The CAT I is Out of the Bag

Jeffrey Lewis 0:06

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

Aaron Stein 0:21

I'm Dr. Aaron Stein, Chief Content Officer at War on the Rocks, aka Minimorphic Media. Jeffrey, it's good to see you again.

Jeffrey 0:28

It is good to see you too, Aaron, if only virtually. We're back to our old tricks.

Aaron 0:34

Yeah. You know, one thing the pandemic did do for us is it got us onto Zoom, which I think is nice. I get to actually see you now. Although we were on Skype in the early days, weren't we?

Jeffrey 0:45

Yes, we used Skype, and I guess we saw each other then, too. Yeah.

Aaron 0:49

What the hell are we talking about?

Jeffrey 0:50

The whole four times. I don't know.

Aaron 0:52

The before times, man.

Jeffrey 0:53

They are a blur. And this week's topic is something that we have been long interested in.

Aaron 1:00

Yeah. Even in those before times. Yeah. I think if the Trident is the official missile of the Arms Control Wong podcast, a.k.a. We do take sponsors, MBDA, we also take sponsors and we love Storm Shadow, a.k.a. Scalp on this podcast, the British and French cruise missile that has found its way to Ukraine.

Jeffrey 1:19

There are so many reasons that we love it, but at least for me, it's two. Oh, yeah. One reason I love it is because most of what I know about that missile initially came from our friend, the late Dennis Gormley. And if you've been a longtime listener of the podcast, you know that when Dennis was alive, we frequently talked about how underappreciated Dennis and his work were.

And now that Dennis is gone, he's still underappreciated. Yep. But also, Francois Heisberg, who I also adore, one of my favorite people in the world, told me that he is the one who came up with the name Scalp. Wait, really? I didn't know this story. And it's a joke. It's a sly reference to the tomahawk. Okay, well, I get the reference.

Is that actually true? If we have the tomahawk, they can have the Scalp.

Aaron 2:13

I don't know. It's a great story. It's one to tell at parties. So I'm going to go with it. Yeah, Scalp. I mean... It's a cool missile because I think, as you just said, we love cruise missiles on this podcast. Dennis Gormley doesn't get enough love. He called it. And now we have a cool story about its naming.

And I remember going way back in the archives, reading about it showing up throughout the Middle East. I think the Saudis and the Emiratis and its impact on the missile technology control machine.

Jeffrey 2:47

Yeah. So for listeners, Scalp is a it's a strange cruise missile. And I don't fully understand because it's co-developed between the United Kingdom and France. And so in the United Kingdom, it's called Storm Shadow, which I guess in theory is a cooler name. But like, I don't know what a storm shadow like do storms have shadows.

Aaron 3:08

The Brits have weird naming conventions, but they would say the same about us.

Jeffrey 3:13

But in France, it's SCALP EG, also serving as a French acronym. And I guess EG is general employment. But there's a navalized version of it. But it's a stealthy. Very, well, very, I would say fairly long range cruise missile. Although there are there are debates about just how long range it is. But the UK has donated a number of these cruise missiles to Ukraine, which judging from the Russian kvetching about it, the Ukrainians are putting to very good use at the moment.

Aaron 3:52

Yeah, I mean, I think we're going to come back to the escalation dynamics a little bit. But, you know, one of the again, as I was saying, one of the reasons is that it's export around the world has implications for one of the first, I guess, the first name and the first words in this podcast name, which is arms control and the control of missiles and spread around the world.

And yes, they were donated in this case to Ukraine.

Jeffrey 4:16

Yeah, there is this just really fundamentally interesting question, both about the inherent range of the missile itself, but then also the methods that MTCR, the Missile Technology Control Regime, members use to calculate the range. Because I think from a UK and French perspective, this was always intended to be an exportable system. They have exported it to a number of countries, actually.

You know, everyone knows about the UAE because that was like the first big export. But it's also been exported to Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, which is where I got really interested in it. And now Ukraine. But it's... Not clear to me that this system is not—what's the right word to say? It's not clear to me this system is exportable under the MTCR.

I mean, every system is exportable. All the MTCR is is a set of voluntary guidelines, and there is a strong presumption of denial, but it doesn't really prohibit you from doing anything, but— I think this is an MTCR category one system, no matter what we have decided.

