First Combat Use: Turkey’s Bora Missile

Jeffrey Lewis 0:02

I like to run things to the ground. You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Aaron Stein 0:24

And I'm Aaron Stein, director of the Middle East Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Anne Pellegrino 0:30

And I am Anne Pellegrino, a project manager and research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

Jeffrey 0:37

You are laughing at me, Aaron, but I've got a beach view and a Turkish missile launch, and I couldn't be happier.

Anne 0:45

Launch a missile, get a pod.

Aaron 0:47

Yeah, man, it's in my neck of the woods. I saw this flash across my Twitter scene and what's funny is I instantly shared it with you and then I got giddy phone calls. Giddy phone calls is not normally what one I would associate with the use of ballistic missiles in combat.

Anne 1:02

Yesterday was so much fun.

Jeffrey 1:04

Yes. So, dear listeners, what has happened is Turkey has joined Iran and the Houthi rebels. And I suppose the the Egyptians and the Syrians as a country in the Middle East that has used a ballistic missile in combat.

Anne 1:24

Dun-dun-dun!

Aaron 1:25

Boom! Goes the dynamite. Yeah, it started creeping up out on the Turkish press on May 29th, and they really weren't shy about it. There was a nice little video.

Anne 1:35

So, Aaron, you are the one, you're the Turkish expert, so can you give us a little context?

Jeffrey 1:40

Gobble, gobble. Gobble, gobble, Aaron. Talk Turkey to me.

Aaron 1:46

They have been involved in combat operations in northern Iraq against the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which is a U.S.-European Union and Turkish-designated terrorist group, basically since 1984. But in the most recent context, since April 2018 and beginning in May, they have an operation called Operation Claw. And the missile was used as part of Operation Claw, the press tells us, in late May.

And that's basically it.

Jeffrey 2:16

And I mean, what's interesting to me is this is a Bora missile, which is Turkey's domestically produced version of China's B611M, which is pretty wild.

Aaron 2:32

Yeah, I mean, and you did some work on this. I mean, maybe just give us the cliff notes on the origins of this missile and why we love it so much.

Anne 2:42

Sure. So it is a result of Turkish and Chinese co-production on Turkey's ballistic missile program. And co-production began in the 1990s when China basically helped Turkey jumpstart its domestic ballistic missile program. Phases one and two resulted in Turkey's Kasirga artillery rockets. And then the Yildirim, which was the first variant of the B611 ballistic missile. Now, the Bora I is the product of the third phase of cooperation, which began in 2009, and is an extended range version of the B611 Yildirim missile.

Aaron 3:32

Yeah, it means lightning.

Anne 3:33

Okay, yes, lightning. And B611M is the ER version of the B611, which is the Bora 1.

Aaron 3:44

And they sort of brought this thing out into the wild. I can't remember. They had a test video. It was up over the Black Sea, and I think that's where you got your interest in the missile, and you went hunting for where it was made.

Anne 3:54

Yes. So it was like July 2017, they launched it into the Black Sea. That was, I believe, one of the first tests that we saw or that they videoed. And then we didn't, I haven't seen anything, any other media related to it besides... Mock-ups at defense conferences and such. So I was super excited to see some combat use of the Bora.

Well, I wasn't expecting it. I wasn't expecting it. I wasn't expecting to flex my geolocation chops in Turkey. So yesterday was a good day.

Jeffrey 4:36

Well, I think, I mean, the thing is they're selling it. That's one thing. And so, you know, in some sense, this is product placement. The Bora is available for export under the name Khan. And actually, I think, you know, the B611 and B611M, which is a pretty popular Chinese short-range ballistic missile for export, I think this is the first combat use of that system.

Anne 5:01

Yeah, it is.

Jeffrey 5:03

So lolly lolly, get your SRBMs while they're hot. But I mean...

Aaron 5:09

We were WhatsAppping about this as I was going home yesterday because I'm on solo dad duty. I mean, how do the Chinese use these things? Because it sort of seems like the Turks... Well, we're going to talk about why the Turks really use it a little later, at least what we can infer. But it sort of seems like overkill for what the Turks used.

