Transcript: Webinar – U.S. Basing Posture in the Wake of Epic Fury
Click here to watch the webinar.
PANELISTS
Gen Frank McKenzie, USMC (ret.)
Hertog Distinguished Fellow, JINSA; Former Commander, U.S. Central Command
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 U.S.-facing posture in the Middle East in the wake of Operation Epic Fury. I’m Jonathan Ruhe JINSA’s Fellow for American Strategy, and I’m honored and pleased to be joined today by General Frank McKenzie, who is the Hertog Distinguished Fellow here at JINSA. He is also the former commander of U.S. Central Command and currently the president of the Citadel, which is also his alma mater.
In September 2024, General McKenzie authored a JINSA report entitled “U.S. Bases in the Middle East: Overcoming the Tyranny of Geography.” This report has proved to be very forward-looking in that it raised red flags about the inherent risks in America’s basing structure in the Middle East, and it laid out a detailed plan to re-examine and relocate U.S. military assets in order to reduce these risks, from Iran, its proxies, and other threats.
Among its recommendations, the report highlighted Israel’s potential role in this new regional basing structure to build on and expand on Israel’s reassignment to the AOR [Area of Responsibility] for U.S. Central Command in 2021. This occurred when General McKenzie was sent on commander and came after JINSA led the charge to make the case for this shift to CENTCOM.
Then, building on General McKenzie’s paper, in September 2025 a new JINSA task force issued a report called Base for Success that laid out and expanded on U.S. basing options at Israel’s Ovda Air Force Base. This recommendation came to fruition, starting shortly before Operation Epic Fury, when U.S. forces, including what would ultimately become 1000s of personnel and more than 200 aircraft, deployed to Ovda. Recent reports now suggest the U.S. military is looking at Israel and other locations farther west, away from the Gulf and Iran, for repositioning certain regional assets based on lessons from the recent conflict with Iran.
For our audience, welcome you to pose questions in today’s discussion. Please type them into the Q&A box in the bottom of your screen, and we’ll get to them at the time we have.
So, General McKenzie, to start, I just want to start with sort of a table, table setting question before we drill down into the recent war and its implications. I want to go back to your September 2024 report, which we just covered, which I think was very prescient, because you warned that quote the United States will not be able to maintain its bases around the Gulf in a full-throated conflict because they will be rendered unusable by sustained Iranian attack. So, just to start off, so we don’t, we don’t miss the forest for the trees. What is, or was it specifically about America’s basing posture in the Middle East and Iran’s attack capabilities that shaped your analysis here?
General Frank McKenzie:
First, thanks. Always enjoy being with JINSA. It’s always a remarkably well-informed audience with great questions, and as usual, I look forward to the questions. I find that the best part of these sessions, but let me begin by saying, U.S. basing in the Middle East, of course, is a product of many years of development and different priorities when those bases went in.
Let’s remember when CENTCOM first stood up, when Iran turned over and the Shah left, we were faced with a different problem in the region. We were really looking at ways to prevent the Russians from coming South into the oil fields, and so our strategic thinking over that period sort of reflected that an original basing structure was sort of designed to counter that. We fought a major counterinsurgency campaign, military campaign, and then a counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq, one in Afghanistan, and the bases that we laid out along the Southern edge of the Arabian Gulf, beginning with Ayodhya, which is the CENTCOM forward headquarters, Al Dhafra in the UAE, Manama in Bahrain, which is the Fifth Fleet headquarters, bases in Kuwait, were all sort of built to support those small, not small scale, but relatively low intensity counterinsurgency operations, and what developed over time, of course, is Iran increasingly rose as a regional threat. They began to perfect their abilities, well not perfect, but improved their abilities with missiles, with drones, with other systems that threatened both us and, more significantly, our neighbors in the region.
What you’ve got really is an artifact of earlier posture decisions. No one in their right mind would ever put the CENTCOM forward headquarters, 100 miles away from Iran, yet that’s where it is, because when we put in place many years ago, we were thinking Iraq, we were thinking Afghanistan, we were thinking other things, and not the growing threat from Iran. Anticipation is the heart of wisdom, not a lot of wisdom there. When we chose the location of the CENTCOM Forward headquarters, what we’ve got is a situation where it’s good to be close to your potential enemy, because it’s a short commute to the fight. It’s bad to be close to your potential enemy, because he has the ability to strike you very quickly, a matter of just a couple of minutes is all the warning time you’re going to get for some of these bases, and we’ve seen that borne out here over the previous few months.
So, what happened in 2020 and what really happened in 2020, 2021, and 2022 was that we undertook some studies at U.S. Central Command. We recognized this problem, and we proposed to the Biden administration, Pentagon’s policy shop, that we consider moving bases to the West to include Israel, to include Egypt, as places where we might, we might flush to the West if we get into a fight with Iran. The model is pretty clear, we’re going to have trouble maintaining this forward basis, so we looked at potential bases at Jeddah and along the Western Coast of Saudi Arabia and Red Sea, we looked at potential locations in Eastern Egypt, we looked at locations in Israel, we looked at locations in Oman, of course, we looked at locations in Jordan, all designed to extend the Iranian range to get to us.
