Typhon, Father of Monsters

Jeffrey Lewis 0:05

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

And I am Dr. Aaron Stein, president and CEO of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, where, as the joke likes to go, it is sunny.

Jeffrey 0:30

Oh, my God. I've been watching Welcome to Wrexham. I've never been a fan. I don't dislike it, but I've just never really watched It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. So I really only know Rob McElhenney through his ownership of a lower tier Welsh football team.

Aaron 0:49

You know, when I get old, I want to own like a European like third division soccer team or –

Jeffrey 0:57

Or rug, like, I don't care. Like, I feel like it's a nice life. Could, could I just do the being rich part without the owning a sports team? Okay, well, that, well, that's the part of it. So, like, and I want it to be in Spain. I mean, I do think that there is something lovely about having this wealth that you're able to spend on an extremely expensive play thing that makes all of these people apparently happier.

So, like, being beloved in a local community because you shower them with money seems like, you know, not the worst thing to do with money. I see people driving around in, like, McLarens here on the peninsula. And, like, that just makes people hate you. Like, if you took that giant sum of money and, like, I don't know, bought a bunch of poor school children lunch, people would be like, wow, you're really great.

So, like, probably option B is better.

Aaron 1:49

Yeah. I mean, yeah. The joke in my house is that there's Operation Barbarossa. In my house, it's called Operation Andalusia. We're all gearing towards the same goal, which is a villa, whitewashed walls, olive trees, tomato, a lot of fresh ham and red wine and just silence and a view. That's where this is all going. Operation Andalusia. Trademarking that.

Jeffrey 2:14

You know, I think the segue there, Aaron, is we're not talking about Spain today, but we may be talking about a former Spanish colony.

Aaron 2:25

There you go. We won fair and square. We kicked ass and took names, right? And I think we won it fair and square in the late 1800s, although listeners will not know that we cut out me Googling that. Yeah.

Jeffrey 2:40

You know, history standards in this country have fallen, Aaron. Yeah. Today, we're going to talk about the U.S. Army's deployment of the Typhon strategic mid-range fire system in the Philippines, because I have been OSINTing the f*** out of this.

Aaron 2:59

Why did they come up with a new acronym? Why did they just call it Griffin 2.0?

Jeffrey 3:04

I don't know. Because, you know why? Because it's not as pretty as Griffin. I don't have anything against Typhon. Typhon is nice. It's perfectly acceptable. I mean, it is... His VLS cell or set of VLS cells bolted to a truck. I mean, it's still the, still the, still the hillbilly Griffin. It's not as pretty as Griffin.

Aaron 3:27

Griffin was beautiful. So I think when they did the test launch or right off, right down by you down by the Santa Cruz, it was on the island of Santa Cruz, which I have scuba dived off of. Not Santa Cruz, off, off LA. It's what is it? Santa? It's, it's right next to Anacap, right next to Anacap.

I forgot the name of it.

Jeffrey 3:46

Santa Ana? Santa Ana. There's two little islands that stick right out there. What the f*** is that thing called?

Aaron 3:50

No, it's north of Catalina. I've literally been there on a dive boat.

Jeffrey 3:53

No, but I'm saying it's nearby, right?

Aaron 3:55

Yeah, they're next door. Anacapa's a little rock. Great diving if you're in the Pacific. I think it's Santa Cruz. Wait, is it San Nicolas? It's a saint. And that's another one. We have Operation Andalusia in this house. It's also Choose Your Saint because I also like to buy in Ireland. It is San Nicolas. San Nicolas. Okay. Yes.

So right next to it. And they had the hillbilly trailer. And they seem to have basically modified the hillbilly trailer. And they've given it a name.

Jeffrey 4:21

I mean, they gave it a coat of paint. I don't know that they did much more than that. I mean, at least the thing's not up on blocks.

Aaron 4:30

The way they built that deserves its own HGTV special. It's like DIY your missile launch. I mean, I know they were like in a hurry and shit, but come on. No, it's great. But anyways, and so they rolled that thing off in the Philippines and it carries both Tomahawk and SM-6, if I'm remembering correctly. That's correct. And SM-6 is, look, we've talked a lot about missiles we love on this podcast.

The SM-6 is a great missile. It's beautiful. It does a lot of really cool stuff. My only complaint about the SM-6 is that I don't know what to call it.

Jeffrey 5:04

Because it does so many things. It's amazing.

Aaron 5:07

The missile's amazing. Is it an anti-ship missile? It's anything you want it to be.

