Speaker 1: Lute force. If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Software Radio, Special Operations, Military Nails and
Speaker 1: straight talk with the guys in the community.
Speaker 2: Hi, and welcome to another wonderful episode of soft Rep Radio.
Speaker 2: I am your host, Rad and I have the wonderful
Speaker 2: pleasure of having this guest on that I'm about to introduce.
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Speaker 2: all up in my brain. I'm trying to remember all
Speaker 2: of this, guys, so book club, So join the book club. Now,
Speaker 2: my guest comes from the United States Army and I'm
Speaker 2: going to read you his bio to introduce you to
Speaker 2: retire Colonel John antol And, so let me go ahead
Speaker 2: and read this. John Antell is a soldier, historian, author,
Speaker 2: leadership development expert and master storyteller. In one of his
Speaker 2: many books or in a single session, John will teach
Speaker 2: you how to improve your leadership and raise your team's effectiveness.
Speaker 2: He has published fourteen books and hundreds of magazine articles
Speaker 2: on military history, military technology, and leadership topics. John served
Speaker 2: thirty years in the US Army and retired from the
Speaker 2: US Army as a colonel. He is an airborne and
Speaker 2: ranger qualified and commanded tank and cavalry units. In his
Speaker 2: post army career, John has become a successful author, magazine
Speaker 2: correspondent and editor, video game producer, military consultant, film personality,
Speaker 2: public speaker, radio talk show host, explainer, integrator, journalist, and
Speaker 2: leadership coach. He has been awarded the prestigious Draper Leadership Award,
Speaker 2: the Silver Order of the Saint George Medal, and numerous
Speaker 2: military medals, including three separate awards of the Legion of Merit.
Speaker 2: In October twenty seventeen, John was awarded the Congressional Veteran
Speaker 2: Commendation CVC by Congressman Sam Johnson of Texas. In short,
Speaker 2: John's life purpose is to develop leaders and inspire service.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show, rad Thank.
Speaker 3: You very much very kind of you and much more
Speaker 3: than I deserve.
Speaker 2: You know, you just put yourself into the selfless service
Speaker 2: lifestyle where you just probably wanted to do good.
Speaker 3: Well, I tell you the I'm still trying to make
Speaker 3: an effort. Since January twenty twenty one, I was a
Speaker 3: member of the Army Science Board for three years. And
Speaker 3: when I left the Army Science Board, I realized that
Speaker 3: we still needed to coach, teach and mentor our military
Speaker 3: to understand the changing methods of war. And we are
Speaker 3: transitioning from twenty years of fighting jihatis and fighting in
Speaker 3: the Middle East, and now we're looking at peer competition.
Speaker 3: As you can see, the whole world is on fire.
Speaker 2: It really is. And you have a book, right, and
Speaker 2: it's called Next War, Right, I mean, this is something
Speaker 2: that is this is your lane, and so you bring
Speaker 2: this to the show to talk about. I was watching
Speaker 2: some of your highlight reel, right. You have a YouTube
Speaker 2: video out there right now, Next War, and I was
Speaker 2: watching your highlight reels of that and that you're talking
Speaker 2: already like with a crystal ball of what is currently
Speaker 2: happening right today. Even though I don't like to date
Speaker 2: our podcast, but I mean You've got Israel and Hamas
Speaker 2: going at it wholeheartedly. You've got Ukraine and Russia battling
Speaker 2: it out right now. And these are, you know, inavertently
Speaker 2: like proxies for a lot of others to be involved in.
Speaker 2: And then you have Azerbaijan and Armenia right these triple
Speaker 2: threats that have been going on, that have been under
Speaker 2: the radar or not under the radar. People are just
Speaker 2: like batting a blind eye to it. And I kind
Speaker 2: of talk to my oil change the other day, kay
Speaker 2: hear me, and I said, are you ready for a
Speaker 2: super sonic missile to blow up the grocery store across
Speaker 2: from us? WHI we're getting this oil change right now?
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, We're in dangerous times. We're in dangerous times.
Speaker 3: And since January twenty twenty one, when I left the
Speaker 3: Army Science Board, I started to spend a lot of
Speaker 3: time briefing, having ZOOM and MS team calls with soldiers,
Speaker 3: leaders and government leaders throughout our nation also our allies.
Speaker 3: And so I've given over two hundred and eighty presentations
Speaker 3: since January twenty twenty one. Yeah, and those presentations mostly
Speaker 3: by MS teams or ZOOM MS teams is the preferred
Speaker 3: method right now. But the point is is almost all virtual,
Speaker 3: but many but several dozens in person, and I don't
Speaker 3: charge for these. All I care about is that we
Speaker 3: learn together and that we try to move our understanding,
Speaker 3: our situation, awareness of the changing methods of war, and
Speaker 3: in many ways, you know, just move the needle to
Speaker 3: get us to act in time, because I think that
Speaker 3: we're urgently we need to have a sense of urgency.
Speaker 3: We're running out of time. If we're not careful, we're
Speaker 3: going to find ourselves in a much greater conflict against
Speaker 3: peer competitors very soon. I mean, if you think about it,
Speaker 3: World War II wasn't really thought of as World War
Speaker 3: two until about nineteen forty forty one, maybe even forty
Speaker 3: two by some people. We are right now in a
Speaker 3: situation where there's the greatest war in Europe since World
Speaker 3: War Two. There's a major conflict in the Middle East
Speaker 3: which is going to expand Israel is going to be
Speaker 3: fighting both Hamas, Hezbollah and possibly Iran. We could be
Speaker 3: in a war this Friday in the Middle East. Our
Speaker 3: aircraft carriers are in position, our aircraft could be there
Speaker 3: because if we do not act after we've set this
Speaker 3: deterrent up, then no one will ever believe that we
Speaker 3: will act, and all of our deterrence fails, and therefore
Speaker 3: we just bring on more war. So the first thing
Speaker 3: we have to do is not so much to try
Speaker 3: to prognosticate where everything will happen and what will happen next,
Speaker 3: but understand the changing trends, the changing methods of war,
Speaker 3: and then be able to apply those with some foresight
Speaker 3: and imagination. And if you look at what happened in Israel,
Speaker 3: the horrific, horrific Hamas attack on Israel that happened on Saturday,
Speaker 3: October seventh and is now developing into a major war,
Speaker 3: this is a failure of imagination on the part of
Speaker 3: US intelligence, Israeli intelligence, and European intelligence, and a failure
Speaker 3: of imagination amongst the leadership. We get so consumed with
Speaker 3: our internal squabbles and our internal desires that we forget
Speaker 3: about the people out there who really want to kill
Speaker 3: us and how we need to protect them, and the
Speaker 3: government's job, and the leaders of our nation and other nations,
Speaker 3: their job is to protect their people. And the problem
Speaker 3: with Israel was that they have done some things that
Speaker 3: have made that less capable than more. And Israel now
Speaker 3: is going to show you in their fight against Thomas
Speaker 3: and others, an extraordinary capability because they understand the changing
Speaker 3: methods of war. They have adapted to these and developed
Speaker 3: the systems, the tactics, techniques, and procedures in order to
Speaker 3: do extraordinary things in the battle space. And we're going
Speaker 3: to see that unfold in the days ahead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent. A lot of things that we
Speaker 2: didn't know are going to be in battle will, like
Speaker 2: even from video games, if you will, will be starting
Speaker 2: to show up on our news feeds when you see
Speaker 2: these things that we've never seen before being deployed. You know,
Speaker 2: these new munitions that we never knew about. Something that's
Speaker 2: been classified this whole time is now being used in
Speaker 2: a big conflict that we're like, what was that thing? Yeah,
Speaker 2: and you just really.
Speaker 3: Often actually been practicing with these weapons. So the difference
Speaker 3: is is that if you have a secret weapon, if
Speaker 3: you will, unless it is able to deploy by itself
Speaker 3: and use by itself, if humans have to use it,
Speaker 3: if units of soldiers have to use it, they have
Speaker 3: to practice with it ahead of time. There's many cases
Speaker 3: in history where countries had military technology was very an
Speaker 3: tried to show it up right before the battle, but
Speaker 3: nobody knew how to use it. But the Israelis are
Speaker 3: an exception here. They have integrated this into their training,
Speaker 3: integrated into their system. I mean, just imagine the Israelis
Speaker 3: have mobilized three hundred and sixty thousand soldiers in three days.