Now, unfortunately, and we call this the western basing network, this was allergic to policy in the Pentagon at that period, and they aggressively shut us down as we tried to do this work. Our theory was particularly in the case of Saudi Arabia, would ask the Saudis to pay for these bases, because ultimately we’re talking about defending Saudi Arabia, there would have been very little monetary burden to the United States for these bases, but from a policy point of view, we were never, never able to gain traction within the department to move to the West, and unfortunately that lack of foresight by that administration at that time has hamstrung this administration’s ability to pursue, to put us at risk as we have had to fight Iran here over the last few months.
I don’t blame the Trump administration for this. I think the blame for the current situation falls squarely in a lack of vision in the Biden administration and their inability to see the nature of the threat from Iran, and not only to negate it, but really to, I would say, to have an unhealthy degree of focus on the Pacific and lack of desire to support what goes on in the Middle East during times of stress.
Jonathan Ruhe:
So I want to, in the second follow up on that Iranian threat that you were starting to describe, but if we could, I’d like to explore a little bit more about why, the resistance to pushing basing farther away from the Gulf, this Western basing network, as you discussed, is you said it was a lack of vision or imagination, is part of that the threat was generally abstract in a lot of ways until we saw Iran’s retaliation in Epic Fury, or also I imagine having basing in some of these countries creates an interest in our host nation partners that we not depart those?
General Frank McKenzie:
So, the threat was not abstract to us. The threat was not abstract at the level of military advice. The threat is certainly not abstract to the nations in the region. I think what you had was a situation where, at the policy level, we simply didn’t want to deal with those facts. We preferred to shift forces elsewhere. There’s a great move to minimize our presence in the Middle East. I think it just really was a refusal to examine the reality of the situation on the ground, and the growing trend of Iranianization, which blessed these bases at very close range to Iran under increasing degrees of risk. It’s what’s going to happen when your strategy doesn’t match the reality on the ground, and the strategic approach that they chose was not reflective of the situation in the world as it existed.
Jonathan Ruhe:
The Iranian threat, specifically in terms of how it’s played out in Epic Fury earlier this year. So, I recommend to our audience, go back and read General McKenzie’s report, because it gives use the word prescient, it’s a pretty good insight into how this, how this conflict played out, at least in terms of what Iran did, but, General, let me just ask you, is there anything about the way Iran fought this war, this fires war, that surprised you, or anything good in a positive or negative way? I’ll just keep it broad.
General Frank McKenzie:
No, I think an important thing to understand is bases can be hit and still function. Blown up buildings, while ugly to look at, don’t necessarily mean that a base is not operational, because what makes a base a fighter base operational is runway, is taxiway, it’s the fuel hydrant system, the system that typically runs underground, that allows you to do mass refueling operations of the number of aircraft, or your weapons bunkerage areas safe.
It’s unfortunate if dormitories are hit, you prefer that hangars not be hit, because that affects your ability to work on airplanes in the heat of the region. But let’s just recall that bases can be hit and take what appears to be significant damage, and yet remain operational, to a non-professional view of a base with buildings blown up. Wow, it’s been hit hard, and it’s been hit, but is it still operational? And that’s a very different thing that we look at. However, to go back to your story, your very good question, I think what has surprised me a little bit, and it’s not so much a surprise as a growth, as just the natural evolution of warfare. Iranian drones, I think they’ve been very effective. We knew they were coming when I left active duty, and in ‘22 we certainly saw the threat of drones in the region. I said in testimony before I retired, that I felt we had lost effective air supremacy and even air superiority to some degree in Central Command, because of the ubiquity of drones. So, I think that’s been a factor that has certainly played to an Iranian strength. I think we’ve done some things to compensate for that, but their ability to generate mass drones and employ them. I don’t think it’s a surprise, but I think their missiles have not been as effective as their drones. Let me put it to you like that.
Jonathan Ruhe:
And I guess in terms of what, how Iran, you mentioned your bases can be hit and keep functioning. There was also probably a related problem, and one that your 2024 report sort of picked up on Iran’s interest in targeting radars, satellite communications terminals, things like that. Even if the bases could have still functioned, you mentioned runways and taxiways. Do you see this, Iran’s ability to target those other capabilities as problematic or a key lesson to digest going forward?
General Frank McKenzie:
Absolutely, what we were able to do to a very limited degree under the previous administration, and what this administration has continued, I think, very aggressively, is we’ve moved some of our critical command and control capabilities out of the region, because we have the capability to exercise air command and control, in particular global, we can do it from a global sense, so we can be far away from the region, still maintain a chaotic at Al Udeid where we can do outreach and give confidence to our friends in the region that we’re going to be there with them. But you can carry out those critical command and control functions on the other side of the world, and in fact we do so, and I congratulate the current team for doing that. I think that’s been able to preserve our critical command and control activities while this is going on.
