Google Speech-to-Text API Automatic Transcription (Chirp). Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:00back to the June 17th, Islamabad
00:00:03of Mou, of I don't see that happening anytime
00:00:08of of soon. Right, thank you very much Dr. Mata for joining us
00:00:10of and being a part
00:00:11of the show. There's of course lot of concerns around what is happening in the
00:00:15middle
00:00:15of east
00:00:15and what will be the likely future scenario between Iran and
00:00:19United States,
00:00:20but also now with new front between the rebels in Saudi Arabia opening
00:00:24of up, it's important to see how exactly these two players are going to take the
00:00:27situation forward. It's also important to... take a look
00:00:31of at what this war has meant for these countries and especially in terms
00:00:34of the cost that they have to bear and of course look into the
00:00:38of kind of money that spent by the United States so far points towards of
00:00:42course huge numbers uh close to the tune of 33 billion dollars with
00:00:46about 22 billion dollars out of that spend on munitions alone and talk more
00:00:49about that we've been joined by
00:00:51of David Erosh who's from the the marshall institute thank you very much David for
00:00:55joining us and being a part
00:00:56of the show in your perspective when you're looking at and hearing
00:01:00reports about um ammunitions being out of
00:01:03stock, stock powers affected greatly, the defense
00:01:07sectory pointing towards more weapons production, how serious
00:01:11and significant is this concern within the United States and
00:01:15its defense forces as to the kind of money that has already been spent
00:01:19on munitions and
00:01:20in what that means in
00:01:22of terms of how the US is going to take the situation
00:01:25forward, yeah well let's start with the
00:01:29easy one, the mone is not an issue, that that seems like lot of money
00:01:33to you
00:01:33of and me, to normal people, to real people, but
00:01:37um, the department of defense is very, very, very big
00:01:41organization, and normal piece time spending is about $2 billion
00:01:45a day, so um,
00:01:48that's uh of interest, and the other thing is department of
00:01:52of defense equipment doesn't depreciate the way like if you buy
00:01:55a car and you keep it for five years that you try to sell it, that car is worth.
00:02:00fraction of
00:02:00a what it was, but um, we carry the value of aircraft for
00:02:04example, all the way through the end
00:02:06of their life cycle,
00:02:07a so there was a10 airplane uh
00:02:11that was
00:02:13of damaged at salty airbase in Jordan, um, that's
00:02:16reported as the purchase price
00:02:18of the airplane, but the airplane is almost 40 years old and nobody's going
00:02:22to replace it, the air force wants to
00:02:24a retire it, so so the money is not an issue, bigger issue is production
00:02:28and capacity, this has been a... problem really since
00:02:302017, and the origins go back to
00:02:34the end
00:02:35of the cold war, when the United States and other
00:02:38of countries uh
00:02:39in paradoxically took a peace dividend, decided to stop stock piling weapons because they
00:02:43thought there would never be another major conflict, and
00:02:47basically went to just in time
00:02:49supply, allowed their production base to
00:02:53atrophy. we kind of got a foreshadowing of this with the Ukraine war
00:02:57where we realized that we weren't producing art. shells fast
00:03:01enough, and that
00:03:02a the Ukrainians and the Russians were both firing
00:03:04in a week, the equivalent of year's worth of supply for the United States, the
00:03:08of European countries were absolutely shocked, they couldn't um
00:03:12keep up
00:03:13at all, and what we're seeing now is illustration in the
00:03:17US,
00:03:18of it's
00:03:18it's serious, but it's not a
00:03:21of of showomper, we have reserves and these projections
00:03:24are all made up of publicly available
00:03:27in figures based on public contracts there to let there's a possibility of
00:03:30additional contracts, there's also substitution
00:03:34from um us allies that have produced things under
00:03:38license, so for example the south koreans produce
00:03:40a knockoff
00:03:43of of of the patriot that is compatible with patriot, and the UAE has fielded that for
00:03:48of of example, but basically we're having to shift and draw down from other
00:03:52contingencies and what that means is that if there's
00:03:55simultaneously a war someplace else
00:03:58of we'd be stretched.
