lightly edited for flow and clarity.
Jonathan Ruhe:
Hello everyone. Welcome to today’s webinar on the U.S.-Israel air campaign against Iran. I’m Jonathan Ruhe, JINSA’s Fellow for American Strategy. I am thrilled to be joined by today’s panelists. Today’s discussion is taking place in the context of an open-source and unclassified environment. So anything we discuss here today will be within those bounds. Also, for our audience, if you have any questions for our panelists, please type them into the Q&A box on the bottom of the screen. We’ll do our best to address them in the time we have today.
So I want to start off with what I think is perhaps the most timely and immediate burning issue for a lot of our audience, which is the daring and headline-grabbing rescue of a downed U.S. airman inside Iran over the weekend. We’ll start by discussing that, and then from there, build out our discussion into some of the larger issues surrounding the air war itself.
General Trask, I’ll start with you, especially given your past experience as Vice Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command. We’ve read the headlines in all the big papers, heard some of the descriptions on social media. But if you could give us a sense of this operation in terms of the scale that was involved, everything that has to go into the complex operation to try to rescue a downed airman in hostile territory, including the coordination that involves between Special Forces and Air Force units.
Lt Gen (ret.) Thomas Trask:
Yeah, thanks, Jonathan. Appreciate you having me on today. It’s been really interesting reading over the weekend about the two rescue missions that went on, and they’re the two classic types of combat rescue operations that go on the front seater, DUDE 44 Alpha, when punched out on Friday. He was picked up in a classic service internal seesaw operation. The Air Force CSAR forces are on a very rapid alert. I don’t know exactly what their posture was in this case.
It can actually be airborne during a large package strike, where you have airborne rescue forces, meaning helicopters and HC-130 refuelers. Or more likely, most of the time, they’re on a very short string, either sitting in a cockpit on a 5-minute alert, or maybe inside the building on a 15-minute alert. But those forces, whenever there’s an air campaign like this. So it’s possible the Air Force will have deployed those rescue forces in a way to respond.
For the highest likelihood of success, you have to pick up a downed pilot in the first hour or so. So that’s why you want to try to get there before the adversary has time to react and to bring force to bear on a down pilot, and there is a much higher success rate if you can get there immediately.
If you aren’t able to get there immediately, and what happened to the back seater, it becomes more of a pre-planned operation. In that case, it may still be done by the Air Force component by themselves, if it’s simple enough. An example would be your second down pilot might have been in an area where the adversary doesn’t know where he is. He’s in a safe area, but he’s not in an area where the helicopters can go directly to him and pick him up. So there may be an offset mission that’s planned for the next night, where the Air Force would put a small team of PJs or combat rescue officers on the ground, and they go pick him up, move him into a suitable area for extraction.
Then there’s the case where it’s even a larger requirement, which is apparently what happened over the weekend, where the location of that downed pilot or downed WSO, in this case, was in an area that you’re going to have to fight your way in and fight your way out. The fact that they put that together in 48 hours is remarkable. Usually, something of that scale of that second pickup, is something that you may take a few more days to do, particularly with the idea of taking MC-130s and landing a large ground force in Iran somewhere. Very reminiscent of 1980 in the hostage rescue mission, when we landed C-130s. They were the earlier versions of the same squadrons that did this mission this week. They did that mission in 1980, so it’s very reminiscent of that.
That really ramps up the scale of the operation. What happens is, if possible, when an aviator goes down, there’s a pilot on the ground, the hardest part is usually locating them. But once you have a location, everything that’s flying that day may be turned to support that operation. So immediately, even with just the air refuelers and the command and control aircraft, the close air support aircraft, the combat air patrols, all of them may immediately support that very rapid version of the rescue. You still may have dozens of aircraft involved, all put together in a very short time.
Typically, Sandy aircraft, historically have been A-10s for many, many years. They have crews that are specially trained to do combat-rescue. They may be doing other missions. For example, the mission that I flew in the Gulf War where we picked up an F-14 pilot when I was flying H-53s there. The A-10s that we flew with and in our pickup were Sandy qualified, they were killing Iraqi tanks that day. That was their mission, and they were on the on the task list to divert to a rescue mission if that happens.
So it very well could be the similar case in this situation. As the A-10s are retired out, F-16s have become primarily the platform that we’re doing that mission with. But there are close air support aircraft and crews who are specially trained for CSAR, that work with the helicopters, they work on the techniques, the radio procedures, all of that, so that they can know exactly what the situation is.