You’re right, we all thought all along what they would try to do is hit our, particularly our ballistic missile defense radars with drones. They’ve had limited success doing that. I’ll be honest with you, though. I’m not read into the BDA [Battle Damage Assessment], so I don’t know how overall successful they’ve been, but I think their inability to launch mass attacks has been significant, a significant achievement that we have made. But remember, that’s a combination not only of defense, which is most inefficient way to stop these systems from attacking, but also our own offensive capabilities, striking into Iran, going after the launch flights, the factories, the production facilities, the transportation network, all of those things are part of the delivery system for both drones and ballistic missiles, and in order to protect in the terminal area where they’re targeted, you need to reach out all the way down that chain to get a very beginning. I think we have some success going ahead,
Jonathan Ruhe:
I’m glad you raised that. I want to jump to that question before we really dive into sort of the implications, take aways where we go from here. So, in your 2024 report, I’ll just quote it. You said, quote, “the central calculus by the war with Iran will be the measurement of how long the Iranians could sustain a drone and missile bombardment in the face of U.S. efforts to strike their launching systems and command and control facilities.”
Assuming that framework still holds, how would you assess this sort of race for it to strike first, to get in, to take out their capabilities before they took out ours. How would you assess that based on the war?
General Frank McKenzie:
We’re executing a long-haul war plan. We’re having good effect now; we’re in a pause while we seek a political solution. I think we would be prepared to pick this back up and go after them very hard if the president chose to do so, and I believe it is still very much within our capability to get on the positive side of this equation, and to go after Iran, and I think we were on the positive side when we halted to try to find a political end to this conflict, and that’s a political decision, not a military decision, but I was not unhappy as an outside observer with where we were in that calculus, and I think if we picked it up this afternoon we would be in a very good place to go forward.
Jonathan Ruhe:
So, speaking of going forward, I want to dive into where we go from here, because I think that’s a key area of interest for our audience. So, I’ll start with based on what you’ve seen from the war. What we’ve discussed so far, are there any ways you would update or even foot stomp and reinforce your recommendations from the report? Are there in ways the war shook out that you would highlight in terms of recommendations for the U.S. to really drill down on in terms of places to shift our forces?
General Frank McKenzie:
Sure, so I think what it does is it validates the work we did in Central Command in 2021-2022 where we looked at you’ve got to go west, you’ve got to be able to get your aircraft out west, but here’s the thing, as people in UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia will tell you, they can’t move. They get worried when we talk about the United States moving, and what we need, but the point is, so you’ve got to do two things.
First of all, let’s take Al Dhafra as an example, in UAE you may wish to move west out of Al Dafra, but you still need to maintain a presence in Al Dhafra in order to show solidarity with your partners in the region who are unable to redeploy, so maybe you move those jets to the West, maybe far to the West, you tank them, you bring them in, you bounce at Al Dhafra, you go fight, you might come back and rearm it, Al Dhafra, go back into the fight, then bounce West and bed down somewhere far to the West.
Which brings me to a point as a CENTCOM commander, Jonathan, the airplane that I was most concerned about were my tankers, not the jets, not the fighters, I can always get more fighters, tankers are a finite quantity, and actually the tanker, whether it’s the KC-135 or the KC-46 whatever platform that’s actually the visible, tangible manifestation of American strategic air power. It’s not the bomber, it’s not the fighter, it’s not those airplanes. What gives us global reach and operational flexibility in the region is our ability to tank, to move globally, and then to move operationally at great depth. No other nation in the world can do that at the scale that we can do it at. That’s why tankers are so very important as we look at them. But yes, we need, as we look as we draw lessons learned from this, we need to look West. We need to look at basing in Israel. I think it’s a great idea. You need to look at basing west along the Red Sea and Saudi Arabia. You might need to look in Oman. You need to continue to look in Jordan. You might talk to Egypt, but of all the countries, one thing that’s significant is that we all these countries will have access, basing, and overflight issues. They’re going to want to have a say in where those jets go when they take off.
We know this is, as the CENTCOM commander. I spent a lot of time on these negotiations. Obviously, probably Israel is the place where you’re going to have the fewest ABO restrictions, access, basing, and overflight restrictions on your airplanes. That’s why Israel is a particularly attractive location. You don’t want to put all your aircraft there, because you never want to put all your aircraft in one country, or in one base, or in several bases in one country, but instead, what you want to do is you want to spread out that necklace of bases far to the west, where you make it harder for the Iranians to see you, you make it harder for the Iranians to range you, although over time we should recognize Iranian missiles are going to increase in range. I’m solving a problem for today, next year, two or three years from now. We can deal with those problems five years down the road from now. In CENTCOM, everything is a less than optimum solution, because nothing’s ever perfect.
Jonathan Ruhe:
You very neatly teed up several follow-on questions, sort of wonder you mentioned aerial refueling tankers, part of also our global reach and a strategic power, but also some of the benefits offered by basing in Israel. As I mentioned at the outset, your report called for this, JINSA had a report that drilled a little bit more specifically on that issue, and then we saw this start come to fruition before and during operation Epic Fury, both with facing aircraft at Ovda, but also we saw aerial refueling tankers at U.S. aerial refueling tankers at Ben Gurion Airport, and then also sort of since the war the Israeli Air Force has taken delivery, I believe, of its first KC-46 aerial refueling tanker.
