From the Crows' Nest

Ken Miller [00:00:09]:
Welcome to from the Crows Nest. I'm your host, Ken Miller from the ssociation of Old Crows. It's great to be back here with you and I am pleased to have with me on the show today once again a friend and colleague, journalist, author, subject matter expert, AOC Board of Director Jeff Fisher. Fish, how are you doing? It's been a couple weeks since we chatted, but it's good to see you again.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:00:30]:
It has been a while. It's. It's good to see you as well. Everything out here in Europe's going splendidly, so. Yes, everything's good.

Ken Miller [00:00:37]:
Excellent. Well, that's why I wanted to have you on the show. There's been a lot going on in the news. Obviously we're going to get to a couple things about a defense show over there. There's a lot of talk about what's going on, Russian economy and partnerships between India, Russia, China, everything. So we're going to go global today and I want to have you on to help us catch up and keep pace with what's happening in the but you actually have the privilege of being the inaugural guest on the podcast that we are live streaming and with video. So now everyone gets to watch us as well as listen to us. So we'll see how this goes this first time.

Ken Miller [00:01:10]:
I'm sure we're going to mess this up a little bit, but I appreciate your willingness to be on camera and we'll try to keep things moving along. So with that, I thought we'd get started with you were over in Ukraine a couple weeks ago or last week and at a defense conference over there. I wanted to ask you what was the defense conference and was this the first year that they were holding it or what was the talk of the town over there?

Jeffrey Fischer [00:01:34]:
Sure. So first of all, it's awesome to be the first guy live on on video and I broke out my Old Crow shirt which for for those who are attending this year's conference, if you're looking for me, this will be the attire at the conference. So that's good.

Ken Miller [00:01:50]:
And also since we're all we're promoting old crows, we're getting the branding going.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:01:54]:
Branding, labeling and marketing. It's all, it's all thing you have.

Ken Miller [00:01:56]:
To get me one of the shirts though.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:01:58]:
It's. They weren't expensive. They're from now I will tell you it's 100% polyester. So it's not the most comfortable shirt in the world.

Ken Miller [00:02:05]:
No. Well, so.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:02:06]:
So anyway, no, this isn't the first year for the conference in Ukraine. It's actually held in Lviv, Ukraine, which is actually in the. In the far southwest corner. Lviv's really only been kind of attacked twice, so it's. And it's an artsy town. Very Hungarian, Austrian, Hungarian empire. Beautiful city. Actually.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:02:25]:
It's one of the towns that was not. Was not destroyed during World War II. So you still see a lot of. A lot of old architecture. It's very beautiful. Tons of energy, lots of nightlife. There's. There's a midnight curfew.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:02:38]:
So for those who imbibed in part, partook in the. The drinking at. Late at night at about 11:50, all the bartenders run around with plastic cups and push you out and make you take your drink home. And it's quite. Not that I was there, but it's quite entertaining, I've heard. But on a more serious note, right, so. So this is hosted by an entity called Brave One. And Brave One is kind of the conduit between the Ukrainian government, defense industry in Ukraine, as well as defense industry outside.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:03:08]:
And it's. It expedites bringing forward capability and capacity into the battle space. Right. So it's. It's pretty cool. And then they've done this for a couple of years, and this year it was so big, they had 5,000 participants show up that they. And. And what's.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:03:25]:
What's interesting is they don't even announce the venue until the day before because it's in Ukraine. Right? So you don't even know where you're going. You just get a hotel in Ukraine and kind of hope you're close. It was at the soccer stadium. It was so big. It was hosted in the soccer stadium. Right. So it was monster.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:03:44]:
And they're now.