I say it was targeting tunnel complexes or caves. It's really just over the border. What is this missile actually intended to do?

Jeffrey 5:34

Yeah, you know... This particular missile, the Chinese have developed exclusively for export. But back in the day, the Chinese actually developed some of these things for export and then decided they liked them so much that the Second Artillery, which is now the PLA Rocket Force, decided to transition from an entirely nuclear force to a force in which the majority of their Missiles were conventionally armed short-range missiles.

And so, you know, they look at them as kind of an alternative to an air force. And so, you know, it's actually pretty interesting. David Logan, who I don't know if people know, has a really cool paper out on how the existence of a conventional missile force in China has shaped career prospects for Chinese military officers. But the Chinese are like nutty about conventional missiles.

And they used them, I think, in the way that we would use, well, certainly the way we use Tomahawks, but also the way that we would use aircraft-delivered precision munitions.

Aaron 6:43

Okay. I mean, because this area where it allegedly struck in northern Iraq, it's sort of a mountainous area just over the border, and... Just to put it in context, that place is routinely struck by F-16s carrying precision guided munitions, so it's not like they really needed the missiles to be able to strike targets up there. They just chose to use the missiles.

Jeffrey 7:05

Oh, but it's inter-service rivalry, right? Like, if you've got a Bora, you've got to use it. I guess. I mean, well, I think this is exactly what we saw in in the Chinese case, which is the second artillery hates nuclear weapons. And I shouldn't call them second artillery anymore. The rocket force, because like what was the plan for the Chinese rocket force in the war?

You guys go hide out in caves until the war is over. And if we get new, dig yourself out and take revenge. Like that's the mission on Earth. I mean, one thing that I think really came out of this, Aaron, and we should talk about the geolocation is they launched the Bora from the same place that they had been launching artillery strikes.

Aaron 7:49

Yeah, but we did. So like that, I mean, that's a good place to transition is like we found that out. So like it comes up and maybe we describe the video. So then there's a video attached to it and we're like, oh, we can find this. So that's that was the sort of framing for the giddy phone call.

Jeffrey 8:04

Can we talk about our effed up workflow?

Anne 8:09

It was basically like a race, and we just kind of were like, oh, this looks like a flat plane. It's probably around here.

Jeffrey 8:16

Well, wait a second. We have to set the scene for listeners. So Aaron is texting Anne and I on WhatsApp.

Aaron 8:28

There is a arms control wonk podcast group chat.

Jeffrey 8:33

Yes, among... That you all wish you could be in.

Anne 8:36

Sorry.

Jeffrey 8:38

No, you don't. No, you don't. And so Aaron is texting on that, but I have also called Aaron, and so I cannot use my phone. My phone is on speaker because Anne and I are sitting in Anne's office. And Anne is taking things off the WhatsApp chat and putting them into Twitter DMs so I can see them on my computer while we are all talking.

Which it turns out is not an effective way. Well, actually, I guess it turned out to be an effective way to find a missile launch site.

Anne 9:08

I didn't really, there wasn't really a way around it once we began that process because it just, it became like a... Copy paste second nature to me. I was like in the zone and you were freaking out. You're like, I can't see these things, Aaron. Like you're, you're saying, you saying that you see it and I can't see it.

And you're, you're, you're just, I'm like, Jeffrey, it's in your DMS.

Aaron 9:31

Yeah. Well, that's because you guys don't use the WhatsApp desktop feature.

Anne 9:36

I didn't know there was one.

Aaron 9:37

I do now. Well, that, so that was the, that was the, that was, that's the root of the problem is that you guys are, are behind. You guys are still using your phones exclusively for WhatsApp, not the desktop feature.

Anne 9:47

All right. Well, our next Turkey geolocation, we will all be on WhatsApp desktop.