That’s all by way of asking, General, if you could, I think, particularly for our audience, sort of expand upon you mentioning the access basing overflight issue, where Israel would probably impose, relatively speaking, the fewest constraints. But could you expand for our audience a little bit more about what about Israeli bases makes them appealing from a U.S. perspective?
General Frank McKenzie:
Sure. Well, one of the things that jumps out when you immediately are Israeli bases are going to be very well defended against ballistic missiles and against drone attack, that’s probably the most significant thing. Additionally, these bases are very well developed. Again, I talk about something that is innocuous as a fuel hydrant system, which is a profoundly unsexy thing, except it is what allows you to operate at scale from a fighter base instead of having to fuel Bowsers from trucks bringing fuel out there. If you have a fuel hydrant system, you can fuel it much more quickly. You can do a lot of things quicker than if you’re at a more expeditionary level. Many of the bases we’re looking at in Western Saudi Arabia would be semi-expeditionary in nature, and what you’d call your sortie generation rate, your ability to land an aircraft service, it bomb it, fuel it, get it back in the air, is going to take longer than if you had a base at Israel.
Look, over time, we would look to our Saudi friends, we would look to our other friends in the region to consider investments in those bases that would bring them to that standard, and we had plans to do this, plans that were not supported by the policy shop in the Pentagon during the Biden administration, but I think now is the time to go back and take a look at it, and I think this follows neatly under some of the concepts of defense that we’re seeing in the region, where we want our allies and partners to pick up a larger share of this. Certainly, they should be asked to pick up the share of building these bases, because these bases are there for their use, as well as our use. There’d be dual use bases, but they would provide an enormous buffer for the next five to seven years against growing Iranian capabilities. And remember, we’re not looking to leave our forward bases necessarily, but rather to be able to flush to the west in times of crisis, or maybe even operate a fraction of these jets at the western bases on a continuing basis, just depending on the geopolitical situation,
Jonathan Ruhe:
You mentioned not viewing the Western bases as an alternative to our forward posture along the Gulf, based on the war. Do you see, and it may differ for our various partners in the Gulf. Is the lesson for them completely restricting U.S. access? If only we’ve been able to operate more shoulder to shoulder with the Americans, we could have helped our Arab Gulf countries climb one way or the other in terms of the relationship with the U.S. and this basing posture.
General Frank McKenzie:
Well, the lesson should be, I would think, for our partners if you still want to remain very close to us in the United States because we’re the source of the technology that will allow you to defend yourself against Iranian actions.
Second, I think if you’re the Gulf partners, you want to look at investing in more ballistic missile and drone defense systems, because here’s the thing: you’re not going to be able to move your bases, you don’t have the luxury of strategic choice like we do to flow to the West, at Al Dhafra and Al Udeid, PCB, Prince Sultan Air Base South of Riyadh–those bases are not movable. You can’t slide them to the West. You have to defend them in place. There are things you can do to harden those bases that we should look at.
One is, as I’ve already noted, more defensive systems. Then you need to look at bunkering better, you need to look at a variety of things you can undertake on the ground to make it harder for the Iranians to get at you. Then I would argue you need a very active and aggressive deception program about where your airplanes are, where your Patriot missiles are, and where your radars are. All these things we looked at, we recommended, I believe the current administration has undertaken many of these initiatives now. It is regrettable that we did not do this before.
Jonathan Ruhe:
As you mentioned that the passive defenses, and I remember you talking about the Iranian attack on air bases in Iraq in 2020 in retaliation for the killing of Qasem Soleimani, and correct me if I’m wrong, you mentioned part of it was the passive defenses, you were able to take advantage of the base, but another part was you had some semblance of early warning that this attack was coming, you were able to take those precautionary measures, is, and you mentioned at the outset there’s a five minute warning if you’re something like that along our Gulf bases.
Is that just a static problem? Are there ways to improve early warning, especially I’ve heard you talk about this in past JINSA webinars with some of Iran’s shorter-range capabilities, it’s more of a bolt from the blue strike rather than some of these attacks they’ve prepared on Israel with medium range capabilities.
General Frank McKenzie:
That’s the problem, the shorter-range missiles, less warning time, and less strategic warning time, too. That’s why close-in bases are uniquely vulnerable. The deeper bases, we’re going to in general get some strategic warning if the Iranians are up to something. It may not be long, but we’ll get some warning against a base like Al-Udeid, which has a very short warning time. Same thing with Bahrain to a lesser degree, with Al Dhafra. You’re going to get very short windows of warning, because their systems have much smaller missiles and they’re going to do less damage, but at the same time, they’re easier for the Iranians to prepare and launch in ways that make it more difficult for us to detect through I and W than an attack that is pending, so look, how do you defend against that? Well, I would argue when you have an opportunity, you hit the Iranians very hard, so they know that if you do this, we’re going to hit you far harder in response than any potential damage you can do to us, and that means that you need to be able to protect your bases against these attacks.
