BBCNEWS — The Security Brief LIVE
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[00:00:00] for security
[00:00:02] security
[00:00:02] live the brief
[00:00:07] tonight
[00:00:10] a on the brief we are leaving our usual home to bring you into the conversation, we're
[00:00:13] talking Russia, Ukraine and the
[00:00:16] of
[00:00:16] a revolution in warfare that we have seen these past few years, when the security
[00:00:20] brief first launched it was tanks and trenches, today it's
[00:00:24] drones and artificial intelligence, we'll take a deep look into the
[00:00:28] cutting edge technology
[00:00:29] of that is... changing the front lines and that threat doesn't stop at the
[00:00:32] battlefield: sabotage, cyber
[00:00:35] of attacks, disinformation will show you how much is already happening
[00:00:39] in NATO
[00:00:41] a countries. some leaders in Europe say we're already at war, but how
[00:00:45] close really is Russia to our
[00:00:47] of doorstep? so what comes next? are we prepared and is this new
[00:00:51] shape of
[00:00:51] of warfare the blueprint for the future? they are big questions,
[00:00:55] but we have a stellar cast to answer them. don't go anywhere,
[00:00:59] this...
[00:01:00] of is the security brief
[00:01:01] live,
[00:01:17] of of
[00:01:25] of goodness of me,
[00:01:26] of they all came.
[00:01:30] Thankfully, very good evening uh, a warm welcome to our live
[00:01:34] studio audience here at BBC Headquarters
[00:01:37] of of and everyone watching on TV, iplayer and on
[00:01:40] YouTube. We are really pleased to be doing this tonight,
[00:01:43] particularly in mind of everything that we've heard this last
[00:01:47] weekend. It is the first time that we've done this in front of audience, and I
[00:01:51] think that's a mark of how the security brief is growing, in fact so
[00:01:54] of fast that we have had some 10 million views on
[00:01:58] YouTube in the last six. months
[00:02:04] of alone, so a really big thank you
[00:02:08] everyone who's taken an interest and who has supported us,
[00:02:12] of tonight we have gathered for you some
[00:02:13] of the best known faces in BBC News, our chief international
[00:02:17] correspondent Liz Dusedi's here,
[00:02:19] of alongside of
[00:02:20] -
[00:02:26] alongside that our Europeeditor Katia Adler, welcome to you.
[00:02:34] of of In Ukraine we have correspondent Dan Johnson who is just back from the
[00:02:38] front line, he is live for us tonight in
[00:02:41] Keeve.
[00:02:47] a Our guests on stage tonight include the officer, the
[00:02:50] of British officer who is running a 20 nation drone
[00:02:54] coalition in support of
[00:02:57] a Ukraine. Brigadier Steunase.
[00:03:03] in "we
[00:03:07] are really honored to have Dr. Fiona Hill, the former
[00:03:10] in white house Russia advisor to Donald
[00:03:14] of Trump.
[00:03:19] We have combat experience too. The man in your screen is Zayne Senat.
[00:03:23] He's a retired fighter pilot who until just few
[00:03:27] months ago was in the cockpit
[00:03:29] of the..."
[00:03:39] Thank you to Ukraine's deputy ambassador Edward Fesco who is
[00:03:43] with us this
[00:03:44] evening
[00:03:50] and also tonight we're going to hear from some key Ukrainian figures
[00:03:54] of like here who's come all the way from his company forms
[00:03:58] part
[00:03:59] of the... advance that we have
[00:04:01] in witnessed in Ukraine's military capability,
[00:04:05] including this on screen, the first ever recorded
[00:04:09] surrender of Russian soldiers to an
[00:04:12] of unmanned ground
[00:04:13] of vehicle that Boris's team
[00:04:14] developed,
[00:04:23] and if you're a fan of this show then the man standing next to me needs no
[00:04:26] introduction, give it up please for Mikey K.
[00:04:34] 'Christian, thanks very much indeed. um, what's really
[00:04:38] different about tonight is our ability to be able to
[00:04:41] of ask questions, not just from the audience, but from the viewers at home
[00:04:45] in real time. for the viewers at home, you'll see an email coming up on your screen.