Ken Miller [00:03:45]:
Now, this was just. This was attendees. There were. I would imagine there's no exhibitors or.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:03:50]:
It'S just briefing tons of exhibitors. It's almost all exhibitors. Right. And yes, there are briefings. We had some phenomenal lectures. One of the ones that I found most interesting, and I will admit, before I say this, before I share it, it's not palatable to probably many peaceful Americans. But the Ukrainian military, to encourage their drone pilots to actually be better, they've created pseudo, a video game. So you get points, right, as a drone operator for what you blow up and what you kill, if you destroy.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:04:29]:
If you damage a Russian tank, you get 10 points. If you kill a Russian tank, you get 20 points. If you kill a Russian soldier, you get six points. And there's points for everything. And all of this is verified by other video and other ISR assets and stuff like that. So you can't really lie. And they post which units has the. So it's a competition between units, right? And then with the points, you get to go into the UAV market space and figure out what UAVs you want to buy with your points.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:05:02]:
So those who are actually being very effective are rewarded more and they get to go do more. And it, like I said, if it was a video game, it'd be very cool, but this is actually real life. So it's, it's a little, some people find it distasteful.

Ken Miller [00:05:15]:
So it is a competition that is, it's not, it's not a virtual training. It's.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:05:19]:
Oh, no, this is. If you, if you blow up a tank, right? And if you blow up a tank and like two Russians get out and they die, you get 20 points for the tank and you get 12 points for the two dead rush. So you get 32 points.

Ken Miller [00:05:32]:
Okay, so I, I know when we had you on the show, I think it was last time back in early August before the event, you, you talked a lot about how Ukraine was really becoming the test bed for a lot of advanced technology. You know, because companies could come in and just set up in Ukraine and then, right, there's the front line and that it creates a training ground or an experimentation ground. And of course, then there's training on the other end. I think that that's an interesting link is you can experiment with all the technology, but how do you train your pilots and war fighters over there? Obviously they're fighting, but you need to give them, you need to keep that training up so that the next time up they can adapt to everything that's happening. So is this a kind of a new approach or has this been something that you've seen along front lines in conflicts in the past in terms of how do you train in real world environments while a conflict is going on in a situation like this? I mean, curious your take of whether or not this is a new trend in training or if it's, you know, Ukraine specific.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:06:29]:
It's actually a, a continuing trend, but there's, there's a significant shift. Right? So if you, if you go back in history to like 1999 and you go look at the, at the, at the United Allied Force, the war in, in Serbia, right. General Jumper was the chief of staff at the Air Force at the time. And he was continually approached, right, by guys who would carry suitcases in his office and go, I've got the key. The Tool that will win the war. I've got the Wunderwaffen right here in this case and they were all SAP and they were restricted. And it was, he's like, how am I even going to get this in the battle space? It's too classified. So there's always someone who wants to bring something to the market.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:07:13]:
Specs. Why I say it's 100, 180 out or 180 degrees out from that. Excuse me. Is what you're seeing coming into Ukraine has very little to do with high levels of classification or sophistication or advanced weaponry. I'm not joking. It's, it's on par with like putting shotgun barrels on quadcopters to do counter drone capability. And it, and these can go on to any drone, right? They can affix to any drone. And the four barrel shotgun, two facing forward and two facing aft.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:07:48]:
They fire simultaneously to mitigate and eliminate any kind of recoil, right? So you shoot forward, shoot back at the same time, you eliminate recoil. Keep your, your shot pattern clean is on par with like 300. I asked the guy in Lviv, I'm like okay, so how much is this? And he's like the gun or the uav? I'm like well okay, how about the gun? It's like okay, four barrels, mountable, $300, right? So like okay, I'd like some, I'd like a couple guns, right? There was a entity there that has a surface to surface missile that's at trade readiness level four or five. That is going to cost $15,000 a copy. That's with fuel and with the bomb in the missile. And it can go 400km, right? So when you start talking like this and you start seeing things where really low end tech that can be produced in volume and mass. The war is transitioning to that. It's fascinating is that in response to.

Ken Miller [00:08:50]:
Just how chaotic and congested the spectrum is that we don't even know how to operate with fidelity in the spectrum. So they're trying to bring it back down to that kind of low tech, low level engagement because that's what's available. Or is this a part of something larger than, than that?

