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00:00:00for security
00:00:02security
00:00:02live the brief
00:00:07tonight
00:00:10a on the brief we are leaving our usual home to bring you into the conversation, we're
00:00:13talking Russia, Ukraine and the
00:00:16of
00:00:16a revolution in warfare that we have seen these past few years, when the security
00:00:20brief first launched it was tanks and trenches, today it's
00:00:24drones and artificial intelligence, we'll take a deep look into the
00:00:28cutting edge technology
00:00:29of that is... changing the front lines and that threat doesn't stop at the
00:00:32battlefield: sabotage, cyber
00:00:35of attacks, disinformation will show you how much is already happening
00:00:39in NATO
00:00:41a countries. some leaders in Europe say we're already at war, but how
00:00:45close really is Russia to our
00:00:47of doorstep? so what comes next? are we prepared and is this new
00:00:51shape of
00:00:51of warfare the blueprint for the future? they are big questions,
00:00:55but we have a stellar cast to answer them. don't go anywhere,
00:00:59this...
00:01:00of is the security brief
00:01:01live,
00:01:17of of
00:01:25of goodness of me,
00:01:26of they all came.
00:01:30Thankfully, very good evening uh, a warm welcome to our live
00:01:34studio audience here at BBC Headquarters
00:01:37of of and everyone watching on TV, iplayer and on
00:01:40YouTube. We are really pleased to be doing this tonight,
00:01:43particularly in mind of everything that we've heard this last
00:01:47weekend. It is the first time that we've done this in front of audience, and I
00:01:51think that's a mark of how the security brief is growing, in fact so
00:01:54of fast that we have had some 10 million views on
00:01:58YouTube in the last six. months
00:02:04of alone, so a really big thank you
00:02:08everyone who's taken an interest and who has supported us,
00:02:12of tonight we have gathered for you some
00:02:13of the best known faces in BBC News, our chief international
00:02:17correspondent Liz Dusedi's here,
00:02:19of alongside of
00:02:20-
00:02:26alongside that our Europeeditor Katia Adler, welcome to you.
00:02:34of of In Ukraine we have correspondent Dan Johnson who is just back from the
00:02:38front line, he is live for us tonight in
00:02:41Keeve.
00:02:47a Our guests on stage tonight include the officer, the
00:02:50of British officer who is running a 20 nation drone
00:02:54coalition in support of
00:02:57a Ukraine. Brigadier Steunase.
00:03:03in "we
00:03:07are really honored to have Dr. Fiona Hill, the former
00:03:10in white house Russia advisor to Donald
00:03:14of Trump.
00:03:19We have combat experience too. The man in your screen is Zayne Senat.
00:03:23He's a retired fighter pilot who until just few
00:03:27months ago was in the cockpit
00:03:29of the..."
00:03:39Thank you to Ukraine's deputy ambassador Edward Fesco who is
00:03:43with us this
00:03:44evening
00:03:50and also tonight we're going to hear from some key Ukrainian figures
00:03:54of like here who's come all the way from his company forms
00:03:58part
00:03:59of the... advance that we have
00:04:01in witnessed in Ukraine's military capability,
00:04:05including this on screen, the first ever recorded
00:04:09surrender of Russian soldiers to an
00:04:12of unmanned ground
00:04:13of vehicle that Boris's team
00:04:14developed,
00:04:23and if you're a fan of this show then the man standing next to me needs no
00:04:26introduction, give it up please for Mikey K.
00:04:34'Christian, thanks very much indeed. um, what's really
00:04:38different about tonight is our ability to be able to
00:04:41of ask questions, not just from the audience, but from the viewers at home
00:04:45in real time. for the viewers at home, you'll see an email coming up on your screen.