[00:04:49] please
[00:04:49] of do write in with questions, and we'll endeavor to answer
[00:04:53] those tonight, just a little bit on my background. uh, i
[00:04:57] of spent 20 years in the British military flying
[00:04:58] of assault, helicopters'. very closely with UK special forces in places
[00:05:02] like Kosovo and
[00:05:04] a significantly in Iraq and then did two strategic military
[00:05:07] of planning tours in Afghanistan followed by my final tour in the Ministry of
[00:05:10] Defense which was in equipment capability, so basically
[00:05:13] taking the concept of helicopter all the way through to the front
[00:05:17] line, so concept to combat. should we at the
[00:05:21] outset address the elephant in the room? I knew you go that. It
[00:05:25] is not a camera trick, he really is this tall, and just for the
[00:05:29] record, I am not that small, too
[00:05:33] tall to be pilot. in fact, they told me, can we sit now?
[00:05:36] yeah, they told me Mikey that you were the only pilot who flew assault
[00:05:39] helicopters with his head out the sunroof. Is that
[00:05:42] true? You try getting that lump
[00:05:46] with all the gear on into that small cockpit. Trust me, it's a
[00:05:50] challenge. It was cozy. Now let's move on. Okay, to the serious stuff. The deputy
[00:05:54] ambassador just told me in the green room that we are meeting at inuspicious moment and
[00:05:58] we are. Today in Warsaw, the Warsaw
[00:06:02] Security Forum, NATO's top commander set out a plan to defeat
[00:06:06] should it come, any Russian assault on the Alliance's east flank, and as we
[00:06:10] all know, the US president is threatening to... cut weapons sales
[00:06:13] and intelligence to Ukraine, which could hardly mikey come a worst
[00:06:17] time, because the evidence suggests that Russia is escalating,
[00:06:21] yeah, I think although evidence absolutely points to um, Russia
[00:06:25] is escalated in terms the way it's now targeting
[00:06:28] non-combatants or civilians uh, as we say, but more
[00:06:32] importantly, it's the infrastructure that
[00:06:36] civilians actually depend upon,
[00:06:38] so we're talking about bridges, power plants, talking about
[00:06:41] public transport uh, talking about places of learning and I just want to start
[00:06:44] off by showing you the inside story uh on
[00:06:48] just one these drone attacks. Let's go to the screen. um what you'll
[00:06:52] see is the map opening up to satellite image and this location
[00:06:56] is called symbolova. It's a Russian drone
[00:07:00] base that didn't exist year ago. Now what you can see there just left
[00:07:04] the screen is six drone launch rails they're all pointing west
[00:07:07] all towards Ukraine. As we zoom out we're now going to move to
[00:07:11] the target of. those drones, which was the Academy of Sciences
[00:07:15] in the heart of Keeve. Now, the distance that that
[00:07:19] drones travels to get to that target is about 210 kilometers.
[00:07:23] These new jet power drones fly at about 500 kilometers an hour, it's about 8 and a
[00:07:27] half kilometers a minute, so that flight time is about
[00:07:30] 25 minutes, so the old sheads, the
[00:07:33] propelling ones that we've covered on the security brief lot, they would have taken well
[00:07:37] over an hour to get to that target, these new drones, the garan 3s and garan
[00:07:41] fs, they're through. times as fast, which means that Ukraine
[00:07:45] has a third the time to acquire it, to track it and
[00:07:49] to shoot it down. Dan Johnson in Keeve, these were truly
[00:07:52] awful scenes that we saw at the Academy of Sciences
[00:07:56] a couple of weeks ago in the heart of Keeve, and it's
[00:08:00] got worse since then, and it's coming a time when we're hearing
[00:08:04] all sorts of things from Washington, it must feel out there in Keith
[00:08:07] like a particularly precarious
[00:08:09] moment. 'Yeah, it
[00:08:13] certainly does, Christian. I was here august when the sun was
[00:08:17] out, the city was busy, it was lively, and there was a
[00:08:21] perception that there was some level of normality here, but very quickly you
[00:08:25] could see how that mirage was shattered by the constant air
[00:08:28] raids because of those quicker drones and Ukraine's lack of
[00:08:32] interceptors to defend its skies, sometimes up to 20
[00:08:36] times a day people were having to run to shelters for