00:04:00of Right, David, for context, um, has uh the US
00:04:04historically seen such inventory
00:04:06shortfalls? Well, we haven't been as reliant
00:04:10on precision guided munitions the way um, we have
00:04:13here,
00:04:14but you know, if you look for example at the start of World
00:04:17War II, the United States army was
00:04:19of smaller than Portugal, smaller than Yugoslavia, and uh, we
00:04:23had stock piles that matched it, we we didn't really have effective
00:04:26tank, uh, we were short aircraft, um, "and we we
00:04:30wound up building all these things out in in very short
00:04:34order, but that's a much, that's with much broader industrial base
00:04:38of with a uh uh base of trained machinists and stuff that
00:04:42doesn't really exist in the United States because lot of our commercial production has been
00:04:46outsourced to other countries and our
00:04:48of defense production has been allowed to
00:04:50a lag,
00:04:51of so um uh again
00:04:54of it's it uh, I think what makes us of concern is that we
00:04:58are so reliant on the..." precision munitions,
00:05:02of but um, the period of risk will only last about three years, I
00:05:06think, and there's another, there's another factor I should have mentioned at the start, which
00:05:10is people look at say the use of tomahaw. missiles and they say, well they used all these
00:05:13tomahawk missiles here so we can't go forward in war,
00:05:17but you you use lot these munitions at the start of a
00:05:21campaign, and then as you're able to substitute, you
00:05:25you suppress enemy air defense, you're able to drop bombs instead of firing missiles your need
00:05:29for those missiles sort of tapers off, so so there's a
00:05:33significant element of risk, we haven't been as dependent on missiles
00:05:36any other time as we are now, but we we have had shortages
00:05:40with certain calibers missiles in the... fast, it's it's just our mindset has
00:05:44been wrong for the last 50 years, right? it may
00:05:48not be huge in numbers, like you've pointed out, but it is a cost nonetheless
00:05:52and so given the current amount that has already been spent on
00:05:56munitions in the Iran war, is the US willing to keep on
00:06:00spending such amounts in this war um and
00:06:03continue with the kind of expense that is going to be
00:06:07built on whether they're producing weapons at home or taking in from other
00:06:10countries. President Trump did not make the political
00:06:14case for this war with the American people before going there,
00:06:17so um the bigger issue is the loss of U.S. service
00:06:21members, we we've lost 18, um,
00:06:24you know, if if you were to look it in the macro sense, that's about as many people
00:06:28as the department of defense would lose to traffic accidents, but we don't
00:06:32look these things a macro sense, people um are saying you didn't
00:06:36make the case for this war, so the war is viewed as uh not a
00:06:40war of not a war of, it's viewed as a of choice
00:06:43uh and so the human costs uh if we
00:06:47were to lose say a ship which is major
00:06:51investment for us, people would say, well wait a minute, why
00:06:54are we here? so that's that's a poor
00:06:57preparation uh on president trump's part,
00:07:00and you think he thought that this would go much more quickly than it
00:07:04did, the money is issue, but honestly the way the
00:07:08US government works, we say do you buy guns or butter,
00:07:12but never really clear uh tradeoff, we wind up buying guns
00:07:15and butter, the only question is how much of each uh, and the tradeoffs are
00:07:19not explicit. is the sentiment within the
00:07:23defense forces um also the same as you're
00:07:27representing and especially given the defense secretary
00:07:30stuns, what is the way that the defense forces themselves feel
00:07:34about the current status? uh, I
00:07:37can't speak for contemporary moods within
00:07:41our... forces, but uh uh, in general
00:07:45soldiers always complain, pretty much no matter where they
00:07:48are, and the issue here of course is that they're a
00:07:52very auster environment, locked down, subject to
00:07:56periodic attacks, um, and there's not a lot of you
00:08:00know fixed infrastructure, there's not um, you
00:08:04even when I was like deployed to Bosnia, which was considered to be a combat
00:08:07tour, but we had
00:08:11uh monthly... trips for relaxation, we had resorts close
00:08:15by and the terrain was pretty nice, actually pretty
00:08:18beautiful here, these guys are out the
00:08:20in the middle desert, nothing to go, so and of course you if you're a ship,
00:08:24my goodness, mean particularly an aircraft carrier, well you you can't just get up and
00:08:28walk up on the the deck, the deck is very dangerous,
00:08:32so um some these guys you know may not get lot of direct sunlight
00:08:36for six months, so i'm sure morale is flagging
00:08:40and uh what makes that worse is the fact that you don't
00:08:44know how long it will how long this will go,
00:08:47so um, I would, I would be surprised if Moral is as high
00:08:51as it was, say in some other uh
00:08:54incidents, but soldiers always complain, and given
00:08:58the democratically drawn nature the US Armed
00:09:01forces, uh, I would be shocked if uh,
00:09:05if uh, if we didn't get complaints, I would be concerned if they weren't
00:09:08complaints, right, and what about the...