Aaron 5:28

Yeah. I mean, for listeners who aren't really in the weeds about the MTCR, although if you've been listening a long time, we've talked about it a bunch.

Jeffrey 5:37

If you're not in the weeds about the MTCR, why the hell would you download something called Arms Control Wonk Podcast?

Aaron 5:44

Yeah. Tell them what a category one system is and the presumption of denial about the export of category one systems. It's pretty simple. Right.

Jeffrey 5:52

So the voluntary export arrangement, the missile technology control regime has categories of systems that have different expectations in terms of how permissive the parties will be. And the Category 1 systems, which contain a strong presumption of denial for their export, are those that can carry a 500-kilogram payload to 300 kilometers, which, by the way, is a very archaic standard because what it is supposed to limit is the use of ballistic and cruise missiles for the delivery of missiles.

Nuclear weapons.

Aaron 6:36

Right. It's the presumed payload that you would need for a nuclear weapon, a nuclear warhead.

Jeffrey 6:43

And that number is like, yeah, it's not really a real number. And on top of it, not only is it not exactly a real number, that definition was created, I think, prior, I would say prior to the modern era in which we decided that All kinds of missiles are actually really useful to deliver payloads, right? It really reflects an era in which if you were taking 500 kilograms and you were sending it 300 kilometers, the expectation was it would be so inaccurate that the only thing you would possibly ever consider doing that for was a nuclear weapon, which is just like not the case today, right?

It arguably wasn't the case when they did it, but you know, whatever. Sometimes you have to have an arbitrary limit.

Aaron 7:29

I don't have it in front of me, and I should, but it's the first chapter of Dennis's book, which is that the initial guidance systems for these things were only in the hands of two countries. And really, it was the US that was driving it here. And as guidance with GPS and INS and all these things have matured and proliferated around the world, I'd say the MTCR is in the pre-proliferation of very accurate and cheap guidance systems as a metric for delivering payloads.

Jeffrey 7:55

Yeah, I mean, I think you see that, and I don't want to take too many potshots at the MTCR, which I think is just fundamentally—that is too strong of a word, but it really needs a serious rethink, I think, in light of technological realities. But— You know, it, it really, it really is. It's pretty archaic in the way it thinks about these problems, because like in the 1970s, like cruise missiles were really just a just US thing.

And I think the way you see this is, oh, in the challenge that the MTCR has in distinguishing UAVs from cruise missiles, which is to say it doesn't. And one of the few things that Chris Ford and the Bush administration did that I agreed with, but it never be said that I can't agree with people who I think are fundamentally wrong about everything, is actually tried to come up with a technical rationale to separate cruise missiles from UAVs.

And I think they did pretty well.

Aaron 8:59

Yeah. So, you know, it's old. Yeah. And the cruise missiles, UAV stuff, the Russians lean on that a lot. And we'll come back to that later. One of the things that's interesting is how you calculate range with a cruise missile. Because, I mean, a cruise missile is essentially an airplane, right? It's an air-breathing airplane. It's a smaller-bodied.

I mean, there's differences. But, like, you think about it. It's not a ballistic missile in that it goes up and it goes down in a ballistic arc. It can fly and it has a jet engine out the back of it.

Jeffrey 9:29

Yeah. I was going to say it's like, there are no differences. It's an unpiloted airplane. It has a jet engine and it has wings. And the only, the only difference I think fundamentally is that airplanes have landing gears on them because we don't intend them to be single use. Right.

Aaron 9:48

And life support systems for humans.

Jeffrey 9:51

Right. So we, That makes it a little bit tricky to come up with good technical rationales. And the one the Bush administration tried was speed, which actually I think was a pretty decent, you know, was a fairly decent proxy for loitering UAVs versus what we would think of as missiles. But it turns out it's really hard to estimate the range of a system.

That's where I was going, yeah. Yeah, for like a whole bunch of reasons.

Aaron 10:25

Yeah. So, I mean, I think it was the Saudi or the UAE case. Remind me. I can't remember. But when people started pointing out, like, why did you send the system to them? Because it can be MTCR compliant. The response is always it is. Because it's not a Category 1 system because the range is limited. And it gets down to, like, do you cut the fuel tank?

