Two Weeks of Epic Fury

Marcus Weisgerber:
Like this is the backbone of the US military forces, a tanker fleet that was built in the Eisenhower era. I pulled the numbers last night and the Air Force fact sheet, I think says there's around 400 total KC-135s still in the active fleet, which is unimaginable that you still have all these planes.
Roman Schweizer:
From DOD to Congress and from the White House to Wall Street, the NatSec Need to Know Podcast. An unrehearsed podcast featuring insightful discussion and forecasts of the major national security and defense issues of the day. Welcome to the NatSec Need to Know.
We've got a special edition this week. Two reporters to discuss Operation Epic Fury and the upcoming DOD budget. We're going to cover issues in Washington and around the world and preview what to expect over the next several weeks. Joining me are two all star editors and reporters; Tony Bertuca from Inside Defense, and Marcus Weisgerber from The Wall Street Journal. They've each covered Washington and the Pentagon for decades and are as well sourced as anyone in town. Thank you both for joining. Let's get after it.
Thanks so much for joining. This is the first podcast recording since Operation Epic Fury. Again, we're into the 13th day. Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine just completed another press conference at the Pentagon, updating folks on the status of the war. Flurry of headlines, bunch of issues.
Who wants to start off first with observations to date, and then where we think this is headed into week two? And how the administration has been handling it?
Tony Bertuca:
I'll go with some observations. What we've seen the trajectory of messaging, at least from the Trump administration, it definitely began one strong direction from the president with lots of reports about, well, this is for a regime change. Here we go. The president is telling the Iranian people their hour of freedom is at hand and they should go overturn the government amid the US bombing campaign.
And then we saw the government, especially Secretary Hegseth from the podium at the Pentagon, take that in a different direction, saying that what we're really looking at now is a much more scoped operation. And it's all about taking out Iran's missile capabilities, especially their ability to launch and produce missiles in their defense industrial base, so the bombing of launchers and factories. And also to eliminate the Iranian Navy. And so they've really tried to pound away at that for the last several days now.
Secretary of State Rubio has done the same. And this morning, the most recent press conference, Secretary Hegseth, again, went back to those talking points and said, "This is what this is about. It's scoped." But one of the things we did not hear about at the beginning of the operation were a whole lot of concerns about how the Strait of Hormuz could be disrupted. And the flow of 20% of the world's global oil supply could be disrupted.
The markets have reacted violently. We've seen some very unusual fog of war or fog machine of war type things going on from the administration. You've got the Secretary of Energy tweeting out the Navy is escorting ships and deleted the tweet. The Navy has not been escorting ships. US has been hitting Iranian mine vessels, but all sorts of problems still remain in the Strait of Hormuz
If you were listening to Defense Secretary Hegseth today, he said, "We're on it. No need to worry about it." I'm paraphrasing, but not by much. So, saying, "Don't worry about it, we got it." So, that's where we're at right now.
Marcus Weisgerber:
There has been an abundance, abundance of munitions used in this. If you noticed central command stopped disclosing actually how many munitions have been used, know that there's been over 5,500 targets hit. So, we know we're talking a lot more than 5,500 munitions. I don't know conservatively what you want to say, but I don't know if even double may be conservative on this one.
We've seen some tragedy. We've seen loss of life on the American side of this. We've seen fog of war between the US and its partners in the region with the Kuwaitis shooting down three S-15s with an F-18 of their own. Which is seemingly unimaginable that something like this would happen, especially with some of the videos that have come out showing that it appeared that the planes were in visual range of one another. I don't know if we've reported this, so I'm going to hold back exactly some of the details.
We've also heard of the military, partner military is shooting down some other assets with Patriot American type assets, with the Patriot systems, uncrewed type systems. As they've said, they keep ramping up. I believe that they said earlier today that this will be one of the busiest days, or if not, the busiest day so far, and you're seeing it. And then culminating last night, we saw the very tragic loss of a KC-135 tanker.
Now, I know we don't know what that tanker was doing and details of... I know we reported last night that it was two KC-135s that collided with one another. Don't know if they were actually doing refueling while this happened. But I had an editor ask me, "Is this plane really 60 years old?" Yeah. This is the backbone of the US military force is a tanker fleet that was built in the Eisenhower era.
I pulled the numbers last night and the Air Force fact sheet, I think says there's around 400 total KC-135s still in the active fleet, which is unimaginable that you still have all these planes. I know we're going to transition to budget, but I'm wondering how a lot of this correlates into both a supplemental request and also this eye-popping 1.5 trillion, which everyone says is real and it's going to happen. I guess it's just a mix of how much is going to be based, how much is going to be more reconciliation. But I'll pause there.