00:04:49please
00:04:49of do write in with questions, and we'll endeavor to answer
00:04:53those tonight, just a little bit on my background. uh, i
00:04:57of spent 20 years in the British military flying
00:04:58of assault, helicopters'. very closely with UK special forces in places
00:05:02like Kosovo and
00:05:04a significantly in Iraq and then did two strategic military
00:05:07of planning tours in Afghanistan followed by my final tour in the Ministry of
00:05:10Defense which was in equipment capability, so basically
00:05:13taking the concept of helicopter all the way through to the front
00:05:17line, so concept to combat. should we at the
00:05:21outset address the elephant in the room? I knew you go that. It
00:05:25is not a camera trick, he really is this tall, and just for the
00:05:29record, I am not that small, too
00:05:33tall to be pilot. in fact, they told me, can we sit now?
00:05:36yeah, they told me Mikey that you were the only pilot who flew assault
00:05:39helicopters with his head out the sunroof. Is that
00:05:42true? You try getting that lump
00:05:46with all the gear on into that small cockpit. Trust me, it's a
00:05:50challenge. It was cozy. Now let's move on. Okay, to the serious stuff. The deputy
00:05:54ambassador just told me in the green room that we are meeting at inuspicious moment and
00:05:58we are. Today in Warsaw, the Warsaw
00:06:02Security Forum, NATO's top commander set out a plan to defeat
00:06:06should it come, any Russian assault on the Alliance's east flank, and as we
00:06:10all know, the US president is threatening to... cut weapons sales
00:06:13and intelligence to Ukraine, which could hardly mikey come a worst
00:06:17time, because the evidence suggests that Russia is escalating,
00:06:21yeah, I think although evidence absolutely points to um, Russia
00:06:25is escalated in terms the way it's now targeting
00:06:28non-combatants or civilians uh, as we say, but more
00:06:32importantly, it's the infrastructure that
00:06:36civilians actually depend upon,
00:06:38so we're talking about bridges, power plants, talking about
00:06:41public transport uh, talking about places of learning and I just want to start
00:06:44off by showing you the inside story uh on
00:06:48just one these drone attacks. Let's go to the screen. um what you'll
00:06:52see is the map opening up to satellite image and this location
00:06:56is called symbolova. It's a Russian drone
00:07:00base that didn't exist year ago. Now what you can see there just left
00:07:04the screen is six drone launch rails they're all pointing west
00:07:07all towards Ukraine. As we zoom out we're now going to move to
00:07:11the target of. those drones, which was the Academy of Sciences
00:07:15in the heart of Keeve. Now, the distance that that
00:07:19drones travels to get to that target is about 210 kilometers.
00:07:23These new jet power drones fly at about 500 kilometers an hour, it's about 8 and a
00:07:27half kilometers a minute, so that flight time is about
00:07:3025 minutes, so the old sheads, the
00:07:33propelling ones that we've covered on the security brief lot, they would have taken well
00:07:37over an hour to get to that target, these new drones, the garan 3s and garan
00:07:41fs, they're through. times as fast, which means that Ukraine
00:07:45has a third the time to acquire it, to track it and
00:07:49to shoot it down. Dan Johnson in Keeve, these were truly
00:07:52awful scenes that we saw at the Academy of Sciences
00:07:56a couple of weeks ago in the heart of Keeve, and it's
00:08:00got worse since then, and it's coming a time when we're hearing
00:08:04all sorts of things from Washington, it must feel out there in Keith
00:08:07like a particularly precarious
00:08:09moment. 'Yeah, it
00:08:13certainly does, Christian. I was here august when the sun was
00:08:17out, the city was busy, it was lively, and there was a
00:08:21perception that there was some level of normality here, but very quickly you
00:08:25could see how that mirage was shattered by the constant air
00:08:28raids because of those quicker drones and Ukraine's lack of
00:08:32interceptors to defend its skies, sometimes up to 20