Speaker 2: Right because they have a ready reserve right of like
Speaker 2: IDF and male female from seventeen or sixteen, all the way,
Speaker 2: you have to do their forced service for two years.
Speaker 2: But then they we see photos, right, we see photos
Speaker 2: of the IDF walking around with their guns slung in
Speaker 2: civilian clothing like eating gelato. Okay, so it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: they're supposed to be always up, they're ready for this
Speaker 2: type of a situation. I guess that would bring me
Speaker 2: to say, we all saw what happened or hear about
Speaker 2: what's happening, and it's ever evolving. But why do you
Speaker 2: think it took you know, six hours for them to
Speaker 2: give any kind of reaction force to the initial onslaught
Speaker 2: with all of these armed personnel on the ground, I'm sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're going to do a detailed after action review
Speaker 3: of what their problems were but I tell everyone there,
Speaker 3: but for the grace of God, go us. I mean,
Speaker 3: the Israelis are very good at what they do at
Speaker 3: defending their nation, and their military is extremely serious, much
Speaker 3: more serious sometimes than ours. And our problem is is
Speaker 3: that they were surprised. And how were they surprised. Well, again,
Speaker 3: it's a failure of imagination when you believe a certain
Speaker 3: line of thinking that well, Hamas is coming around. They've
Speaker 3: been real nice to us lately. We beat them hard
Speaker 3: in the May twenty twenty one war, and they learned
Speaker 3: their lesson, you know, they learned their lesson, so they
Speaker 3: would never dare do anything. When you start to believe
Speaker 3: that narrative, then you disregard the obvious indicators that start
Speaker 3: to pop up, and you come up with excuses for
Speaker 3: why they won't happen. So we've done the same thing.
Speaker 2: The dominoes lie where we have let's say Palestine. You know,
Speaker 2: I know they're not rocks per se, but I usually
Speaker 2: say they throw slingsh shots. That Israel, you know, to
Speaker 2: try to attack them. Back in the day, kids throwing rocks,
Speaker 2: you know, and then Israel having armament against Gaza and
Speaker 2: that influence. But today and Hamas throwing rockets, right, So yeah,
Speaker 2: where do they go from not having much in some
Speaker 2: of these you know, volleys that they get involved with
Speaker 2: all of a sudden thousands and thousands of these missiles.
Speaker 2: And I understand paragliders are using and being they're being
Speaker 2: inventive and they're being outside the box thinkers, you know,
Speaker 2: But where are all these rockets and all of these
Speaker 2: you know, where do you think the dominoes are being
Speaker 2: pushed off here?
Speaker 3: Well, it's quite clear, and only we need leaders with foresight.
Speaker 3: Foresight is the ability to see and solve problems in
Speaker 3: the short run and create solutions for the long term.
Speaker 3: So we have to be able to solve problems in
Speaker 3: the short run and create solutions for the long term.
Speaker 3: And we're our lack of leadership across the board is
Speaker 3: sad because this is what causes us to drive into
Speaker 3: cascating failures, cascading wars. I mean, have you noticed that
Speaker 3: the wars now are happening with increasing frequency And they're
Speaker 3: not small things, they're major wars. So our challenge is
Speaker 3: is that our leadership really needs.
Speaker 2: To change, and we need human intelligence that was on
Speaker 2: the ground. There's got to be a humid out there,
Speaker 2: that's uh right.
Speaker 3: But if you ignore it because you've been told no,
Speaker 3: that's not really what they mean. They really are getting
Speaker 3: together because they they're just trying to posture. You can
Speaker 3: talk yourself out out of bad things all the time. Now,
Speaker 3: failure of imagination is crucial. This was a complete failure
Speaker 3: of imagination. The Israelis are very good at this. They
Speaker 3: normally developed up multiple courses of action with many possibilities.
Speaker 3: They red team with folks that are trained to act
Speaker 3: like the enemy and think like the enemy and say
Speaker 3: this is what the enemy will do. Somehow they ignored
Speaker 3: all of that. This is the same danger that we have. Now.
Speaker 3: You can use red teaming in any organization you have,
Speaker 3: but for national purposes and for the army, it's truly important.
Speaker 3: For the military, it's truly important. We've got to look
Speaker 3: at some of the worst cases. Now you put this
Speaker 3: into context of the United States. What can we learn
Speaker 3: from the surprise that Hamas gave Israel? Now the rockets
Speaker 3: and all that you mentioned. Just to answer your question,
Speaker 3: Hamas and Hezbela are proxy armies of Irad, pure and simple.
Speaker 3: Anybody who says otherwise is making an excuse. Now, they're
Speaker 3: making an excuse because they don't want to get into
Speaker 3: a larger conflict. But you see, there's two kinds of
Speaker 3: ways to look at most of these problems. There's the
Speaker 3: black swan. We all know what that means. It's kind
Speaker 3: of like what happened on nine to one one, when
Speaker 3: something out of the blue seems to shoot out. And
Speaker 3: then there's the gray rhino. And the gray rhino is
Speaker 3: something that you see oft in the distance is coming
Speaker 3: towards you, but you ignore it, and you ignore it
Speaker 3: until it hits you. And our problem is we have
Speaker 3: some gray rhinos out there that are a huge and
Speaker 3: some black swans, and you couple those and you've got
Speaker 3: real problems. The Israelis disregarded the intel. The indicators didn't
Speaker 3: believe that Hamas would act and did not alert their folks,
Speaker 3: and their folks were not prepared. The soldiers in camps,
Speaker 3: their police in stations were not prepared for this kind
Speaker 3: of attack. Now they should have been thinking about this
Speaker 3: because I'll tell you in nineteen forty eight, when Israel
Speaker 3: first got its independence, and Israelis were living in Kibesim
Speaker 3: and Nahab's settlements, Knackoll settlements and all this. They were armed,
Speaker 3: and they were prepared, and they were better prepared for
Speaker 3: this kind of attack in nineteen forty eight than they
Speaker 3: are today. Why, well, we've gotten a lot softer over
Speaker 3: the years. We don't carry weapons anymore, at least in Israel.
Speaker 3: They're not even allowed to carry weapons. In many cases.
Speaker 3: Most people don't know that. They don't have a second Amendment.
Speaker 3: An armed population is didn't more difficult for this kind
Speaker 3: of thing to happen against a disarmed population, it's much easier.
Speaker 3: So Israel has changed and they rely on their military
Speaker 3: to do stuff. And their common thought is that hold
Speaker 3: in place and hide and the military will come save us.
Speaker 3: It's kind of the same thing that many people in
Speaker 3: the United States believe in the police. Things won't happen.
Speaker 3: If anything happens, I'll call nine one one and the
Speaker 3: police will arrive. Well, mostly the police arrived after the fact,
Speaker 3: and the army in Israel arrived after the fact. Now
Speaker 3: that is hurting the Israeli the idef, the Israeli defense
Speaker 3: forces to the core. They are sickened by this whole thing,
Speaker 3: and they are going to seek their revenge. Joh On
Speaker 3: Hamas and then later other enemies should those other enemies
Speaker 3: continue to attack. And today there's been a lot of
Speaker 3: action in the Lebanon, Israeli border with Hesbelah, so actions
Speaker 3: that could erupt into greater conflict. So we could see
Speaker 3: this easily get into a larger war. But what's important
Speaker 3: isn't the ability to kind of to be some kind
Speaker 3: of prognosticator that says, I know exactly what's going to happen.
Speaker 3: No one knows what's going to happen tomorrow. But what
Speaker 3: we can do is we can study the past. Now
Speaker 3: we can learn to gain foresight. And one of the
Speaker 3: things I've been trying to impel the US military to
Speaker 3: do is to study the wars of the last three years.
Speaker 3: Now there are four of them. There were three up
Speaker 3: until Saturday. The first was the second to going to
Speaker 3: Kerabak War in twenty twenty forty four day decisive victory
Speaker 3: of Azerbai John against Armenian And this was their first
Speaker 3: war in history to be won primarily by robotic systems.
Speaker 2: No kidding, right, like a drone or some type of.
