Britain Isn't Ready For A Real War - Col. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon OBE

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Rep number 10004. What is the state of Britain's national defense? When I joined the army, there were 150,000 people and 1,000 tanks. At the moment, it's about 70,000 and 148 tanks. What he has done is stirred up European militaries and made people realize that actually we cannot rely on the U.S. We must produce our own military capabilities so that when the Russian president looks west, he sees a credible defense. We are learning from the lessons from Ukraine. 80% lethality from drones, 20% from conventional. We now know that certainly for the foreseeable future, the next decade or so, it's going to be an autonomous-type battle. And unless we can operate in that, we're going to struggle. Hey, Mr. Bretton Gordon, welcome to Trigonometry. Well, thank you very much indeed for having me. It's been a great ambition to come and do your pod at some stage. Pleasure to have you. We want to talk about the. The British Army and also the evolution of warfare, the war in Ukraine. Perhaps we'll touch on Syria, which is an area of great expertise. Before we do all that, tell us a little bit about your story, your journey, your background. Well, I come from a real military family. I think I'm the fourth generation who've been through the academy at Sandhurst. A fairly sort of ordinary academic life at school. I didn't really get many A-levels. I did agriculture. I was at the University of Reading and just scraped through, and then went into the army, which a regular officer for 23 years. I was lucky in inverted commas. I sort of hit all the big matches, as it were. I was a young tank commander in the first Gulf War, and then did Bosnia War, Kosovo War, did a few UN trips in Cyprus, then was involved in the second Gulf War as well, and did a number of tours in Iraq when I was commander. I did a number of tours in Afghanistan as well. And when I left the army after 23 years, I then got involved in Syria for sort of 10 years, in and out of there, and to see Assad gone and a lot of happy faces in Syria is great. And after I left the army, I sort of got into a whole host of things, sort of journaling as well and writing books. So, yeah, I've had a very fortunate life, I think, from a military perspective. And quite a lucky one, you know, I've I've survived a few scrapes. So and now and the irony having somebody who did so badly at school. I'm also now a don at Magdalen College, Cambridge, which when they asked me if I would do it, I said, hang on, you've got the wrong man here. You know, I've got one A-level, you know, hardly any academics and a third class degree in agriculture. They said, Hamish, you've got a lot of very clever people here at Cambridge. We just need a few with a bit of experience. That's where you come in. So that's that's sort of mine. My story in a nutshell. Well, it's great to have you. One of the things that we've been covering and talking about a lot and it's been a big discussion point in our countries, I'm sure you're well aware, which is the state of Britain's defense, the armed forces, the lack of funding and other issues that this country has been dealing with for a long time. Well, I think it's it's a it's a very easy one to decry and put down, I think, like a lot of NATO countries, European NATO countries, our government so overspent the peace dividend after the end of the Cold War, that actually a lot of capability was denied. A lot of people thought the end of the Cold War, that was it. Then we got into all the counterinsurgency with Al Qaeda in Iraq and then the Taliban in Afghanistan that we focus very much on there and we sort of lost the ability to to do war fighting, as it were. And. As part of that, what it meant is we diminished our skills. So where we find ourselves at the moment is a very small military. I mean, when I joined the army, there are one hundred and fifty thousand people and a thousand tanks. At the moment, it's about seventy thousand and one hundred and forty eight tanks. Now, not saying that that is is a metric, but I think it just gives people an idea of what the contraction has been and the disinvestment. And it's it's not one individual governments, it's been all of them over the last 20 or so years have disinvested. We invested in what we call urgent operational requirements for Iraq and Afghanistan. But counterinsurgency is a very different type of warfare. In the olden days, like our allies, like the Americans and the Australians, we could do it all. But we just focused on counterinsurgency. And I think morale in the British military also dipped. Now, I talk about my life up until 2012, where I pretty much every year I was doing some sort of operational tour somewhere. And some people thought, you know, that that's hard yards. And so my family and my wife were completely hacked off with it. But actually, as a professional in whatever guys it is, as a professional soldier doing your thing every day was keeps you sharp and keep keeps you going. Now, after 2012, when we sort of downscaled in Iraq and Afghanistan, young men and men and girls in the British military were not going on operational tours, so they weren't getting that excitement. I think morale dipped. And when morale dips, and you're not being funding, you then reach a place. It is only really since 24th of February 2022, when Putin invaded Ukraine, that suddenly countries like in Europe and Britain in particular realize, crikey, we don't have a credible conventional deterrence. So started to reinvest in it. But when you drop so low, it takes a heck of a long time to get back there. So very long answer to your question at the moment, the British military and the British army, and same within Royal Navy and Air Force, are trying to recover from 20 years of disinvestment and low morale to get back to where we should be. And I think what we're learning in Ukraine