That requires again investment in ballistic missile defense capabilities. It also means investment in a ballistic missile defense architecture of warning and tipping across the region that involves all the Gulf partners, the United States, and the State of Israel. Everyone has a role to play here, and by doing that, you can qualitatively improve your ability to defend against these forms of attack, and we’ve made some pretty good progress down that road, and I know that’s only increased in the last few months.
Jonathan Ruhe
So, I’m glad you raised the integrated air defense architecture. I want to come to that a little bit. A new U.S.-based sponsor helped satisfy the US-Iran MOU, stating that the U.S. would be willing to remove its forces from the proximity of Iran within 30 days of a final deal. And do you think lessons from this conflict could apply to U.S. bases and other theaters, such as INDOPACOM?
General Frank McKenzie:
I think we still need to further negotiate what removal from immediate proximity to Iran means. I don’t know what that means. I’m negotiating with that right now. Clearly, it would be easy to say, well, yeah, moving to the West would grant you that visibility. I’m just not sure I’d recommend that, and I’m not sure this administration is going to want to do that.
So, I think that is something that we would still look to negotiate with Iran as to what it means to be proximate to Iran. I don’t know the answer to that. That’s ultimately going to be a policy question, not a military question. But I would not immediately assume that means leaving Al Udeid to satisfy that requirement or leaving Al Dhafra to satisfy that requirement. What it means, I don’t know.
Now, the second part of the question was a very insightful question. I think this has profound relevance for INDOPACOM, and in fact for Europe, because what we see is the rise of hybrid warfare, and I mean it may be in a slightly different context than it has been used. I think what you’re seeing, of course, drones are becoming increasingly important in the airspace: drones for surveillance, drones for strike, even anti-drone drones. I think we’re going to increasingly see, and I think that’s one of the big takeaways from this war. The other thing is, if you can see it, you can strike it. So, things like that beautiful CENTCOM command post at Al Udeid had the same relevance to warfare today that the Maginot Line did to the Second World War. It was a monument to old think you, we need to be able to move, we need to be able to deceive about where our locations are, and that’s going to require not only significant electromagnetic emanation management, it’s going to require an understanding of what’s in what’s in space, looking at us, and how do we deal with that, and that will require a very sophisticated understanding of not only military overhead non-air breathing systems, but also the plethora of commercial overhead imagery systems that are out there. We need to know and understand and master how we use that ability, that capability to help us and to hurt potential foes, and look, those lessons apply everywhere in any conflict, anywhere. So those are things that I would take away from here right now that I think have applicability, certainly in Eastern Europe right now, but also potentially in the Western Pacific.
Jonathan Ruhe:
So I’m at the risk of jumping around a little bit, there’s just so much we would like to get to, but I want to, I want to stay on this issue of integrated air and missile defenses for the, for the region, we’ve heard in past JINSA webinars, partly it’s a problem of collective action, we also saw you mentioned the drone threat in this war some of our Gulf partners have very exquisite and capable U.S. air defenses: Thad and Patriot. As you mentioned, the drone threat is a different sort of issue. Do you see the future of integrated air and missile defense changing to having to address these drone threats in a way that wasn’t there if we were talking, say, in January of this year?
General Frank McKenzie:
Well, I think we’ve always recognized the threat to the sensors associated with you, with your heavier, heavy ballistic missile defense system as being very real. The technology of defense has just been slower to catch up, I think, than the technology of offense, but I believe the technology of defense is improving. We will catch up; it’s not new. We didn’t suddenly discover it when this war kicked off that your radars are where they’re going to go when they’re your most vulnerable part, because a ballistic missile defense system without a radar, nothing but a very expensive piece of iron sitting on the ground.
So, we have always known that, but the technology proved effective and now you’re talking terminal defense close to the sensor. We’ve been working to create systems that can do that. We’ve been slower than offense, I think, not just us, but around the world, everywhere. It’s the natural back and forth of offense and defense, and warfare. I believe a lot of things out there now are actually changing that balance a little bit, everything from kinetic to non-kinetic systems to, as already mentioned, drones that hit drones, and then you also have got to go all the way back in the chain to the drone launching site, you want to make it hard for the drone to launch, you want to make it hard for them to build the drone, transport the drone, get it ready to fly. So, you’ve got to have a comprehensive, holistic view of the threat to be more effective in defending against it.
Jonathan Ruhe:
I want to answer another question from our audience. [Questioner] asked, ‘General, is there any concern that the U.S. basing in Israel could subject Jerusalem to an increased level of Iranian attacks or aggression from Tehran and/or its proxies?
General Frank McKenzie:
Well, I’m not sure how we can get to a higher level, frankly. I mean, so yes, possibly, but on the other hand, what you gain by U.S. basing there is you gain the use of those aircraft against the system that I just described to reduce the frequency, duration, and intensity of those attacks. So, reasonable question, I’d rather have U.S. forces there than not, not only in Israel, but anywhere else. But I’m the former Central Command commander, telling you that.
Jonathan Ruhe:
So, but in your central CENTCOM commander, when Israel was, was reassigned and moved into the AOR of Central Command in 2021 So, looking at, let’s say, the U.S.-Israel operational cooperation in Epic Fury/Rising Lion, what is your assessment?