Speaker 3: The first time this unmanned combat aerial vehicles and loitering
Speaker 3: munitions were used on such a scale for such a
Speaker 3: great effect to win decisively when you consider the Armenians
Speaker 3: held the high ground, not Hills mountains. They had defensive
Speaker 3: positions that were dug in for twenty six years, and
Speaker 3: all of that didn't matter. The Azerbaijohnny's were able to
Speaker 3: change the situation. Studying that war gives you great insight
Speaker 3: and provide you with the fuel for foresight to see
Speaker 3: where the rest of the wars are going to happen
Speaker 3: and how they're going to happen.
Speaker 2: Your YouTube video it's next war, right that you have
Speaker 2: out there, That's what it is. That was about four
Speaker 2: weeks ago that you put that up and then you know,
Speaker 2: I was watching it. Just really informative and I just
Speaker 2: want to let my listener know that that's out there,
Speaker 2: right you can. We're going to put it in the
Speaker 2: comments so that if you want to just click on
Speaker 2: that YouTube link, we'll get that information. I just want
Speaker 2: to let you know that it's incredible to watch the
Speaker 2: footage that you have there where it shows just these
Speaker 2: you know, makeshift they would be like a VBIED right right, right,
Speaker 2: like just just completely correct a vehicle born improvised explosive device.
Speaker 3: Right, and the changing methods of war are such that
Speaker 3: soon we will have AI enabled swarms of loiding munitions
Speaker 3: linked with every other system that can be linked and networked,
Speaker 3: and they will go from point A to point B
Speaker 3: to point B point C, and they will kill and
Speaker 3: destroy all of the things underneath it according to their
Speaker 3: targeting parameters. So what we're going to get is an
Speaker 3: increased temple of war. Anyway I've developed from this study
Speaker 3: of war. Of these three wars, and again the go
Speaker 3: to Kira Bak war was the first one. The second
Speaker 3: one was the Israeli Hamas War of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: which the Israelis won in eleven days. Now how much
Speaker 3: US was badly beaten in that war. They sued for
Speaker 3: peace and sued for a ceasefire, and the Israelis granted
Speaker 3: it to them because it wasn't anything like what happened
Speaker 3: this last Saturday. There's going to be no ceasefire now.
Speaker 3: And then the third war courses the Russo Ukrainian War,
Speaker 3: the greatest war in Europe since World War Two, the
Speaker 3: most bloody and the most innovative. In fact, if you
Speaker 3: were to say, how do you represent in one word
Speaker 3: the Ukrainian armed forces and that word would be innovation.
Speaker 3: The fact that they've survived and that they're on the offensive,
Speaker 3: even if the offensive hasn't been as successful as many
Speaker 3: people would like, is truly amazing, because if you do
Speaker 3: the calculus, if you add up all the correlation of forces,
Speaker 3: Russia should have won in the second week.
Speaker 2: Right according to the Grand scheme. If we look at
Speaker 2: the map that's flat at school, it says Russia's right here,
Speaker 2: so big, they should win.
Speaker 3: Okay, if it was just a mathematical equation and you
Speaker 3: added up that Russia has, and you added up everything
Speaker 3: Ukraine has, well, Ukraine would have lost in the second week.
Speaker 3: In fact, in it's a sad story about the United
Speaker 3: States because in nineteen sixty seven or sixty eight they
Speaker 3: had their first major input into large computer systems, and
Speaker 3: Department of Defense says, we've added up all the correlation
Speaker 3: of forces, when will we win in Vietnam? And they said,
Speaker 3: you want in nineteen sixty two?
Speaker 2: You know, but obviously, yeah, well, here's what I blame
Speaker 2: for Ukraine's success is the twenty year old who's been
Speaker 2: now at combat since February twenty second, of like twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two. Okay, so he's already been. He's been doing
Speaker 2: it since he's about eighteen seventeen, eighteen years old now,
Speaker 2: so he's been in combat. But before that, that young
Speaker 2: man didn't have any type of like military training, and
Speaker 2: what he was doing before that was most likely playing
Speaker 2: airsoft wargames in a free society where that was a
Speaker 2: normal thing and they can go and play those war
Speaker 2: games on the weekend, okay, And so there's any training
Speaker 2: he got and Call of Duty or any of these
Speaker 2: video games where it requires thought process, flyings coming up
Speaker 2: with crazy tactics, and now all of a sudden you
Speaker 2: have the same twenty year old who grew up on
Speaker 2: that technology. Whereas in Russia you got these guys that
Speaker 2: are just a little bit you know, their economy wasn't
Speaker 2: giving them video games. They're very oppressed. They don't have
Speaker 2: the same freedom to get on the internet like they
Speaker 2: were in Ukraine. And so you have these old time
Speaker 2: Russian tactics coming at these Ukrainians who are there's old timers.
Speaker 2: You got some fifty year olds who know the old
Speaker 2: school tactics of Russia tactics, but they have that that's
Speaker 2: from their wartime, right, That fifty year old had his time,
Speaker 2: you know, fighting, But that young twenty year old who's
Speaker 2: sneaking through the lines, who's dropping precision little you know,
Speaker 2: pin drop munitions, that kid right there, you know, he's
Speaker 2: the unique innovator. Those are the innovators.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot to be said for what you
Speaker 3: just talked about and many points of truth. There a
Speaker 3: couple of things that I think all your listeners need
Speaker 3: to understand. Video games don't really trade you through war.
Speaker 3: What's interesting is that being able to adapt to technology
Speaker 3: does being able to use different types of technology and
Speaker 3: understand how to use it. That's really good. But call
Speaker 3: of duty is not warfare, but.
Speaker 2: The controller that they're using, sir, you know the controller
Speaker 2: that the building that Xbox. Yes, it's being used by
Speaker 2: EOD guys for the robot.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, But for instance, the Ukrainians are losing ten thousand
Speaker 3: drones a month. They're losing ten thousand drones a month
Speaker 3: small uas. Primarily that's the quad copter drones. The key
Speaker 3: to those is a good operator, you see, because every
Speaker 3: one of those are FPV drones first person view drones
Speaker 3: where they are in fact operated one drone by one person.
Speaker 3: So they have to be able to be really skilled
Speaker 3: because you can fly a drone in your house and
Speaker 3: that's cool, but you try to fly it outside and
Speaker 3: that's harder. And you try to fly it outside carrying
Speaker 3: your grenade, going through the trees and coming up tree
Speaker 3: top level and dropping it on a tank. That takes skill.
Speaker 3: So there's a whole bunch of skills that have to
Speaker 3: be trained with. Now in the United States, we should
Speaker 3: have drone racing clubs everywhere to train drone operators, you know,
Speaker 3: but we don't. In the military, we should do that
Speaker 3: as well, we don't. The ability to have well trained
Speaker 3: drone operators is crucial, and of course the technology will change.
Speaker 3: But the more you can adapt to technology, the better
Speaker 3: off you are. And America has a bit of advantage
Speaker 3: there because we have a technological society. But the enemy
Speaker 3: also know this and they will do everything they can
Speaker 3: to take away our electrons, you know. So what I've
Speaker 3: been trying to do, and I gave three briefings this
Speaker 3: week before we've even talked a tenth Mountain Division just yesterday.
Speaker 3: I try to get the leaders and the staffs of
Speaker 3: these units to see the trends, to see how war
Speaker 3: is changing, and those changes are really crucial to change
Speaker 3: your thinking and your mindset, because, for instance, the first
Speaker 3: is that we have a transparrent battlespace. Everything on the
Speaker 3: battlespace can be seen by sensors from ground level all
Speaker 3: the way up to satellite. A peer competitor once to
Speaker 3: find you. They have so many means now there's no
Speaker 3: place that you can hide. That means there are no
Speaker 3: sanctuaries because missiles and rockets now can fly tremendous ranges
Speaker 3: with great precision. In the past, they could only shoot
Speaker 3: so far and you could be out of the range
Speaker 3: of the artillery. But now you are always under the guns.
Speaker 3: You are never out of the range of their striking power.
Speaker 3: So therefore they see you and they can strike you.
Speaker 3: So we have to develop a concept called masking. It
Speaker 3: is not a doctrinal term in our military. I'm trying
Speaker 3: to get people to embrace it. Masking is the full spectrum,
Speaker 3: multi domain effort to deceive enemy sensors and disrupt enemy targeting.