Jeffrey Fischer [00:09:08]:
It's a little bit of both. So if I'm going to build an ATACM, right, that can go 300km and I'm going to put EP capability into it and I'm going to counter GPS denial into it and all these really expensive things so that I can, I can try and maximize the chance that this hits my target. I'M going to pay a million bucks. That's how much one ATACM costs. Okay, well how about I eliminate all of that EP and all of that craziness and all the expensive INS and navigational systems and I just give it, no kidding, like a Garmin GPS with some simple avionics and I launch a hundred of them. Okay, 100 is going to cost what, 15,000, 150,000. What? 1.5 million for 100?

Ken Miller [00:09:59]:
Let you do the math.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:10:00]:
Yeah, 1.5 million for 100 of them. And, and, and for 100 I'm, I'm, I'm gonna hit something, right? Yeah. So they're, they're kind of just going away from trying to be creative and, and, and high tech in the EW world and they're going to low tech solutions. This is in line with what we're seeing as well with the, with the fiber optic cable, Right. It's just too hard to try and operate it at the high end of electronic attack and electronic protecting. Why don't I just fly with a spool of fiber optic cable to cost me a thousand bucks and I know that I'm going to hit the object that I want to hit.

Ken Miller [00:10:31]:
But then you showed the picture of the like over in Ukraine where like there were fiber optic cables just everywhere, right. It solves some problems, but it also then creates other operational problems. So it's not always the most attractive way of fighting, I guess you could say.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:10:44]:
Sure. And, and what's the other thing that's interesting? Right, so let's say you're a, a Ukrainian four man team operating and a drone comes in with fiber optic and it comes in, it blows up near you. If you race out to where that blew up and you grab the fiber optic cable that remains. Right. So it's some, there's going to be some cable that remains. If you plug a light into the back of it really fast, that light goes all the way back to the operator, right. So you immediately know where the operator was, was operating from. And if you have drones up at that point, you can kill them sometimes.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:11:21]:
Again, war is unsavory. But the truth of the matter is we, Ukraine and Russia can create a lot of drones, right? They're getting very good at drones. The most expensive part of that weapon system is the pilot, right. Just like the F35 Pilot or FDR 22 Pilot. So if you can start eliminating pilots, this becomes a significant problem for, for Russia and for Ukraine. What I see happening, and this is actually really interesting, right, is if you Want to try and protect your pilot and you want to avoid jamming. What if you use RF energy from the controller to a hub that's closer to the battle space and from that hub you use fiber optic cable? Because if they come back in and blow up the hub, okay, then I'll just create a new hub. So I think that's probably where you're going to see the next thing come on to.

Ken Miller [00:12:11]:
So this conference happened a couple weeks ago. I know that there was some talk in the news here in the US about kind of an apparent shift maybe in rhetoric at least from the Trump administration where kind of shifting more toward. Yeah, okay, Ukraine had, can reclaim, can reclaim some land or that's, that might be a shift in how we're focusing. Was that any, was that a conversation topic over there? What was the sentiment in terms of not just European but US Support for the ongoing war effort? How has that changed here as we go into the fall this year?