You mentioned in your report that in 2024 the United States is sort of without peer in terms of its ability to sustain a major campaign going after Iranian capabilities like you’ve discussed. I think we saw an impressive level of operational coordination planning before the operation with the Israelis. What are your takeaways or sort of perspectives on what you saw in terms of that bilateral partnership during the war itself, at least on an offensive level?
General Frank McKenzie:
Let’s remember how it all started. It all started when we moved Israel into CENTCOM back in early 2021 and that’s a President Trump decision. He’s a guy that made that choice. I wrote about it in my book. We had argued for it for a long time. He made the decision about 10 days before he left office in January of 2021. I think it’s one of the most consequential decisions that he’s made regarding the Middle East, because what it has allowed Central Command to do is more directly coordinate with the State of Israel.
Number one, it’s allowed CENTCOM to act as a convening authority to bring other Chiefs of Defenses together with the Chief of Defense of Israel, it’s allowed equal access to the combined air operations center’s capabilities, not only to Israel, but also to other states in the region, and hence ultimately to Israel.
So, I think that action by President Trump in January 2021 is a profound thing that has had a direct effect on our ability to plan coordinate operations with Israel up until this point. Yes, the level of practical coordination has been very high with Israel, and we would not have been able to do it had Israel not been inside Central Command.
Jonathan Ruhe:
To drill down a little bit further, where you mentioned having Israel in CENTCOM creates a sort of a convening capability, it’s not just a bilateral issue, it’s a multilateral one. Where do you see the potential for that cooperation to develop going forward, perhaps at a more multilateral level? And I’ll just put in a shameless plug, JINSA report Base for Success talks about the various ways that Ovda, in particular air base in Israel, could become a, we call it a CENTCOM Center of Excellence sort of as you mentioned, General, not just for us, Israel cooperation, but more regional security cooperation, better burden sharing, things like that. But I’ll put my own commentary aside and ask for your thoughts on where you see that cooperation potentially expanding going forward.
General Frank McKenzie:
Well, I think one of the key tasks for CENTCOM, at the military level, is to remember that we operate at the military level. This is not the political level. This is the military level. One of the key things that CENTCOM always strives to do is to get Israel into the room with all the Arab neighbors. Israel needs to be part of that. You want to do that because Israel has unique and compelling capabilities, and every Arab state in the region is aware of those capabilities. They want exposure to them to defend themselves.
The major threat from Iran remains: its missiles, its drones, cruise missiles, and its proxies, so that remains the major threat. So, all the areas, disciplines for multilateral cooperation, this is the easiest to work in, because you’re not basing forces in another country or having to accept forces based in your country. What you are doing is sharing, tipping, and queuing information about a potential attack, and that’s a unique thing. I think that’s only going to continue as we go forward, because the Iranian threat is out there, they are going to try to rebuild, and we’re going to be ready for that.
Jonathan Ruhe:
Our conversation so far has been salted a lot toward Army and Air Force questions, but since you’re a Marine, I’d like to ask you, are there even looking beyond Epic Fury, are there ways you see U.S.-Israel cooperation in terms of facing posture in expanding to the other services, beyond just beyond just air force or air defense,
General Frank McKenzie:
In 1998-1999 was the time for command training to train in the Negev Desert. I’m very familiar with training on the ground in Israel. I think all those options are there. I think they remain very important to us. Israel is in the Western part of the Central Command AOR, so they’re great opportunities for naval cooperation. They’re great opportunities for cooperation on the ground. So, to me, this is something that’s been continuing for a number of years. It will simply expand given the new relationship with CENTCOM.
Jonathan Ruhe:
So, a quick reminder to our audience at the time we left. If you have questions for General Mckenzie, please just type them in the Q&A box on your screen, and we’ll do our best to address them in the time we have left.
So, one thing that I think became a certain issue during Operation Fury, and in your report, you mentioned the phrase Tyranny of Geographies, so I guess there’s no harm to be using it again. One of the things we saw in terms of the tyranny of geography is Iran’s ability to dominate the Strait of Hormuz, at least, or they have a geographical predisposition where they could, they could certainly pose a real threat to it. What are your takeaways in terms of how you saw the U.S. Navy fight this war, in terms of Iran’s ability to deny us access, potentially to the Gulf and Hormuz? In terms of what sort of, what’s the naval dimension of U.S. force posture coming out of this war?
General Frank McKenzie:
So, right now, I don’t think we have fully exercised naval capabilities to open the Strait of Hormuz because we’re in political negotiations with conflict right now. I think the President’s preference is to solve the problem politically. I hope he does, and if so, our military operations will play an important role in establishing the hammer for him to achieve a political solution. If we can’t achieve a political solution, then I think everything’s back on the table, and you could see the U.S. Navy go back in there in a way we have not yet done today, forcibly, if necessary, opening the Strait of Hormuz, maybe conducting operations up and into the Iranian goal. The U.S. Navy has the capability to do all those things. We have not yet chosen to do that. We could do it in the future if the President directs. The Iranians are very much aware of that.