Speaker 3: To deceive their sensors and disrupt their targeting, there's a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of things you can do to deceive their sensors,
Speaker 3: and there's things you can do to disrupt their targeting.
Speaker 3: You can't necessarily be invisible, you can't be necessarily in
Speaker 3: an impregnable position. I mean, there are very few impregnable
Speaker 3: positions in the world. You can dig a foxhole and
Speaker 3: get out of bursting radius of some artillery. You can
Speaker 3: dig a deep bunker and you can get out of
Speaker 3: the range of some things, but bunker busting missiles will
Speaker 3: find you. Drones can fly into the openings. All those
Speaker 3: things can happen. So there are no places on the
Speaker 3: battlefield that are now completely safe. What does that mean, Well,
Speaker 3: think about what that means as far as our ability
Speaker 3: to mass forces. Why are the Ukrainians having problems trying
Speaker 3: to break through the Russian defenses Because every time they
Speaker 3: mass more than four or five vehicles, the Russians see
Speaker 3: that and the target that sticks out gets hammered. The
Speaker 3: target that sticks out on this battlespace gets hammered. They'll
Speaker 3: see it and in seconds they have a kill chain
Speaker 3: that goes very rapidly from sensor to shooter, and they'll
Speaker 3: launch systems, launch effects against those targets and destroy them.
Speaker 3: So if you have ten vehicles together, or ten vehicles
Speaker 3: in a command post, wow, that's a real target that
Speaker 3: sticks out and you'll be seen immediately. You got more
Speaker 3: than that cluster together, and you're going to be annihilated. Now,
Speaker 3: the Israelis have less of a problem with this with
Speaker 3: hamas their rockets are primarily designed to strike general areas.
Speaker 3: They are not very precise. Now that doesn't mean they
Speaker 3: don't have some precision weaponry, and any one of their
Speaker 3: drones can be absolutely precise because it's human operated, it's
Speaker 3: remotely human operated. But the Israelis are amassing their forces
Speaker 3: now and they're starting their assault into Gaza and other places,
Speaker 3: and as they do this, you'll see many videos of
Speaker 3: them clustered together. They would never be able to do
Speaker 3: that in Ukraine, and we cannot do that on future
Speaker 3: battlespaces against peer competitors. Now tomorrow, we could end up
Speaker 3: in war by design or mistake. In Europe, the Russians,
Speaker 3: if they wanted to hit us, imagine our post camps
Speaker 3: and stations in Romania, in Poland, in Germany are peacetime.
Speaker 3: We're in peacetime barracks. We're all within range of their
Speaker 3: weaponry and they know exactly where we are. So if
Speaker 3: they wanted to conduct the first strike to kill a
Speaker 3: lot of Americans. They have the missile capability and the
Speaker 3: ISR capability to do it. Now. Retribution is what holds
Speaker 3: them back to terrence. But if they don't believe in
Speaker 3: our deterrence anymore, then we just become a soft target.
Speaker 3: One of the jobs our military has to be is
Speaker 3: to turn those soft targets into hard positions so that
Speaker 3: they become very hard nuts to crack. And the enemy
Speaker 3: will say, why why we shouldn't do this because we
Speaker 3: don't have the capability.
Speaker 2: I'd imagine peace time. Could we not have like, you know,
Speaker 2: patriot missile systems and stuff? I mean, like.
Speaker 3: Systems are great. Patriots. Missile systems are very expensive in
Speaker 3: their high end against high end targets. They are important
Speaker 3: to have. They have to be alert all the time, yeah,
Speaker 3: and maintained and up kept and like them to cover
Speaker 3: everything which we don't readiness, Yeah we don't.
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 3: Israel is a small country and their iron dome system
Speaker 3: works very well. But they spent a tremendous amount and
Speaker 3: so a way to help them to create this iron
Speaker 3: dome system that provides this bubble over Israel. We don't
Speaker 3: have anything like this over the United States, you know,
Speaker 3: like they do. We have anti ballistic missile systems that
Speaker 3: are designed to shoot down you know, nuclear warheads if
Speaker 3: they're launched on a major scale. But our camps, post
Speaker 3: and stations all across the world in North North Korea
Speaker 3: has missiles that could hit our camps in South Korea
Speaker 3: within minutes. We're not in hardened positions. Guam, we have
Speaker 3: air defense systems there, but we're not in hardened positions.
Speaker 3: Pearl Harbor. Nobody could hit us at Pearl Harbor. I
Speaker 3: mean we're too far away. Right. Wait a minute, Wait
Speaker 3: a minute, what happened to World War Two when these
Speaker 3: guys had propelled driven air cranes and hit us. I mean,
Speaker 3: so we have to think this through. That is a
Speaker 3: problem with no imagination. You see, we have set ourselves
Speaker 3: in a box thinking we're the best in the world.
Speaker 3: Nobody wants to fight us, and we're fine. Well, the
Speaker 3: enemy doesn't see it that way. They see us as weak.
Speaker 3: They see us having fled from Afghanistan. They see us
Speaker 3: having across the world stage lost a lot of our
Speaker 3: capabilities to deter war.
Speaker 2: I mean we've fled quite a bit, actually, not just Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: but all the past have fled out. I mean all
Speaker 2: the way back to NOM fled out. You know. It's like,
Speaker 2: you know, they're just I mean, honestly, you know, I
Speaker 2: don't know how.
Speaker 3: You couldn't send a weaker and more confused message, right,
Speaker 3: You know very well, if you have a bully, you
Speaker 3: got to send that bully a clear message. You know,
Speaker 3: if you sit there and you cower, the bully is
Speaker 3: going to take you down. But if you send him
Speaker 3: a message that this fight, even if you're smaller, is
Speaker 3: going to be so bad, it's going to be so
Speaker 3: tough on him that he's going to regret at the
Speaker 3: rest of his life, then you have a chance to
Speaker 3: deter And if you don't, then you have a chance
Speaker 3: to fight. And the worst thing you can do is
Speaker 3: die fighting rather than die as a victim. You know.
Speaker 3: So our challenges, our challenges is that we've got to
Speaker 3: send better messaging with real action, and it's the actions
Speaker 3: that count, and our actions so far have been contrary
Speaker 3: to deterrence.
Speaker 2: We just need to spray paint Wolverine yeah on everything
Speaker 2: we get.
Speaker 3: I hope we never get to the case where we
Speaker 3: have to defend the United States with high school kids
Speaker 3: at their hometown.
Speaker 2: Red Dawn, I said, Wolverines, Right, we know exactly what
Speaker 2: I understand.
Speaker 3: I follow it completely.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The point is is that is that our military needs
Speaker 3: to get harder, smarter, and tougher and focused on war fighting. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: there's a misfocus in many ways and we need to
Speaker 3: change that. And commanders right now across the military, we're
Speaker 3: having trouble getting commanders because people don't want to accept
Speaker 3: command because if they do, they have a very high
Speaker 3: propensity of being called toxic for something or any other city.
Speaker 2: Well, and they also need to be given command so
Speaker 2: that they could be called toxic because they're not even
Speaker 2: be giving the opportunity to be toxic because the houses
Speaker 2: in disarray, they're fighting against themselves when they should be
Speaker 2: working to you know, support bills for Ukraine, Israel and
Speaker 2: infrastructure and you know American citizens.
Speaker 3: Well, American democracy has always been messy, and we'll get
Speaker 3: through that. Some people will argue, you know, different cases
Speaker 3: and make a lot of hay out of certain things,
Speaker 3: but what we have to do is we have to
Speaker 3: have focused, clear, strong leadership in order to deture war.
Speaker 3: Just like when you deter a bully, and our military
Speaker 3: needs to be harder, tougher, and smarter. Now, we have
Speaker 3: a lot of great people in the military, Army, Navy, Marines,
Speaker 3: Air Force, Coast Guard, Space Force. Those guys are working
Speaker 3: hard in many cases, but they have to have the
Speaker 3: foresight and the imagination to understand what's coming. We did
Speaker 3: not understand what was coming on December seventh, nineteen forty one,
Speaker 3: as most of your listeners know, that's when Japan, Japan
Speaker 3: attack Pearl Harbor started for US World War two, and
Speaker 3: we were surprised. We never thought they would do that.