[00:08:40] cover, and that has disrupted everyone'. lives here, it means people can't
[00:08:44] sleep, it means they can't get on with anything during the day without
[00:08:47] disruption, and since then things have only got worse, the
[00:08:51] infrastructures being targeted to the point where it feels like
[00:08:54] keive is now on the front line in the way that somewhere in the east was at
[00:08:58] the start of this war, you've even got drone nets that have gone up over Keith's
[00:09:02] bridges just in the past week because of Russia's attacks, they're coping
[00:09:06] with the power cuts already, just for the last 10 days, there's been a
[00:09:10] rolling schedule of three or four hours. a day where each neighborhood has
[00:09:14] had scheduled power cuts to try to preserve electricity, so people
[00:09:18] are already living under the reality of not having light, not having
[00:09:21] heat, not having water, because they need power to pump that up to the top
[00:09:25] the tower blocks. the metro grinds to a halt, the escalators have to
[00:09:29] stop because there isn't enough electricity, and it really hit me last night when we were out on
[00:09:33] these quiet, dark streets, the street lights off, lots of
[00:09:37] buildings in complete darkness, people staying at home to be safe so they're not
[00:09:41] out and about with such... threat in the air and there was a tow truck going
[00:09:45] around the city having to collect the trolley buses that had all been
[00:09:48] stuck at different points around the city's roads because the power simply wasn't
[00:09:52] there for them to get back to the depot under their own steam. yeah um dan
[00:09:56] for the moment thank you for that. mean we need to look closer mikey at where this threat
[00:10:00] comes from and the weapons doing most the damage here are
[00:10:04] Russia's newer jet power drones and not just one type
[00:10:08] there's a whole inventory them. yeah there is and there's a lot them but i want to...
[00:10:12] "I want to focus a triumverat tonight, if I can draw your eyes um onto the
[00:10:16] screen please, um, this these are the key drones that I want to look at
[00:10:20] tonight, we'll start with the Garan 4, it looks like the Iranian shahead which is kind
[00:10:24] of..." triangular shape, but when you get onto the under the skin of it, it's a totally
[00:10:28] different animal, it's got a Chinese jet engine on the back of it, it travels at 500
[00:10:32] kilometers an hour, and it's got a thermobarrick warhead, which basically creates a massive
[00:10:36] fireball and then a and then a precious wave, uh, pressure wave, the grand
[00:10:40] five, notice a shape, it's more like cruise missile than a drone, again, Chinese jet
[00:10:44] engine, it's got about a thousand kilometers range which is significant, and that
[00:10:47] puts anywhere in Ukraine a target and potentially beyond, a Russia is building
[00:10:51] these in the thousands, and then finally this is the banderol cruise missile, it's... small chris
[00:10:55] missile, it's
[00:10:56] not a drone, and what's important about this is it can,
[00:10:59] it is launched from a drone, it's called the Orion drone that the Russians have, and
[00:11:03] that drone has a 24-hour loiter capability, so that's what
[00:11:07] makes the banderal a bit of a threat. Can you, can you give us some perspective on these cuz
[00:11:10] I i don't have an impression the size? Yeah, I
[00:11:14] mean, I was absolutely flabergas when I saw the size of this,
[00:11:17] especially the Grand 5. Let me, let me just show you, let me just show you
[00:11:21] picture, um, that's little old me on the um, on the... right
[00:11:25] the picture there, I'm standing at two meters tall, if you contrast my height now to
[00:11:29] the garand five, that's standing at 6.5 meters,
[00:11:32] that's three times the size of me, it's about 25 times the
[00:11:36] size of you, christian, christian's actually on the graphic too, you just can't see
[00:11:40] him, i told you he gives as good as he guess,
[00:11:44] um, look, let's talk about that the the high end the
[00:11:48] drone spectrum, mean some the some the effective drones we've seen you've
[00:11:52] just set out for us, but there are... which are much
[00:11:56] smaller, they're much cheaper as it turns out and they are highly effective.