Aaron 9:52

And so we just started looking at newspapers. So there was news clippings online from all of these various Turkish sources. And it was more or less like them writing the same story or at least copy-pasting the same story. And the first one that we looked at just listed the province that the missile was fired from. So from Hakkari province, which is not all that surprising.

That's just way down in the... Southeast tip of Turkey, close to where the four countries come together, those four countries being Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Turkey.

Jeffrey 10:24

Which was horrible for me because the name of the target was... Hukirk. Hukirk. Which I could not keep straight. The fact that you speak Turkish and Anne speaks Arabic, it was easy for you to. I was drowning.

Anne 10:38

Well, so, but then also in that first article, there was the name of a brigade, right, Aaron, where that's where we started our search. It was the 10th Mountain Commando Brigade.

Aaron 10:50

10th Mountain Commando Brigade. So then we went looking for, and then in the video, it's in a flat plane. You see some.

Jeffrey 10:57

Yeah, there were several videos of the launch. It's a thing we haven't said, but it turns out those were really useful.

Aaron 11:03

Yeah. So then there's a video of the launch and you can tell it's in a flat plane, I guess is the word you would take in a, I mean. Flat plains surrounded by mountains, and there are identifiable structures. There's a weird curvy road, and I mean, what are those buildings that you can see? Are those like temporary storage trailers?

Anne 11:21

Yeah, like portable trailers, like the things that I'm sure everyone in my generation grew up, at least one class in elementary school was held in one of those trailers outside the high school.

Jeffrey 11:31

Jesus Christ, we really have underfunded education. Yeah.

Anne 11:34

Yeah, you'd think. So it was probably like 20 of those trailers all lined up in three rows. And then just beyond that, we could see what looked to be five half-dome hangar-like structures. So those were the main... Structures that we were looking for in that video, but then we also got two other videos that had useful different angles with other useful identifiers, right? It wasn't really all that useful because we, you know, I mean, we found it out eventually. We found the first base. Why don't we go? Okay, it didn't take us, it took us like an hour, 45 minutes. I'm pretty sure that that's pretty good for geolocation.

Aaron 12:23

We found the first base.

Jeffrey 12:24

We found the commando base because they wrote commando on the mountain.

Aaron 12:28

Yeah, they wrote commando on the mountain over it. And what confused us, I think we should say why we got confused and why we, for about two minutes, thought we had found the launch point.

Anne 12:42

It was a little longer than that. Jeffrey was determined that that was the spot.

Aaron 12:47

We were determined to orient it. Well, that's because there were effing missiles on the base.

Anne 12:52

Yes, okay. So when we see Bora launchers on a pad, we think maybe that's the right place.

Jeffrey 13:00

Wait, I didn't see Bora launchers there. I just saw shelters that are evocative of missile. And there were what looked like launch positions.

Anne 13:12

Okay. Right, that's right. My bad.

Jeffrey 13:14

Our bad.

Aaron 13:15

Right, and so then we thought we had found the base, but then we quickly, okay, not quickly, maybe 15 minutes, we were trying to make it work, and we're like, no, this isn't the right place.

Jeffrey 13:24

I like to run things to the ground.

Anne 13:26

Fair enough. But I, okay, so what was missing from the first location?

Jeffrey 13:30

Everything.

Anne 13:31

It was not, well, okay, but we're going to, you know. So it was tucked up above, what was the town's name? Started with a Y. Someone dug my memory.

Aaron 13:46

Yuksekova.

Anne 13:47

Yes.

Jeffrey 13:49

Which is where the Hakari Airport is, 40 kilometers away from Hakari.

Anne 13:53

Right. And so in the video, though, you could see beyond the launch point and there were no other structures really identifiable. But from the vantage point of the spot that we initially identified, there were – it was a town. So there was a whole bunch of structures. That didn't match up. The kind of the –

Jeffrey 14:15

Mountain line, the ridge line didn't match up. That's what persuaded me it wasn't right. And is when Ann showed me the the mountain profile, it just, it was not match. Yeah, right. So I started to get frustrated.