Speaker 3: We thought they might, you know, attack US in the Philippines,
Speaker 3: little piece meal stuff. They were tremendous in their first
Speaker 3: six months. They wrecked havoc across the Pacific for a year.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Basically, we're at our with send. Had they been better
Speaker 3: at it, we would have been really bad. So our
Speaker 3: challenge is is that what happens if we have another
Speaker 3: situation like that. Our military is being paid and trained
Speaker 3: to stop that situation through deterrence. That means we have
Speaker 3: to be so tough that they will not attack us.
Speaker 3: And right now we have a lot of soft targets
Speaker 3: out there and a lot of soft thinking and not
Speaker 3: the kind of training that we need because we're not
Speaker 3: training for the next war. We're actually training, in many
Speaker 3: cases for past wars.
Speaker 2: So let's let's let let me let me pick up
Speaker 2: the training then real quick with you, colonel, because retire, colonel,
Speaker 2: forgive me, but colonel, you get those Colonel.
Speaker 3: You're always you always have the title. And I'm honored, yes,
Speaker 3: colonel in the United States Army, and I'm very proud
Speaker 3: of that. You can call me John, antel or John,
Speaker 3: doesn't matter. And I've been called worse.
Speaker 2: Go ahead, So with your how proud you are, I
Speaker 2: would never call you soft? Right, that's a two shape
Speaker 2: point because I got a friend that's a private in
Speaker 2: a guard unit, and I don't think he's soft. He
Speaker 2: doesn't think he's soft, But is his training soft?
Speaker 3: We don't rise to the level of our expectations, fall
Speaker 3: to the level of our training.
Speaker 2: M And so if this is a regimented training program
Speaker 2: that's constantly put out to these guys and somebody wrote
Speaker 2: it and they might have been soft.
Speaker 3: Well is that here's the deal? You have the are
Speaker 3: you hard? Are you you have the discipline to make
Speaker 3: your soldiers camouflage? What does it take to learn to
Speaker 3: be to camouflage your soldiers. It takes discipline and equipment,
Speaker 3: and if you don't have the equipment, you make it up. Now,
Speaker 3: you look at most pictures of American soldiers and they're
Speaker 3: poorly camouflaged. And camouflaging vehicles and camouflaging command post crucial
Speaker 3: in a transparent battle space. That's essential. The discipline that
Speaker 3: we need to lead the army and the Air Force
Speaker 3: and the Navy and the Marines and the Space force.
Speaker 3: You know, in the years they had through these tough times,
Speaker 3: has got to be armed with the foresight of what
Speaker 3: those wars will look like. And again I go back
Speaker 3: to we need to study the four wars that have
Speaker 3: just happened since twenty twenty. The second to go in too,
Speaker 3: Karabakh War twenty twenty, the Israeli Haimas War twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: the Ukrainian War twenty twenty two going on, and now
Speaker 3: the Israeli Hamas War. I'm calling it the October War
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three, but it's it's going to go on
Speaker 3: longer than a month. So our challenge is is that
Speaker 3: we have to study these and our leaders need to
Speaker 3: be studying this. I had a general officer who retired
Speaker 3: and was talking to me about a subject and I said, well, sir,
Speaker 3: you know while you were in command, this was going
Speaker 3: on and I'm sure you were studying it. And he said,
Speaker 3: why was too busy commanding to study war?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, what do you You got to read
Speaker 2: at least sun Su, right, or at least Swartzkoff's stories
Speaker 2: and have an understanding, right, if you're going to be
Speaker 2: a position of.
Speaker 3: That, well, you need to be a leader. You need
Speaker 3: experience and knowledge in depth. So you need to understand
Speaker 3: things like in the military Sunsu and clause of its
Speaker 3: and all that. But you also need you know, in breath,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, in breath, you need to understand and it
Speaker 3: basically the overall in breadth of it. But you also
Speaker 3: need to study in depth the campaigns that are happening now.
Speaker 3: Because the war's nature is relatively the same over the years,
Speaker 3: which is why Sunsu the Art of War classfits from
Speaker 3: the eighteenth century of nineteenth century. Those studies are valuable
Speaker 3: to us because the nature of war hasn't changed in
Speaker 3: the big picture, but the methods of war changed dramatically. Obviously,
Speaker 3: there were no machine guns in the American Revolution. Now
Speaker 3: there are machine guns. You can't fight the way you
Speaker 3: fight in the American Revolution against machine guns. That'd be crazy,
Speaker 3: all right, And we learned that in World War One, basically,
Speaker 3: So we have to change our thinking with the methods,
Speaker 3: changing methods of war, and artificial intelligence is driving a
Speaker 3: tremendous change in warfare. Weapons are now as you saw
Speaker 3: on the video that we talked about earlier that I
Speaker 3: sent out to everyone, those weapons are now able to
Speaker 3: see the battle space with high definition and send back
Speaker 3: streaming video, and all of that can be collected for
Speaker 3: intelligence and information for strike information, and you know you've
Speaker 3: hit the target and to win the information war. So
Speaker 3: you've got all these capabilities now, and we've got to
Speaker 3: change how we think about how to fight simply just
Speaker 3: some simple things like the first strike. In every case,
Speaker 3: we're not going to be attacking our peer competitors. I
Speaker 3: can't imagine the preemptive war against China or Russia. It's
Speaker 3: not out of the realm of possibility.
Speaker 2: But I'm not in on it. I don't want that.
Speaker 2: I mean, like, if it's coming from US, I don't
Speaker 2: want it from America's side, right, I don't want Yeah, so.
Speaker 3: If we go into war against Russia or China, and
Speaker 3: we are at war right now with Russia, hybrid war,
Speaker 3: so we have to consider that. We have to think
Speaker 3: that through because we are at war with Russia now
Speaker 3: and we don't consider ourselves at war, but I assure
Speaker 3: you Russia does. They're losing soldiers of high mars every day.
Speaker 3: They know who makes them. They know America is the enemy,
Speaker 3: you know, So we need to start thinking about that
Speaker 3: because they want revenge. So we have to open our
Speaker 3: minds a bit and start thinking differently. You know, we
Speaker 3: have this complacency that we've developed because we are so
Speaker 3: rich and so big and on everything else, that we
Speaker 3: think no one can attack us. And over history, if
Speaker 3: you study history, you'll see that that doesn't always, that
Speaker 3: doesn't work. Eventually somebody does. Now, if the Chinese were
Speaker 3: to attack in the Pacific and conduct a first strike,
Speaker 3: they have learned from what Russia did in Ukraine. Russia
Speaker 3: had a first strike on the first week of the war.
Speaker 3: From February twenty fourth on, they started to hit the Ukrainians.
Speaker 3: They hit twenty nine and eleven targets. That was not enough.
Speaker 3: They thought they would slap their little cousins around and
Speaker 3: say hey, we're coming. Pay attention. We're your big brothers.
Speaker 3: If you don't, we'll beat you up. Instead, the Ukrainians said, f.
Speaker 2: You, We're going to fight like hell and then yeah,
Speaker 2: we're going to die try and yep.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the Russians weren't ready for any of that.
Speaker 3: They had they foresight on this. Had they thought through
Speaker 3: what the Ukrainians were going to do, they might have
Speaker 3: attacked that was that first strike with everything they had.
Speaker 3: So imagine everything they had and just completely annihilated any
Speaker 3: capacity to do war and govern the country because the
Speaker 3: first strike gives them great capability because they have surprise.
Speaker 3: So put that in China's place. China watched this and
Speaker 3: studied it. They know, so if they do a first strike,
Speaker 3: it will be everything they got.
Speaker 2: So since Russia came in and tried to just pitter
Speaker 2: patter in the beginning, if you will with Crimea in
Speaker 2: twenty twelve, fourteen to today, with what they're doing in
Speaker 2: February of last year, don't you think that they've kind
Speaker 2: of like decimated the idea of keeping any infrastructure if
Speaker 2: they wanted just to move in within a two week
Speaker 2: mindset and then just take over. Now they're just like
Speaker 2: laying it out flat and just like blowing the entire
Speaker 2: cities apart, and just no cause for concern on you know,
Speaker 2: civilians whatsoever, because they're all just you know, they just
Speaker 2: don't It seems like almost a genocide.
Speaker 3: Yeah, excellent comment. The Russians came in with a flawed idea.
Speaker 3: They were believing their own propaganda and Putin lives in
Speaker 3: an echo chamber, so it only takes one guy to
Speaker 3: make the decision. And Z lives in an echo chamber,
Speaker 3: so it only takes one guy to make a decision.