[00:12:00] yeah, the things doing the battage, the damage on the battlefield or what's called
[00:12:03] FPV drones, first-person view, there's an addition to that, which is the
[00:12:07] fiber optic side, which we'll get into a little bit later, but um,
[00:12:11] let's go again to some some video footage, this is called the Russian lurker, and it's an
[00:12:15] ambush drone, um, basically you can see it just popping up from
[00:12:19] behind cover there, and what they're doing is is they're turning the rotors off to
[00:12:23] conserve the battery and then it can't sit on standby mode for hours,
[00:12:27] there's there's an onboard acoustic sensor which is really sensitive which
[00:12:31] is listening for the specific engine signature of
[00:12:34] vehicle. um, that's terrifying if you're a soldier on the front line. it
[00:12:38] is, it is. what's happening here is is that when that sensor is triggered, it
[00:12:42] alerts uh the operator who's actually flying it manually onto
[00:12:46] the target, and we're talking from signal to strike, we're talking literally about three
[00:12:50] seconds, so if you are infittune, you are a soldier, um,
[00:12:54] that is, that is... terrifying um in Iraq our biggest threat was improvised
[00:12:57] explosive devices or one the biggest threats, but they were
[00:13:01] hidden in roads, they were static, what we're seeing here is iED that can
[00:13:05] actually fly and it's way harder to spot. I think what is unique
[00:13:09] about this war and lots of commentators have talked about it is that when one
[00:13:13] side innovates, the other answers and then goes a
[00:13:16] step further, and the time that that happens has been really
[00:13:20] compressed, so what is Ukraine's answer for example to the
[00:13:24] Russian? Okay, yeah, the Ukrainians are are using
[00:13:28] a similar tactic, it's not identical, let's take a look at some
[00:13:31] footage, it's important to note that this is unverified footage, but this
[00:13:35] is road in Dumbas and you can see dozens and dozens
[00:13:39] these drones, now what these are doing is the Ukrainian, the they're
[00:13:43] waiting for Russian infantry to come over the horizon and then they
[00:13:47] will they will target it, it's what's doing the damage, but these drones unlike the lurker that
[00:13:51] we've just seen, these drones are clearly visible, so the tactic that the Ukrainian
[00:13:55] are using is is more of deterrence than deterrence in itself,
[00:13:59] yeah, so those drones are obviously giving Ukrain a
[00:14:03] fighting chance, and especially so on the front line, I'm going to bring up map
[00:14:07] and I'm going to show you in red the Russian advance as it was
[00:14:11] in March 2022, and then as the map evolves, you
[00:14:15] will see in orange what is
[00:14:18] claimed as the Ukrainian counter offensive, so you
[00:14:22] can see how far they've pushed them back, now there is some really important. numbers in
[00:14:25] this: a recent congressional hearing, the
[00:14:29] CIA chief John Ratcliff told us that Russian
[00:14:33] soldiers arriving at the front line now survive
[00:14:36] average 25
[00:14:38] minutes. 46,000 Russians,
[00:14:42] Mikey were killed and wounded in just the last month.
[00:14:46] Yeah, I as as a former military man who's done quite a few combat tours, that that
[00:14:50] number is absolutely horrific. And it's, it's these
[00:14:53] first persones. doing the damage, more importantly, it's the fiber
[00:14:57] optic uh first-person view jones that are doing the damage because you can't jam
[00:15:01] them. um, and that is
[00:15:03] what is tearing holes in Russia's front lies. now we spoke to the
[00:15:06] deputy commander of Operation Vivaldi, um, which was the
[00:15:10] offensive around Leyman, which is in northern Doniesk, and that's where
[00:15:14] dan's been in that's where dans come back from, yeah, and and the deputy
[00:15:18] commander told us that they were basically pushing
[00:15:22] out drone operators now into very secluded and... areas like
[00:15:25] fox holes and
[00:15:27] the modus operanda is basically to gain the what's
[00:15:31] called dominate the isr so intelligence
[00:15:34] surveillance and
[00:15:38] um, it is important to say that the Russians do have similar
[00:15:42] capability and they are employing, which explains
[00:15:45] the stalemate on the front line in some parts, it's just looking for that little bit of gap
[00:15:49] so they can get the edge. let's talk about defense, which is a really
[00:15:53] key part of this for Ukraine, they are innovating when it comes to attack
[00:15:56] drones, but what about when it comes to intercepting those Russian
[00:16:00] drones that you've just put on screen for us? yeah, let's let's take a look a look at some footage,
