Four years into the war in Ukraine, two years into Ukraine developing cheap interceptors and we still don’t have these things. And being surprised by Shahed drone attacks, I think is unforgivable. That was the ultimate foreseeable event, given Iran exported these things to Russia. And the fact that large numbers of these things we used, we had to use five-year-old tactics and techniques rather than latest generation of $3,000 to $4,000 interceptors, was a gross failure of leadership and a real failure of learning and adaptation. Mick Ryan, School of War podcast.
I have been fortunate to be regularly invited onto the School of War podcast and have terrific discussions with the host, Aaron MacLean. Aaron is always a great conversationalist and a deeply knowledgeable interlocutor about war and a range of national security topics. He is also a good bloke.
In this podcast, we cover a range of subjects related to the ongoing Iran War. This includes:
The political objectives for the war, and strategy for achieving them
The performance of the United States military in the military campaign against Iran, and the American cooperation with Israel.
The application of AI in supercharging tactical and operational level military action.
The role and impact of decapitation operations.
The state of the NATO alliance where it goes after this war.
The failure to learn from the Ukraine War in the lead up to operations against Iran, particularly with regards to intercepting Iran’s Shahed drones.
The impact of the Iran War on nations in the Pacific, including Australia.
It was a thoroughly enjoyable discussion, and was recorded during my recent visit to Taiwan. The war in Iran was certainly a topic raised by many of my interlocutors there.
While there has been much to learn from the war in Ukraine, and I have written on this topic frequently over the last few years, the Iran war also provides a wide range of insights about effective strategy, economic coercion, national resilience, air defence, absorbing new era technologies and national will. We talk about many of these in the podcast.
You can listen to our full conversation at this link.
Enjoy!