00:08:36times a day people were having to run to shelters for
00:08:40cover, and that has disrupted everyone'. lives here, it means people can't
00:08:44sleep, it means they can't get on with anything during the day without
00:08:47disruption, and since then things have only got worse, the
00:08:51infrastructures being targeted to the point where it feels like
00:08:54keive is now on the front line in the way that somewhere in the east was at
00:08:58the start of this war, you've even got drone nets that have gone up over Keith's
00:09:02bridges just in the past week because of Russia's attacks, they're coping
00:09:06with the power cuts already, just for the last 10 days, there's been a
00:09:10rolling schedule of three or four hours. a day where each neighborhood has
00:09:14had scheduled power cuts to try to preserve electricity, so people
00:09:18are already living under the reality of not having light, not having
00:09:21heat, not having water, because they need power to pump that up to the top
00:09:25the tower blocks. the metro grinds to a halt, the escalators have to
00:09:29stop because there isn't enough electricity, and it really hit me last night when we were out on
00:09:33these quiet, dark streets, the street lights off, lots of
00:09:37buildings in complete darkness, people staying at home to be safe so they're not
00:09:41out and about with such... threat in the air and there was a tow truck going
00:09:45around the city having to collect the trolley buses that had all been
00:09:48stuck at different points around the city's roads because the power simply wasn't
00:09:52there for them to get back to the depot under their own steam. yeah um dan
00:09:56for the moment thank you for that. mean we need to look closer mikey at where this threat
00:10:00comes from and the weapons doing most the damage here are
00:10:04Russia's newer jet power drones and not just one type
00:10:08there'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
00:10:16screen please, um, this these are the key drones that I want to look at
00:10:20tonight, we'll start with the Garan 4, it looks like the Iranian shahead which is kind
00:10:24of..." triangular shape, but when you get onto the under the skin of it, it's a totally
00:10:28different animal, it's got a Chinese jet engine on the back of it, it travels at 500
00:10:32kilometers an hour, and it's got a thermobarrick warhead, which basically creates a massive
00:10:36fireball and then a and then a precious wave, uh, pressure wave, the grand
00:10:40five, notice a shape, it's more like cruise missile than a drone, again, Chinese jet
00:10:44engine, it's got about a thousand kilometers range which is significant, and that
00:10:47puts anywhere in Ukraine a target and potentially beyond, a Russia is building
00:10:51these in the thousands, and then finally this is the banderol cruise missile, it's... small chris
00:10:55missile, it's
00:10:56not a drone, and what's important about this is it can,
00:10:59it is launched from a drone, it's called the Orion drone that the Russians have, and
00:11:03that drone has a 24-hour loiter capability, so that's what
00:11:07makes the banderal a bit of a threat. Can you, can you give us some perspective on these cuz
00:11:10I i don't have an impression the size? Yeah, I
00:11:14mean, I was absolutely flabergas when I saw the size of this,
00:11:17especially the Grand 5. Let me, let me just show you, let me just show you
00:11:21picture, um, that's little old me on the um, on the... right
00:11:25the picture there, I'm standing at two meters tall, if you contrast my height now to
00:11:29the garand five, that's standing at 6.5 meters,
00:11:32that's three times the size of me, it's about 25 times the
00:11:36size of you, christian, christian's actually on the graphic too, you just can't see
00:11:40him, i told you he gives as good as he guess,
00:11:44um, look, let's talk about that the the high end the
00:11:48drone spectrum, mean some the some the effective drones we've seen you've
00:11:52just set out for us, but there are... which are much
00:11:56smaller, they're much cheaper as it turns out and they are highly effective.