Jonathan Ruhe:
To focus more nearly on the military issue. So far, we talked a lot about surface-to-surface threats from the Iranians. Could you unpack a little bit more what you see as Iran’s anti-ship threats? I wanted to mention there’s a question about commercial shipping, or just the mere threat of attacks seems to have an outsized effect, but I guess if you’re a U.S. military planner, how do you view those threats?
General Frank McKenzie:
Sure, so I don’t think we were surprised using Iranian drones in the Strait of Hormuz, but it’s proven to be a difficult threat for us to effectively counter. They have a lot of options that are short range, when they fly, they can fly cheap, expendable drones. All those things make it hard to defend against them.
I think we’ve done a pretty good job on mines. I know people say, “CENTCOM focused on the mines to the exclusion of the drones.” I’m not sure if I buy that argument. I would simply say we made the point repeatedly throughout our talk today. The fact of the matter is that I don’t think we were so much surprised by drones as we’ve been limited by the technological capability to defend against them.
So, not necessarily surprising but knowing something is a threat and having the technical ability to defend yourself doesn’t mean you’re surprised by it. There’s a lag, there’s a technological lag there. That technological lag, I believe, is shortening the gap as we have these capabilities in the effect against drones in the kinetic and non-kinetic electromagnetic space. All those things will be, I think, we’re going to see fielded as we go forward. And one thing I would say, too, is I’m not the guy who thought this up, someone much smarter than me did, but I could agree with it.
Iran can play the Hormuz card once. They played it, that card can never be played again, because now we’re going to find workarounds for Strait of Hormuz, whether it’s over land, whether it’s a geographic routing of oil elsewhere, but Iran will never hold that card again. They’re not going to be able to pick that card up off the table and play it. I’m not sure that they played it wisely, because I think we’re going to be able to compensate for it either directly or indirectly in the weeks and months ahead.
Jonathan Ruhe:
So, we have questions from our audience about that sort of details with the first half of your response. Generally, how is the U.S. addressing the risk of cost asymmetry in procurement, given the low-cost drone warfare, increasingly challenges traditional high-cost defense manufacturing. I would just note for our audience, we saw the deployment of the Luca’s drone system by the United States, which I’m going to misuse terms here, but reverse engineering the Shahed Iranian drone essentially in effect to get it somewhere else in this curve. But in general, please.
General Frank McKenzie:
Yes, we’re right now on the wrong side of the cross-imposition curve. It’s much more expensive for us to defend ourselves than it is to attack us. I got to give the department greater credit, though. They know that I believe we are working very aggressively. Luca’s systems, one example, look at low-cost alternatives to the typical exquisite, exquisite production of high-end systems that take a long time to generate, that are often a little bit behind the duck when they’re fielded.
What we need right now is many cheap, low-cost experimental systems. Some of them will work and some of them will fail. Look, from the outside, the department is actively encouraging this, and I applaud this. I think it’s something that will help us greatly as we go forward against these kinds of threats, and you’re right, we have to get to the point where it is cheap to defend and we’re not there yet, but again, I think we know that, and we’re moving that direction.
Jonathan Ruhe:
So, a separate question, but sort of based on the munitions issue, at least, because this was a fires-intensive conflict, and we’ve heard plenty of reports about the replenishment time it’s going to take for some key munitions that the U.S. expended in this conflict.
Did this war tell you anything new, or does it reinforce your existing thinking about repositioning U.S. munitions in the region, the wisdom of that, or how to change it? And I’ll again, I’ll just note for our audience, in JINSA’s report on Ovda, this is a key issue we talk about, which is using Israeli bases, given how well protected they are, relatively speaking, as potential areas for pre-positioning munitions for joint use. JINSA’s commentary aside, General I’d love to get your thoughts on this larger issue.
General Frank McKenzie:
Sure, so I’ll answer in sort of two dimensions. First, the United States is unequal when it comes to shifting munitions worldwide, we’re very good at doing that, the Secretary War is the guy that makes those decisions, advised by the Chairman, so we’re very good at shifting Patriot interceptors from INDOPACOM to CENTCOM, if required, or to and from Europe, if required.
We have very good systems for knowing our stockages of various munitions, and whether to move them. And ultimately, the person who makes those decisions is at the Secretary level, because you’re talking about relationships between co-coms as you seek to move those.
So we’re good at doing that. Prepositioning can be useful, and you should certainly examine all those opportunities. Israel certainly is a possibility. There are other possibilities, but Israel is certainly a possibility that we should look at.
But here’s a larger issue. For many years, our defense industrial base has been undersized for the commitments that we have. I’d say the current situation we’re in, where we’ve shot a lot of high-end weaponry, is not something that we did not foresee. We’ve been looking at it for several years. Again, this administration has done some things to widen this industrial base, but what you got to have, I think, is a long-term commitment. If you want people to build 155-millimeter artillery projectiles, the person who’s making an investment in the private sector needs to know that this is not going to be a three-year project that’ll be overturned by the next administration. He needs to feel that you’ve got 20 years ahead of you building these abilities to build these projectiles.