Aaron 14:33

So then I was like, wait a minute. Because at this point, we were so excited. We were just working off that one news story. And I was like, I'm just going to Google it again. So I Googled it again.

Jeffrey 14:41

And by the way, I was also frustrated because we had this conversation at the beginning. And let this be a lesson to geolocators. Don't just start looking randomly, which we kind of did. Yeah, we did.

Aaron 14:53

We were excited.

Jeffrey 14:53

You really need to invest the time to make a best guess at where you should start looking, and that's when you saved us, Aaron.

Aaron 15:01

Right. So then I went back to – I was like, oh, wait a minute. The second story in Yeni Akit, which anybody who knows Turkey knows that Yeni Akit is an anti-Semitic rag. But in this case, they were really nice in that they actually listed – The location of where it was fired, and it's a place called Derecik, or Derecik?

Jeffrey 15:25

You're saying this like any of us speak Turkish.

Aaron 15:28

No, well, I'm trying to phonetically spell it in case people are following along. The C's in Turkey are pronounced like J's. And then, in the process of then Googling for local military facilities, I found... Sort of pictures of the Derechik Fourth Border Battalion. And then the problem is that it's not a very well-photographed area in Google Earth.

Jeffrey 15:57

Oh, it's horrible. Yeah, the newest image in Google Earth is, like, ancient, right?

Anne 16:05

It was very blurry. You could barely see. I mean, you could make out structures and like, you know, where there was definitely a town. There was nothing. There was nothing to identify. There was nothing to go off of, really with our videos.

Aaron 16:21

But then I, so then I started looking just at like Google images of the place and I started to get really giddy and excited because I just knew in my bones that like this was the place because like there was some markers in there and Jeffrey kept wondering why I was squealing and I was talking to myself.

Anne 16:36

And again, remember our workflow. Our workflow. You kept getting excited. We could hear you getting excited, but you weren't sending us anything. Right.

Aaron 16:43

Well, I was putting it in the WhatsApp, but then you guys weren't putting it in the WhatsApp, so then finally Jeffrey and I got on a separate DM track, because at this point, we're having to track down imagery.

Anne 16:54

We all should have just been in Twitter DMs. I know.

Aaron 16:58

Now that we're looking back on this. So then we go searching for the imagery.

Jeffrey 17:02

Right. And Planet had some okay three meter images, which whet our appetite more. Because we could see that the base had been built up. From the time of the old Google Earth image, and so that was more credible. And then we got a digital globe image that ended the discussion.

Aaron 17:29

Yeah, because do you want to describe what we saw in that digital globe image?

Jeffrey 17:35

For a missile launcher, multiple. There's like, what, two or three of them? Yeah, there's like three on there. I think not on the pad where they were fired, because the the Digital Globe image was from like, I don't know, a week or two before, but they're just above the pad that we identified as the launch point for the May 29th strike. Yeah, and I mean, it was clear, Isabelle.

Aaron 17:58

Oh, yeah. No, they're right there. And then at this point, I'm still looking for more videos. And then what we find is a video from 2017 of artillery rockets that are being fired from the same place.

Jeffrey 18:11

From the same pad. Same pad, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Aaron 18:16

Yeah, yeah. And then there was another video online that was floating around on the Twitters that I also found that provided another angle. Which just sort of sealed the deal, is that at that point, put it in the bag, we had found the place.

Jeffrey 18:32

Yeah, so now we know, you know, it's funny because Anne and I were like looking at one another like, oh, we, when we made our Middle East missile map, we identified the production facility for the Bora, and we identified the test site for the Bora.

Anne 18:48

We didn't think to add some missile bases.

Jeffrey 18:52

Well, now we got one, right?

Anne 18:53

Well, I think we got two.

Jeffrey 18:55

Yeah, the other one definitely has my attention. I mean, we're going to have to, like, snoop on that and see if they roll one out. Because the range of the Bora... I mean, Aaron, you were pointing out, it's really overkill, given how close the targets seem to have been.