Jeffrey 5:11

It's a choose your own invention. Is it an air defense missile? Is it a land attack? I don't know.

Aaron 5:17

The thing does everything. It's a wonderful missile. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. But anyways.

Jeffrey 5:23

You know how it is? It's so that the army was like, oh, okay, we'll take a Navy missile.

Aaron 5:28

We'll take a Navy missile. But anyways, the deployment, I think, is important because this is part of the Marine Corps, but also the Army wants to get more missiles into the first island change.

Jeffrey 5:39

Aaron, this is an Army system. The Marine Corps has a wholly separate system.

Aaron 5:43

I know. But basically, the Philippines have let us in and have let us do the hillbilly griffin on their territory, and the message is loud and clear to their next-door neighbors.

Jeffrey 5:53

Yeah. So for listeners, what has happened is the – Army and the Marines are both developing these capabilities. The Army has a system called Typhon, which it's weird because I know it is the mid-range capability, and that's what Army officials keep calling it, but I have in front of me a piece of paper that says it's now strategic mid-range fires. So I don't know if that's a real name change that just hasn't stuck, if you know, whatever, but.

The Army has this system, and basically each battery is four trailers with VLS cells and a battery operations center. And these batteries are deployable as part of this whole new Army operating concept called the Multi-Domain Task Force. Which ultimately is going to have both high Mars launchers, these mid-range capability launchers, and eventually the long-range hypersonic weapon. And what the Army has done is for a temporary deployment period, which they have not defined how long temporary will be, They deployed what I make out to be two of these launchers and a battery operations center in the Philippines for a series of exercises over the last month or two.

Aaron 7:23

So it's like half a battery. Which the Chinese and the Russians really don't like. So it's like it's half a battery, right? So like it's two VLS carrying trailers.

Jeffrey 7:32

I mean, half the launchers, but yeah. And to be clear, it launches both SM6, which has a classified range that is variously reported at around, I think, 500 kilometers. Although, again, the range is classified. And Tomahawk. It's amazing. Which is, you know, like, a lot more than that. And, you know, I do these track two discussions with Russians and Chinese.

And, boy, do they hate this f***ing thing. I actually think this is probably kind of a waste of money. Because it's, like, pretty vulnerable and super expensive. And there just aren't that many of them. And, like, I don't know. But, god, do the Russians and the Chinese hate them. So... Well, because we're calling it – Maybe it's not quite the waste of money, I think.

Aaron 8:21

So I don't think it's a waste of money. I love it because any time to get more SM6 out there, it just gets a big two thumbs up. I'm the Siskel and Ebert of the SM6. But let me ask you a question. How do we come up with mid-range? Because I know that you're getting squishy with that.

And I can see your face contorting when we call it mid-range. Because Tomahawk, yes, I think by strategic system accounting rules is mid-range. But by any other definition, it can get thrown pretty far out there.

Jeffrey 8:49

Yeah. I mean, I think mid-range comes from longer than ATACOMs and the precision strike missile that will replace ATACOMs. Which is going to be like SM6 range.

Aaron 9:03

Yeah, it's like 500 but below 2,000.

Jeffrey 9:06

Yeah, but doesn't exist yet. And then up through Tomahawk, and I think the long-range hypersonic weapon is going to be even longer. But, I mean, to be fair, maybe that's why they seem to have renamed it strategic mid-range fires. I mean, this is – you're right. This is a very long-range system. Look, my complaint is just – You know, it's about number of missiles on launchers.

It seems like a lot. I guess, to be clear, I think they don't exactly know what the final configuration is. I think they're still fussing around with this yet. But it just feels like it's a lot of infrastructure for not as many missiles. That's my complaint. Also, it's not pretty.

Aaron 9:59

I mean, it's the DIY hillbilly. We've talked about Griffin on this show. The truck cost a lot of money.

Jeffrey 10:07

I couldn't have protested INF deployments, man. I just couldn't have done it. It's just too pretty.

Aaron 10:13

You would have protested in spirit, but you would have been like, but the design of that truck, you know, like warms my heart.

Jeffrey 10:19

Like, I don't know. This is probably a bad idea. But did you see that thing?

Aaron 10:25

So anyways, let's talk about the OSINT aspects of it. They rolled off us a C-130. Is that what they did? C-17. C-17. Yep. And the U.S. Army was trying to obstruct where it was for some strange reason, but the Philippines did not.