So that appears to be what happened on Friday with the pickup of the pilot. And then, of course, it reverted to the other type of pickup, which is a pickup in a third party or a noncombatant area. So, the A-10 that was shot down on Friday was able to limp back to friendly space. The same force followed him [and] probably knew where he was going, knew what his intentions were, [and] were able to pick him up safely and rapidly after his aircraft was shot down.
So, in that case, my assumption is that part of the rescue force was the second shootdown on the A-10 that happened on Friday. But to plan the large mission with the special operations teams that involve putting ground forces in, evidently, involve putting Little Bird helicopters taken in the back of those C-130s, which is a common thing that we train to do with the MC-130 using the Army Little Birds to transport them in, because of their short range capability.
The ability to plan that mission and execute in two days really is remarkable. Obviously, something in the landing zone, they weren’t expecting the ground to be as soft, either damage the landing gear, or something that prevented them from taking off again. Typically, you would have tried to take more time to do more analysis of the potential landing zone to know more likely whether or not the C-130s could land and take off there. But they planned it on very short notice, then reacted to the contingency when the C-130s were not able to take off, and executed the mission on the ground.
Still waiting to hear more details, but that’s a fairly common version of the different types of rescue missions that can happen. There is a Joint Rescue Coordination Center that operates under the Joint Force Commander that can bring to bear forces from the Special Operations component, the Air component, even the Army or Marine components or Navy components. If they have forces that can aid in the CSAR. Every service doctrinally is responsible for trying to rescue their own first. If you’re in an Army Airborne operation, there are aircraft that are designated to pick up aircraft in case an aircraft goes down. The Navy have rescued helicopters on the carriers that are designated to be the immediate response for a naval aircraft that goes down.
As soon as it becomes a need for more than just what that particular component has the capability for, it will go up to the Joint Commander, to the Joint Rescue Coordination Center, who then can reach out to any other forces in any of the components that are needed. Reaching the Special Operations Component for that is pretty normal. If it’s too big for one of the components, that is typically where they will go first to see what Special Operations capability is in theater that could be brought to bear.
Usually in a more pre-planned mission, like this one appeared to be, where two days later you’ve located where your survivor is on the ground, what his condition is, and then plan the operation for the next night, or two nights later, or whenever you can bring it all together. But I’m sure there will be some amazing stories to be told from that. I’m looking forward to getting more of the details, but that kind of gives you the layout of how the typical CSAR effort might come together.
Jonathan Ruhe:
Thank you very much, General Trask.
General Norkin, we’ve heard in reports that Israel played a role in helping with the rescue. Again I realize we’re in an open source, unclassified environment here. Israel also has a unique perspective on the risks of Airmen being downed over hostile territory. Could you give us [a] sort of fill in with an Israeli perspective. Maybe how Israel helped in this operation, and also how these operations look from the Israeli perspective?
MajGen (ret.) Amikam Norkin:
Well, first of all, the most important thing is that both airmen are alive and secure now. I hope that they are going to be well in a short time. Second, we must speak about that the American military demonstrate the value that you’re never left behind by anyone. So, I think it’s a very important demonstration, not just for the American military, but also for all the partners.
Third, I am saluting to my friends from the American military that bring both warriors back home. I think that they use all the American Force capabilities, unique capabilities. Of course, they can do it with no Israeli support. But once we are partners and we are fighting the same war, we are there to support in many ways and many aspects.
I cannot speak about the specific activities, intelligence, and other activities that we did, but they’re all being behind the stage, not in front of the stage, because there was no need. The American forces did it all by themselves. But to understand the size of the territory that the aerial platform needs to close and to avoid any ground enemy ground forces to get into this specific area, and by attacking the roads and many other specific points that there are like a circle around the area that the pilot or the WSO is supposed to be and by that means secure the area from the air, and then the special forces can get in and bring him back home.
So in that case, the main issue is the distance. Usually, the Israel Air Force is fighting in Lebanon, in Syria, and other areas which are a 10-minute flight. Now, those missions there are 2,000 kilometers from the Israeli border, but also from the American carriers and the American bases around the Gulf.
Sometimes you need to fly there for more than one hour, one hour and a half. So, you need to plan the mission that is supposed to be in a long-distance mission. As General Trask mentioned, you need to support them with tankers and control platforms and others.