Down and give it less fuel or like what I was doing with the airplane stuff is like everybody knows if you fly higher you can fly farther because there's less friction in the air and if you get lower there's more friction and it goes less distance so it's how you calculate your fuel economy which anybody who drives a car knows that highway miles are different than city miles

Jeffrey 11:04

Yeah. So, you know, I don't quite know how to go about framing this. I think the place to start is just by observing that apart from like what everybody says. Based on official documents, the U.S. intelligence community clearly believes that both Storm Shadow and Scalp in their domestic configurations for the UK and France, but also in their export variations, are MTCR Category 1 systems.

And it's the funniest damn thing, because the way that I worked that out was when I went and looked at Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat, which is published by the National Air and Space Intelligence Center. In the 2000s, it was so clear. It said that Scalpe EG and Naval Scalpe had a range of more than 300 miles per And that the reduced-range export version, Black Shaheen for the UAE, had a range of more than 250 miles, which, you know, like, given a mile is bigger than a kilometer, means it's clearly an MTCR Category 1 system.

But now, this is so aggravating. If you go into ballistic and cruise missile threat, It lists all of them as simply having a range of more than 250 kilometers. Yeah.

Aaron 12:32

I think they say over 250 kilometers, and it's nothing more. Yeah, it's just 250 plus. Plus, yeah.

Jeffrey 12:41

And what's really, really, really annoying, which I get kind of bent out of shape about, is that's how they handled it in the 2017 version. In the newest versions, they just don't even bother with Allied cruise missiles. So as much as I love ballistic and cruise missile threat as an official government document... It rarely, well, it treats very inconsistently and now increasingly rarely treats at all the issue of friendly missile capabilities, which is hard because one, as an academic, not really supposed to think of the world in terms of good guys and bad guys, but also like, you know, today's good guy, tomorrow's bad guy.

Aaron 13:22

Yeah, but... Right, but it's the British and the French.

Jeffrey 13:28

Yeah, but think about all the people they sell it to. Egypt. Egypt, are they good guys, bad guys? I don't freaking know.

Aaron 13:33

I don't make value judgments, man. This is commerce. They're just guys. Commerce. That's another plug for sponsorships of the show.

Jeffrey 13:42

Well, I think poor, you know, was it Lockheed makes the JASM-ER? I think Lockheed is the aggrieved party here because they're not allowed to export this system that, as far as I can tell, would be a very competitive export.

Aaron 13:53

You have your Trident. I have JASM-ER. I love JASM-ER. I like JASM-ER.

Jeffrey 13:57

I'll tell you what, I was firmly against investing in LRSO until they, until, you know, it sort of leaked that it was probably going to be just an extra extended system. Range version of the jazz and then I was like, okay.

Aaron 14:10

Well, I guess I love jazz I would ride that thing down down in the fiery blaze of glory man. I love it.

Jeffrey 14:15

Anyways, so we should talk about this I mean, there's a there's a couple of issues So there's a great paper called long-range nuclear cruise missiles instability by George Lewis and and Ted Postal and you know It says this is back when I wasn't annoyed with Ted all the time that has the fundamental equations for estimating the range of cruise missiles and And so, you know, these are the inputs that you're going to need to reach a judgment like this are pretty complex because you need to know the size of the fuel tank.

Aaron 14:45

Yeah.

Jeffrey 14:46

You need to know the power and efficiency of the engine. Yeah. And really trickily, you have to make an estimate of the drag and lift of the airframe. Yep. And that's already a pretty analytically complex trick. Yeah. But then on top of that, and you see this both in the Lewis and Postal paper, but in the arguments over whether this thing is MTCR compliant that we can talk about in a second Ultimately, the flight profile makes a huge difference, which if you've ever flown on an airplane, you know, right?

There's a reason you go up to cruising altitude. And so you have a fundamental question with cruise missiles, which is how much of the time in flight do you spend up cruising where you're really efficient? And how much do you spend down near the ground or sea level where the air is much thicker, where you're going to...