Roman Schweizer:
The first thing that is surprising, and maybe at the expense of sounding like a Homer, but maybe just from a historical context. The scope and breadth of this campaign, just from a military history perspective, is crazy. We are 13 days into a military operation against what I've referred to as one of the founding members of the axis of evil. This is a varsity team.
The US military and the US and Israel are waging a major combat operation or war, whatever you don't want to call it, against a tier one bad guy. The fact that they have not shot down any aircraft or hit any US ships or any of the, again, apocalyptic scenarios is still just pretty amazing, I think. So, I think the conduct of the war from the US perspective or US performance has been pretty impressive, I would argue.
Now, Secretary Hegseth was pounding the podium as he does. His job is today and in all the press conferences, but I do think it's notable. I would say, from a munition's perspective, one of the things that I... So, stats that the secretary, or I think maybe the chairman said, ballistic missile launches are down 90%, one way attack drone launches are down 95% yesterday. It does seem like the US is, or US and Israel is methodically checking through that target set.
Getting to the Strait of Hormuz question. The secretary strenuously objected to some CBS reporting that the department had not considered the idea that the Strait would be closed. I got to be honest, guys, I find that hard to imagine. I think General Caine is a serious guy. I'm sure every military planner in that building, in the CENTCOM, has considered that idea for the last 40 years.
But I did think it was interesting though that they said they had no clear evidence of Iran placing mines in the Strait. I know there's been conflicting reporting on this. That's what doesn't make sense to me. Chinese shipping or China flag tankers are getting through, but then there are mines in the water. Those two things don't make sense. But I also thought the interesting thing was that the chairman said that the shipping attacks have been hit by surface-to-surface missiles, not unmanned surface vessels or mines.
So, I think that's also an interesting thing. I'm sure if the Navy is going to press the issue, those are some of the target sets that they would be looking at. This is the conundrum is I think the military objectives are being accomplished. The strategic objective, I think, and Tony, which you referenced, the regime change one was always the stretch goal. The Venezuela type option, et cetera. And certainly there are other more military objectives. And as we all know over history, the US tends to be great at the military objectives and maybe not always achieving the strategic objectives, whether it's diplomatic or whatever.
The one story, there's a ton of narratives and stories and all these things, but the one crazy one to me is, Marcus, the point you raised. Some Kuwaiti Hornet driver shot down three F-15s and like you said, within visual range. So, either this guy is the worst fighter pilot in the world or something else was up. I really think that's really one of the big stories that I think is perhaps concerning in terms of how that goes down.
And Tony, I do want to give you shout. I apologize. I've been doing this as my day job for a long time and I have never heard the fog machine of war.
Tony Bertuca:
At some point, I think when a cabinet official puts out a statement and yanks it back and the market reacts violently, I think fog machine of war is pretty appropriate.
Roman Schweizer:
As a saying, that's gold. Is that a Tony Bertuca branded comment?
Tony Bertuca:
I think I heard it someplace else. I don't think it came right out of my mind.
Roman Schweizer:
You're not going to claim origin. All right. Fair enough.
Tony Bertuca:
You never know. Maybe it was. Maybe it is. A lot of people say it is. A lot of people say it.
Roman Schweizer:
Tony, people are saying.
Marcus Weisgerber:
One other thing that's really striking to me is, this is the example of what everyone has said. You have these low cost drones and we're shooting them down with Patriots and very, very, very expensive munitions. That's the one thing that has really, really, really stuck out.
Tony Bertuca:
Acting Comptroller Hurst said something interesting about this yesterday at the Reagan Innovation Summit. One of the things he said was that when they look to do this supplemental, and again, they won't put a size on it or timing on it. There's been reports 50 billion, but I heard much higher than that. I've heard up to 200, so it could be huge.
One of the things he said was, "We aren't looking to simply replace what we've got, but we're also looking at possible new entrants, new things." You've got to believe that some of the new spending will be toward what these new entrants are putting together that are cheaper, more low cost than some of the stuff that they're using now to hit these drones.
Marcus Weisgerber:
We've been wondering if they're going to go... Ukraine has offered to help, there's a big Chinese parts issue there. But you got to think there's things like that Anduril Roadrunner that's out there.
Tony Bertuca:
RTX makes the Coyote.