[00:16:04] this is the Ukrainian new jet powered interceptor, that's coming off the... well it's
[00:16:08] super fast and it's designed specifically for the Garan 3 and Garan
[00:16:11] 4 uh because the speed on them, what you can see there is
[00:16:15] the camera in the nose of that jet-powered drone and what it's doing
[00:16:19] is is the operator is flying it manually onto the target and that target is garan 5
[00:16:23] that's 6.5 uh meter drone and this is what we're talking about
[00:16:27] is the pace the technological and tactical
[00:16:31] advantage is minuscule and they're trying to get that advantage all
[00:16:35] the time and this has been happening now for many years. in defense and also
[00:16:38] offense, because Ukraine has come to rely much more
[00:16:42] its own technology, perhaps as well in mind of what we've heard over the
[00:16:46] weekend, in the first half of this year, using drones and
[00:16:50] missiles that it has built, Ukraine has hit targets,
[00:16:53] 700 them deep inside Russian territory, we've seen
[00:16:57] untold damage at the oil refineries, the strikes on the
[00:17:01] wildburies plants, the logistic plants, uh, we've seen shadow tankers hit
[00:17:05] in the sea of Assof and then just last week was reporting on this
[00:17:09] strike a data center, i think it was the second data center at
[00:17:12] Yannex, the Russian equivalent of Google, that
[00:17:16] tells me that Ukraine has some very capable deep
[00:17:20] strike capability, yeah we've been covering the Ukraine war since it start in
[00:17:24] 2022 or certainly after crimea, um, but for
[00:17:27] years Ukraine's deep strike capability was largely dictated
[00:17:31] by Washington, not just from capability perspective,
[00:17:35] so we saw the High Mars launchers, the... back's missiles, storm shadow,
[00:17:39] scalp, which are the cruise missiles, but also from a policy perspective,
[00:17:43] and what that means is that whilst they were given the capability, they weren't allowed to
[00:17:46] target anything inside Russia, that's all changed
[00:17:50] now, um, Ukraine now builds its own
[00:17:53] capability, and more importantly it's working to its own policy,
[00:17:57] and the driving force behind all of that is a Ukrainian defense
[00:18:00] company called Firepoint. Let me just take you um
[00:18:04] through their inventory, I'll skip through quickly, um, but we can bring up this is
[00:18:08] called the FP1 5.1 drone, key bit to note on that is it's got a range
[00:18:12] of 3,400 kilometers, note the warhead, it's 60
[00:18:16] kilograms, so that's reaching a place like Siberia, you could get that far with that
[00:18:19] into Siberia again, which wasn't possible on 22, the
[00:18:22] FP2uh, it's basically similar fusillarge, it's got
[00:18:26] a larger warhead about 200 kilograms uh which
[00:18:30] reduces the range, now I want to go to the FP5, that's not a
[00:18:33] drone, it's cruise missile, many of you may have heard of this, it's the
[00:18:37] flamingo and you can see the devastating effect that it can have there,
[00:18:41] it's got a range of 300 kilometers, it's got a warhead of
[00:18:44] 1150 kilograms and this is what is doing that
[00:18:47] major damage to the Russian refineries and they produce these a
[00:18:51] fraction of a cost, just to put that into perspective, a US made cruise
[00:18:55] missile way more technical technologically advanced, but
[00:18:59] a TLAM Tom Land attack missile um that comes in at around
[00:19:03] 2 to 4 million per unit, cheaper just just really quickly before we
[00:19:07] talked to stew, firepoint, the company we're talking about, not just making these
[00:19:11] drones, but crucially the interceptors in to replace
[00:19:15] the sort of pack two, pack three, and also the ballistic missiles
[00:19:18] too. yeah, we we interviewed um Arena Terrick last week, she's
[00:19:22] the um CEO of Firepoint, she gave us an update on what's called the
[00:19:26] FP7 and the FP9, basically two ballistic missiles um
[00:19:30] they were building, if we can just bring up a quick shot for perspective, that's arena
[00:19:34] in the middle to the right of is what's called in FP7. to the left of
[00:19:38] her is a FP9 now um they have got over hundred
[00:19:42] factories fire point uh in um Ukraine and President
[00:19:46] Zelensky has said that he wants these missiles in the hurry by the end the year, but
[00:19:50] what I hadn't quite realized when we were talking to Arena is there's two
[00:19:53] FP7s, one FP7
[00:19:55] is ballistic missile, the other one's called an fp.x and that's an
[00:19:58] interceptor that is hopefully for Ukraine going to fill that gap of pack 2 and
[00:20:02] pack 3 patriot missiles that were expended during the um Iran war.