00:09:13reports coming in of retirements within the armed force, especially
00:09:16related to the defense secretary, so those
00:09:20are at the senior level, so here we're talking about senior
00:09:24generals, um, the secretary is very
00:09:27controversial figure, I don't care for him particularly,
00:09:31um, and he does not show any deference to uh,
00:09:35rank or experience, he tends to have the view that he is a combat
00:09:39soldier, which he was, um, uh,
00:09:42Iraq and that uh the generals don't know what's going on,
00:09:46that he knows what's going on better. There's also an element of
00:09:50suspicion the we have a theory
00:09:54that the people who are career civil servants
00:09:57and
00:09:58the diplomats, and by extension some senior officers uh are
00:10:02inherently democratic. This comes out the first impeachment of President
00:10:05Trump where one the key figures was an army lieutenant
00:10:09colonel. So he doesn't show them any deference.
00:10:12and he apparently views some these officers as having made
00:10:16unacceptable compromises of military values in order
00:10:20to swage the biden administration or the Obama administration uh
00:10:24that's very controversial, we're losing lot of
00:10:27leadership, um, and uh, you know, I
00:10:31don't know anybody, none of my peers who are defense
00:10:35professionals and I mean, I'm a retired colnel, and I served in
00:10:39the army for 30 years, none of my peers like the guy or
00:10:43have much, I think that he's on the right track, but
00:10:47we are democraticly responsive armed forces
00:10:50and the president gets to choose the generals he
00:10:54likes. we've had controversial reliefs in the past like when um
00:10:58president showman fired general McArthur uh who was the
00:11:01most famous one the most famous soldiers of his day and president
00:11:05shruman fired him so uh this is this
00:11:09is a bit of a concern but uh it's more is
00:11:13being made of it the bench of experienced
00:11:16generals is deep only about 2% of uh
00:11:20colonels become generals and only about uh half of
00:11:24one star generals become two-star generals and it gets narrower and narrower, when you get
00:11:28to the three-st level, all of those positions can be characterized as
00:11:32political, so I wouldn't read too much into
00:11:35it. Right, and David, there's these
00:11:38developments of course, and adding to it, the kind of fatigue that the
00:11:42reports are coming in for the troops that of course are also
00:11:46deployed as part the maritime block, it raisess concerns as to how
00:11:49far of course that is being affected too, what is the US
00:11:53response in terms? how long it is willing to hold that
00:11:57blockaid or um of course uh keep on
00:12:01um rounding the soldiers um for for rest and then of
00:12:05course we're getting more on board is that a strategy that the US
00:12:09is still willing to continue despite these developments yeah
00:12:12so I should have said this earlier as well I
00:12:16apologize for um I don't think President Trump has a strategy a
00:12:20strategy is a long-term plan to do this I think he's he's doing
00:12:23tactics he's mod tactics to this, so the limiting factor on the
00:12:27blockade is basically aircraft carriers, and going back to
00:12:31my early remarks about generations of disinvestment
00:12:35in the defense base after the end the cold war, we
00:12:39just don't have enough carriers, and the fact that this happened
00:12:43right after the Venezuela operation, which had number of carriers
00:12:47on duty there, it means that carriers that normally the navy likes to divide
00:12:51the carrier year into three cycles, you have a import, you have
00:12:55training at sea and then you have deployment and what we're seeing is
00:12:58basically import and deployment
00:13:02because the lack of capacity
00:13:06there, so it's an issue with carriers, the Abraham lincoln was at sea, i
00:13:09think longer than any us surface ship since World War
00:13:13II, longer at sea without a port
00:13:15call, um, the
00:13:19uh, it's it's a problem, but again, you have
00:13:23had issues, exceptional issues. there was one uh national guard so
00:13:27reserve battalion that or brigade rather that had
00:13:31to spend almost two years in combat in Afghanistan
00:13:34because
00:13:35uh of shortfalls at the time in 2007 to enable the surge in
00:13:39Iraq um but here it's a
00:13:42bigger issue and lot of it speaks to uh mismanagement the
00:13:46navy but in short the blockade can be run uh almost
00:13:50indefinitely um usually what that means is that we
00:13:54would lose the capacity have naval strike uh onto
00:13:58Iran's land, but surface combatants and perhaps
00:14:02smaller um smaller carriers that are not uh
00:14:06capable of complete horizontal takeoff, so ships like the USS
00:14:10Boxer which uh need the vertical variant the joint strike
00:14:14fighter could uh execute the naval blockade
00:14:18rule, what you would lose would be the sea base
00:14:20strike. Right, thanks so much David for joining us.