Aaron 19:12

Right, so that's where I wanted to pivot, like, this time. It's like, so then I started, like, if they use them in Huckirk... Like, Huckirk is just, like, across the border, and, like... I mean, yes, I mean, I guess it could be, like, a relatively large area. I mean, it's hard to describe this, like, just in... But the PKK, like, actual stronghold is, like, a little farther if you're looking down at a map to the right in what's called the Kandil Mountains, which straddle the Iraqi-Iranian border and is just slightly south of where those two borders intersect with Turkey.

So it's... It's only 50 kilometers across from there into Iran, at least traveling east. So that's not very far to fly.

Jeffrey 19:59

Yeah, I mean, that little, I don't know what you would call it, town? Derejik? Yeah.

Aaron 20:08

It's like a waypoint. Derejik, the thing that you're looking at are actually military barracks, but yeah, it's like a little waypoint on like a mountain valley road that snakes out of a rock.

Jeffrey 20:17

Yeah, it's five kilometers to the border. And, you know, like just it's in this little salient that kind of sticks into Iraq.

Aaron 20:32

Yes.

Jeffrey 20:34

And so it really, you know, I mean, I guess in some sense it's really useful because it can range everything. Yeah. You know, from this spot, you know, the range on this missile is like 280 kilometers. Yeah.

Anne 20:48

We think its minimum range is about 50, right?

Jeffrey 20:55

Yeah, I think they fired it to its minimum range. Right. I don't think it... If that target had been any closer, they'd have had to drive further away. But I think at 280 kilometers, from here they can get way past Kirkuk. You know, and they can range into Iran and just a wee bit of Syria. But, you know, like that's, it's really, it's sticking pretty far out there.

And when they get the Bora too, which will have like a much longer range, then, you know, Baghdad and Deir Ezzor and Kermanshah and Iran will all be in range.

Aaron 21:46

Well, I mean, for those parts in Darazor, they could just move it. I mean, they have bases in other places along the border. That's true.

Anne 21:53

But why would you do that when you can just build a longer-range missile?

Jeffrey 21:57

I mean, they've already got the concrete pad and the f***ing trailers.

Aaron 22:02

Well, before we... So, like, if you guys had to guess, like, why use this? I mean, was it to get experience on how to use this operationally? Was it essentially like a real-world test, in quotes? Yes. Was it for propaganda? Is it all the above? I mean, it really is overkill. Anybody who tracks the conflict knows that this is where Turkish F-16 strikes are clustered.

Jeffrey 22:28

Yeah, I'm guessing the Army doesn't want the Air Force to have all the fun.

Anne 22:33

And if you're planning on exporting a version, then you would probably like to show off to your potential clients that it can actually see combat, right? I mean, you can do all the tests you want, but I don't know. Maybe they just were like, meh.

Jeffrey 22:54

Well, and I mean, this gets into this bigger question of... What value countries see in ballistic missiles. Because, you know, I think that we have a... We have been slow in the United States and Western Europe to appreciate the value that countries place in conventionally armed ballistic missiles. It was a surprise to the United States when the Chinese invested heavily in them.

And I think that we don't really... Haven't really caught on to how much missile proliferation is going on in the Middle East, hence Anne and my missile map, right, to illustrate that, like, even, like, Qatar and the UAE and Saudi Arabia, right, all of those countries, as well as Syria and Egypt and Iran and now Turkey are building conventionally armed ballistic missiles.

Like, I think this is a capability that... Regional militaries value. They're, you know, reasonably accurate. You know, and you don't put a pilot in harm's way.

Aaron 24:02

I mean, there's no harm up there to pilots anyways. They have completely unfettered access to Iraqi airspace. I mean, the only air force that operates up there is ours.

Jeffrey 24:15

Yeah, but, you know, this may not be the only country they use these things against.

Aaron 24:20

No, I understand that. I mean, but Anne, I mean, one thing that we, well, I mean, we are writing this up is like, they want longer range, the Bora 2.