Speaker 3: There's very few people in the Communist Party in China
Speaker 3: that will say to Z, that's not a good decision. Ze,
Speaker 3: you shouldn't do that. I mean, he has purged anyone
Speaker 3: that he doesn't trust, and so everybody else is pretty
Speaker 3: much saying yes, sir, yes, sir. So the challenge we
Speaker 3: have here is that only one guy makes a decision,
Speaker 3: and he can make a very bad decision. For instance, historically,
Speaker 3: why did Hitler declare war on the United States after
Speaker 3: Pearl Harbor. He did not have to. Hitler, Germany was
Speaker 3: not obliged by any treaty with Japan. To declare war
Speaker 3: in the United States. But he did. He didn't even
Speaker 3: advise anybody. He didn't go to his generals and say, hey,
Speaker 3: what do you think. He just declared war on the
Speaker 3: United States. He was already at war with Russia, he
Speaker 3: was already at war with most with Britain. So he decides,
Speaker 3: just let's add another enemy. The guy was in this
Speaker 3: case and the general officers, the German generals, when he
Speaker 3: announced this at a party conference meeting, they went, what
Speaker 3: now we're at war with the US. Well that changed
Speaker 3: all sorts of things and they had no plans engaged,
Speaker 3: they had submarines out there, all these things that had
Speaker 3: to change. So the bottom line is that leaders can
Speaker 3: make bad decisions. We've seen that, and it is very
Speaker 3: probable that z the Emperor of China will decide to
Speaker 3: do something against Taiwan that will happen in the next
Speaker 3: twenty four to thirty six months. And if that happens,
Speaker 3: we are in a major conflagration. And that can all
Speaker 3: be by his miscalculation of him thinking he can win. Now,
Speaker 3: I believe that we have a very resilient and capable military,
Speaker 3: but we need to be more focused in order to
Speaker 3: deter the war. It is better to deter the war
Speaker 3: than it is to fight the war and then have
Speaker 3: to recoup all that. So if we're harder now, if
Speaker 3: we're more disciplined now, if we're stronger now, if we're
Speaker 3: more our focus now, we might be able to do that.
Speaker 3: And we look at what's happening, I mean with Ukraine,
Speaker 3: with Israel, Hamas, all of these things can easily, as
Speaker 3: we've talked about earlier.
Speaker 2: You know, everybody's pissed off right now, yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 2: so what.
Speaker 3: Does it take for us to see the rhino coming?
Speaker 3: What does it take for us to say, okay, we
Speaker 3: better get ready now. Now? In the United Kingdom, the
Speaker 3: British Commander in Chief of the British Army, he has said,
Speaker 3: he said last year, this is our nineteen thirty seven moment.
Speaker 3: We have got to get ready for this war. And
Speaker 3: he's been putting the British Army on a very strong
Speaker 3: war footing. And in fact, I've even had an opportunity
Speaker 3: to brief some members of the British Army in the
Speaker 3: Royal Artillery and they took an early brief from me,
Speaker 3: and then they took another one six months later and said,
Speaker 3: look at what we've done based on what you talked
Speaker 3: about to change our methods.
Speaker 2: Nineteen thirty seven was before what we called the World War,
Speaker 2: like you know it was, you know, I think Hitler
Speaker 2: was still talking to the boy Scouts about how to
Speaker 2: create the Hitler youth in nineteen thirty seven exactly, all right, and.
Speaker 3: You know the wart started on September first, nineteen thirty
Speaker 3: nine in Europe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's seeing the historical recreation happening here of what
Speaker 2: was going on. Yes, that's what he's talking about. I
Speaker 2: just want to be clear for my listener, Like we
Speaker 2: got to finish.
Speaker 3: I believe that we are in October nineteen forty one
Speaker 3: in a comparison.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So one of my friends, when I was talking about
Speaker 3: this yesterday, he says, well, what if you're wrong, John,
Speaker 3: What if none of this is going to happen and
Speaker 3: Ze really loves peace and everyone's going to be, you know,
Speaker 3: singing Kumbai a in a couple of years. And I said, well,
Speaker 3: that would be great, but wouldn't you rather be prepared
Speaker 3: rather than be unaware of victim?
Speaker 2: Correct? So, like, better to have it and not need
Speaker 2: it than to need it and not have it right,
Speaker 2: And what is the job of.
Speaker 3: The military and our government leadership, and that is to
Speaker 3: have the foresight to prepare for these kind of things
Speaker 3: so that we can either stop them from happening through
Speaker 3: de terns or mitigate them from disasters into quick victories.
Speaker 3: And we've got to win quickly because long wars are stupid.
Speaker 3: We learned that in the last twenty years.
Speaker 2: Jeez, yeah, jeez, sixty years, I mean, right, you know
Speaker 2: z long wars, you know, I mean none was like
Speaker 2: fifties through seventies. Sure, you know when it was really
Speaker 2: kicking off. And that's Korea. You know what a Your
Speaker 2: father was a Korean War veteran, yes, right, and he's
Speaker 2: at Arlington. Correct, let's give him a shout out.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. My father was a marine in the first
Speaker 3: Marine Division, fought to Korean War. And my mother was
Speaker 3: a WHAF in the Air Force during the Korean War
Speaker 3: Women's Air Force. And both of them have passed and
Speaker 3: they're arresting in Arlington, and I'm very proud of them.
Speaker 3: But what we have to think about today is how
Speaker 3: to in the past. The Korean War, the Vietnam War,
Speaker 3: those were wars abroad, and many of them can be
Speaker 3: explained as part of the Cold War. You know, in
Speaker 3: the Cold War, we were more prepared for actions than
Speaker 3: we are today. In the Cold War, we had a
Speaker 3: mobilization system for our military that we would mobilize with
Speaker 3: a draft service men and women, well service men in
Speaker 3: those days, you know, for warfare if we needed them.
Speaker 3: And we had a civil preparedness situation across the country
Speaker 3: where people took this relatively seriously. Today we have nothing today.
Speaker 3: If you said civil defense, they wouldn't know what to do.
Speaker 3: No one would know what you're talking about. There's no
Speaker 3: place to go, there's no end of this. Now. I'm
Speaker 3: not saying we should start building bomb shelters everywhere, but
Speaker 3: mobilizing the society, mobilizing the military, and then mobilizing the
Speaker 3: nation is crucial. And you see, as I said earlier,
Speaker 3: that the Israelis have been able to do a tremendous
Speaker 3: mobilization in less in days. They've been doing it in days.
Speaker 3: The Russians took to mobilize three hundred thousand men took
Speaker 3: half a year. What would it take for the United
Speaker 3: States to start mobilizing the nation and the military if
Speaker 3: we needed to?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: I hope we never need to. And one of the
Speaker 3: ways we will never need to is if we start
Speaker 3: thinking better and we start looking at how wars will
Speaker 3: be fought and then making sure that our enemies with
Speaker 3: a very focused message, know that if they try to
Speaker 3: attack us, we will not be easy targets. And right
Speaker 3: now we have too many easy targets.
Speaker 2: Let's play here. Let's say it happens here, and here
Speaker 2: we all are. We're Americans, and we've all got thirty
Speaker 2: rifles in our armory with the child locks coming off.
Speaker 2: And I got two arms, okay, and I got four kids,
Speaker 2: so that's eight arms, and I got thirty guns, okay,
Speaker 2: so I just need eight, okay, So let's go to
Speaker 2: the eight. So I got eight, and now we're defending
Speaker 2: the other twenty two arms from being taken from looters outside.
Speaker 2: So not only are we going to have people who
Speaker 2: are neighbors that we think our neighbors, but they're defending
Speaker 2: their eight or twenty eight other rifles and ammunition in
Speaker 2: their house. How do we calm? I mean, like, I
Speaker 2: guess if you go to like a religious group and
Speaker 2: you can have you know, a church email, but if
Speaker 2: email's gone, you can't reach out and communicate with your
Speaker 2: fellow brother and to say, hey, are you going to
Speaker 2: cover the watch to It's like, you know, are you
Speaker 2: gonna be on Ham radio? So my dad being an
Speaker 2: eighteen echo operator in a green Bereat team all radios,
Speaker 2: we grew up with Ham radios and all that CBS
Speaker 2: in my life. You know, it was just like I
Speaker 2: even Morse code, right, you know, how do we we
Speaker 2: would have to communicate together to not kill each other.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, you know, worst case scenario. You know,
Speaker 3: if you think about some of the things that are
Speaker 3: going on right now. We have an open porous border.