Get better stealth in terms of radar, and you have... But obviously, it's going to be less efficient, and you're going to be maneuvering, right? That's the whole idea. And those maneuvers, anytime you're going side to side, you're not heading directly towards your target. And so you can... Really put your thumb on the range if that's what you want to do.

And not surprisingly, that is exactly what the French and the British did when they calculated the range before starting to sell it.

Aaron 16:14

No, totally. I mean, you explained it very well. Most of these things, I think it's fair to say, it's a high-low profile. And that to extend range at certain places as it maneuvers, it's flying up really high where the air is thin. And then as it gets closer to its target, it drops. It flies like an airplane.

It gets down low. And so then the range is fungible. And so you can calculate the range, you know, depending on, and is it, and it's also depending on estimates, right? It's depending on basic scientific estimates where you can input things, I assume like air density, right?

Jeffrey 16:54

Yeah, that's right.

Aaron 16:55

And so it's not like they, they, they put this thing and just flew it in one direction and then like got a tape measure out.

Jeffrey 17:01

Yeah, that's right. And so you can see this a little bit. The Black Shaheen sale triggered a big debate in the MTCR. And what we know about that comes from a GAO report, which has one of my favorite all-time quotes. It's so bland. MTCR members have not always agreed with each other's interpretation of the MTCR guidelines and control lists concerning cruise missiles, which is like Yeah.

But, and the other reason we know about this is Doug Barry, who used to be at Aviation Week and is now at IISS, who I actually met in person for the first time at the IISS Missile Dialogue a couple weeks ago. Yeah. He covered it a lot. Basically, there was a pretty big fight that ultimately led in, I think it was 2002.

I think it was in Warsaw, actually. You know, I could Google that and just double check. I do think, well, I think it was in Warsaw where they agreed to recalculate or to change how they calculated. Because the French and the British were calculating these incredibly... You know, short range flight profiles where the missile was flying low the whole time and maneuvering.

And the U S obviously was imagining that you pop the thing up to cruising altitude, get where you want to go. And then at the end, you kind of drop down and do your thing. And they worked that out, ultimately. But it's one of those things where, like, although they worked it out, I think in the way that would lead one to be more restrictive.

Right? Because now, basically, the guidelines say that you determine the range based on a one-way distance using the most fuel-efficient flight profile. I think the deal, I mean, I don't know this. I'm just inferring. The inherent deal was, okay, from now on, we'll calculate it that way. But Storm Shadow slash Scalp is like functionally grandfathered in, which is why now you've seen all of these exports, including to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which, you know, to be fair, probably ought not be getting MTCR Cat 1 systems.

Aaron 19:31

No. I think the pushback to this would be people saying at this point, if they're not going to be used for nukes, who cares? And I think that's the broader question about the MTCR. Because so many countries now are developing MTCR Cat 1 systems. That the cat's out of the bag. See what I did there? The cat one is out of the bag.

Jeffrey 19:54

Yeah, I think you're probably right.

Aaron 19:59

But it goes back to that need to update it, right? It's not just about drones. It's that the underlying systems have proliferated.

Jeffrey 20:08

Yeah, Richard Spire? Spear? It's funny. I know both him and I debated against his son, and I realize at the moment I don't know if it's Spire or Spear. He's done a lot of really great work at RAND talking about things the MTCR could focus on, right? So focusing on technologies that might can contribute to either hypersonic gliders or, or scram jets, or maybe you know, missile penetration aids.

And so there are, I think things in the missile field that are worth restricting. But like, you know, in, in the era in which we live in Our ability to use the MTCR to restrict the sale of short and medium range ballistic missiles just seems crazy. I mean, the way I always say it is, it's kind of a supplier cartel, but this is a cartel that doesn't include China, North Korea, or Iran.

So it's like, well, that ain't much of a cartel, right?

Aaron 21:08

Yeah. I mean, yeah. Technically, the Chinese say they observe the guidelines, but, you know, bullshit.

Jeffrey 21:15

So do the Brit and the French. Yeah, exactly.

Aaron 21:19

Yes.

Jeffrey 21:21

Yes. Actually, Hatar has both, right? Hatar got some short-range Chinese ballistic missiles. And I guess according to Wikipedia, they have Storm Shadow, which I had missed. So maybe it's Scalp.