So, just to summarize my comments, I’m very happy that they are both alive. Once the enemy takes one of the American pilots or the Israeli pilots as a prisoner, it might become a strategic issue. We cannot give the enemy such an advantage to have someone like an American pilot or Israeli pilot in his hands, and I’m crossing my fingers that until the end of the war, it won’t happen.
Jonathan Ruhe:
Thank you, General Norkin. If I could follow up, you know raise the issue of, as you mentioned, some of the risks that come with operating as a pilot over Iran, as opposed to Lebanon, which is much closer. I don’t know if it’s the case in Israel, but I get a sense here in America, we’ve been hearing a lot about how the United States and Israel have achieved air superiority over at least big parts of Iran’s skies.
So maybe the shootdown, as General Trask mentioned, not only the shootdown of the F-15, but also of some of the aircraft that came to perform search and rescue mission, they may come as a surprise that the Iranians are able to target aircraft like this. Could you explain to our audience what air security means and what it does not mean?
MajGen (ret.) Amikam Norkin:
Yeah. Once we are speaking about air superiority, it means that you can fly and do your mission about the enemy territory, but it does not mean that it’s 100% safe. There are still air defense systems. They’re all spread around the bases. It’s very hard to find them. So, we must take an assumption that there is a threat. There is not zero threat. The threat went from 100 percent to 20 or 25 percent but it is still there.
We are intercepting 90 percent of the missiles, but still 10 percent of the missiles are still penetrating to the Israeli territory and we need to get into the shelter to secure ourselves. So, once you fly above the enemy territory, it can be about Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, of course, Iran. You must understand that there is still a threat, and you must be ready to act once your system might give you an alert, or you can designate the missile by your eyes, and you can use your EW system, but the threat is there.
It’s not the same thread for the aerial platform that comes to the search and rescue mission. At the search and rescue mission, you are flying at a low altitude, and by that, you get into an even higher layer of threats, because people can shoot you by with rifle, with MANPADS and other systems.
The risk that those A-10 pilots, Blackhawk pilots, took in those missions is a very high risk because of the mission. You cannot compare it to the F-15 risk and the high-altitude flying above the targets. It is a completely different risk. I think that to be part of a search and rescue mission is the highest threat level for a pilot. The C-130 or the Blackhawk, or any other helicopter, A-10 or F-15. From time to time, as we already saw in those missions, we are losing platforms because of the risk. Once you fly low altitude close to the ground, most of the mission you are flying low speed because you are looking for the pilots or the WSOs, you would like to get more intelligence.
Low altitude, low speed, very high risk. But back to the air superiority. Yes, we have air superiority above Tehran, above Iran, but it’s not equal to zero threat. There is still an air defense system, and our pilots, both the American and the Israeli pilots, must be aware of those threats.
Jonathan Ruhe:
Thank you very much for clarifying. General Trask, I jump back to you. Given what we’ve discussed so far, I want to bring this into the context of, we’ve heard a lot about potential U.S. ground operations inside Iran, whether it’s to secure nuclear material, to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, various other scenarios. Could you give us a sense, does this search and rescue operation, all the things we’ve discussed, does that give you any insight or foresight about what it might say about ground operations inside Iran more generally? I think for our audience it may be more helpful not to think of those potential ground operations in terms of the raid where Osama bin Laden was killed, or things like that. So if you could put some light there—or if it doesn’t tell us anything, why not?
Lt Gen (ret.) Thomas Trask:
Thank you. No, I think it’s pretty illustrative. If I could, real quick, make a comment on General Norkin, where he talked about air superiority. As a helicopter guy used to operating down in the dirt like that, air superiority to us meant that we have our good guys over top of us. It didn’t mean we didn’t have a threat. It means we had lots of help. And primarily it means, as General Norkin laid out very well, it means you can operate over that space with your Air Force, pretty much accomplish any mission you want to, but not necessarily without risk.
One of the things that struck me looking at the videos that are coming out of Iran, there was the HH-60 videos with an HC-130 flying with them in daytime. That obviously tells you that there’s a belief that almost all of the threat has been knocked down. But it’s impossible to eliminate completely the MANPAD threat. You can put a MANPAD in the truck of your car and drive around. You can have a high-powered rifle in the truck of your car and drive around. That’s almost impossible, to eliminate that.
If there was no missile threat at all, you would see the helicopters flying higher. In Vietnam when we did rescue before the surface air missiles really came into being, the typical tactic was to fly at 7,000 or 8,000 feet in the helicopter and only drop down to do the pickup, because the primary threat was small arms on the ground.