00:12:00yeah, the things doing the battage, the damage on the battlefield or what's called
00:12:03FPV drones, first-person view, there's an addition to that, which is the
00:12:07fiber optic side, which we'll get into a little bit later, but um,
00:12:11let's go again to some some video footage, this is called the Russian lurker, and it's an
00:12:15ambush drone, um, basically you can see it just popping up from
00:12:19behind cover there, and what they're doing is is they're turning the rotors off to
00:12:23conserve the battery and then it can't sit on standby mode for hours,
00:12:27there's there's an onboard acoustic sensor which is really sensitive which
00:12:31is listening for the specific engine signature of
00:12:34vehicle. um, that's terrifying if you're a soldier on the front line. it
00:12:38is, it is. what's happening here is is that when that sensor is triggered, it
00:12:42alerts uh the operator who's actually flying it manually onto
00:12:46the target, and we're talking from signal to strike, we're talking literally about three
00:12:50seconds, so if you are infittune, you are a soldier, um,
00:12:54that is, that is... terrifying um in Iraq our biggest threat was improvised
00:12:57explosive devices or one the biggest threats, but they were
00:13:01hidden in roads, they were static, what we're seeing here is iED that can
00:13:05actually fly and it's way harder to spot. I think what is unique
00:13:09about this war and lots of commentators have talked about it is that when one
00:13:13side innovates, the other answers and then goes a
00:13:16step further, and the time that that happens has been really
00:13:20compressed, so what is Ukraine's answer for example to the
00:13:24Russian? Okay, yeah, the Ukrainians are are using
00:13:28a similar tactic, it's not identical, let's take a look at some
00:13:31footage, it's important to note that this is unverified footage, but this
00:13:35is road in Dumbas and you can see dozens and dozens
00:13:39these drones, now what these are doing is the Ukrainian, the they're
00:13:43waiting for Russian infantry to come over the horizon and then they
00:13:47will they will target it, it's what's doing the damage, but these drones unlike the lurker that
00:13:51we've just seen, these drones are clearly visible, so the tactic that the Ukrainian
00:13:55are using is is more of deterrence than deterrence in itself,
00:13:59yeah, so those drones are obviously giving Ukrain a
00:14:03fighting chance, and especially so on the front line, I'm going to bring up map
00:14:07and I'm going to show you in red the Russian advance as it was
00:14:11in March 2022, and then as the map evolves, you
00:14:15will see in orange what is
00:14:18claimed as the Ukrainian counter offensive, so you
00:14:22can see how far they've pushed them back, now there is some really important. numbers in
00:14:25this: a recent congressional hearing, the
00:14:29CIA chief John Ratcliff told us that Russian
00:14:33soldiers arriving at the front line now survive
00:14:36average 25
00:14:38minutes. 46,000 Russians,
00:14:42Mikey were killed and wounded in just the last month.
00:14:46Yeah, I as as a former military man who's done quite a few combat tours, that that
00:14:50number is absolutely horrific. And it's, it's these
00:14:53first persones. doing the damage, more importantly, it's the fiber
00:14:57optic uh first-person view jones that are doing the damage because you can't jam
00:15:01them. um, and that is
00:15:03what is tearing holes in Russia's front lies. now we spoke to the
00:15:06deputy commander of Operation Vivaldi, um, which was the
00:15:10offensive around Leyman, which is in northern Doniesk, and that's where
00:15:14dan's been in that's where dans come back from, yeah, and and the deputy
00:15:18commander told us that they were basically pushing
00:15:22out drone operators now into very secluded and... areas like
00:15:25fox holes and
00:15:27the modus operanda is basically to gain the what's
00:15:31called dominate the isr so intelligence
00:15:34surveillance and
00:15:38um, it is important to say that the Russians do have similar
00:15:42capability and they are employing, which explains
00:15:45the stalemate on the front line in some parts, it's just looking for that little bit of gap
00:15:49so they can get the edge. let's talk about defense, which is a really
00:15:53key part of this for Ukraine, they are innovating when it comes to attack
00:15:56drones, but what about when it comes to intercepting those Russian
00:16:00drones that you've just put on screen for us? yeah, let's let's take a look a look at some footage,