Marcus Weisgerber:
The Coyote.
Roman Schweizer:
I question the idea that we're shooting THAADs or PAC-3s at heads. Maybe some PAC-2 GEM-Ts, which are the blast-frag version. You've seen some footage of, I don't know, maybe it was Qatari or Saudi, Apaches shooting them down. The first Ukrainian option to this, they had guys in Cessnas with shotguns hanging out the window. If they're shooting $10 million Talon missiles at head, shame on us. But no, I do think that's right.
So, one thing I will say is I think I might've been first out of the gate with a $50 billion swag, so I was immediately gratified to see some serious people. Actually, members of Congress and department officials suggest 50 billion. But I got to be honest, I came up with the emergency supplemental request that DOD had laying around from last year combined with some stuff, but I think the number is going to be well higher.
And again, I know Republicans are talking about whether they package it up with California disaster aid, wildfire disaster aid and some farm subsidies to pass it through the regular probes process, or does it become the new reconciliation?
Tony Bertuca:
If you think reconciliation is impossible and uphill, well, you're going to get Democrats to vote for this supplemental. It's going to happen. I think that there's bipartisan support for a supplemental of some kind. So, it's a lot more palatable on the Hill, I think, than going for a straight reconciliation bill.
That's one of the things we've been watching for is to see how this evolves from just the Iran war supplemental till now. Just an emergency government supplemental that includes a lot of money for defense.
Marcus Weisgerber:
It's astonishing, you guys, we alluded to it just a little bit ago, how in a week it went from 50 to, like Tony said, I was hearing 200 this week too from people. And it's just 50, then it was 100, now it's 200. It's just doubling every week.
Tony Bertuca:
You're going to take stuff from reconciliation and add it to it. That way you don't have to worry about it.
Marcus Weisgerber:
We are using a lot of stuff. Every week that goes by, I think a week ago, we had maybe 2,000, this number of strikes have more than doubled in the last week.
Tony Bertuca:
Well, that also brings the question of the cost of the war. So, the one we've got now is a lagging cost, but it was reported early, I think the first six days of the war before it was confirmed officially yesterday by the acting Comptroller Hurst, is 11.3 billion, 11.6 billion, something like that, the first six days of the war. But what we don't have is an up-to-date cost.
So, if it's double that or more than double that, and if the bombing has become exponentially more intense every day, as the defense secretary says it has, the cost is far beyond what the ballpark number is, which is what the Comptroller said that 11-ish billion was yesterday.
Marcus Weisgerber:
I will note, I had in a story last Friday, 11.7 from an independent estimate, pretty cost. But you have the Comptroller, that's the gold standard.
Tony Bertuca:
Ballpark, ballpark.
Marcus Weisgerber:
Dan Caine told me yesterday, Senator Caine at the Reagan event panel I moderated, he said it's roughly, I think he said 800 million-ish a day, which it seems like it's even probably more than that at this point.
Roman Schweizer:
No, I think a billion a day at least is the right number roughly. But again, that's going to depend on replacing three F-15s, buying another KC-46A to replace the 135. The operations and maintenance stuff, and then obviously all the reports.
Which the other reports, which astound me are that I forget whether it was TMZ or whoever came out with a report that Pete Hegseth is spending $30 million on steak and lobster. Which is, as you guys know, cover the Pentagon, it's just absurd. That's chow for the guys in the field, that's surf and turf night on the weekends, but whatever.
Marcus Weisgerber:
I saw that and I haven't dug into it and I probably shouldn't say anything about it, but I'll point to you, Roman, because you are great at always sending out the outlays and everything. When you don't approve a budget till super late, September is always a big month for spending. It's the last month of the fiscal year, and if you don't have budgets approved and such, that's where you got to spend the money. Money is expired. And prior year's money, it's starting to expire too.
Tony Bertuca:
The steak and lobster stuff, that was reported years ago. I remember headlines about that either in the Biden administration or the Obama administration too. It comes up. They're giving that to troops who are downrange. My God.
Marcus Weisgerber:
Yeah, no, I know.
Roman Schweizer:
Although the one thing I would say is, I forget the amount of money. It might have been 90 grand for a Steinway piano for the Air Force Chief of Staff's private residence or something.
Marcus Weisgerber:
There was a violin I think on that list. There was a $21,000 violin I saw on that list that filled out which...
Roman Schweizer:
The Air Force and jazz quartet needed some new hardware, I guess.
Tony Bertuca:
There you go.