Jeffrey Fischer [00:12:49]:
Yeah, so I was, I was very lucky, right. At one of the nights I got a last minute invitation to attend an embassy event where the US Defense attache was. It's a, it's a one star, which is pretty high, right? I mean for, for a defense attache. And I got to meet the ambassador, or at least the acting ambassador. We call it the charge Aid affairs. Basically number two in charge because the ambassador wasn't there. And it was interesting to hear them talk, but it was actually more interesting to hear the Americans in the room. And there were a bunch of them, right? There was, there was a retired two star Special Forces army gentleman who walked up to me.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:13:27]:
He's like, hey, I know you. I said, okay. And we started talking. I said, where do you live in Ukraine? He's like, no, no, I live in Tampa. I just came out to check it out because I wanted to see the conference. I'm like, o. And, and I'll tell you that they're the, the number of low end. And when I say low end, I'm, I'm talking, I'm not talking about like the Spike marlin or Marlin spike or the, the Blackstone investor groups.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:13:52]:
I'm talking about guys who are probably representing investor groups between 3 and 5 million that were out there looking at new and future technology that's going to be on the market space. And because these things are selling. I'll give you if, if I can roll with that, I'll give you another quick one. Right? So there's a, there was a demining vehicle, right? It was like the size of a quad that you'd buy from like Honda four wheeled thing unmanned. And it, it could de mine two hectares in a day, right. It, it could hit and go over anti personnel mines without ever having a problem. And it could hit up to two or three anti tank mines before the front thrasher, which kind of just punches the ground right before the front thrasher needed to be fixed. The Thrasher costs $700 for replacement.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:14:44]:
The total vehicle right costs $20,000. They sold over a thousand last year to Ukraine and that while the number of how many Ukraine's order for next year is classified, they can't tell me but they said it's well more than that. Right. So you're, you're looking at A, a $2 million company in revenue that has orders out for the next you as long as the war's going. And but more importantly when you start looking at something like that, well there's mines all over the world. So you start asking well how many of you sold to the United nations or the NGOs that want to do demining in all these different places. They say the Ukrainian government will not sell one vehicle, one to, to a company outside. We, they're buying everything.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:15:27]:
And of course as an investor you just start salivating on that going oh my God, this is, it's almost impossible to not make money on this. So.

Ken Miller [00:15:37]:
Well, it's interesting how you see it in with the trend toward unmanned systems. Things are there's a, an intentional pursuit to keep the cost per unit down across the board for everything because everything is expendable or there's a, a realization that we're now the only way you can fight if the spectrum is so chaotic that you can't operate a lot of your high tech systems is, is through a war of attrition. And so the more you can buy for lower cost, the more you can put out there and then the more you can afford that the attrition. So is this something that is in your estimation unique to Ukraine, Russia because of geography, politics and so forth? Or is this a trend that can be extended or expected in other parts of the world where there's other conflicts, Indo Paycom region throughout, you know, Asia and so forth. Is it or is this more isolated?

Jeffrey Fischer [00:16:34]:
No, it's not isolated. And I've been thinking a lot about this right and, and, and unfortunately and I love talking to you about this even if it's not in front of thousands of people listening AOC it I like to sit down with you and, and can and kind of Lament what, what does this mean? You know, what does it all mean for the spectrum? And, and I, I haven't really formulated out to where this is like ready for prime time. But I'll give you some of the kind of the, the bigger picture thoughts I have, right? I look at the air domain right now and air domain, Air domain prior to the Ukrainian war was pretty well defined, right? Doctrine was doctrine and, and operations and, and you know, conventional warfare and fighters and bombers and offensive, counter or defensive. All the mission sets were there, right? We knew how to do the, the air, the air campaign assets, right? Cool. And then all of a sudden drones came along. And not only they came along, they came in in the thousands. And you now hear people like General Breedlove or General Jumper or General Mosley. I mean people that I.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:17:42]:
These are former chiefs of staff of the United States Air Force who I hold on extremely high regard. Like these are really smart guys, right? And they're saying things like, you know, rear echelons are no longer sanctuaries for high value assets, right? Your tanker base or your AWACS base or your rivet joint base is just as susceptible to attack as something on the front line. Because a guy with a car could pull up, open his trunk and five UAVs can come out the back and destroyed your, your assets, right? So we have this ridiculous disruptive technology that's coming, right? And it's because it's of low cost, right? It's these low cost drones that can come in and do just do crazy stuff. Okay, Break, break. Think about the spectrum. The spectrum has gone higher and higher and higher in cost for EP and electronic attack. Look at the new compass call that's out there, right? I mean this is a really expensive airplane, but it does some really cool electronic attack in the, in the common worlds, right? This just isn' you know, jam the signal noise ratios and I'm gonna, I'm gonna be here, right? This is really smart stuff, but it's really expensive. Well, what happens when the cost of anti radiation capability, right, like a harm AGM88 drops from 350,000 a piece to 2,000 a piece.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:19:06]:
What happens when any, every transmitter is now vulnerable to be destroyed? Everyone. And no matter where it is, whether it's on the front lines or in the back echelons or in space, it doesn't matter. All I have to do is create a seeker that I could put on a drone now. And, and as long as that seeker is programmed to go find out, find the right frequency And PRI and PRF and pulse density and all the, all those parameters that are out there. It's going to hit it. And, and now it's not a luxury that everyone has that they can just transmit all they want in the spectrum. You're going to have to become judicious and you're going to figure out how do you balance that? We're not there yet, but I don't think we're very far away.