00:14:25being a part the news room today, there's a lot of development still taking place, of course
00:14:29continue to affect the parties involved in the war, but also others who
00:14:32experienceing the impact of this war as well as the economic
00:14:36impact that has been created now, not just from this radio from news, but also from
00:14:40babo Mandap. we're now going to take a look at another aspect that's very important,
00:14:43that's the ongoing genocide in Gaza and of course what's going on in the west
00:14:47bank, but the way that different countries have responded to that is
00:14:50important with the new UK prime minister um it was...
00:14:55um mixed uh expectation whether or not there is going to be
00:14:59tough first chance that the UK is going to take and um there's has
00:15:03been of course uh an all out support that has been stated by
00:15:07the prime minister also some sort of boycots that have been put in place but what
00:15:11does it essentially mean in terms the UK's actions
00:15:15we're going to take closer look at that with christoph blo's professor of international
00:15:19relations and security at the university of Bradford thank you very much christif for
00:15:22joining us today in your opinion what's you're hearing from the UK prime
00:15:26minister how starkly different do you think it
00:15:29is uh from of course what Starma talked about
00:15:33earlier but also historically for UK to be
00:15:37giving such a statement for what's going on outside the
00:15:41country, especially with the kind of calls for more
00:15:45support for Gaza that came in from the people the
00:15:48UK.
00:15:51the position the United Kingdom has been that it has been a
00:15:55supporter and ally of Israel generally speaking, it has a
00:15:59military agreement with Israel and it has
00:16:03intelligence sharing with Israel and it supported Israel
00:16:07in the wake the 7th of October
00:16:10events, but of course since then has been become very,
00:16:14very cautious and to some extent has
00:16:18condemned Israel with regard to the actions in Gaza and the
00:16:21occupied territories, and of course the very high
00:16:25civilian death toll in Gaza and some the military
00:16:29actions by Israel in in in the Gaza area
00:16:32and also now the settler violence in the occupied
00:16:36territories has brought about condemnation from United
00:16:40Kingdom, so we see first of all that arms export
00:16:43licenses were suspended, so some
00:16:47some action against Israel in this way, and at the same
00:16:51time, they did not want to use the word
00:16:55genocide, and they're still not talking about genocide pers as a legal
00:16:58principle, partly because they don't want to take the responsibility
00:17:02of making this judgment and incur the responsibilities that would
00:17:06follow from this. such as having to prosecute individual people
00:17:10and taking actions, the united nations also said that, so how is it
00:17:14about taking
00:17:14responsibility?
00:17:19they they're trying to to to to manage
00:17:22different trends, think in different tensions
00:17:26in their policy, so while they they are not completely
00:17:30breaking with Israel, they're clearly criticizing Israel's actions in
00:17:34gaza, have called for seasfire quite earlier.