So the fact that you’re still seeing them flying low level means they know that there’s still a MANPAD threat out there that’s greater than the small arms threat. But that threat obviously exists, as General Norkin laid out very well.
But to answer your question, I think it’s very illustrative of the fact that you can go in and control a small amount of territory for a short period of time with a relatively small force in a relatively quick and efficient manner, the way that we did for this rescue mission. If there were other objectives that you could accomplish by doing that in parts of the country, that would be very achievable for us to do, and think of it as a raid versus an invasion.
Permanent forces you know, suppose we decide to go in, and one of the things that’s being considered is to take control of parts of Iran that are near the strait in order to reopen the strait. That would take a permanent presence. That would be a lot more difficult. It would take a lot more logistics. It would involve much heavier forces with the ability to supply them by air, routinely.
To do a raid for one night, where you basically take control of a tactical area for one day or one night, takes much less. You don’t have to do any resupply. You don’t have to plan on a logistical tail. The force can go in quickly, accomplish their mission and then extract quickly. In terms of putting troops on the ground, we’ve now broken that barrier. There have been troops on the ground in Iran as part of this thing, in a more raid type of operation. There may have been others that we just don’t know about at this point. Because if there were specific missions that could be accomplished, or objectives that could be accomplished more easily by a small team on the ground that could be infiltrated, supported just for a few hours, accomplish a mission and then be extracted and brought back, that’s certainly doable probably in most parts of Iran that are not urban.
Obviously, it becomes much more difficult to do that in an urban environment, although not impossible. It just takes longer. It probably wouldn’t involve air support. It would be all on the ground support. But those types of missions are certainly achievable if there is an objective that matches up to it, like a personnel recovery mission that we just saw.
Jonathan Ruhe:
Thank you. So continuing to sort of take a wider look over the course of this hour about the Iran war, General Trask, I’d like to ask you a different question. You had some familiarity with how to plan for a conflict with Iran.
You know, we’re a little more than a month in now. Could you give us sort of your top-line assessment, maybe just narrow it to the air campaign, but go as wide as you’d like, as to where you see the current state of, the successes, the operational achievements of the air war so far, and also sort of trying peer ahead at the challenges that remain.
Lt Gen (ret.) Thomas Trask:
Yeah, sure. It’s been a long time since I’ve been involved in the planning for Iran. But when I worked at CENTCOM under General Petraeus and General Mattis, I was part of the team that worked on that.
Without talking about any of the classified elements of the plan, I can say generally that everything I’m seeing looks pretty familiar, and it started really last summer. So there were options that were just intended to go in and disable the nuclear program. There were options that went further than that, to attack and destroy the support mechanisms for the nuclear programs.
And then you can imagine what the scales of different options are up to, and including support of a full out invasion and takeover of Iran. There are several levels of gradations in between. The option that we seem to have been executing involve first focusing on the strikes against the nuclear program last summer, then we went back and got the rest of those targets in this. The second most important targets seem to be the missile capability, the missile fields, the missile infrastructure. Then it went more into destruction of military capability. And that seems to be the kind of a second level of targets that we’ve been focused on.
Now we’ve moved into more infrastructure and industry related to the defense capability. Everything that I’ve seen seems to still be focused on military capability. That includes just this weekend, Israeli Air Force strikes against the biochemical capability in Iran, which is directly related to supporting the development of weapons that have been used to support Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, the rest of the proxies that the Iranians have been supporting for years.
So, it looks like an industrial target, but it’s directly related to military capability that these Iranians have had for years. So you think about the tiered target set that start with the nuclear program, spread out to more direct military targets that include forces, barracks, training facilities, equipment, vehicles, all of those things are in that target set that would be to destroy a military capability that would make Iran less of a threat to its neighbors afterward.
Then, to take a step further, the ability to build weapons, the ability to support them by attacking the infrastructure. So that seems to be where we are in that kind of hierarchy of options that the National Command Authority has to work with.
Jonathan Ruhe:
Thank you, General Norkin, because I just asked General Trask such a big question, but also because maybe there’s a different Israeli perspective in terms of the planning and the targeting. Could you give us your assessment from the Israeli view of basically what I just asked General Trask from the American perspective.
What do you see as the successes so far and the challenges that remain for Israel to achieve its goals?