Ken Miller [00:19:48]:
So not being very far away here in the US and you're talking, you're coming to us from Austria. Of course, for those that might not have had the chance to tune in to previous episodes with you on the show.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:19:59]:
I'm neutral. I'm neutral.

Ken Miller [00:20:00]:
You're neutral. And you know, but obviously you're, you follow what's going on with the US And I had the pleasure of being on Capitol Hill last week. We had a number of congressional meetings and so forth. But, you know, today is September. Well, we're recording this on September 29, end of fiscal years tomorrow. We are at this point. For those who might be following aoc, I've said numerous times in years past, like, don't worry, they'll come up with a deal. You know, don't.

Ken Miller [00:20:25]:
There's not a shutdown concern this year. There's a legit shutdown concern. And there was some guidance brought out by the administration that I found was kind of interesting where in the event that there's a shutdown, and again, there could be an 11th hour change here, but it looks like we're moving that direction more so than in years past. But their instructions were it provides DoD guidance for identifying those missions and functions that may continue to be carried out in the event of a shutdown. So obviously when there's a shutdown, everything stops from the federal government. However, active duty military, they're not furloughed. There are certain emergency operations and functions that have to continue. The document that they put out identified in order of priority.

Ken Miller [00:21:11]:
And I found this an interesting one. I wanted to get your take on this order priority and what is missing or what how maybe that is in effect. But number one, operations to secure the border is the number one function that will continue. Middle east operations. Golden dome and then depot maintenance, ship building and critical munitions. Nowhere in there is Ukraine, Russia, other potential conflict areas. I, I found it very interesting by what it wasn't including, but also a lot of reliance still on the big ticket stuff which we were talking about. You know, no one's paying high prices for big systems.

Ken Miller [00:21:54]:
These as much these days, they're looking for that smaller attributable capability. And yet we're, you know, the idea is we're going to be focusing on some of these other big defenses items. So what is your take in terms of how should the U.S. prioritize, in your opinion? This is your neutral. How should the US Be prioritizing these critical missions? Because if we prioritize wrong, we're going to miss out on some of the trends that are happening out there. So how should we be monitoring is what, what are some of the critical questions we should be asking as we go into a shutdown or possible shutdown in terms of how the US has to position itself in this new crazy global environment we have?

Jeffrey Fischer [00:22:37]:
Yeah. So I didn't know that those are the priorities. It's, it's a little disappointing, but, but not surprising.