The capital outlay is going to cost him; guess how long it’s going to take to make a profit on it. This is a capitalist system. He needs to be able to make a profit on it. He needs to not be afraid we’re going to cut it off next year, because now we’re angry at somebody, and we’re not going to sell him munitions anymore. And that’s not a problem, particularly with this administration, as it has been with the predecessor. But you must establish that degree of stability in the industrial base. For me, of all the things we discussed on this issue, that’s the most significant thing.
We really need to re-gear our industrial base to make it more competitive to look at the volume of projections that we produce, to look at how we share those. It’s a huge market for American conditions globally, Patriot Interceptors, and as we go beyond Patriots, and I think more low-cost lines, those systems as well.
Jonathan Ruhe:
So, again, reminders for the audience, if you have any further questions, please feel free to type them into the Q&A box. So, I’d like to, in some of the time we have left, sort of look at maybe where you see Iran going from here on a military level, and with the caveat that this discussion is not read into classified information, but at least on an unclassed level, was there anything you heard about Iran’s potential cooperation with Russia and China, and potentially others that surprised you, or do you see, maybe that cooperation deepening going forward based on what Iran takes away from this war.
General Frank McKenzie:
So, it’ll be more important to Iran than to Russia or China, and Iran will certainly try to make the most of it. They’ll get what they can, they’re going to be looking for air defense systems, the performance of Russian air defense systems around the world should give you pause if you’re buying them. I don’t think Chinese air defense systems are necessarily any better. I think we’ll watch that very closely, and I would think that we would retain the right to remove those capabilities if they’re introduced into Iran. Either we, or the Israelis, would probably look to do that, but the Iranians are certainly going to try to rearm as they go forward again. We need to monitor that very closely.
We can do that. We can see as they make these decisions, as they try to bring a replacement and other systems online, and we could act very aggressively if we needed to stop that.
So, the political question remains open about the Strait of Hormuz again. We’re resolving that at the political level right now. So, I’ll leave that one alone, except to say that the U.S. military is certainly capable of providing pressure on Iran if necessary to steer the negotiations, one way or another.
Jonathan Ruhe:
To jump, jump from that. So, we’ve been talking, obviously, about how U.S. posture in the region changes, and the lessons we learned, given your long history of planning against and studying how the Iranians do things, their concepts of operations.
First, it’s a two-part question. The first part is that you mentioned that the Strait of Hormuz is a card that Iran can play once. In terms of Iran rebuild its missile and drone arsenals more broadly, do you wonder, are you worried that this is a card they’ll want to play more often, and not in Hormuz, but in general, are you worried the Iranians learn missiles and drones, that’s everything that looks like a nail, because it’s just the hammer we have in our hands.
General Frank McKenzie:
So, possibly, but I would tell you, there are ways to defend against missiles and drones, and we’re only going to get better, and we will get better defensively faster than they get better offensively. Of that, I’m sure.
Jonathan Ruhe:
I guess a final question is we’ve heard plenty, and in some of our previous JINSA webinars that you’ve been a part of Iran has missile cities, they have very mobile, or they have some mobile transport record launcher capabilities. Iran has its own way to play cat and mouse against our ability to target them.
Have you seen changes in Iran’s posture, or do you think they may, in terms of their rebuild, might change in terms of moving their own assets deeper into their own country, beyond at least the reach of Israel, redoubling investments in these missile cities, or maybe something completely different.
General Frank McKenzie:
So, look, that’s just my opinion, for what it’s worth, uninformed by any classified information.
First, there’s no place in Iran we can’t reach or we’re Israel can’t reach. Number two, we should encourage Iran, and it is good for Iran to build large, fixed sites. The one thing we know in the entire history of warfare to this point is if it is a fixed location, we can get it. The key to survival is deception, dispersion, and concealment. That’s the key to survival. We should encourage them to build more large, fixed complexes.
Jonathan Ruhe:
We’ll sneak in one more question from our audience before the buzzer. Is there a concern that Iran will develop cruise missiles from its drone program, like how Ukraine evolved its drone missile capabilities to strike Russia, and if so, how will Iran’s defense industrial base adapt if there is an MOU?
General Frank McKenzie:
Sure, I think we need to watch, so yes, I think they will be very innovative. The Iranians have proven to be smart in these, in these technical innovations. We’re going to need to watch that closely. I believe we have the capability to watch that closely and to know what the Iranians are doing, and we need to be ready to act if necessary to prevent it and I believe we can detect it. We can prevent it.
Jonathan Ruhe:
All right. Well, thank you. I’d like to thank General McKenzie for his time and candor this morning. I’d also like to thank our audience for tuning in this Monday morning, the plugs right before we get off General McKenzie’s report, Tyranny of Geography, is available on JINSA’s website. Your book, Melting Point, I highly recommend. General McKenzie also gave a book talk here at JINSA when it was released, and then also JINSA says report, Base for Success, which goes into the U.S. basing options at Ovda Air Base in Israel. I commend all of those to our audience. Thank you again to General McKenzie and thank you all. We look forward to seeing you again soon on the next JINSA webinar.
General Frank McKenzie:
Thank you, Jonathan. Take care. Thank you very much.