Anne 24:31

Yeah, that's the thing. 2018, April 2018, the defense minister announced the development of the Bora 2, and they said it would be more advanced and a longer range version, which if the Bora 1 already has a range of 280 kilometers, which is just under that 300 kilometer MTCR threshold, That kind of begs the question of how much longer will the range of the Bora II be?

Especially given the Chinese co-production element, my guess is that we will see two domestically produced variants of missiles that look very similar and have a very similar range, but without the... Overt, I mean, without the overt kind of cooperation that was signed between Turkey and China for the previous three phases of missile development.

Jeffrey 25:31

And here I should jump in and say that China has a, which we have never seen, except for in Chinese marketing materials, they have a 360 kilometer range variant of the B611M, which is like 650 millimeters in diameter. So the Turks could build that. But one thing that we've worked on a lot here is looking at how Iran progressed from the Fatah 110 that had like a 300 kilometer range, you know, pretty similar in capability to the B611M.

And, you know, that's now the Dezful, which is a thousand kilometer range missile.

Anne 26:11

That wasn't a very, it didn't take them very long to... To jump once they had the Zolfgar and then it was the Dezful popped up like almost immediately afterwards. You know, they gave us some whiplash.

Jeffrey 26:23

Yeah. I mean, they made a carbon fiber airframe. They made it a little bigger. They probably improved the propulsion a bit. So, you know, when a country like Turkey and this is like the big takeaway for me is when a country like Turkey starts with licensed production of a missile, even if that missile is under the MTCR threshold.

The technological paths available to them to make increasingly long-range missiles are different today than they were in the past. Things like carbon fiber airframes, countries can do. And so, you know, like if a country had, well, some countries did import Fatah-110s from Iran, That missile, really, if you can produce that, the steps you would need to produce the DESFUL later aren't that enormous.

So these much shorter range missiles, I think, really are now stepping stones to much more serious capabilities.

Aaron 27:17

As part of your missile map, is that you've identified that the Turks have these components?

Anne 27:24

Well, so I don't actually know. Do we know what Turkey's game is in terms of carbon fiber? No, I don't think we looked into that.

Jeffrey 27:32

No, I don't. We don't know that. That's a that's a that's a very interesting one. Although, you know, like we've watched like the Brazilians and the Iranians stand up domestic carbon fiber industries.

Anne 27:46

And so, I mean, I imagine it wouldn't be that hard for them.

Jeffrey 27:51

And actually, you know who else uses wound filament airframes? The North Koreans.

Anne 27:58

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey 27:59

Well. So, welcome to the new world of missile proliferation. That's the thing.

Aaron 28:05

I mean, the Turks up until about, hold on, I'm not an expert on Turkish carbon fiber, although I have been told in multiple meetings that they're pretty well advanced in this a long time ago.

Jeffrey 28:20

Well, there is a thing called Oksaka.

Aaron 28:26

Yes, in the Global Composite Center. I mean, they were at some point...

Jeffrey 28:31

Which has a joint venture with Dow. Yeah. So, you know...

Aaron 28:40

They have the capability. I'm just going to say that. I'm comfortable enough to say that, even though I am, quote-unquote, an expert. I am an expert on Turkey, not quote-unquote, but I wouldn't say I'm an expert on Turkey's carbon fiber industry. That's what I'm trying to say here.

Anne 28:54

So when Turkey says that the Bora 2 will be more advanced... That doesn't necessarily mean, like, more advanced guidance. It could be more advanced components, like carbon fiber, right?

Aaron 29:08

They do make one of the components of the fuselage for the F-35.

Anne 29:12

Oh, right.

Aaron 29:13

Yeah. So that's where I'm going with this, is that I would venture to guess, I would wager a considerable amount of money that they would have the ability to make lighter airframe.

Jeffrey 29:23

I am looking at SACA's carbon fiber available for purchase.