00:16:04this is the Ukrainian new jet powered interceptor, that's coming off the... well it's
00:16:08super fast and it's designed specifically for the Garan 3 and Garan
00:16:114 uh because the speed on them, what you can see there is
00:16:15the camera in the nose of that jet-powered drone and what it's doing
00:16:19is is the operator is flying it manually onto the target and that target is garan 5
00:16:23that's 6.5 uh meter drone and this is what we're talking about
00:16:27is the pace the technological and tactical
00:16:31advantage is minuscule and they're trying to get that advantage all
00:16:35the time and this has been happening now for many years. in defense and also
00:16:38offense, because Ukraine has come to rely much more
00:16:42its own technology, perhaps as well in mind of what we've heard over the
00:16:46weekend, in the first half of this year, using drones and
00:16:50missiles that it has built, Ukraine has hit targets,
00:16:53700 them deep inside Russian territory, we've seen
00:16:57untold damage at the oil refineries, the strikes on the
00:17:01wildburies plants, the logistic plants, uh, we've seen shadow tankers hit
00:17:05in the sea of Assof and then just last week was reporting on this
00:17:09strike a data center, i think it was the second data center at
00:17:12Yannex, the Russian equivalent of Google, that
00:17:16tells me that Ukraine has some very capable deep
00:17:20strike capability, yeah we've been covering the Ukraine war since it start in
00:17:242022 or certainly after crimea, um, but for
00:17:27years Ukraine's deep strike capability was largely dictated
00:17:31by Washington, not just from capability perspective,
00:17:35so we saw the High Mars launchers, the... back's missiles, storm shadow,
00:17:39scalp, which are the cruise missiles, but also from a policy perspective,
00:17:43and what that means is that whilst they were given the capability, they weren't allowed to
00:17:46target anything inside Russia, that's all changed
00:17:50now, um, Ukraine now builds its own
00:17:53capability, and more importantly it's working to its own policy,
00:17:57and the driving force behind all of that is a Ukrainian defense
00:18:00company called Firepoint. Let me just take you um
00:18:04through their inventory, I'll skip through quickly, um, but we can bring up this is
00:18:08called the FP1 5.1 drone, key bit to note on that is it's got a range
00:18:12of 3,400 kilometers, note the warhead, it's 60
00:18:16kilograms, so that's reaching a place like Siberia, you could get that far with that
00:18:19into Siberia again, which wasn't possible on 22, the
00:18:22FP2uh, it's basically similar fusillarge, it's got
00:18:26a larger warhead about 200 kilograms uh which
00:18:30reduces the range, now I want to go to the FP5, that's not a
00:18:33drone, it's cruise missile, many of you may have heard of this, it's the
00:18:37flamingo and you can see the devastating effect that it can have there,
00:18:41it's got a range of 300 kilometers, it's got a warhead of
00:18:441150 kilograms and this is what is doing that
00:18:47major damage to the Russian refineries and they produce these a
00:18:51fraction of a cost, just to put that into perspective, a US made cruise
00:18:55missile way more technical technologically advanced, but
00:18:59a TLAM Tom Land attack missile um that comes in at around
00:19:032 to 4 million per unit, cheaper just just really quickly before we
00:19:07talked to stew, firepoint, the company we're talking about, not just making these
00:19:11drones, but crucially the interceptors in to replace
00:19:15the sort of pack two, pack three, and also the ballistic missiles
00:19:18too. yeah, we we interviewed um Arena Terrick last week, she's
00:19:22the um CEO of Firepoint, she gave us an update on what's called the
00:19:26FP7 and the FP9, basically two ballistic missiles um
00:19:30they were building, if we can just bring up a quick shot for perspective, that's arena
00:19:34in the middle to the right of is what's called in FP7. to the left of
00:19:38her is a FP9 now um they have got over hundred
00:19:42factories fire point uh in um Ukraine and President
00:19:46Zelensky has said that he wants these missiles in the hurry by the end the year, but
00:19:50what I hadn't quite realized when we were talking to Arena is there's two
00:19:53FP7s, one FP7
00:19:55is ballistic missile, the other one's called an fp.x and that's an
00:19:58interceptor that is hopefully for Ukraine going to fill that gap of pack 2 and
00:20:02pack 3 patriot missiles that were expended during the um Iran war.