Aaron 21:37

It seems like they follow French aircraft exports. You know, Greece operates Mirage, UAE operates Mirage, you know, or Tornado on the UK side. They're tethered to the aircraft. Because I know with the UAE, one of the reasons that they were so pissed off at us is that we didn't give them JASM or an equivalent for the F-16s that they bought.

Yeah.

Jeffrey 22:00

Yeah, my understanding is that was a big deal in Saudi Arabia, too, that the Saudis were like, look, we're not interested in doing, I think this was actually, I think this was a sustainment. I don't think it was new aircraft. But basically, they weren't interested in buying British if it didn't come with the armaments. And if it didn't come with the best armaments, they'd buy it from someone who did.

So, you know, again, like if you want to make U.S. fighter sales around the world, boy, I've turned into an arms merchant. I just think the reality of it is. It's commerce. I, you know, I mean, the reality is, is if you're going to sell somebody planes, you have to sell them the armaments to go with it.

And, and if you're not willing to, and just the reality is, is that the ranges, the, the effective range of conventional munitions is today much greater. And so, you know, I, like, I care a lot about arms control. I care a lot about escalation control. And we, we can talk about that, but like, You know, if to switch over to Ukraine for a second, if conventionally armed short and medium range missiles weren't so useful, why the hell do the Russians use so many of them?

Aaron 23:07

Right. Well, this was my transition point was it does. The Ukrainians have shown with some ingenuity and I assume a lot of help. Well, like just help for basic things, not necessarily they need it, is that you can whack systems like the HARM or other missiles onto, I guess, legacy Soviet aircraft with not much to do. And we assume that they're firing these things off of MiG-29 or Su-27 or something along those lines, which are Soviet aircraft.

That idea that you can buy elsewhere and whack them on perhaps becomes more poignant, even if the situation is far different in Ukraine. Which brings us to the pivot point, which is one of the things that Putin said before this war began, and he said a lot of crazy things, was something that we talked a lot about here, which is that he doesn't like the idea of long-range cruise missiles in Eastern Europe for decapitation strikes.

Right. Hey, you know what? He's right. I know. I'm not saying he's wrong.

Jeffrey 24:08

They're very destabilizing. And now they're in Ukraine. I was a little surprised when they showed up in there. I'm just saying, I realize I'm being kind of a jerk here, but if you think that long-range cruise missiles are destabilizing because of the possibility of decapitation strikes— Maybe you shouldn't be deploying non-INF treaty-compliant cruise missiles on your own systems, and maybe you shouldn't be using the hell out of your own short and, you know, probably medium.

I'd have to go back and look at, you know, the range of everything that's being used, but you shouldn't be using those systems so profligately. In Ukraine, because obviously the other side is going to like respond. So like, I mean, you know, like he pissed in his own bed.

Aaron 25:06

I want to be very clear. I have absolutely no sympathy for Vladimir Vladimirovich or however they pronounce it for Vlad. None. Zero. Zero. But I do think we should talk about escalation dynamics, given that these systems are in Ukraine, and we just talked about range. They now have the range to fly far beyond Ukraine's borders.

Jeffrey 25:29

Oh, yes, because, you know, we'd have to calculate what it is. But even if you, I mean, 250 kilometers is plenty. And I see no reason not to use the original number that was more than 300 miles because these are donated out of the UK stockpile. And that's the highest official range I've seen quoted, unless the people at Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat are just idiots.

I don't think they're idiots. Is it possible that the people who calculate cruise missile ranges at Wright-Patterson don't know what they're doing? Seems unlikely to me, right?

Aaron 26:01

Seems very unlikely, but anything's possible. But the escalation dynamics here are such. What do you think about it?

Jeffrey 26:10

Yeah, I mean, I think. It's tough because it's risky. I mean, I think it was the right thing for the United Kingdom to do, and I'm glad the Ukrainians have it, as we've discussed before. I think, in general, I certainly think, and I'm putting words in your mouth, but I think you're probably fine with inching out a little bit further on that curved slope.

That is the risk of things going wrong with accurate, longer-range conventional systems. But the Russians really hate this stuff. You know, I think they hate it not just because of the conventional capabilities it gives the Ukrainians, although everybody hates losing and they would have complained about anything that was effective. But I, yeah, that ability to hit targets deeper in Russia, I think, really does.