00:17:38have even recognized the palestine state
00:17:41in 2025, so that's a major step for
00:17:44Britain to take, and now of course the sanctions
00:17:48which under burnam have been taken against the occupied
00:17:51territories, so banning any goods or any to be
00:17:55either exported or exported to the occupied
00:17:59territories is quite a major step, and it's a signal which
00:18:02says that what Israel is doing in the occupied territories is
00:18:05illegal. how does the public in UK
00:18:09feel about this response and the UK still hesitant
00:18:13to call it a genocide? yes, there is kind of
00:18:17a spectrum of of opinion on this. mean, the furthest the government has
00:18:21gone is that individual ministers have talked about potential war
00:18:25crimes that have been committed by Israeli forces or
00:18:29Israeli persons in in in in these conflicts
00:18:33and they've obviously caused called for cease fire really early
00:18:37on. and condemned various military actions by Israel,
00:18:41in the United Kingdom, the there is some division there
00:18:44is concern about the anti-semitism
00:18:47and threats to the Jewish community in the UK. on the
00:18:51other hand, especially in the labor party itself, and so
00:18:54towards the left the spectrum, the pro Palestinian
00:18:58sentiment is very very strong, and especially the the idea
00:19:02that there are war crimes taking place and that it could be amounting
00:19:06to genocide. Right, um, Chris,
00:19:10when we see the situation, of course, especially in the way
00:19:13that Israel's relationship with the United States has also been
00:19:17affected um, as part the duration
00:19:21the conflict with Iran, how do you think that
00:19:25the relationship that the UK has with Israel changed in
00:19:29whatever form, despite of course whatever steps has been taken by the current
00:19:32government, what is the current stance the
00:19:36relationship that you has with Israel at the moment,
00:19:39because while of course these statements are being made, there are
00:19:43other engagements and trade relationships that have still not been
00:19:46cancelled. yes, so the netan government
00:19:50is very angry about the United Kingdom stances especially,
00:19:54and the idea of these sanctions against the occupied
00:19:58territories, a general view towards Gaza, I think is seen as
00:20:02very critical in Israel, but yes, the relationship remains to some
00:20:05extent, and the United Kingdom... also has to manage its relationship with
00:20:09the United States, as you say, for different reasons, the Trump
00:20:13administration also has some issues with Israel, and
00:20:16so this is quite a difficult balance to manage, so
00:20:20Burnham has to look both towards his own constituency, which is fairly
00:20:24pro Palestinian as well as
00:20:28being careful about not being accused of antizionism, so it's a
00:20:31difficult political path for him to tread, so they want to go as strongly as
00:20:35possible, but he's been quite clear, he said he doesn't feel entitled to make the
00:20:39judgment that is genocide, so he thinks there has to be some kind of
00:20:43formal judgment elsewhere that's made
00:20:45that, but there is talk about war crimes being
00:20:49committed. by Israel for sure in the members the current UK
00:20:53government. right, thanks so much Christop for
00:20:57joining us and being a part the show today, speaking just about is the current stance that the
00:21:01UK is taking about the genocide in Gaza, and while it has taken
00:21:04certain measures and talked about support for Gaza, it has
00:21:08fallen short of calling it a genocide, and that of course still
00:21:12remains concerns for the people the UK. that's all that we have from
00:21:16the news room today, we'll now see you tomorrow.
00:21:50February 2026 parliamentary elections after major political
00:21:53reset Bangladesh heads to the poles once again where the new generation
00:21:57decides the next chapter of
00:21:59Bangladesh.
00:22:10Pakistan TV team is here at the Beijing Capital International
00:22:13Airport.
00:22:20Pakistan tv is right now reporting live from the great hall the people
00:22:24here in China's capital
00:22:25Beijing.
00:22:33Pakistani delegation led by prime minister Shahar Shariff
00:22:36and chief of defense force field marshall Assim Munir have
00:22:40now departed from the great hall the
00:22:42people.
00:22:50very significant mous will be signed in this
00:22:54important
00:22:54meeting,
00:23:10we are at the jinna
00:23:18talks comment today, prime held a key meeting with
00:23:22us vice president JDV in
00:23:24Islamabad
00:23:36you about about the Pakistani role
00:23:38especially
00:23:41very good Pakistan leadership
00:23:44and I have no
00:23:48second thought about the fact that. for the man of
00:23:51peace, it was Pakistan who made sure that the 47 year
00:23:55old conflict
00:23:56ends,
00:24:05the way he praised the role of Prime Minister Shahbaz
00:24:08Sharif, field marshall Assim Munir, it made headlines
00:24:12in Pakistan,
00:24:32here at Gina Convention Center Islamabad. Pakistan's water
00:24:35strategy is clear. When river crosses borders, cooperation
00:24:39becomes just as important as the water
00:24:41itself.
00:26:32in
00:26:33airport
00:26:39where the new generation decides the next chapter of
00:26:42Bangladesh.
00:26:54A second thought about the fact that is the man of
00:26:57peace.
00:27:02tell you about about the Pakistani
00:30:20Hello and welcome to pakistan tv with the news of this hour, I'm Zaina Bukhari, let's have
00:30:24look at the
00:30:24headlines.
00:30:45Pakistan strongly condemy attacks against Saudi Arabian RefMs
00:30:49Islamabads and waving support for the kingdoms of granity, territorial
00:30:52integrity and
00:30:53security.