00:20:06Okay, so what is all that? then for the UK and the drone coalition, the UK is
00:20:10leading on behalf of Ukraine, the man at the ministry of defense who leads that
00:20:14project is brigadeer stunasse, welcome to the stage,
00:20:17thank it is the evolution these weapons that Mikey has just said
00:20:21out over five years of war that has everyone worried, how do you
00:20:24support Ukraine with the technology they need when
00:20:28it is advancing so quickly? really simply, we listen to
00:20:32them, um, it was really easy uh early on in the war is really
00:20:36easy to have that, slightly western arrogance that we know about
00:20:39maneuver, we know about capability, we can teach them a lot uh, and
00:20:43in the early days the conflict, rightly so, NATO emptied its
00:20:47lockers, we gave them everything we could ' and the bit of inflection
00:20:51point slightly awkwardly in 2024 when Ukraine showed us that
00:20:55they actually know lot more than we do about uncrude warfare um and
00:20:59quite frankly the most important thing we've done is have a bit of humility uh because
00:21:03they have got they're having the lived experience uh we've always
00:21:07seen through history the opportunity for defense to advance
00:21:10significantly when you've
00:21:11got an existential threat, the risk process changes, the
00:21:15tolerance for risk is totally different, you will accept a certain
00:21:19amount of gadult. is if it means that you can find a new and better way to defend
00:21:22yourself, and that's what we're seeing a daily basis in Ukraine. we we've
00:21:26seen what relatively cheap one way attack drones can do. why
00:21:30doesn't Europe have similar stock pile of mash produced
00:21:34drones? wouldn't that serve as a conventional nuclear deter
00:21:37conventional non-nuclear deterrant? for about six weeks. the speed of
00:21:41iteration we're seeing, we talk about 24/6 sex upgrade cycle.
00:21:45every 24 hours you have to do something different, you have to move, different angle of attack,
00:21:49different. matitude every six weeks you have to upgrade your system, could be your
00:21:53software, could be your antenna, could be your frequencies, every six months you've got to
00:21:57replace your system because you're obsolete, so if you've
00:22:00got a stock pile of million drones sat there to deter the enemy, they
00:22:04might be detered for six weeks, but then they'll counter develop and suddenly you've
00:22:08got 999,000 shelfware that's
00:22:11irrelevant, we've been speaking uh before the show
00:22:14to NATO second in command, air chief marshall sirjonny
00:22:18stringer who told us wants something far more
00:22:22hard-edged on the alliances eastern flank. have listen to
00:22:25this. one the things that you are already seeing is
00:22:29how we are reposturing the forces that we've got,
00:22:33bringing in new systems to augment them, because we've
00:22:37got to recognize that a threat that people would have been comfortable
00:22:41with even maybe five years ago in terms
00:22:44the capability that an adversary had and all the
00:22:48scale at which they... uh could employ it, now ranges
00:22:52down to incredibly cheap drones at one end the spectrum, to ballistic
00:22:56missiles at the other, and pretty much to all points in between,
00:23:00so there's been significant work that's gone on uh
00:23:04in in my part of NATO in allied command operations to
00:23:08bring forces in all the domains back to those
00:23:11five uh war fighting uh domains at NATO
00:23:15recognizes to make sure the capability we put up is as
00:23:18strong as it's can be now his boss in
00:23:22Warsaw today has just said
00:23:25NATO's got this, but that's on you and your
00:23:28partners, I mean time's yeah, no pressure, time's
00:23:32not on your side either stu, so how how do you meet that challenge that Sir
00:23:36Johnny's just laid down there in the best possible time? so the