I understand why the Russians have drawn a red line at it. I don't believe it's credible. I don't think that they will enforce it. But I do think that this is a very sensitive, sore point for them because it increasingly means that you can't just keep the war in Ukraine.

Aaron 27:27

So I agree with that. I have no problem with them being exported. And I think this is the right missile to be exported. And here's why. Again, the range is fuzzy, right? But it's less than a Tomahawk. And I think when the Russians were putting that out, it's Tomahawk well behind the line, right? Well behind the forward line there that they were actually talking about.

And so that range actually does matter in how they conceptualize it. And why I think, yes, you're probably like putting your toes a little farther over the slope, but it's like a toe. It's not like you took a big step, like you're scuba diving the giant step off the back of the boat.

Jeffrey 28:12

Yeah. I think this is like a Tom Schelling tacit bargaining problem. You know, Tom I love, I love, by the way, I now go to these conferences and they listen to people talk about Tom Schelling and, you know, like I get it, he's dead. And, you know, but that's like trying to interpret what he meant. And it was like, you know, he didn't die that long ago.

Like he actually like wrote things you could ask, you could have asked him. Right. Know he has that famous example where if two people are going to meet in New York City on a day, but they haven't agreed on a time or a place, how, where would you go, right? And and it's this tacit kind of tacit agreement exercise, and it's always Grand Central Station for him, which It's really funny because in the book he admits like maybe that's like specific to his generation and I think he was at Yale at the time if you're like going into New York from Yale.

He tried it on my class at Maryland and nobody got it.

Aaron 29:09

I'd say the interest in Madison Square Garden.

Jeffrey 29:12

Right. Well, because that's the train we would take up 100%, right? So that helps illustrate these things are not foolproof. But the way I think of it is, and I would, if I were the Biden administration, I would say this, that we would provide to Ukraine the kinds of capabilities that are being used against them. And so if the Russians were to stop using Long-range cruise missiles against targets in Ukraine, then we wouldn't export long-range cruise missiles

Aaron 29:46

But if they're going to hit the Ukrainians with that stuff, then, you know, I think it's fair game.

Jeffrey 29:50

And that to me seems like a good kind of, you know, the Russians can set any red lines they want, obviously. And we have to guess about whether they're credible. And I think the best way to sort of conceptualize credibility is if you're using them, you don't actually think they're out of bounds. You might not like that the Ukrainians are using them, too.

But they're probably not out of bounds, so you know, I think, I think, eight Hackams and Storm Shadow are fine. I, yeah, I think when you, you start looking at Tomahawks and things that go a thousand kilometers you know, then I guess maybe it does get a little, I think it's a little more hairy. I think it's range. I like, I, I slightly disagree with you in that

Aaron 30:41

Because the Russians are using systems like Kalibr that have that range. So that's where I... Again, Kalibr's longer range than Storm Shadow. At least we assume. We know, right? Because they fired off the Caspian and it hit Syria. And so they're using asymmetric systems.

Jeffrey 31:02

I can look it up if you want me to look it up. Let's look up Kalibr.

Aaron 31:07

I always think of Kalibr as equivalent to Tomahawk.

Jeffrey 31:12

You know, I'm just realizing, I don't think, yeah, 2,500 kilometers.

Aaron 31:28

So we couldn't give them 2,500.

Jeffrey 31:32

So that's what I'm saying, like that range piece, even the advertised range matters. Yeah. So, I mean, I think what I would say is, you know, try it. Not try giving it to them, but try saying, you know, we're going to provide things that are comparable to what you use. And, you know, see if the Russians push it.

You know, give them a chance to set some credible red lines where they have some skin in the game by refraining from using certain systems.

Aaron 31:58

Does that include Iskander and, I guess, the Kinzhal, which is just Iskander on an airplane?

Jeffrey 32:05

Yeah, I mean, my feeling is if they don't stop using Iskander, I would give the Ukrainians eight Atkins. If they stop using Iskander, then, you know, then we realize that we're dealing with sane people who are concerned about escalation control, and I would match. I think the red lines are light. I think the red lines are mostly drunk Medvedev.