Roman Schweizer:
Sorry if you're a fan of the Air Force jazz quartet and the listener.
Marcus Weisgerber:
Bands in the military are wonderful. They are so good.
Roman Schweizer:
Oh, they rock, for sure, for sure. Okay. But in all seriousness, and this is a serious topic. To me, it's interesting from the outside. Week one was running out of munitions. And by the way, I do think if we are worried about China, Taiwan, if we are worried about usage rates and all that stuff, I would guess, and this is going to be up to you guys to figure it out, but the supplemental request, the quantities may be classified.
I would not be surprised if for operational security reasons, they said number of THAADs, PAC-3s, and that stuff is classified. So, we'll have to see. So, last week it was about, first week was we're running out of bullets. This week is Strait of Hormuz. To me, I wonder what next week is going to be? The one thing I will say is from a question I get from investors freaking out about why isn't the Strait of Hormuz open and why can't the Navy do this?
I have said from the get go, even to when Trump initially tweeted about it, that General Caine and Admiral Cooper, their best military advice would be, you should not be pushing this. You cannot rush this. Yes, the Navy could force the Strait open, but there is a huge consequence; risk to sailors, to ships getting a DDG, hit by a mine, or a cruise missile, or a suicide boat would be disastrous on so many levels.
Obviously the human cost, but to give the Iranians a victory, politically for Trump, the Democrats would seize on it. There's just so much. And I think right now, to me, I would assume is if we have B1s and B-52s flying round the clock 24/7, dropping tens of thousands of pounds of hate every day, you're just going to have that compounding effect and you're working down the target list.
Like you said, you're focused on the leadership, you're focused on the missiles and drone threat, you're focused on command and control and IRG scene, besiege forces, and you're going to get to the Strait. You're attacking the naval base at Bandar Abbas and the mine layers and all that stuff, but why rush it? That's the thing.
And to me, that's the interesting argument. From my perspective, is the Wall Street side of this is you got to get Strait open. I think the military perspective is, let's wait until we can, instead of fighting our way through, why don't we just set the condition so we can just sail our way through?
Tony Bertuca:
Yeah. I think probably the defense secretary was trying to deliver that message today when he was at the podium. Just "We've got it, don't worry about it. We're on it." I think there's probably something to be said for the fact that the Navy hasn't escorted ships yet is because we believe it's not safe for the Navy to do so. How unthinkable is it for a US ship to be sunk, period, let alone by Iran.
That would end the conflict that night probably politically. If that's not something you're willing to do, it's not a risk you're willing to take. You can see the president has said, "Ships ought to just give it a shot, have some backbone and go for it, just go." But I don't think we're going to see a whole lot of that. And I don't think insurance companies are into that either.
So, we'll have to wait and see where they get on the target list and when the Strait can get opened up. I had to get smart on tanker wars this week, but God, Roman may know this. I think at the height of tanker wars, if we look at the rate at which the Navy was moving ships through the Strait, given the backup now, it's like two years, isn't it? I think so, the throughput is going to have to get throttled way up when they do it eventually, just given the amount of backup that's there currently.
Roman Schweizer:
By the way, one of the flag officers I worked for as a junior officer was during, oh, my God, I'm going to forget the name of it now, the tanker escort mission, Operation Earnest Will.
Tony Bertuca:
Yeah, Earnest Will.
Roman Schweizer:
When the Bridgeton got hit by a mine and boy, had some stories about that. If the Navy is escorting ships through or convoying ships through, that's just going to be very ponderous. If it is free and open and they're just holding it open, then I think that's different. But resuming normal operations is going to take some time. I think really that's part of the question is, are you fighting your way through or is it just open?
Again, where you differ from the strategy, and this is strategy versus military objectives. Iran has to do two things. One, the regime needs to survive, and that's an easy gig unless we go with a ground campaign or until there's some internal pressure, descent, or whether it's the Kurds or Azeris or whoever.
And then two is economic warfare. I will tell you though, is if US is able to open the Strait of Hormuz in two weeks, let's say, I think they might try in a week. I think they might have the condition set. Again, they're being forced or people are trying to pressure them to push an operation. But if they wait two weeks and get that open without Iranian consent, without a ceasefire, this war could go on forever.
That is the only thing right now, the economic pressure for energy markets, for oil markets, for prices, for all these things, that is the only constraint on this. And so Trump is always famously, he always says, "Zelensky has no cards to play, the Ukrainians," but Iran has one big card to play. They're playing it. And I think that's the big question is if we take that card away, it's going to completely change the character of this.