[00:20:06] Okay, so what is all that? then for the UK and the drone coalition, the UK is
[00:20:10] leading on behalf of Ukraine, the man at the ministry of defense who leads that
[00:20:14] project is brigadeer stunasse, welcome to the stage,
[00:20:17] thank it is the evolution these weapons that Mikey has just said
[00:20:21] out over five years of war that has everyone worried, how do you
[00:20:24] support Ukraine with the technology they need when
[00:20:28] it is advancing so quickly? really simply, we listen to
[00:20:32] them, um, it was really easy uh early on in the war is really
[00:20:36] easy to have that, slightly western arrogance that we know about
[00:20:39] maneuver, we know about capability, we can teach them a lot uh, and
[00:20:43] in the early days the conflict, rightly so, NATO emptied its
[00:20:47] lockers, we gave them everything we could ' and the bit of inflection
[00:20:51] point slightly awkwardly in 2024 when Ukraine showed us that
[00:20:55] they actually know lot more than we do about uncrude warfare um and
[00:20:59] quite frankly the most important thing we've done is have a bit of humility uh because
[00:21:03] they have got they're having the lived experience uh we've always
[00:21:07] seen through history the opportunity for defense to advance
[00:21:10] significantly when you've
[00:21:11] got an existential threat, the risk process changes, the
[00:21:15] tolerance for risk is totally different, you will accept a certain
[00:21:19] amount of gadult. is if it means that you can find a new and better way to defend
[00:21:22] yourself, and that's what we're seeing a daily basis in Ukraine. we we've
[00:21:26] seen what relatively cheap one way attack drones can do. why
[00:21:30] doesn't Europe have similar stock pile of mash produced
[00:21:34] drones? wouldn't that serve as a conventional nuclear deter
[00:21:37] conventional non-nuclear deterrant? for about six weeks. the speed of
[00:21:41] iteration we're seeing, we talk about 24/6 sex upgrade cycle.
[00:21:45] every 24 hours you have to do something different, you have to move, different angle of attack,
[00:21:49] different. matitude every six weeks you have to upgrade your system, could be your
[00:21:53] software, could be your antenna, could be your frequencies, every six months you've got to
[00:21:57] replace your system because you're obsolete, so if you've
[00:22:00] got a stock pile of million drones sat there to deter the enemy, they
[00:22:04] might be detered for six weeks, but then they'll counter develop and suddenly you've
[00:22:08] got 999,000 shelfware that's
[00:22:11] irrelevant, we've been speaking uh before the show
[00:22:14] to NATO second in command, air chief marshall sirjonny
[00:22:18] stringer who told us wants something far more
[00:22:22] hard-edged on the alliances eastern flank. have listen to
[00:22:25] this. one the things that you are already seeing is
[00:22:29] how we are reposturing the forces that we've got,
[00:22:33] bringing in new systems to augment them, because we've
[00:22:37] got to recognize that a threat that people would have been comfortable
[00:22:41] with even maybe five years ago in terms
[00:22:44] the capability that an adversary had and all the
[00:22:48] scale at which they... uh could employ it, now ranges
[00:22:52] down to incredibly cheap drones at one end the spectrum, to ballistic
[00:22:56] missiles at the other, and pretty much to all points in between,
[00:23:00] so there's been significant work that's gone on uh
[00:23:04] in in my part of NATO in allied command operations to
[00:23:08] bring forces in all the domains back to those
[00:23:11] five uh war fighting uh domains at NATO
[00:23:15] recognizes to make sure the capability we put up is as
[00:23:18] strong as it's can be now his boss in
[00:23:22] Warsaw today has just said
[00:23:25] NATO's got this, but that's on you and your
[00:23:28] partners, I mean time's yeah, no pressure, time's
[00:23:32] not on your side either stu, so how how do you meet that challenge that Sir
[00:23:36] Johnny's just laid down there in the best possible time? so the