Speaker 3: Drug cartels are able to smuggle in anything they want
Speaker 3: to any place in the United States.
Speaker 2: Anything Philadelphia.
Speaker 3: The Russians have small nuclear weapons. They may have given
Speaker 3: some to Iran, we don't know. Okay, so you can
Speaker 3: start thinking through what the possibilities might be there if
Speaker 3: you wanted to distract and disrupt the United States. There's
Speaker 3: other ways to do so. But what you're talking about
Speaker 3: is the difference between an armed population and an unarmed population.
Speaker 3: An armed population just harder to take over and harder
Speaker 3: to control. The reason that it's harder to control is
Speaker 3: obvious and that's why some people don't want the Second
Speaker 3: Amendment to exist. But what's more important is that all
Speaker 3: of us need to develop human relationships with our neighbors
Speaker 3: and our communities. Human relationships make the difference in all cases.
Speaker 3: We work together to get things done. You don't do
Speaker 3: anything on your own. You may think you're a great
Speaker 3: individual operator and you're going to run off into the
Speaker 3: woods and survive, and you've played call of duty a lot.
Speaker 3: But the big thing is is that we operate. Human
Speaker 3: beings operate in teams, and that means you have to
Speaker 3: have leadership. And I wrote a book called Leadership Rising
Speaker 3: that you might enjoy. It talks about you. It talks
Speaker 3: about how you know who you are first and then
Speaker 3: you learn how to leave. So leadership is crucial and
Speaker 3: being able to form teams in your community to help
Speaker 3: people is important. For instance, we had this happen in
Speaker 3: my neighborhood and when we had a very had winter
Speaker 3: in Texas and we lost all power for about a week.
Speaker 3: It was on and off a couple of times, you know,
Speaker 3: so it wasn't a total loss of power. But we
Speaker 3: all got together as a community and we helped each
Speaker 3: other out and we talked to each other because there
Speaker 3: wasn't any electricity. You couldn't talk on the phone anyway.
Speaker 3: That's interesting. We didn't start running around looting each other's
Speaker 3: homes because we had relationships. And that's what you have
Speaker 3: to do in every case. And also have to remember that,
Speaker 3: you know we have America is exceptional for one reason only.
Speaker 3: We are not the best looking people on earth. We're
Speaker 3: not the most and we may be very rich, but
Speaker 3: it's not about the money. We have wonderful assets in
Speaker 3: the country, but that's not about it. It's because we
Speaker 3: decided to rule ourselves that was exceptional in the history
Speaker 3: of mankind. We decided that we wouldn't have a king
Speaker 3: or a czar or an emperor rule us. And because
Speaker 3: of that, the czars and the emperors don't look like
Speaker 3: us very much, because we ruined their whole idea of governance.
Speaker 3: Right therefore, they hate us. And so we have to
Speaker 3: underst stand that although we may be able to play
Speaker 3: nice with these people sometimes when they in fact want
Speaker 3: to be nice because it benefits them, we should never
Speaker 3: ever forget that our whole way of life, the whole
Speaker 3: idea of thinking that we govern ourselves no matter how
Speaker 3: unruly and undisciplined and sometimes messy. That is that we
Speaker 3: rule ourselves. Is one of the reasons why Putin and
Speaker 3: Ze and others can't stand us and can't have that
Speaker 3: kind of thinking in their countries.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: You saw what happened in Hong Kong when when for instance,
Speaker 3: people of Hong Kong were protesting and carrying American flags.
Speaker 3: Carrying American flags happened.
Speaker 2: Oh well, yeah, that's just that's what happened. That's what happened.
Speaker 3: I know, I know, And that's what that shot the
Speaker 3: Chinese to the heart because they saw that virus of
Speaker 3: freedom spreading across the nation, and so therefore they did things.
Speaker 2: You're right one hundred percent. A lot of people forget
Speaker 2: though that there was the huge uprising going on and
Speaker 2: they were not they were not standing down. They were
Speaker 2: willing to go, you know, fight for their freedom, and
Speaker 2: they wanted that freedom that we do have. They want
Speaker 2: to be able to you know, scroll and death scroll
Speaker 2: what they want on their Instagram or whatever. But then
Speaker 2: all of a sudden COVID boom, everything shut down, force
Speaker 2: shut down, and in China, forced shut down for a
Speaker 2: long time.
Speaker 3: Right. And one of the things that I think is
Speaker 3: crucial to understand in the big picture, is that the
Speaker 3: ability of human beings to rule themselves, even if it
Speaker 3: isn't the most efficient form of government, because the most
Speaker 3: efficient is a dictatorship, you know. But even though that is,
Speaker 3: it is something that we embrace and that many and
Speaker 3: many other people in the world do not. In the
Speaker 3: history of man, in the history of humankind, it is rare.
Speaker 3: It is so rare that that's what makes us exceptional.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you look at the history of humankind,
Speaker 3: there were a few places where there was you know,
Speaker 3: brief sort of glimmers of liberty ancient Greece, but you know,
Speaker 3: that's the kind of women weren't allowed to vote, blah
Speaker 3: blah blah, you know. And of course we went through
Speaker 3: the same thing where people had to earn the franchise
Speaker 3: over over the years Roman Republic for a while. But
Speaker 3: when you get down to it, human beings have been
Speaker 3: run by dictators, kings, czars, emperors, oligarchs, and religious leaders
Speaker 3: almost solely, you know, throughout the history of humankind. So
Speaker 3: therefore what we have is precious and we should think
Speaker 3: about it very carefully. So I'm dedicated to trying to
Speaker 3: get our military to see the changing methods of war
Speaker 3: as they are unfolding, and to be prepared with the
Speaker 3: foresight to be able to adapt, improvise, and overcome. They
Speaker 3: need to start urgently training now in a lot of
Speaker 3: different ways. You know, our command posts can no longer
Speaker 3: operate the way they used to. Our logistics systems can't
Speaker 3: work the way they used to. We used to mass
Speaker 3: a lot of stuff together in one place. When you
Speaker 3: do that, it'll get destroyed. All of those things need
Speaker 3: to change. That is a huge train change in training regimen,
Speaker 3: a huge change in thinking. And until the thinking changes,
Speaker 3: nothing changes.
Speaker 2: So with that, let's segue real quick. We have like
Speaker 2: about ten more minutes to capture this. I with recruiting today,
Speaker 2: and this is going to be a good pitch for them,
Speaker 2: because you know, I'm all about Hey, step inside the office,
Speaker 2: see if you want to take the next step down
Speaker 2: the career of the military, whatever branch that might be,
Speaker 2: does the So the recruiting probably needs to adapt to
Speaker 2: you know, that same concept to get strong individuals into
Speaker 2: you know, the military service here, right, we got to
Speaker 2: find the jobs for those flyers, those drone pilots, those
Speaker 2: types of individuals you know, the Marines are always going
Speaker 2: to have a pollup bar. They need that. That's their
Speaker 2: recruiting tool. Is that pollup bar, That's what they need
Speaker 2: to know. Can you lift this? Can you lift three
Speaker 2: hundred pounds? Just in case? You know, right, what's your thoughts.
Speaker 2: Let's like and you know, I want to be positive
Speaker 2: about getting people into the military, and like you had
Speaker 2: a great military career.
Speaker 3: Well, every day in the US Army for me was
Speaker 3: a blessing, even my worst days, and we had some
Speaker 3: bad days. But I will tell you that the great
Speaker 3: honor and privilege to serve with American soldiers, Marines, airman, sailors,
Speaker 3: Coast guardsmen. I didn't serve with any Space Force guys
Speaker 3: because it hadn't been created yet. I retired in two
Speaker 3: thousand and three, but God bless them. Our challenge is
Speaker 3: that we have got to get people to see the
Speaker 3: value of this. Being able to serve your nation means something.
Speaker 3: Our nation is exceptional. It is worth serving, it is
Speaker 3: worth being a part of and in your life. If
Speaker 3: you only exist for yourself, then your life is very small.