Jeffrey 10:38

Yeah. Yeah. So the... When the... Part of the... Okay, so first of all, this is a training deployment. And General Flynn gave a nice interview in which he talked about the value of doing training deployments. And his argument was, yeah, we could play around in Hawaii, but Southeast Asia is a very distinct operating environment. It is super hot.

It is super humid. You often are close to the ocean and sea air has certain aspects. And so it was valuable for them to train in theater, which I totally believe, by the way. Yep. You know, like the bonus is it really upset the Chinese. But yeah, they tried to be a little tricky. So part of the story is you can put this thing on a C-17 and you can fly it in.

Capability. So it's super mobile and it can appear and be like, ha ha! Strategic fires! It's not, you know, like, you need like a You need a fairly long runway. One of the reasons that, you know, like we were able to find the thing and like lots of people found it, to be clear, is like there aren't that many runways that are that long.

I think it's a thousand feet, I think, is the length of the runway. But whatever. It's a pretty big runway. But yeah, they only said that they're putting it in northern Luzon. And they only released one picture of it being unloaded at night and one picture of it next to a wall that I think they thought would be pretty hard to ID.

Small problem. The wall is super distinctive. The airport it is based at is a civilian airport with several flights a day to Manila. The U.S. does exercises out of this airport, so we have lots of reference images of it. And then, oh, yeah, Northern Luzon Command of the Philippines, when they went – when they did like a little visit, blew the location.

Aaron 12:43

So, yeah. Yeah.

Jeffrey 12:44

It's at the airport in Laog. Laog, however you say it.

Aaron 12:48

L-A-O-A-G. We're going to go with Laog, but that's par for the course when you come around this podcast.

Jeffrey 12:56

Planet has a beautiful series of satellite images, so we can count that it's only two of the four launchers, and you can see how they're all set up. They're working at a tense, so I think this thing really is a temporary deployment.

Aaron 13:11

Yeah, and they're probably... Wanting to test beyond just how they will do in that hot and humid environment, what it's like to roll on and roll off and live in the mud for a little while. Because I think the idea is that they would be mobile in an actual conflict so that you wouldn't just be sticking around someplace.

You can drive around and try and stay hidden.

Jeffrey 13:32

Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah, I don't think you would just leave them at an airport. I think leaving them at an airport is a concession to the soldiers who have to sort of do this shit for a while. Right. Exactly. I think ultimately, if you planned a permanent deployment, you would have hardened shelters. You would keep them in and then in a conflict, yeah, you'd go out and hang out in the woods.

Aaron 13:58

You roll them out, yeah. You know who used to write about sort of strategic-esque systems, particularly cruise missiles that would roll around that would really frighten the Russians and potential US adversaries? Who? Who? He is the sort of godfather of the cruise missile on this podcast. Gormley used to write about this all the time because the Russians were always frightened of Tomahawk or U.S.

Precision being a First Reich weapon on their nuclear ICBMs.

Jeffrey 14:29

Oh, you know, in all the times I talked with Dennis, we never discussed this. I feel like a bad friend.

Aaron 14:38

I think he wrote a paper on this for Ifri. I don't think he's ever been on the pod, but he should be. Bruno. Oh, yeah. We should have Bruno on. Maybe I'm making that up. But anyways – Why don't we have Bruno on? Anytime. Bruno is great. But let me ask you, why were the Chinese so upset?

Because my guess is it's pretty similar to the Dennis Gormley, at least paper I think I read a long time ago.

Jeffrey 14:59

So actually, I don't understand this. I observe the Chinese and the Russians are both extremely upset about this. I find this curious because one – Who's the party that put hundreds of f***ing medium and intermediate range missiles in theater?

Aaron 15:21

That's the Chinese.

Jeffrey 15:23

Like, what did you think was going to happen? So I find that very curious. You know, I understand. And two, it's a very small capability. You know, it is even, you know, like maybe they see the future, but like, I don't know. I find it curious that they are so deeply alarmed. Yeah.

Aaron 15:52

Maybe the Miss Cleo, the Miss Cleo of crisis management, she can see the future. Quite possibly, although if they could see the future, why did they start this nonsense? What's funny is the Miss Cleo reference will go over about 85% of our listeners' heads because they're too young to actually watch cable television. I mean, you know, like lucky Zoomers.

Jeffrey 16:15

You never had Miss Cleo trying to tell you your future?

Aaron 16:20

Oh, my God. And the other thing is that while I love the capability, while I love the SM-6, and I love the Tomahawk as well, the capability is duplicative. And it does strike a little bit as service rivalry in terms of the Army wanting these things as badly as, say, perhaps the Navy who has these, the Air Force who has elements of this with Tomahawk, and then with the Marine Corps and all the stuff that they're trying to do.