MajGen (ret.) Amikam Norkin
I think that in the current war, there is no difference between Israel and the United States. Why?
Because the planners, they are sitting together. The commanders talk to each other every day, maybe more than once a day. So we are on the same page, the same plan. We support each other.
Of course, Israel is a very small nation and quite small air force, but we are doing both together, both air forces act together, both militaries. We share intelligence, and there is no American perspective at the tactical level. There is no American perspective or Israel’s perspective. We’re on the same page.
I think that as General Trask already answered, we are not just acting at the nuclear reactor. We act against the entire chain of the ballistic missiles and other military capabilities. Now we are getting to the semi-military targets, the petrochemical infrastructure industry, and the trains, and the bridges that support the military to transfer capabilities from one part of Iran to another. As the American President already declared, the next step might be the electricity and energy capabilities.
So, the current war, we can see much deeper and more precisely, [the] military activities inside the Iranian system. By that, we are pushing the Iranian capabilities and the Iranian regime back and back to the point that we are going to achieve our goals for the war.
Jonathan Ruhe:
Thank you. If I just follow up very quickly. You mentioned at the start there how unified the U.S. and Israeli planning and operational perspective is in this operation. Could you maybe talk a little bit more about that. I mean, for our audience, there’s the Israeli Air Force, because the Israeli Air Force controls everything that applies in the Israeli military.
But the United States has an Air Force and a Navy that are each operating in the skies above the country. And so I want to, in this discussion, be sure we talk about the impressive nature of that tactical coordination. And if you could, please expand on that a little bit?
MajGen (ret.) Amikam Norkin:
Maybe I’m wrong, General Trask will correct me, but the commander that coordinates all the American forces is the CENTCOM. Under Central Command there is a Central Command Air Force. And so we are speaking to the Central Command planning team and to the Central Command Air Force and all the aerial components that are acting under the Central Command.
So, there is no need for the Israeli planning team to speak to more than one American team, because of the structure of the organization on the American side, which it’s much bigger, with more components. There is a carrier, there is a Space Force, and there are other forces. In Israel, everything is under the Air Force auspices. So it might not be easy, but still, the Central Command are doing very well. The relations between CENTCOM and the Israel Defense Forces, they are very close. They know each other. They can do the missions in a very intimate coordination.
Lt Gen (ret.) Thomas Trask:
General Norkin has it exactly right. Even though there’s not a ton of history of the U.S. military working with the Israeli Air Force, there is a ton of experience of the U.S. military working with coalition air forces that fit into this coordinated effort. Lieutenant General France is the Air Component Commander under Admiral Cooper at CENTCOM. So, he is the airman that is the chief coordinator of all of that, whether it’s Marine Corps, Air Navy, Air Coalition, in this case, Israeli Air Forces.
That machine comes together very well, it has decades of experience operating, and it makes it very easy for another Air Force to join in. It just becomes part of that coordination so that everybody knows what targets everybody’s hitting, the command and control apparatus there is going well, and everyone understands where it all fits together to make sure there are no conflicts.
Going back to the discussion we had on the personnel recovery operation this weekend, had that been an integrated Israeli Air Force plane that had gone down, it would have operated exactly the same way for any airplane that’s in the coalition operating under that big umbrella. And so there truly is one coordination point for all of the air that’s working underneath the CENTCOM commander.
Jonathan Ruhe:
Thank you, General. So to follow on to that, but also to fold in questions we’re starting to get from the audience. We’ve seen reports that in targeting some of Iran’s missile capabilities, there’s one thing to take out, the mobile above ground launchers. We especially saw a lot of that in the 12-day war last summer. There’s also Iran’s underground missile cities.
We’ve also seen various ideas of just how much of Iran’s missile firing capability launchers and stockpiles have been reduced. Is there anything you could tell our audience, how to think about this problem and Iran’s expected resilience on this front as they continue to fire a dozen, maybe more, missiles every day? General Trask, please.
Lt Gen (ret.) Thomas Trask:
Yes, certainly part of the effort is to identify where those underground areas are, where they’re continuing to protect those missile forces and that capability. But I can only imagine that the intelligence on that is growing daily, so that we understand every day when if they’re only launching 8 or 10 or 12, there’s probably a good chance that we’re getting a better feel for where they’re coming from, where they’re being hidden, where they’re being supported from, where they’re getting fuel from.