and what the Ukraine military is showing us, you can get there and you can get there quickly. But it takes funding. And I suppose the final thing I'll say on this morale, we recruiting for the British military has until quite recently been dire, and you had a whole lot of reasons for this. But unless you can recruit the right people at the right time, you are going to suffer. And that's what happened to the British army. There's so many great boys and girls who wanted to join the military but couldn't because of bureaucracy, pathetic little medical issues that the computer said no. So in effect, a lot of the very best of British young boys and girls were not joining the military. Almost the second 11 were. I think that's sorted out now. And I'm still an active reservist. So I see these young men and women on a regular basis. And I think now we're getting back to where we should. Really talented young men and women, really driven, really motivated. And they're starting to see the right kit coming through. They're starting to see the stuff they see on the TV and the stuff that you talk about in your podcast about how Ukraine is doing so well. They're starting to see that flow back into the British military. But it's been really slow. And I know a cavalry regiment who, yeah, reconnaissance. Regiment. It's all about drones now and integrating it with platforms. Having to buy their own drones with their own money to train on, which is absolutely bonkers. Which is why people like me and other military analysts who have columns like I do in a national newspaper decry this position. We must give our men and women the right tools to do the job. And if they can, we can be as effective as the Ukrainian military and become a credible conventional deterrent. So it's dropped low. We're getting back there. But actually, even the funding that we've heard about in the defense investment plan is not going to be enough to realize the strategic defense review, which I think, which was the review of the British military on how we should provide a credible capability going forward. I don't think there is enough funding for that at the moment. But we have, we are learning from the lessons of Ukraine, 80% lethality from drones, 20% from conventional. If you fund it, you know, it's, it's a waste of time. And I'd say not a waste of time now that's wrong, but at the moment we're sort of funding to about 80% and the great president of the United States. So I don't agree with a lot of the things he says, what he has done is stirred up European militaries and made people realize that actually we cannot rely on the US. We must produce our own military capabilities so that when Putin or whoever replaces him looks Western future. He, I say she, there is no way in the world that a woman would ever run Russia. So that's another story. But when the Russian president looks west, he sees a credible defense and doesn't invade countries like Ukraine in future. Well, right. And actually, just to your point about President Trump, he may have stirred up people into realizing that you can't rely on America. But actually, you're also going to be in a much more powerful position in relation to America if you're negotiating things or trying to do things together to be able to argue your case if you have a strong military, which, as you say, we've run down. And is your assessment that the reason that's happened is we basically got very comfortable for a long time? Is that fair? Well, I think priorities for the government have changed. And although you hear every prime minister since Winston Churchill say that defense and security is the number one priority for a nation, it's probably not since Churchill. We actually believed our leaders when they said that. So I think that has become an issue. And so much spending. When we're spending six times the amount on welfare that we are on defense, you sort of think we've got the balance wrong here. So I think that has really been the case, that it's been focusing on other things. And yeah, to a degree, relying on others. Good old Uncle Sam, he'll always come steaming over the Atlantic to help us out. Well, actually, we now know that we're going to have to do a lot of work on this. And I think it's going to be a lot of work. And when you compound it with our European partners who have done the same or even worse, I mean, the Germans who have taken a lot of criticism for a whole host of historical reasons, obviously, but they were the worst. They're a hugely wealthy country, massive potential, and actually had a large army, but they just didn't really bother. It's only recently 300 billion euros invested in German defence in the next couple of years. I mean, that is a real, you know, you can just see people in the Kremlin sort of going, flip an egg. Yeah, they are serious. And that's the sort of thing that we should do. So I think it's been collective responsibility in European NATO countries and its focus. And the defence investment plan, although I've criticised it, it is at least going in the right direction. We're at 2.6% of gross domestic product now, allegedly going to 3.5% by 2030. If we were going to 3.5% by the 2030, I'd say we're on track. But we are going in the right direction. And one can see, I mean, sitting outside Parliament, you almost feel the heat of their breath on the back of your neck. You know, unfortunately, their big focus is on the next election, which is two years' time. What's going to get them re-elected? And my experience of politicians, most of them are pretty insular and pretty selfish. So at the moment, well, possibly at the moment, defence. might get them re-elected. But until now, that hasn't been the case. It's not until the security service, MI6 and others say, we're in a hybrid war with Russia. We see Russian jets dropping sensors around British Navy ships this week. We see Russian proxy GRU agents firebombing the Prime Minister's house. We see cyber attacks, Shadow Fleet tankers. Suddenly people are going, hang on, maybe there is a thing about this. So I think we're getting there. Are we doing it fast enough? We shall see. But I know, I think, going back to your first question, morale in the military is on the up. And certainly the young boys and girls who I see on a fairly regular basis are really up for it. And as long as we make sure that they get what they require. I mean, one final thing I'll say, I find the irony about Russia. Because Russia is losing 30,000 people a month in Ukraine, only replacing about 25%. 