Aaron 32:28

He's saucy all the time. That guy needs to check himself into the Betty Ford Clinic there.

Jeffrey 32:34

I know. That guy's sauced. I mean, I don't care if he drinks himself to death. Just give somebody else the phone.

Aaron 32:38

He's so sauced. It's unbelievable. You read this stuff. It's like you could just hear the slurring in his voice. Staggering around. Give me my phone. What?

Jeffrey 32:50

Wait, who... Vadim! That's the arms control one. Yes, Vadim. Vadim, you have bag?

Aaron 32:56

That's a deep cut for long-time listeners. Yes, it is. Way deep cut.

Jeffrey 33:03

Oh, yeah, Medvedev. Anytime Medvedev gets drunk, he really wants the bag. Yeah, I just... I do think that we are definitely playing a little bit with fire here. I mean, to be fair, having a conventional war raging in the heart of Central Europe with a nuclear-armed power on one side and at least proxy, you know, another nuclear-armed alliance using, you know, providing arms and indirectly and quite directly supporting, if not directly engaging in combat, but definitely directly supporting.

Like, that just carries a certain inherent escalation risk, right? We are playing with fire. We are knowingly choose to play with fire because we would prefer to run the escalation risks than allow the Russians to prevail. And I'm on board with that, and I'm fine with that. And so once you accept that, we are making choices about...

How much we want to do and how much we don't want to do. And generally, I think the Biden people have gotten it right. I think it's great that we aren't engaged in direct combat. I think that would run really serious risks. But, you know, using the same kinds of weapons that the Russians are using, or at least providing those to the Ukrainians, just, I think that's a risk worth taking.

Aaron 34:27

So this may be an explicit endorsement then for the Storm Shadow ER. Give it that Jasmine R range. Give it the longer fuel tank.

Jeffrey 34:45

Yeah, I mean, it is really an interesting question. One of the things Dennis raised, and now maybe we really should be wrapping up because this is off the rails. I am not actually convinced that the export version has less range. I mean, it might have a heavier payload. But when Dennis actually gave me a report he wrote after interviewing a bunch of French officials, and I'll be damned if Dennis didn't cut out The portion on what the French did, like literally physically with a pair of scissors, cut it out before hand gifting me a copy of the report.

Did he really do that? Yes. Dennis. Love Dennis, but come on, man. But my sense from talking to Dennis is that the French felt that the stealth characteristics of the cruise missile were the sensitive piece, not really the range. So I think they do have an export version. I think the export version is not about compliance with the MTCR.

It's about compliance with French national interests in terms of the stealthiness of the thing. And so, like, yeah, maybe it has some extra ballast or something in it. I guess it's possible it has a slightly smaller fuel tank. But, you know, at 250 miles, again, according to the original ballistic and cruise missile threat before they reduced the range in publications, you know, that's already plenty.

Aaron 36:19

I mean, that's, yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I have nothing else to add there other than Dennis remains the goat. So go back and read Missile Contagion. It's the Bible. It's not even really out of date. I guess it is a little bit, but not much. The basics are all there.

Jeffrey 36:36

It was it was it was wonderful. I still I know we talked about it on the on the on the the Dennis Memorial podcast, but I still fondly remember taking that train across northern Italy, eating Italian cold cuts, including mortadella, which is just really fancy bologna. Fancy and a bottle of wine. It's good.

Aaron 36:55

Yeah. Fancy bologna. That's your that's your Midwestern roots going out there.

Jeffrey 37:00

It was Dennis. Dennis was slightly embarrassed. We went into the deli to pick up all our all our provisions for the train ride, which was, you know, a bottle of wine, cheese and a bunch of cold cuts. And he was like, do you mind if we get some mortadella? I know it's really just fancy bologna, but I love it.

Aaron 37:14

It was like, I love it, too. Way to go. Well, that's the signal that we've gone off the rails because we're talking about train rides with Dennis again where you were on the rails. So with that, if you want to join, talk about the Black Shaheen, Storm Shadow, Scalp, whatever you want to call it, with the elite group, the absolute most elite of the elite, the best of the best.

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It was good talking to you.

Jeffrey 38:01

Thanks, everybody, for listening.