That intelligence picture grows every day. It does demonstrate their resilience, that they’re still able to operate at the level that they are with ballistic missiles, particularly targeted at Israel right now. I would have bet that we would have been down to maybe one or two a day by this point. So, they are being more resilient than I think probably we imagined. But it doesn’t mean that degradation isn’t truly happening and then underway, and we will get better intelligence every day.
The trick is finding the intelligence. Getting to them, even if they’re underground, is not that difficult anymore. As long as we know where they are, we’ve got ways to go there. There may be the occasion where using forces on the ground to do a raid may be worth an objective like that at some point. As I insinuated, it may have already happened as far as we know. But that’s just an intelligence picture that continues to grow, in my opinion.
Jonathan Ruhe:
Thank you General Trask. A follow-on question from our listeners: is the United States able to use our airbases in and near the Gulf to attack Iran?
Lt Gen (ret.) Thomas Trask:
My understanding is yes. The only bases we’ve not been able to use are in Spain, based on the restrictions of the Spanish government. Everywhere else we’ve had bases, even though some of those nations may not have agreed, and NATO necessarily has not agreed, none of them have precluded us from using our American bases, except for Spain right now.
So, certainly in the Gulf region, those appear to be no issues at all. In fact, it seems to be all of those nations that host our forces have been very supportive of the operation and allowed us to do what we need to do.
MajGen (ret.) Amikam Norkin:
Jonathan, as you know, JINSA did a project about American bases in Israel. I think that what we are learning now, the cooperation and amount of U.S. platforms that deployed every day from the Israeli bases and other air defense systems we can use to protect the American forces in the Israeli bases.
The technology is shared, the ammunition is shared, the shared platforms that we are using the F-35, F-15, F-16. So I think that now, compared to the time that we published the paper about the American bases in Israel. Today, I have a much more positive parameter to get such a project.
Jonathan Ruhe:
Thank you, General Norkin. For our audience, he’s mentioning JINSA’s report from last November called Base for Success in which we recommended U.S. basing options, specifically at Ovda Air Base in southern Israel.
But General Norkin, since you thankfully raised that topic, we’ve seen reports, Ibelieve it was last week, that Israel is potentially offering the United States to relocate more of its forces to Israel after the war. Beyond just what’s there currently. Is this something you can discuss for our audience?
MajGen (ret.) Amikam Norkin:
Well, it has just been published in the Israeli media also, but I have no formal sources. So this is part of just a media article. But yes, I think that both for the Iranian threat and also to complete the mission in Gaza and the place that the American government and the American military is going to take to control the forces that might come to the international force to Gaza, so that is more than one reason to have more American capabilities in Israel.
Jonathan Ruhe:
I want to follow up with another question from our audience. I realize the numbers for the munitions I’m about to reference are closely guarded secrets for a lot of good reasons, but General Norkin, I’ll start with you, and then I’ll ask General Trask if he has follow-on thoughts. At what point do American and Israeli weapons stockpiles become a strategic factor? I think specifically there are concerns about running low on maybe air to ground munitions or various other offensive capabilities. General Norkin, can you comment on that first?
MajGen (ret.) Amikam Norkin:
Well, at the broad level, we are not going to get to that point because the Iranians have much less missiles than the amount of bombs. So if we would like to continue to attack Iran, we can reduce the number of targets per day and other parameters, but Israel and America can keep attacking Iran for a long time. But I’m not sure that this is the right thing to do. Not because of the amount of bombs, but because of other aspects like the Israeli economy or the oil price or other parameters. It’s better for us to achieve our goals in a short time. But the bombs, the amount of bombs, it won’t be the limiting factor.
Jonathan Ruhe:
General Trask, is there anything you’d like to add?
Lt Gen (ret.) Thomas Trask:
No, I agree with General Norkin. I think, you know, there are certainly strategic questions that have to be continually evaluated on ramping back up weapons production in the United States. I think that’s part of the President’s budget request that certainly is going to be a large part of making sure that we keep stockpiles robust.
The strategic concern for the United States is, do we get so low to the point where we might be taken advantage of somewhere else in the world, like in the Pacific?
As far as continuing this mission, and at the rate that we have, and even at increased rates, I don’t think there’s a significant concern that we’re going to be in any kind of contingency operations because of lack of munitions.
It’s certainly something that needs to be addressed, the replacement of everything that’s going on here, and obviously that’s part of the budget discussions that are about to start in Washington.