Again, incredibly hard, but I think that's why CENTCOM and the Navy are being very deliberate about some of the preparatory operations.
Let's just nerd it out a little bit on the budget. 1.5 trillion, it sounds like Comptroller said that's the number. Everything I've heard to date says that's what the number is. Weirdly, I guess sounds something like 1.1 in the base request and a couple of 100 billion, 350 or whatever in bolt-on program decision memoranda, three buckets might be classified, who knows the contents of that list?
Which again, the weird thing to me, and I'm just curious if you guys have heard anything, that getting to 1.1 is some budget sleight of hand, because I know that that's going to be the current policy baseline or what they're going to try to pitch that as. But the discretionary DOD budget was still like 856 or something like that. And then you bolted on 150 mandatory. So, even if DOD gets 1.1, that's going to be a pretty big number even if they don't get all the extra stuff. But so just give us your updated thoughts on budget.
Marcus Weisgerber:
I've heard similar numbers to you, similar breakdown as what you just did in the last bit to get to the five with the energy department, nuclear spending. I agree. I know there's been reporting out there that there's fighting about what to spend. To me, it's like, how the hell do you spend that money that quickly? Even if it's reconciliation money, which gives you, I think, five years, and then I guess the current one was five, One Big Beautiful Bill was five years and then another five.
You can't build this stuff fast enough. You can't buy 100 ships. It'd be great to buy 100 ships. I pointed out to someone here, I said, "The entire increase to this budget will be the entire F-35 program, procurement program. The entire thing." Think about that, 2,700-ish jets and you could buy that and have room to spare for a few dozen ships with the plus up in this budget.
Roman Schweizer:
Tony, I'm sure you want to say something, but here's a free one for you guys. I have heard that, unconfirmed, of course, but that if the 1.5 goes forward as the request, there will not be any unfunded priority lists. Think about that. In my entire career, as I'm sure yours is, you've never had a point where the Pentagon got all the money it wanted. And essentially at 1.5, there's nothing else to spend.
Marcus Weisgerber:
Oh, you actually just gave me a great in. I've had a budget story that's been written and it just keeps changing and being overcome by events for weeks and it keeps getting pushed, but that could be a good way in. But they have to legally send it though. Don't they legally have to send it because it was in the NKA?
Tony Bertuca:
You can send it empty. TRANSCOM sends a blank one every year. You just send an empty one.
Marcus Weisgerber:
Yeah. Thank you note. Just a thank you note.
Tony Bertuca:
Yeah, thank you note. TRANSCOM sends an empty one every year.
Roman Schweizer:
Thank you for your interest in national security.
Tony Bertuca:
Yeah. Thank you for your interest in this matter. I think it's going to be a really fascinating budget season. We just don't have anything official yet, but stuff I've heard, pretty similar. The other thing I heard was flexibility matters a lot to the department this year in ways that it hasn't in the past. And I'm talking about reprogramming thresholds and the ability of these new program acquisition executives to be able to move money around without congressional approval on the front end.
On the back end, we'll send you guys some paperwork, but on the front end, please do it. I think things to look for about this, the size of the budget, but also whether or not they can spend it when they want and how they want is really going to be a matter for Congress, the appropriators in particular. This is like the Pentagon's got to go hold hands with the appropriators this year in ways that it really hasn't in the past, because appropriators are intensely distrustful of giving the executive branch budget flexibility.
That to them every year sounds like a slush fund. I really haven't seen it work out. So, they got some multi-year procurements, the ones they got. You saw they got eight out of the 13 this year for critical munitions and DOD leaned forward with those frameworks, but they didn't get everything. They got stiff armed. So, it'll be interesting to see how appropriators react this year.
One of the other things that the Comptroller said was, "We're going to get the budget a lot sooner this year than we did last year." I think last year it didn't fully arrive to the appropriators till June and they had already marked up and there was bad blood after that. Everybody's annoyed. And then they didn't come back until fall and look for that emergency money for munitions. They were just astounded, the appropriators, but if you listen to, appropriators tell it.
So, it's going to be a much more interesting budget season this year, knowing that the administration is going forward with a structured plan, something that it wants to accomplish, an amount of money it wants, but then the level of flexibility it's going to need. It'll be interesting to see if they get it.
Marcus Weisgerber:
A lot sooner. It could be May, but I don't know. I keep hearing end of March for what it's worth.
Tony Bertuca:
Sooner than June, I guess.