Jeffrey 16:49

Yeah, I think one thing you see is when is General Flynn kind of often goes like out of his way to sort of Talk about why land forces are so important in Asia. You can tell he knows he's swimming upstream.

Aaron 17:03

Yeah, I know.

Jeffrey 17:04

He is the great- We've all seen The Princess Bride.

Aaron 17:08

Exactly. Another reference that perhaps some of our younger listeners won't know. No, but I think the challenge that I think the Chinese, and I know that the Russians do, is they see these as, I think, as being capable of striking leadership targets with great precision and accuracy.

Jeffrey 17:27

I mean, I do think that ultimately that to me is fundamentally a concern. I mean, for the Russians, it's so far away from them, right? It can't hit Moscow. So I find the Russians being alarmed the weirdest part. Right. So that I can't factor. But, you know, I think also there is probably a – There is an echo of what was so powerful about the INF deployments.

So I'm someone who, in retrospect, thinks that I wasn't – I was eight. I was not – I did not have an opinion about INF deployments in real time. But in retrospect, I think the real value of INF deployments in Europe is it convinced the Soviets that NATO would remain cohesive. It was valuable to do because it was hard.

The Russians were convinced that if they deployed INF forces and then we countered, that the politics of that would be so hard it would tear NATO apart and they would come out ahead. And what it dawned on Gorbachev was actually it didn't tear NATO apart. NATO was capable of doing this hard thing. NATO wasn't as fragile and vulnerable as they thought.

It couldn't be easily divided. And now they were in a bad way because NATO had done the hard thing and now have this capability, which was very threatening and very destabilizing and that the bet the Hawks had made had not paid off. Right. My guess is there's kind of an echo of that, which is like, can you imagine what an Asshole you have to be to get the Philippines to be like, hey, America, we know we threw you out because you were a colonial occupier who was only able to stay because you coordinated with our terrible dictator who, by the way, is like the current president's father?

Son, yeah. But now they're like, you know, actually, we take it all back.

Aaron 19:36

Well, that's the real story here, right? Is that the Philippines had booted us and seemed to have been under the last guy, Duterte?

Jeffrey 19:45

Yeah. Boy, that guy.

Aaron 19:46

That guy. Sort of an interesting character in world history and the world keeps on turning. We have the new guy, Marcos, who's linked to the old guy, the old, old guy. But ultimately is they've invited greater US presence back on the island.

Jeffrey 20:02

Like, can you believe that like – Park Chung-hee and Marcos both produce future presidents of democratic South Korea and the Philippines?

Aaron 20:13

No. The whole thing is just incredible to wrap your mind around. But the Chinese are just – They're so aggressive and so ham-fisted in how they're approaching regional politics is that we've ended up in a place where the US is putting the hillbilly trailers in.

Jeffrey 20:29

Dude, when we put Typhon in Vietnam, my head is going to explode. You know, and the Vietnamese are like, yeah, you could put it at forward operating base John McCain. It's unbelievable. It's like, what?

Aaron 20:44

No, or I mean, we joke, but I was just watching something on Twitter or something like that where the Vietnamese were showing off their BrahMos cruise missiles as like basically signaling to China, you know, about staying out of their territorial waters.

Jeffrey 21:00

So it's not – I don't think the Vietnamese have Brahmos, but they have their own domestic copy of the KH-35.

Aaron 21:08

OK. So maybe I conflated it with a different missile. But my point stands.

Jeffrey 21:12

We could quickly Google it. I think it was Brahmos.

Aaron 21:15

I think they bought Brahmos from India.

Jeffrey 21:17

Well, I know that the Philippines are buying Brahmos. Did I miss Vietnam buying Brahmos? I can't keep track. OK, man.

Aaron 21:25

Maybe I've screwed it up.

Jeffrey 21:27

Not yet. As best I can tell. They're negotiating, I see.

Aaron 21:36

Okay. Okay, so maybe that's where it came from. Maybe that's where I saw the thing is that in negotiations to buy the BrahMos from India, the Philippines were keen to show off that what it's for is for territorial – what am I saying? It was for territorial disputes with China, largely mirroring those of the Philippines with Second Thomas Scholl.

Jeffrey 22:01

Yeah, so I just wrote, along with Kolia Brockman, a paper on missile proliferation in Asia. I wrote the part on who has what and what they're building. And I can't keep it straight. There are so many purchases and programs under development, and they are... You know, like 90% of them are organized around sinking Chinese ships. Right.