00:23:40critical thing and one the critical lessons that we've learned from Ukraine is about the partnership with industry and how
00:23:44important
00:23:44it is, and and most critically how much earlier you have to be embedded with
00:23:48industry, if we wait for a competition or a contract to tell
00:23:52industry what our problem set is, they haven't got time to develop it, so the UK's
00:23:55launched an uncrued system center, which is is mainly about
00:23:59behaving a different way, we've got the capability, we've got the
00:24:02technology uh, we've we've got we've got the laws, we're not going to break any laws by
00:24:06moving fast, the difference we've got is we've got to change the behaviors and the the
00:24:10risk culture, how do you generate that pace of innovation without
00:24:14an so just to pick you up on that, are you saying that it's not so much about the
00:24:18stop p, it's about having the factories and logistics and
00:24:20the teams in place to scale this at 100% if you need
00:24:24to
00:24:24do that, you've got to have the relationships, you've got to have the trust, the three tenants are
00:24:28trust, tenacity and tempo, but if industry doesn't trust
00:24:32us, the government or military, you're not going to get anywhere, so we've got
00:24:36to bring them in the tent lot earlier, we've built some really good relationships, we've got a
00:24:40phenomenal industrial base in the UK, not just defense companies and it's
00:24:44amazing how many these companies at the component level that's where you can start
00:24:48stockpile because your actual will keep developing, but I need
00:24:51radios, I need antenna, I need engines, I need everything that we
00:24:55need to make up our drone of a system, system of systems approach, I'm
00:24:59a turbo geek, I'm so sorry, but you hear, exactly, no, no, no,
00:25:03100% why I'm doing this job, um, buse, it's not about how
00:25:07fast you can run now, it's how quick can you think, and the military
00:25:11haven't got all the good ideas, so we haven't even touched on the robots
00:25:15fighting on the ground, the sea drones that have decimated Russia's
00:25:18black sea fleet. I guess the question i've got is the balance for the
00:25:22UK still out of kilter what do I mean by that in terms of are we
00:25:26spending still too much on conventional capability like ships, tanks
00:25:30and jets and not enough on drones? is this a trap to get me in
00:25:33trouble with the cavalary? the
00:25:35man of build it says yes yeah exactly I'm the drone guy no
00:25:39100% no the drone does not replace
00:25:42anything it is and not or so you still need
00:25:46your tanks you still need your friggets you still need your fast jets sorry about that. you
00:25:50absolutely still do do still need them, the the point is though, if you haven't
00:25:54integrated crued uncrued mix, you're immediately a
00:25:57disadvantage, and that's the next, but there's there's obviously a budget consideration on
00:26:01that, um, there are, but again, you don't have to buy millions of
00:26:05drones now, you need to buy enough, which we have done, to start
00:26:09crued uncruwed teaming. our defense investment plan points towards that, crude
00:26:12uncrued mix, um, across all three services, a hybrid
00:26:16navy. it's all about expanding, the end the day, if I can
00:26:20put less human beings in harm's way by augmenting them
00:26:24with autonomous capabilities, why wouldn't i? stu's
00:26:28going to come back and he's going to answer our questions uh, a little later
00:26:32in the program. for the moment studies and
00:26:34gentlemen.
00:26:44Mikey, Europe buys weapons for Ukraine from the
00:26:47Americans through what is called the prioritized Ukraine requirements list
00:26:51or Pearl, as you and I know it. What would it mean if President
00:26:55Trump stopped supplying those weapons to the Europeans? Yeah, great question.