Jonathan Ruhe:
Thank you. With a little bit of time we have left, I’m jumping around a little bit here, but I want to be sure to address a bunch of different things.
General Trask, I’ll ask you this first. We’ve heard, in the context of President Trump’s efforts to get a cease fire, threatening things like power plants, bridges, various other targets in Iran that haven’t been hit, at least not intensively yet. From a military perspective, could you tell us what considerations might go into targeting things like that?
Lt Gen (ret.) Thomas Trask:
I think it’s obviously a sensitive question, but it’s not necessarily always a legal matter. Most often it’s easy to make the legal case of why you’re striking a power plant. Think of an example, if there’s a power plant in war with the United States, and the same power plant supplies power to North Carolina, but also to Fort Bragg, that becomes pretty easy to make the case that that’s a legal military target.
Now the question becomes more in the gray area is if it is a smart target. What’s the situation that you want to leave afterwards? Do you want to have a situation where you’re creating another generation that may be against you for the small military gain that’s gone by knocking out certain civilian infrastructure targets?
It’s probably going to be pretty easy to link a lot of those targets to military capability. So the legality of it isn’t necessarily in question. It’s whether each one of those creates enough military advantage in the conflict to outweigh what it may mean after the conflict is over with the relationship in this case, you know, we would like to see, obviously, at some point, the people in Iran to rise up and to throw off this regime. So we don’t want to make enemies of those people who have already demonstrated a capability to risk their lives to try to overthrow their own government.
So a lot of that has to come into play. But there may be targets. The one I mentioned earlier about the petrochemical plants that the Israeli Air Force knocked out. I read an article yesterday that said it knocked out 85 percent of their capability. There’s probably civilian uses for that as well, but it has a huge impact on their ability to build weapons to spread to their proxies in the region afterwards. So that one’s a very easy one, and obviously the military objective of attacking a target like that probably easily outweighs any risk that it might have against effects on civilians.
But the other thing to remember is that using classic logic of an adversary government that cares what happens to its people doesn’t apply here. Because we care more about what happens to the Iranian people than the Iranian regime cares about what happens to the Iranian people. So using that logic of ‘we’re going to put this pressure on it, because it will hurt your people and you’ll care about that’ doesn’t apply here because they don’t care about that.
So it just changes the rationale as they weigh those advantages versus disadvantages for each of those targets. And I’m sure you know that’s something, as I mentioned, we’ve been starting with a very small pinpoint strike to a full invasion of Iran, we’re somewhere in between. So whether that next step up accomplishes objectives, that’s got to be part of the work that’s being done in the Pentagon, and the decision makers and the policymakers in the government that are giving recommendations to the President for how this can work out.
That said, we may know sooner than we realize in a few hours when we understand what’s going to happen next. But I’m confident that the smart career policymakers are providing those options right now for the government.
Jonathan Ruhe:
Thank you very much. That’s incredibly illuminating, clarifying. To attempt to peer ahead just a little bit more before we close today’s webinar, General Norkin, I’ll ask this question to you. But of course, General Trask, please feel free to add anything you like.
General Norkin, how do you view the possibility that Iran may get military resupplies from Russia or China or any other of our shared adversaries? Maybe for air defenses, but also potentially even more broadly than that, how do you how do you assess that scenario?
MajGen (ret.) Amikam Norkin:
Well, I think that there is no major option for the Russians to support them. The situation in Russia is quite complicated, and they need their systems in their war, and there are no extra capabilities.
As you all know, the Iranians support Russia with the Shahed technology, the war between Russia and Ukraine. Russia can support Iran with intelligence or other capabilities.
About Chinese technology, or maybe other nations. Yes, there is an option, but we can monitor that with the American and the Israeli intelligence, and we can reduce the amount of support that Iran can get from the external nations.
Jonathan Ruhe:
General Trask, any final thoughts?
Lt Gen (ret.) Thomas Trask:
It’s been striking to me how the few friends that Iran had going into this have been largely quiet and hands off at this point. So the issue that General Norkin mentioned about providing Shahed drones for the Russians, I would bet that’s going to be less likely to happen, should this regime survive this, going forward.
Jonathan Ruhe:
Wonderful. Well, I’d like to join our audience in thanking General Trask and General Norkin for joining us. Particularly thank you General Norkin for joining us at night in Israel as you begin to celebrate Passover. And to our audience, Happy Passover, to those who celebrate. Thanks again for tuning in.