Aaron 22:30

And that is the – what the army and the Marine Corps, two separate programs, yes, are ultimately trying to do is to sink Chinese ships in the sort of first island chain in addition to holding leadership targets at risk.

Jeffrey 22:42

Yeah. And, you know – I think the consequence of China's naval assertiveness in the South China Sea is going to be, plus their enthusiasm for missiles itself, is going to be a region that is lousy with long-range precision strike.

Aaron 23:04

What do you mean lousy?

Jeffrey 23:06

I'm just like covered with like – in the way that louses – Oh, lousy.

Aaron 23:11

Okay. I thought you were saying lousy as an L-O-W-S-Y. I was like, I don't see how that fits together. I see what you're saying. No, absolutely. These are the dynamics that we were talking about five years ago in the Middle East. A region awash with missiles.

Jeffrey 23:25

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean I think the other thing that's going to kick it – I mean I don't want to go too far from Typhon but like – There's what China's doing. There's what Myanmar is doing. There is all of the programs in Vietnam and Philippines and Indonesia. And Singapore is working on a long-range cruise missile with the Israelis that's being sold to Estonia.

All that stuff is going to come home to roost. And that's the context in which Typhon, I think, exists. So... Yeah, I mean, it makes a lot of, I mean, it makes some sense. I just don't know why those missiles need to be on land other than, you know, the army wants to participate in the fight.

Aaron 24:12

Well, I think the argument goes is that they'll be able to hold the U.S. Navy pretty far away and make things challenging for the Air Force. And so the Army and the Marine Corps should have something as well.

Jeffrey 24:23

I mean, but the Army is still going to have to fly into the Philippines, tiny number of 1,000-foot runways. Not unless they let us keep the tents there.

Aaron 24:34

I got to look it up. I think it's 5,000 feet.

Jeffrey 24:38

C-17 runway length. C-17's a little smaller, right?

Aaron 24:44

Yeah, I don't know.

Jeffrey 24:45

I mean, it's a giant fucking airplane, but 1,000 meters.

Aaron 24:49

1,000 meters, okay.

Jeffrey 24:50

You're right, 3,500 feet. I can't keep it straight. I don't care about airplanes. But anyway, there just aren't that many runways.

Aaron 24:57

Right. So when you guys were doing your OSINT, I mean, was there anything else that came out that sort of made you think?

Jeffrey 25:08

Well, I mean, one thing is how physically large these launchers are. They are really, really big. They are pretty easy to see in satellite imagery. And so I think the task of getting them into theater... Getting them into secure locations, whether that's because they're hardened or because they're camouflaged. Like that's not, that's not as trivial as you might imagine.

Right. You know, like you're going to need, if you want hardened bunkers to store these things in, they're, they're pretty big.

Aaron 25:41

I mean, they're VLSL.

Jeffrey 25:45

Yeah. And so that's going to be a, Pretty big construction project, which someone is going to notice. If you want to go no footprint, then you kind of got to get things, you know, in and out. or the Ozempic approach, which you have to slim it down. Yeah. Well, that is where Griffin, right, is so – not that that was a small system.

But even those bases in Europe are like very big and very distinguishable.

Aaron 26:13

Right. They had very unique signatures if I'm remembering the pictures correctly.

Jeffrey 26:17

And got used as a set in a Star Wars movie. That's right. That's right. That's right. It did. But, you know, I mean, the other question is this is meant to be a deployable capability for the U.S. And so it's unclear how many the army is going to buy. But I think the idea is going to be that they're going to surge them into theater and then maybe eventually they'll settle on a on a on a final deployment location.

And it's kind of an interesting question whether where that will be. Right. I mean, the politics in Japan don't seem great. I would have said the politics in the Philippines don't see great. But actually, you know, the army seems to have put this in for an exercise. And there have been a couple of questions by journalists. But, you know, no big protests, even though the things at a public airport.

Like, it wouldn't be that hard to get people to, you know, out there and protest, and they're not doing it.

Aaron 27:09

I mean, maybe we're just beating a dead horse, but, you know, this comes amid, like, ultra-aggressive Chinese actions against Philippine resupply ships to the Second Thomas Shoal and the Sierra Madre. What we're going to end up here is a permanent fixture on Sierra Madre, right? Sorry, on the location of the Sierra Madre. There's already calls just to have a rotation of US Marine Corps assets out there.

The idea is that this is the backdrop to this. The Chinese are water gunning Philippine ships, running into them, and basically announcing on television that they're going to sink their ships because they don't like where the Sierra Madre is located.