00:26:59I think a big part of of Pearl was initially. providing the
00:27:03interceptors, so the pack 2, pack 3 patriots, but as we've
00:27:07seen that supply has been massively squeezed by the Persian Gulf
00:27:11conflict, and the data point that we use often on the program is 1800 pack two, pack three
00:27:15patriots were expended in the first 16 days of operation, um
00:27:18epic fury, so I think from that
00:27:22perspective, that's why Pearl was set up, but it's it's not just about interceptors, there's
00:27:26a secret f16 jet squadron that's operating inside Ukraine that
00:27:30is actually uh allowing Ukraine to have. bit of laid air defense system, so
00:27:34they're basically doing a mission called drone combat air patrol, which you went
00:27:37out there to see, yeah, um, exactly, um, and if we think about
00:27:41that,
00:27:41you know, um, the jets are western provided, uh, the pilots and
00:27:45training are from the west, and the supply and parts in order to keep them in the air are also from
00:27:49the west. I think the critical thing for me that we kind of touch upon, but we
00:27:53don't get enough into, is the intelligence piece, and the US still
00:27:56provides Ukraine, the target GPS's that
00:28:00enables those deep strike op. That's the critical vulnerability
00:28:04in my just coming back to what Sir Johnny was
00:28:06discussing, sir Richard Nightton here, the head of Britain
00:28:10Briton's arm forces, he thinks air and missile defense is
00:28:14still one the biggest gaps in NATO's
00:28:17capability in spite of everything that we've done and that
00:28:20includes Mikey, defense the UK. Yeah, let's um let's take
00:28:24a look a map, picture paints a thousand words, um, and I think it
00:28:28will underline why those concerns exist, so what we're doing now
00:28:32is... expanding on the Russian threat outside of drones uh
00:28:36to concentrate on ballistic missile capability. now the concentric
00:28:39circles are the ranges of Russian weapons um
00:28:43all of of that have been used inside Ukraine.
00:28:47now as you can see on that outer rangering circle, you can see London
00:28:51flashing there, it doesn't just cover the UK, that outer rangering
00:28:54circle uh covers iceland of which there are US military
00:28:58bases. um, you can see number two and number three, we've covered.
00:29:02those but I want you to look at number five, that's called Nareshnic
00:29:06um and it's a hypersonic missile that can fly of up to speeds of Mac
00:29:1010, that's 10 times the speed of sound, but it's also got
00:29:14multiple warheads and it is also nuclear capal, nuclear
00:29:17cap,
00:29:18I think we got some pictures of that actually, this is uh Denipro
00:29:22in November 2024, just count these
00:29:24so UK sorry, six warheads coming in and
00:29:28six sub munitions so 36 in total.
00:29:32and it has been used again this more recently in Keive in
00:29:35May, just before we talk to Fiona, does he does Europe
00:29:39have a counter to that? simple answer is no, the US
00:29:42can currently defend itself against the hypersonic
00:29:46missile in the final stage of flight, we call that um
00:29:50the terminal phase, but the reality is is that there's no single
00:29:54system that stops everything, you need a layered approach, so as sir Johnny
00:29:57Stringer, D Saker said out for us, you need defense against drones, you need
00:30:01another defense. against ballistic missiles, need another defense against hypersonic
00:30:05missiles, and now Europe and indeed the US, especially after the
00:30:09Iran war, um, I think they're sure on every level,
00:30:13right? Dr. Fiona Hill uh, has joined us here on the stage. Now,
00:30:17in the first term, she was Donald Trump's top Russia advisor in the White
00:30:20House. She spent more than three decades studying Russia
00:30:24and the man who runs it. In fact, she wrote the book on it. Mr. Putin,
00:30:28operative in the Kremlin, her upcoming book on resilience.
00:30:32looks at how prepared we are as society for the geopolitical threats that
00:30:36are coming at us. very warm welcome, it's great, it's great to have you here
00:30:39and congratulations on the book as well.
00:30:41um, when
00:30:42i was in the military, the threat equation i used to use with my teams was
00:30:45threat equals capability
00:30:49times are intent. now you've spent many years studying
00:30:53Putin, in fact i think we can bring up some imagery. top left,
00:30:57that's Fiona, sat right opposite -