Ken Miller [00:22:43]:
It literally just came out like an hour ago before.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:22:46]:
So, look, living in Europe, I, I have the, the blessing and the curse to see things. And I'm forced to see things through a lens that's not necessarily always American. Right. And like I said, it's a blessing and a curse. It just depends on the issue. There's been some very interesting things going on over here when we talk about defense markets, right? The, I just met with a friend of mine from Lockheed Martin who would openly confess in closed rooms that Lockheed Martin is, is having challenges with selling F35s in Europe right now, right? That, that, you know, that they've got Spain basically coming out saying that they're waffling. You've got some other issues. You have Canada now, who's on their second time coming around.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:23:27]:
And I know Canada's not Europe. I'm just talking about porn sales, right? That the perception of the United States, that the current administration is tarnishing. Whether you like the current administration or not. That, that. That's not the point. Right. I'm not saying it's good or a bad thing, just saying that's kind of tarnished. And it's not just the United States, right.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:23:42]:
I mean, there's a lot. Israel has the same problem, right? The, the Israeli Hamas war has gone on for far too long. And you've got people really entrenching in Europe and taking sides. And those sides don't necessarily always align to Israel, and there's a lot of people who don't like Israel as well. So. And these are two big defense markets, right? You've got iai, you've got elta, you've got, you know, you get all the American ones. So they're, they're having challenges and I don't think it's as bad in the short term. Maybe if it's long term I'm going to be concerned, but in the short term I'm not so concerned about.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:24:18]:
Right. I'll land on this issue, right? So one of my good friends is a two star, he just retired out of, out of acquisition and contracting and that, that whole world, right? And I was telling them, I said, I think there's really going to be a disruptive force when the war in Ukraine ends because you've got all these low end technologies that were feeding the fight that are still going to be looking for customers and there's going to be a bunch of them now in the United States and in Europe to want to buy low tech battle proven right capabilities for counter drone or whatever it is. And you know, this is really going to put pressure on the bigs, right? It's going to, you know, and he said, no, it's not right. He goes, the bigs are going to walk in there with a wad of cash and he's going to buy all those capabilities. After they buy all those capabilities, they're going to sell them and then they're going to make money. So it's completely fine. It's like I'm really, really happy. There's a lot of innovation going on and it's great for Ukraine.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:25:12]:
But I think at the end of the day, when the war's over, you're going to see Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop, Raytheon, all of them walking in with big suitcases, finding the capabilities that they really like, buying those and buying the, and then building them in the United States and hopefully building them at a price point where it's similar to what the Ukrainians were paying and hopefully maybe bring down that defense budget a little bit.

Ken Miller [00:25:37]:
Yeah, it's concerning. Given everything that's going on in the world, our standing in the world could be impacted, I should say, by this government budget shutdown. I mean, what should happen is more difficult question to answer and it's not the topic of the show, so we won't get into that. It's just a reality though, that when you have uncertainty about where the money's coming from, from a government funding perspective, it has cascading consequences that oftentimes impact, you know, a lot of more niche capabilities like ew. We're always having to kick the can down the road because we miss milestones because the money's not getting down to us. Because it's delayed through all the cr. So it's, it's something that we, we're very concerned here at aoc. How it's going to turn out this year, I literally have no idea.

Ken Miller [00:26:25]:
And I think that that's interesting. It's a different dynamic than in years past. Usually you can read in the tea leaves, oh, yeah, there's going to be a deal this year. I don't see it so related to that. There was an article I was reading about a recent gathering, Shanghai Cooperation earlier this month between Chinese President Xi, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un from North Korea, and Modi, the Prime Minister from India. A lot of it's, you know, dog and pony, pr Everything. But the, the article's talking about this emerging multipolar world where it's less of a US as the global leader. It's a multipolar world.

Ken Miller [00:27:06]:
How has that relationship between China, Russia, include India and then of course, North Korea? How has that kind of, that partnership impacted, in your perspective, the global security environment? And how, how does that play out in terms of European defense, US Alliances and partnerships both in Europe and into paycom?

Jeffrey Fischer [00:27:29]:
It's not good, right? I would tell you that I, you know, when we look at.

Ken Miller [00:27:34]:
But is it any different than. Is it more or less just for show, or is there something really substantive in terms of their partnership that points to a. Not a new world order, but a new way of thinking of the, of global leadership?