25 to 30% of them. But the latest thing is pay. A Russian soldier gets paid $80,000 a year, which is twice, at least twice what a British soldier gets. And you sort of think, crikey, there is a balance here. Again, we need to get it right. And to contradict myself, I actually think the pay for the military in the UK now is pretty good. So we are moving forward there. And I wanted to just, you mentioned about recruitment. One of the stories I read a long time ago, I think this was in the, this might have been in the Navy or in the Air Force, whichever one. I think it was the Air Force. Maybe it was the Air Force. Where there was a woman who was forced to leave because she refused to comply with instructions from above, which said, we don't want to hire any more useless white pilots. And this sort of fits into the broader theme of DEI and sort of anti-meritocratic initiatives, which are about inclusion, which, you know, maybe there's, where you might want to do a little bit of that. I don't know, but the armed forces don't strike me as the place that you want to be doing that. Has that played a role in recruitment issues and more broadly in the armed forces? I mean, that's, yeah, I mean, that was very well documented. And I, you know, I'm sure it was an error, but again, it's the sort of, it's politicians forcing, you know, their own agendas onto the military. So in my guise, and I've served with every type of person on the front line, you know, whatever colour creed or whatever else. And, you know, on the front line, we're all colour blind. We're all blind to whatever your sexual orientation is. It's all about the ability to fight. And I fought with them all. And quite frankly, it makes no difference. Absolutely makes no difference that whether somebody is good or brave or whatever, those sort of backgrounds, you know, it's all about the ability to fight. And I think that's a big part of the I think that that is, that is really dangerous. What is critical is that when people are recruited, they pass the test. You know, if you're going to be an officer, you pass the all army selection board, fine, you're through. Same in the Navy, same in the Air Force. There shouldn't be a different level for a different part of society. And I think people realise that. And it's ridiculous because it's actually what's in here, not what's on your skin that's important. But I think recruitment has been an issue. I mean, I could reel off many stories of people who should be in the military who are not. In fact, I sat next to a lady the other night whose daughter was a consultant surgeon in the NHS. She wanted, she's always wanted to join the army, absolutely desperate. But because she took some mental health drug, and I haven't a clue what it was, when she was 10 years old, she has been precluded from joining the military, which is completely bonkers. Some of the doctors, British doctors and American and others that I charged around Syria with, had some massive issues, psychological issues, but by God, could they do their job? So I think, again, we're learning how to get around that. But I think the whole diversity thing is something that we're trying to swim through that sea, but because there's such a political bow wave in front of it. Sometimes it's really difficult, but I'm hoping that people realize that it doesn't matter. It's all what's in here that's important to be a soldier or fighter pilot or a Navy guy or whatever. I was reading in one of your articles that the armed forces have been underfunded to the tune of 28 billion pounds. That is a mind boggling amount of money. What effect has that had on the army, the personnel, the equipment in real terms? Well, it's difficult to say that 28 billion is the shortfall from the Strategic Defense Review last year, which said what we need, 80% drones, 20% whatever, and what the defense investment plan. So there's a 28 billion gap. Now, that manifests itself in, as I said, cavalry regiments having to buy their own drones. It manifests itself, I've just test driven Challenger 3, the new British tank, that has what we call hard kill defensive aid suites against drones. And in order to operate in a drone infested battlefield, you need these defensive aid suites. But currently, they're only going to fund something like one or two per tank, as it were, whereas you need four or five. So again, psychologically, when you've been into battle, I was always confident the tanks that I were in, you knew that whatever you hit them, they'd take it up. So I can see in it from a morale perspective, to your point, you know, if you're going into an environment where, rather than being 100% certain you're going to survive whatever attack, you're 50%, that makes it really, really challenging. I was trying to explain to people that the whole medical issue, and I'm sure a lot of other your guests have talked about it. I think when we're professional soldiers, we're all happy to go and do what we're asked to do. But one of the key things is you want to know that if you're shot or blown up, somebody is going to come and sort you out. And that's what we're going to do. And that medical side, and certainly the British Army and the American Army and others were really, really good at that. So, you know, we had some horrific times in Iraq and Afghanistan, but you always knew. Conversely, when I was in Syria, it was a different issue here. And that's what people used to