Marcus Weisgerber:
Yeah. I'm hearing skinny end of March, but...
Roman Schweizer:
I need my fit up though.
Tony Bertuca:
If we get a fit up, we'll see. The department is required by law to submit one and you've got him going, "Yeah, we'll see." There's a lot that hasn't been cleared yet. There's just all this has got to go through the chops. If the Comptroller is freaked out about even being like, "Maybe there'll be a fit up." There's a lot that's not done yet.
Roman Schweizer:
After he confirmed the 1.5 though, he got a phone call from Russ Vought and said-
Tony Bertuca:
Maybe. Maybe. I would love to have been on that call.
Marcus Weisgerber:
I remember Gates holding it one year when they did all the... It was the Black Tuesday or whatever the heck it was at the Pentagon with the briefing where the $330 billion of programs were all cut, and then slowly came back in the coming years. I remember there not being a fit up one of those years.
Roman Schweizer:
And just maybe last point on budget, this is more the Hilling. I still contend that the Republicans will try to do a reconciliation. I think it is for them a way to pass some things like maybe ACA healthcare subsidies and some other policy related, mortgage related stuff, energy related policy. I think Johnson has said they want to shrink that Venn diagram of stuff that's really easy.
But I think this is just straight stuff that will try to help them get elected. Address affordability for November, and then you piggyback a couple of 100 billion, whatever it is for Epic Fury and the 1.5 thrown in there. I don't think defense is a huge mover, but it's a sweetener in a total package to get it across the finish line. And everybody says, "Look, it's too narrow a majority in the House and maybe even the Senate to get this passed."
I know there are some retirements, but I would contend that 4th of July, I still think the setup is 4th of July, Donald Trump's birthday to America on America 250, you know how this is going to get framed. But this is the way to get re-elected, or at least get a bunch of money for defense and other priorities that you know you're never going to get if the Democrats take the House and/or the Senate. So, I think that's a setup. Just curious, anything you guys have heard or thought?
Tony Bertuca:
No, nothing to add there. I think that would be a very interesting way to see it play out, but no, I don't know. Just don't know yet.
Marcus Weisgerber:
I think Americans still don't like the price of gas going up like it is. I know they don't like the mortgage rates going up, which happened again this week after finally declining a little bit. I was at Reagan Defense Forum back, I think it was probably the year before COVID, so 2019. I was in a dinner with some folks and there was someone who gave a presentation that basically was about if the Pentagon spent the budget aligning to actually the missions it's been assigned.
This person was saying that back then that the budget should be like 1.2 trillion, 1.3 trillion or something like that. I remember just being almost laughing at the time because it was roughly half that at the time. There was a member of Congress in the room and a Senator, and they both said something to the effect of like, "I don't disagree with your estimate, but my constituents care about the price of eggs and gas." That's the number one voting issue for them is affordability.
Roman Schweizer:
The one thing I would say, people talk about the 1.5 number and if you do 1.5, that is actually 4.8% of GDP roughly. So, everybody is like, "Oh, they just pulled this number out of their whatever." But the administration has been beating up allies in Europe and in Asia, we're living in a 5% world. And so there is, as ludicrous as it seems, and certainly the US has spent more than 5% of GDP on defense in the past, so whatever.
Marcus Weisgerber:
You know what somebody else pointed out to me? All the Reagan buildup stuff. We were talking about the Air Force bomber fleet this week and how it's on this rotational basis seemingly every night. It's like, oh, it's the B-52 night. Oh, it's the B1 night. Although I don't think we've seen B-2s since early on. But they were saying it's because the fleets are so damn small and in order to just generate enough jets for the number of targets you have every single night, you had to mobilize all of them.
They were talking about how basically all the Reagan buildup iron, be it F-16s, F-15s, AWACS, KC-135s, which we were talking earlier about in the 1960s and '50s, this stuff is old. This may be your moment to actually get all that new stuff in. And they also always point that Reagan's budget went up and then it buttoned.
So, especially if you see powers in Congress shift, that may be where we're at, raise and flat. Although I don't see how you keep it at 1.5 consistently.
Roman Schweizer:
Yep. We'll see what happens. All right. Gentlemen, we have gone longer than just a quick hit. We actually managed to riff for a long time on two certainly important topics. I want to thank you as always for your time. It's great to catch up. I think we're going to have to do this again soon because there is a lot going on. So, Tony and Marcus, thank you so much. It's great to see you and talk to you soon.