Speaker 3: Now you can exist for your family too, and that's
Speaker 3: very important and you should. But there's a nation out
Speaker 3: there that really needs your leadership. Now, I was blessed
Speaker 3: in that I was able to develop as a leader
Speaker 3: through the army. I went to West Point, I was
Speaker 3: airborne ranger. I was able to take command of tank
Speaker 3: companies and tank battalion in Korea, and a regiment, a
Speaker 3: cavalry regiment. I learned a lot about leadership and a
Speaker 3: lot about people. And I'm still learning. There's so much
Speaker 3: more to learn. Never stop learning. But what we have
Speaker 3: to do is we have to look at beyond just ourselves.
Speaker 3: If you think about life, you are a little bright
Speaker 3: dot in a sea of darkness. To your left is
Speaker 3: nothing but eternity when the universe started, if in fact
Speaker 3: it had a beginning, And to your right is nothing
Speaker 3: but until it ends, if it ever ends. You're this
Speaker 3: little dot. You're not even a blink in the eye.
Speaker 3: In fact, you're not even a blink of a blink
Speaker 3: of a blink. You know, in the whole scheme of
Speaker 3: this thing, what do you stand for? What would you
Speaker 3: fight for? What would you die for? Those are the
Speaker 3: questions you have to ask. And if you can answer
Speaker 3: those questions, you don't know who you are.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I believe is that my
Speaker 3: purpose in life is to develop leaders and inspire service.
Speaker 3: To develop leaders and inspire service. So what is your purpose?
Speaker 3: And most people can't answer that question. That's sad. We
Speaker 3: should spend time thinking about that so we can answer
Speaker 3: that question.
Speaker 2: I love it. I love it, and I feel like,
Speaker 2: you know, I've had you on here for about an hour.
Speaker 2: It's just flown by, and we could just go back
Speaker 2: and forth, and we didn't even get into the fact
Speaker 2: that your airborne ranger mechanized warfare awesomeness, you know, staring
Speaker 2: at led screens. Plus you were in during you know,
Speaker 2: nine to eleven when that whole thing. Let me ask
Speaker 2: you that, let's where were you at on nine to eleven.
Speaker 2: I mean, you were retiring in two thousand and three,
Speaker 2: so you had to be already probably full bird. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was a colonel and I was commanding a cavalry
Speaker 3: regiment at Ford Knox, Kentucky. And I will tell you
Speaker 3: that it hit us like a sledgehammer in the face,
Speaker 3: and we immediately went on full alert and started to
Speaker 3: protect the post because nobody knew what was going to
Speaker 3: happen next. And then we started doing all sorts of
Speaker 3: contingency planning, and then we started getting ready for the war.
Speaker 3: This is what the Israelis are going through right now,
Speaker 3: only it's ten times as powerful for them because they're
Speaker 3: such a small country.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, when you think about the size of Israel
Speaker 3: and that they've mobilized so many forces and nobody's complaining.
Speaker 3: They're all coming together, they're all doing it. They're all
Speaker 3: serving their nation. You know. We can have disagreements, that's
Speaker 3: what democracies are about. That's fine. You can strongly believe
Speaker 3: anything you want, as long as you don't hurt other people.
Speaker 3: Your dialogue is really important. But when we're striped, when
Speaker 3: we're hit by a terrorist organization or a dictatorship, we've
Speaker 3: got to figure out how to come together.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: We have to be smart in our response. We have
Speaker 3: to be very very good in our and focused in
Speaker 3: how we go about doing things. But we are facing
Speaker 3: challenges around the world right now that if we don't
Speaker 3: wake up and understand what's happening and gain some foresight,
Speaker 3: well it will hit us like a sledgehammer in the face,
Speaker 3: and then maybe second and third and fourth time, and
Speaker 3: we won't get up. We need to be able to
Speaker 3: see it coming and deflect the blow or maybe force
Speaker 3: the guy, the bully who has the sledgehammer to run
Speaker 3: away because he won't want to fight us. That's where
Speaker 3: we need to be. Now, that's what next war is about,
Speaker 3: you know. So this book, which just came out on
Speaker 3: the twenty eighth of September, is my attempt to educate
Speaker 3: as many people who will listen about what's coming and
Speaker 3: how we do this. It doesn't predict when the next
Speaker 3: war is going to be. I'm not a prognosticator. It
Speaker 3: talks about all the things that we need to prepare
Speaker 3: for in order to fight it if it comes, and
Speaker 3: maybe deter it and then fight it if it comes.
Speaker 3: So this is really really an effort by me to
Speaker 3: try to get as many people as possible involved in
Speaker 3: the dialogue. You don't write a book just to make money.
Speaker 3: I don't. I write it to get a discussion going,
Speaker 3: and get a dialogue going. I want people to think.
Speaker 3: I want them to read to lead.
Speaker 2: I love that. I love that, and it's inciting you.
Speaker 2: You just have to get it off your chest. You're
Speaker 2: just like, hey, you know, here's this, and like if
Speaker 2: you should write songs, I bet you could.
Speaker 3: My wife Chris Good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, then you can meet Taylor I had a Yeah,
Speaker 2: we love it, We love it.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: Listen, Colonel John Ansel a wonderful guest on Soft Rep Radio,
Speaker 2: and you're always welcome back with your perspective and your conversation.
Speaker 2: And my goal with the show is to show my
Speaker 2: listener that you can have a conversation with somebody, and
Speaker 2: you can have a deep conversation with somebody about very
Speaker 2: sensitive topics, but not be at each other's throats of XYZ.
Speaker 2: You know, I can hear your position, You can hear
Speaker 2: a position from anybody and just be open minded to it.
Speaker 2: It's kind of what you were referencing, you know about
Speaker 2: I don't know. Just try to be a good person.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and remember that you are not alone in this world.
Speaker 3: And what makes us human beings is our relationships with
Speaker 3: other people.
Speaker 2: That's right, and hey, and on that. If you're a
Speaker 2: veteran out there, I believe the VA has a crisis line.
Speaker 2: It's nine eight eight, all right, and if you feel
Speaker 2: like you're alone out there, just pick up the phone
Speaker 2: and call nine eight eight. The VA has a line.
Speaker 2: Ask him or hit me up on Instagram. I'll reply
Speaker 2: to you. I have done it before at three am,
Speaker 2: and you know you're not alone out there. And I
Speaker 2: like what he just said. And with that said, I've
Speaker 2: I've had the colonel for an hour. We're going to
Speaker 2: let him go. As soon as I mentioned Leadership Rising,
Speaker 2: what's the rest of the name of your book, Leadership Rising?
Speaker 3: Leadership Rising is a leadership book. Then I wrote a
Speaker 3: book called seven Seconds to Die, about the second to
Speaker 3: going to carabout war. Let me see, here's a copy
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 2: What a wonderful library.
Speaker 3: You have to thank you. This is all about the
Speaker 3: second to going to carabout war and how we can
Speaker 3: learn from that war. Seven seconds to Die because the
Speaker 3: an Armenian soldier said that when he saw the drones,
Speaker 3: he had seven seconds to run or die and just
Speaker 3: and of course next War is the one that just
Speaker 3: came out. And this book is again trying to get
Speaker 3: a dialogue about how we need to think and reimagine
Speaker 3: how we fight. So it's Next War reimagining how we fight.
Speaker 2: So I found it everywhere.
Speaker 3: I want to thank you for this great opportunity to
Speaker 3: talk to you and your listeners. You know, God bless
Speaker 3: our military and our nation and all the great things
Speaker 3: they stand for, and let's make it better every day.
Speaker 2: One dred percent, Sir. I am a steward in these
Speaker 2: shoes and all I could do is the best step
Speaker 2: forward every single day. And so I think if you're
Speaker 2: being on our show, I want everyone to go check
Speaker 2: you out at Amazon or wherever books are sold, go
Speaker 2: check out the colonel stuff and give them a comment
Speaker 2: and reply and leave a review on his book so
Speaker 2: that you know it can rise to the top because
Speaker 2: it needs to. And with that said, this is rad saying,
Speaker 2: check out the merch check out the book club for
Speaker 2: softwarep dot com. And thanks to Brandon Webb for always
Speaker 2: putting me behind the mic. And I'm saying peace, Who
Speaker 2: Army Strong
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Self Rep Radio