[00:23:40] critical thing and one the critical lessons that we've learned from Ukraine is about the partnership with industry and how
[00:23:44] important
[00:23:44] it is, and and most critically how much earlier you have to be embedded with
[00:23:48] industry, if we wait for a competition or a contract to tell
[00:23:52] industry what our problem set is, they haven't got time to develop it, so the UK's
[00:23:55] launched an uncrued system center, which is is mainly about
[00:23:59] behaving a different way, we've got the capability, we've got the
[00:24:02] technology uh, we've we've got we've got the laws, we're not going to break any laws by
[00:24:06] moving fast, the difference we've got is we've got to change the behaviors and the the
[00:24:10] risk culture, how do you generate that pace of innovation without
[00:24:14] an so just to pick you up on that, are you saying that it's not so much about the
[00:24:18] stop p, it's about having the factories and logistics and
[00:24:20] the teams in place to scale this at 100% if you need
[00:24:24] to
[00:24:24] do that, you've got to have the relationships, you've got to have the trust, the three tenants are
[00:24:28] trust, tenacity and tempo, but if industry doesn't trust
[00:24:32] us, the government or military, you're not going to get anywhere, so we've got
[00:24:36] to bring them in the tent lot earlier, we've built some really good relationships, we've got a
[00:24:40] phenomenal industrial base in the UK, not just defense companies and it's
[00:24:44] amazing how many these companies at the component level that's where you can start
[00:24:48] stockpile because your actual will keep developing, but I need
[00:24:51] radios, I need antenna, I need engines, I need everything that we
[00:24:55] need to make up our drone of a system, system of systems approach, I'm
[00:24:59] a turbo geek, I'm so sorry, but you hear, exactly, no, no, no,
[00:25:03] 100% why I'm doing this job, um, buse, it's not about how
[00:25:07] fast you can run now, it's how quick can you think, and the military
[00:25:11] haven't got all the good ideas, so we haven't even touched on the robots
[00:25:15] fighting on the ground, the sea drones that have decimated Russia's
[00:25:18] black sea fleet. I guess the question i've got is the balance for the
[00:25:22] UK still out of kilter what do I mean by that in terms of are we
[00:25:26] spending still too much on conventional capability like ships, tanks
[00:25:30] and jets and not enough on drones? is this a trap to get me in
[00:25:33] trouble with the cavalary? the
[00:25:35] man of build it says yes yeah exactly I'm the drone guy no
[00:25:39] 100% no the drone does not replace
[00:25:42] anything it is and not or so you still need
[00:25:46] your tanks you still need your friggets you still need your fast jets sorry about that. you
[00:25:50] absolutely still do do still need them, the the point is though, if you haven't
[00:25:54] integrated crued uncrued mix, you're immediately a
[00:25:57] disadvantage, and that's the next, but there's there's obviously a budget consideration on
[00:26:01] that, um, there are, but again, you don't have to buy millions of
[00:26:05] drones now, you need to buy enough, which we have done, to start
[00:26:09] crued uncruwed teaming. our defense investment plan points towards that, crude
[00:26:12] uncrued mix, um, across all three services, a hybrid
[00:26:16] navy. it's all about expanding, the end the day, if I can
[00:26:20] put less human beings in harm's way by augmenting them
[00:26:24] with autonomous capabilities, why wouldn't i? stu's
[00:26:28] going to come back and he's going to answer our questions uh, a little later
[00:26:32] in the program. for the moment studies and
[00:26:34] gentlemen.
[00:26:44] Mikey, Europe buys weapons for Ukraine from the
[00:26:47] Americans through what is called the prioritized Ukraine requirements list
[00:26:51] or Pearl, as you and I know it. What would it mean if President
[00:26:55] Trump stopped supplying those weapons to the Europeans? Yeah, great question.