say to me. They said, you realize, if you get into trouble, you know, there's no MERT, there's no helicopter with medics flying over the hill to come and get you. There's no, you know, recon platoon or whatever who's going to come and get you. get you. And actually, psychologically, that was quite a challenging thing um and unless i think unless we thought we were doing such a good you know such an important job we might have gone okay maybe not but uh so very long answer to your question i think that's that's where it manifests itself we're we're not the british are i served with the australian army for a while and they they had a sort of phrase of fitted for but not with you know it's great the australians always always had some gucci kit but didn't necessarily have the the really top end of it although there there were sort of brackets on your vehicle or whatever else that were empty because we couldn't afford it so i think that that that is where it sort of fits in that's where the gap is which is why we need it funded because a lot of that 28 billion is this sort of anti-drone stuff and we now know that that certainly for the foreseeable future the next decade or so it's going to be an autonomous type battle and unless we can 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seem ridiculous but i think a lot of people wouldn't really understand this but how important is morale to the army because we've already talked about it a number of times and what happens when you have low morale as opposed to high morale morale is to the physical ten adds to one i mean you and what what i mean there is morale is essential absolutely essential um if you know some of the stuff you do in the military is pretty difficult you know it's not not stuff that you would naturally do so in order to do it you need to have really high morale and leadership and i think you know that's something that the british military and you know a lot of european american military and others are really good at that more there's the morale the moral component you know are you doing the right thing and then morale you know having big having the right attitude to do it so it is absolutely essential and it's something that we we focus so much time on to make sure morale is best and i think you know the um there are so many sort of um historical examples of where good morale has seen through and undoubtedly when you see some great acts of bravery and all the rest of it it is it is all about morale that it's the thing that keeps you going forward when everything else is telling you not to and it's also a collective thing i think it's it's about really strong leadership and you know in the british in most western armies you know the officers lead they go first it's you know conversing the russian army the officers actually lead from the back you know you go forward chaps and by the way if you turn around we're going to shoot you which is why again looking at ukraine the one of the main reasons russia is losing 30 000 people a month 10 times what ukraine's doing is about morale it's also about training but uh it is something that um that is built over time but is absolutely essential to be a successful not necessarily individual but successful group and that's where leadership comes in because if you're thinking about this underfunding by this huge amount if you're getting kit that quite frankly isn't up to it if you see friends of yours because they become friends die and you think to yourself well if we've been funded properly that wouldn't have happened i mean that quite that's going to lead to resentment and then that's going to lead to very serious problems within regiments well absolutely but but at the moment we are not at war so you're absolutely right in iraq in the early days of iraq and early days of afghanistan that was a problem you know i i still the most frightening thing i've ever done is driven around iraq and in what's called a snatch land rover basically an unarmored land rover wow when you know that you know people were dying but in you know lots of lots of british soldiers are killed in these land rovers uh and that that was that was really tricky you know when people were saying right you go out and patrol you know you're not going to roll and you're still thinking bloody hell but if i go over an improvised explosive device i am toast now by the time we got well into the afghan campaign we were getting protected mobility vehicles i mean i still do remember sitting in the back of a warrior driving from lashkagar up to sangin when you're just thinking you know any moment this thing's going to go pop but but because it had the right kit on it you you sort of knew that you've got a good chance surviving so to answer your direct question because we are not at war now um that that that is what people like me are trying to beat the drum of people over there to fund um but but whether we can get them to understand that that that is the key thing but if next year we are at war then absolutely nobody wants to go down that road in a vehicle they think is going to explode under whatever sort of attack and you won't survive so it's essential and and what we're learning and we're discussing it earlier you know the great thing about ukraine is the pace of innovation spinning so quickly and i'm sure we'll talk about the the the dreadfulness of the british army and military procurement system in peacetime it's a flipping nightmare in warfare as we saw in the second world war and i'm sure i'm sure jim holland and others have talked to you through it and you'll be aware everything works so much more quickly you know in ukraine if you've got a good idea and you've got a good idea and you've got a good idea and it can be on the front line in in weeks maybe a month you know in the british military i you know ajax the recce vehicle that's had a lot of issues which again i tested a few months ago you know it's 10 years in the making it's still not