Aaron 29:30

You know, and it looks, it looks okay. Yeah, I think they're fine. My point is that I think they're fine in that, in that respect. And so scaling up wouldn't be something that would be difficult. how, I mean, do you guys know, and this may be like a real technical question, about how China licenses its engine technology? What's the question for Jeffrey? I don't, I don't, you know.

Jeffrey 29:57

One of the interesting questions that I have is, you know, the normally, so we don't have a lot of data. We know that the Chinese exported production capabilities to Pakistan.

Aaron 30:16

For the engine.

Jeffrey 30:17

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, as best we can tell, it looks like a solid propellant production plant. Yes. And we know that the Turks were doing licensed production, and so I'm guessing that that, you know, we looked at those facilities, and, you know, I think that means that they are making the propellant themselves and then casting it.

And then obviously there is the Chinese plant in Saudi Arabia, which CNN finally got some U.S. officials to confirm is, in fact, a Chinese missile production plant. That also looks like it. So it, you know, it looks like they are exporting... Not just kits, but the actual facilities to produce and cast the solid propellant motors.

Aaron 31:07

Well, if that is correct, I don't think there's anything really stopping just the buildup of the Bora II. I don't think it would be a massive technological hurdle.

Jeffrey 31:18

Yeah, I mean, in the case of Iraq, the issue was the size of the mixing bowls. You know, because there were export controls and they could, you know, but if if the Chinese have decided that they don't care and, you know, like China is voluntarily adhering to the MTCR, but the United States won't let China into the MTCR.

Given that, you know, there are voluntary guidelines anyway, and most MTCR members sort of take a very flexible view, witness the, you know, sale of MTCR Category 1, I think, cruise missiles to Saudi Arabia by the UK. I know they dispute that they're Category 1, but whatever. I could see the Chinese talking themselves into some big bowls.

Aaron 32:07

Yeah. I mean, I just think we're well on our way to the Borat 2. I think it's going to come out at some point, and it's just... There's going to be... Turks do fancy propaganda videos pretty well. It's going to be an Anadolu agency, the official state press agency, and it's going to be fired up over the Black Sea, and we're going to get giddy again.

Jeffrey 32:26

Woo-hoo! Test a missile, get a pod! Boop, boop, boop!

Anne 32:30

We should start a pool, play some bets about what we think the Borat 2 is going to look like, and... Yeah, when it's going to come out, because that's the new, that's that's the, that that's the thing that I'll be looking out for, you know. I don't, do we know? I mean, obviously other countries are probably hard at work, but I think it's a really interesting question. I don't, I don't know. I I am torn. I don't know that listeners want to hear this, but I mean, I'm torn between.

Jeffrey 32:58

The Bora 2 looking like the higher end Chinese B611M, which would be the simplest thing. But I'm not sure that they're going to go ahead and settle for the simplest thing because they don't really need to, right?

Anne 33:19

Right, right. And also, we haven't seen, I mean, we know that there is another rocket motor that we have not seen for the B-6 series, but we haven't seen it in China. Yeah. And we also haven't seen it in Turkey, so I'm interested to see what the timing is of whether we will see a Chinese version, when we will see the Turkish version, their similarities, all sorts of juicy details that do not have answers yet.

Jeffrey 33:51

Yeah. Aaron, you want to say nice things about the Slack channel?

Anne 33:57

His Wi-Fi dropped.

Jeffrey 33:59

Oh! I guess I have to do this. All right. If you like the podcast, you should consider supporting us. We are at www.patreon.com forward slash ACW podcast for five dollars or more a month. You can get access to our weekly mini-pod, Brilliant Pebbles, and you will also be invited to our backers-only Slack channel, where folks get all nerdy.

There's also, for students, if you have a .edu address, we have a $3 tier. We really appreciate the support because it helps Aaron and Anne and I continue to make the pod. And so, if you like the pod, consider making a contribution. Hey Anne, thanks for joining me.

Anne 34:54

It's a pleasure, as always.

Jeffrey 34:56

And Aaron, your Wi-Fi stinks.