Jeffrey Fischer [00:27:47]:
The biggest problem that those Axis alliance, if you will. Right. The Axis powers, modern axis powers have is they're so fundamentally culturally different. Right. When, when the United States built alliances with NATO and others. I mean, we're, we're relatively aligned. Right. You know, our, our traditions and our values and our cultures are relatively aligned.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:28:09]:
Minus Turkey, which. It's an outlier. Right. But they're the ones who wanted to join. You know, when you have different value bases and, and all these different things, it's, it's really hard for them to come together. Right. That's a good thing for us. The, the information that I'm seeing over here that's somewhat concerning.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:28:28]:
Right. Is you've got. No kidding. North Korea kind of pushing a lot of chips in to help Russia in the war. And I'm, I'm even talking about Manpa, right. I mean, yeah, North Korea is losing soldiers big time, but. And, and they're also sending a lot of weapons and they're. And they can build weapons, right.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:28:45]:
If you're only feeding people rice and then taking all the money, you spend a Lot of money on weapons. So that's a concern. And what I'm seeing now on the backside of that deal, and I haven't. This hasn't confirmed, I'm just saying I saw it in the news, was that there's the possibility that, that Russia or Putin has shared nuclear capable sub technology with North Korea, which now becomes. That's going beyond just the rhetoric and the dog and pony. Right, Right. And so that's concerning that. It's not like Kim Jong Un needs another nuclear capability in the nuclear triad.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:29:17]:
Mm.

Ken Miller [00:29:18]:
So where does this place U.S. leadership? You know, in terms of our existing partnerships, both in Indo, Paycom region, Australia, Philippines, obviously Japan, South Korea. AOC is going to have an AOC Asia summit in October. You know, there'll be some. Some leaders there talking about that. So how. What should the message be from the EW community? Because any fight, any conflict that happens in the region is going to start and end with how we approach the spectrum. But also from a more political, global perspective, what does that mean for US Leadership? How should we be engaging in that region to either confront, combat or otherwise interfere with that partnership? Maybe interferes are a little strong of a word, but I.

Ken Miller [00:30:10]:
You don't want it to go unchecked.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:30:12]:
True. I will say this minus the. The issue I just brought up between North Korea and Russia. Usually what happens is, is these, these four gentlemen and their. Their ambitions start to outpace another guy's ambitions, and then they. They butt up against each other and there's a friction point. Then it kind of falls apart until they can come back together again. Right.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:30:35]:
What the US Administration is, is giving them a common enemy, the common foe, and that creates problems. But if I was gonna. I mean, if I wanted to talk about ew, right? And what is the message I want to take for ew? It's. It's not necessarily just the Asian theater, Right. I think, I think big picture, you know, if I. If I was in an elevator with the chairman or with. With the sec. Dev.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:30:56]:
Sec. War, whatever, whatever your. Whichever way you want to lean on that one. Right. Is. You know, when I joined the Air Force and I became an ewo, I was pretty amazed because the chairman of the Joint Chiefs said that the nation that controls and manages the spectrum, the best will be the next. They will be victorious. Right.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:31:19]:
That. That's what it's. That's what the chairman said. I'm like, that's awesome. And I've spent 30 years, right. I've spent 30 years watching EW programs get cut Underfunded milestones broken, delays destroyed, blah blah, blah. And now you've got a new vice chairman, right, who came out just what, two weeks ago and said, dude, we got to go all in on, on electronic warfare. And I'm just like, you know, fool me once and, and when I say that, here's the here, here's where it's where it's really frustrating, right? The United States Air force announced, actually DoD announced about a month ago that it was going to kill the E7 wedgetail program.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:32:05]:
Doesn't matter how you feel about the E7. I'm just saying that that's what happened. AEW, right, is a capability, it's a enabling capability like electronic warfare. Right. So what happened? You had five or six former four star Air Force generals have a summit publicly coming out pleading with the administration not to kill the E7 and the E7's back. That's great. That's the kind of advocacy that EW needs from those not in the EW community. The air battle managers got it from.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:32:44]:
Now I get it. Air Battle management's important to a fighter guy. I'm on board. I understand that. But it, but it is an enabling capability. So when something gets cut out of EW or you know, Compass Call is going to go away with no replacement before the EA 37, thank God, right. Where was that summit, right, of former four stars going, holy cow, dude, we need electronic attack or we're going to get our butt spiked. And you don't see it, you've never seen it.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:33:11]:
And, and that's the problem. It's nice to have chairmans and vice chairman say things that make me feel good, but making me feel good doesn't help, right? We need more.