[00:26:59] I think a big part of of Pearl was initially. providing the
[00:27:03] interceptors, so the pack 2, pack 3 patriots, but as we've
[00:27:07] seen that supply has been massively squeezed by the Persian Gulf
[00:27:11] conflict, and the data point that we use often on the program is 1800 pack two, pack three
[00:27:15] patriots were expended in the first 16 days of operation, um
[00:27:18] epic fury, so I think from that
[00:27:22] perspective, that's why Pearl was set up, but it's it's not just about interceptors, there's
[00:27:26] a secret f16 jet squadron that's operating inside Ukraine that
[00:27:30] is actually uh allowing Ukraine to have. bit of laid air defense system, so
[00:27:34] they're basically doing a mission called drone combat air patrol, which you went
[00:27:37] out there to see, yeah, um, exactly, um, and if we think about
[00:27:41] that,
[00:27:41] you know, um, the jets are western provided, uh, the pilots and
[00:27:45] training are from the west, and the supply and parts in order to keep them in the air are also from
[00:27:49] the west. I think the critical thing for me that we kind of touch upon, but we
[00:27:53] don't get enough into, is the intelligence piece, and the US still
[00:27:56] provides Ukraine, the target GPS's that
[00:28:00] enables those deep strike op. That's the critical vulnerability
[00:28:04] in my just coming back to what Sir Johnny was
[00:28:06] discussing, sir Richard Nightton here, the head of Britain
[00:28:10] Briton's arm forces, he thinks air and missile defense is
[00:28:14] still one the biggest gaps in NATO's
[00:28:17] capability in spite of everything that we've done and that
[00:28:20] includes Mikey, defense the UK. Yeah, let's um let's take
[00:28:24] a look a map, picture paints a thousand words, um, and I think it
[00:28:28] will underline why those concerns exist, so what we're doing now
[00:28:32] is... expanding on the Russian threat outside of drones uh
[00:28:36] to concentrate on ballistic missile capability. now the concentric
[00:28:39] circles are the ranges of Russian weapons um
[00:28:43] all of of that have been used inside Ukraine.
[00:28:47] now as you can see on that outer rangering circle, you can see London
[00:28:51] flashing there, it doesn't just cover the UK, that outer rangering
[00:28:54] circle uh covers iceland of which there are US military
[00:28:58] bases. um, you can see number two and number three, we've covered.
[00:29:02] those but I want you to look at number five, that's called Nareshnic
[00:29:06] um and it's a hypersonic missile that can fly of up to speeds of Mac
[00:29:10] 10, that's 10 times the speed of sound, but it's also got
[00:29:14] multiple warheads and it is also nuclear capal, nuclear
[00:29:17] cap,
[00:29:18] I think we got some pictures of that actually, this is uh Denipro
[00:29:22] in November 2024, just count these
[00:29:24] so UK sorry, six warheads coming in and
[00:29:28] six sub munitions so 36 in total.
[00:29:32] and it has been used again this more recently in Keive in
[00:29:35] May, just before we talk to Fiona, does he does Europe
[00:29:39] have a counter to that? simple answer is no, the US
[00:29:42] can currently defend itself against the hypersonic
[00:29:46] missile in the final stage of flight, we call that um
[00:29:50] the terminal phase, but the reality is is that there's no single
[00:29:54] system that stops everything, you need a layered approach, so as sir Johnny
[00:29:57] Stringer, D Saker said out for us, you need defense against drones, you need
[00:30:01] another defense. against ballistic missiles, need another defense against hypersonic
[00:30:05] missiles, and now Europe and indeed the US, especially after the
[00:30:09] Iran war, um, I think they're sure on every level,
[00:30:13] right? Dr. Fiona Hill uh, has joined us here on the stage. Now,
[00:30:17] in the first term, she was Donald Trump's top Russia advisor in the White
[00:30:20] House. She spent more than three decades studying Russia
[00:30:24] and the man who runs it. In fact, she wrote the book on it. Mr. Putin,
[00:30:28] operative in the Kremlin, her upcoming book on resilience.
[00:30:32] looks at how prepared we are as society for the geopolitical threats that
[00:30:36] are coming at us. very warm welcome, it's great, it's great to have you here
[00:30:39] and congratulations on the book as well.
[00:30:41] um, when
[00:30:42] i was in the military, the threat equation i used to use with my teams was
[00:30:45] threat equals capability
[00:30:49] times are intent. now you've spent many years studying
[00:30:53] Putin, in fact i think we can bring up some imagery. top left,
[00:30:57] that's Fiona, sat right opposite -