Jeffrey 27:51

The Chinese are going to love it when the army deploys the long range hypersonic weapon. I mean that's what's going to happen, right? That is where this is – that's going to happen. It's going to happen in the Philippines. I think it could happen in Vietnam.

Aaron 28:07

If it happens in Vietnam, we need to go together and just do a podcast from there. I've never been. It's on my like ultimate bucket list. I realize it's on like on every American's ultimate bucket list. But like I really want to go and like this will be the forcing action for me.

Jeffrey 28:21

Yeah, I mean, the one possibility is the Vietnamese don't go for it because they just build their own.

Aaron 28:25

And the Brahmos, they just buy Brahmos.

Jeffrey 28:27

Well, and they have their own domestic version, the KH-35, which they could scale up.

Aaron 28:32

Right.

Jeffrey 28:33

So, I mean, but God, you know, like, I don't know. Well, so people will... Serves the Chinese right. By the way, you know the other reason that it's bizarre the Chinese are so worked up? Sure. They have conveniently overlooked the vast number of Taiwanese cruise missiles that exist.

Aaron 28:51

They just pretend they don't exist. Oh, yeah. I mean, I mean, it's like a 1500 kilometer range cruise missile that they drive around in their version of FedEx truck. Yeah. Yeah. That was another great episode. Yeah. Vintage for longtime listeners will remember that one. Yeah.

Jeffrey 29:08

Anyway. But yeah, this is this is totally going to end up there. And someday we'll do a we'll do a podcast on Australia, which wants to get into this business big time. But Australia is far, far away.

Aaron 29:19

I'd love to do one on Australia just to talk about how far away it is from mainland China. Yeah. I have a working theory on Australians.

Jeffrey 29:30

I think they're the best – They're unable to understand geography?

Aaron 29:33

No, they're the best air travelers on the planet. Everything is far away. It is far away. So imagine like you're sitting in Monterey. You're like, oh, God. I got to go to like Washington, D.C. It's like five and a half hours, right? Yeah. To like Australia, that's like flying across the country, right? It's not even getting anywhere.

It's like five and a half hours.

Jeffrey 29:51

This is why I think they must not understand geography because like who gets on that boat for the first time, right?

Aaron 29:57

Someone who's like, I mean, it's just over there, right? It's so far away.

Jeffrey 30:02

It is so far away. I mean, you literally need an ICBM, right? I know.

Aaron 30:09

We've talked about this because people – The world is round. It's a sphere, man. The world is round. People are like, you should put Tomahawk in Australia. I was like, what? To hit Qantas coming in? Yeah.

Jeffrey 30:20

It's really far down there. But they have a whole plan to be a producer and exporter of long-range precision missiles. So, you know.

Aaron 30:33

Well, I mean, maybe you'll have to put them under the wings of a jumbo jet just to get anywhere. But like, man.

Jeffrey 30:37

We might put Typhon down there, but it can't hit anything.

Aaron 30:41

Yeah. I mean, this is when we, well, I mean, you can hit ships, but again, we're off the rails again talking about, you know.

Jeffrey 30:47

I mean, for me, the big takeaways are one is how secretive the army was about the deployment, which is weird because they did it at a public freaking airport, which has many, by the way, there's a Chinese consulate in Laos. It has flights to Manila. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a long, the deployment is along the runway. And so like, why, why were they so secretive about it?

And they, they only deployed two of the four launchers again, as best I can tell.

Aaron 31:20

They may have been secret about it because they just didn't want to piss off the Chinese unnecessarily. Like they knew it was going to piss off the Chinese. And so like they were trying to give cover to the Philippines. But then the Philippines were like, hey, here we are.

Jeffrey 31:31

Or maybe managing the public reaction. And when it turned out, although, again, yeah, I don't know.

Aaron 31:37

They put it on the runway, man.

Jeffrey 31:38

I can't believe they put it next to the runway.

Aaron 31:40

Yeah, and anytime you want to have the long conversation about Australia and my theory about how they're the world's best air travelers, I'm ready to do it. All right. It's six hours anywhere you want to go. But with that, off the rails, if you want to get really off the rails, you can join our Slack channel at patreon.com slash acwpodcast.

$3 if you're a student, $5 if you're not. That's where we go deep, we go weird, and we, you know, get into all the stories that are not covered in the news, or at least I think we do. Patreon.com slash ACW podcast to gain access to the coolest place on the internet. With that, Jeffrey, it's good to see you.