Ken Miller [00:33:23]:
So with that, I, I want, I want to respect your time. Is there anything else kind of that's been on your mind? Obviously, coming out of this defense show, we have a really crazy fall coming up here. You know, we have a couple shows that we're going to see each other at a lot of, you know, talk about different priorities to jump in on anything else that we need to be paying attention to over the next few several weeks, months as we close out this, this year in terms of our global EW capabilities.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:33:53]:
Yeah. So I think a couple things, right, Most of our listeners, right, they, they love ew, whether they're from the industry side or they're, they're from the military side. So I would, I would tell them this. Looking forward to the AOC convention coming up in December there, you know, there's a lot of people who probably won't go, and that's fine. But there are people who will go. And if you're going to go or you want or you're, or you're interested, I think this next one's going to be extremely interesting. And the reason I think it's going to be interesting, other than my shirt.

Ken Miller [00:34:24]:
Is that it definitely has some style to it.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:34:28]:
It will. I mean, and these things are supposed to be fun too. So I'm trying to make it fun.

Ken Miller [00:34:31]:
Well, we'll get you up on stage and you can wear it there. Wear it there and perfect.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:34:35]:
You've got, you've got a lot of digress. You've got a lot of good US Defense industry companies out there, right. Raytheon, bae, all the, all these companies out there. And you now have nations in Europe coming forward saying that we're going to spend 5% of our GDP, right. So it's not just fighting for that, fighting for money in the US Defense budget anymore, Right. It's actually going out and fighting for, and trying to lure customers from the European market space, regardless of who's in, in the administration right now. Right. I mean, yeah, there's the distaste, but if you're the only entity out there and you've got a moat around your product, then you're the only guy selling it.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:35:17]:
So chasing those dollars, I think are going to be extremely exciting watching how that happens. We look at what Europe has the capability to do beyond just the money, right. And how do you build this out? Ew sigint Electronic attack, Electronic protect. For decades, when NATO would do its own self assessments, these were the mission sets that NATO Europe was always underfunded and under resourced in, right. And they relied way too heavily on the United States. Now they've done some stuff for Sagan. Let's, let's be honest. They've, they've got Global Hawk and they've got Predators and they've got some things that do sinking stuff.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:36:01]:
But now we're talking and they're getting into electronic attack, right? So we're seeing this really cool trend. You've got Italy bought, you know, for fms, foreign military sales for a compass, a new compass called who would have thought that we would sell that technology? But, but someone in the Secretary of the Air Force International affairs who made the right decision say, look, we can't keep saying we want Europe to step up to the plate on electronic attack and electronic warfare and then, and then not sell them anything we get, we got to give them it. So, so there's going to be a lot of money chase there. Right? This is going to be interesting to see how those nations out there or how those companies, excuse me, out there, try and lure in customers, especially in that European defense market space. And, and you know, the Germans are coming, the Austrians are coming, the Italians are coming, the French are coming. You know, what, what are you going to do to try and capture some of that, some of that business market space? I find that interesting.

Ken Miller [00:36:54]:
Well, Jeff, that's all the time that we have. Really appreciate your insight, as always into these topics. It's always great to speak with you because it's hard to always make out exactly how we should be thinking on some of these trends that we see in the news and, and talking to you on the ground and you're, you're there and you're talking to people directly and you, and you give great insight. So I really appreciate you taking time to join me once again here on from the Crow's Nest. I will see you in at AOC convention, I know, at least in December, if not before. So thank you for taking time to join me here on, on the show.

Jeffrey Fischer [00:37:24]:
Always my pleasure, buddy. It's good to see you.

Ken Miller [00:37:26]:
All right, well, that will conclude this episode of From the Crows' Nest. As always, please take a moment to review and share the show. Also, we are on Instagram and YouTube so you can check us out on those channels as well. And if you want to learn more about AOC, go to our website at crows.org. that's it for today. Thanks for listening.