on the front line had this been ukraine it would have been in the front line after a few months or so so i think so i i i probably not a good answer you've got you've absolutely put your your finger on the issue here but but i i am confident that certainly because you know if we were at war those situations would would would sort themselves out because once you're at war then it is the number one priority at the moment it's not but i think i think we've got the basis of a plan to get there um and let's hope it's it's not us going to war that gets us there more quickly because there's going to be people listening to this interview hamish you're thinking to themselves look all right you you make some good points but if you look at our country everything is underfunded we're in huge amounts of debt quite frankly are we even going to be able to service that debt i mean there's a discussion around that can we really afford to fund the the armed forces more from 2.8 to 3.5 isn't that fundamentally unrealistic when you look at the current economic climate well it is no i don't think so absolutely not i i think you know it is the number one priority other things you've got to give um you know we know we're going to have to we know that uh you know we've got a lot of net zero projects which yeah i'm i'm as keen as the next person almost on climate change but you know i don't see why we're spending billions on that when we haven't got our fundamentals like defense and security pointed out i think and the fact that when when when it came to try and bridge that 28 billion gap that we've been talked about defense first of all says it was told you find 10 billion you know and to find 10 billion out of a 60 uh annual spend is is challenging i i didn't hear the welfare budget which is six times the amount being asked to save any money so if we can't get five billion out of the welfare budget then yeah i think we we we need to get somebody in who can do it so it's about priorities and it i think this funding has to be and i you know i suppose like most taxpayers i don't want to pay any more tax but quite frankly if it's if it's the difference between, you know, the men and women in the British Army getting the right drone or not, then, you know, I'm happy to do that. Although, you know, I'm sure a lot of others wouldn't. I think there is definitely the money there. The other element to it, of course, we keep hearing about growth. Now, one of the great industries in Britain is its defence industry. And, you know, if we spend our money there, that will generate growth. We just look at the Germans and the new British tank is being built by a German company. I mean, that must be bonkers. But having said that, you know, some of the British companies are, you know, have the potential to do stuff all over Europe. Now, I know there are a few issues with the EU and Brexit and all the rest of it. But the fact we're making summaries of the Americans and Australians, I mean, there is a real opportunity. Now, one is hoping that with Andy Burnham coming in as Prime Minister, we don't swing too far to the left, who traditionally. I mean, we're not seeing the defence industry as an area they want to go to growth. But at the moment, it is a bit of a gold, you know, a golden goose for Britain. And, you know, if we spend our money on defence, it should increase the money within the government. And if we make sure that we sell our capabilities appropriately again. So, yeah, I think whatever else, we have got to fund defence first, whatever that means to other projects or even even if that means increase in tax. That's why your point about net zero is so important, because if you have the highest industrial electricity prices in a developed world, it's kind of hard to manufacture anything, right? I'm just not an expert, but that seems reasonable to me. But I wanted to ask you about the technological side of things as they're developing. You've talked a number of times already about what's happening in Ukraine, drone warfare in particular. If anyone's been paying any attention at all, and I obviously have family in the region, even in this four-year period, you've seen the technological transformation of the conflict. I mean, it's a different war to what it was four years ago, completely. And one of the reasons the high casualty numbers on the Russian side, as you say, Russians are sending their troops in carelessly, but also they're being taken out by drones. I mean, you see videos of people, literally individual soldiers being hunted down. It's actually terrifying to think about being on the ground in that kind of environment. But what is happening? What's happening with the technological side of warfare at the moment, in your assessment? Well, I think we all talk about drones. I had an experience with drones myself. I was, for two years between 2015 and 2017, I was the Peshmerga's chemical weapons advisor, the Peshmerga or the Iraqi military who were fighting ISIS. And I remember we were near Mosul one day in, I think it was April 2016, and this ISIS drone flew over. And you could see it with a hand grenade on, and they were trying to drop it on us. We fired thousands of rounds of ammunition at it, didn't hit it. Anyway, the thing couldn't, you know, it couldn't drop its thing. But that was 11 years ago, or 10 years ago. You wind forward to now and what we're seeing, and what has really kept Ukraine actually in the game is the way that they have developed drone technology to an area where, you know, I find it really. um. significant. You know, when Iran started firing drones and missiles at the Arab states, Zelensky and the Ukrainians were over there showing them how to defend against them, selling them Ukraine drones. Ukraine now makes 50% more drones than it needs, which is unbelievable. Ukraine has developed its own cruise missiles. You might have heard of the Flamingo, which has a range of over 1,000 kilometers, a warhead of about 50 to 100 kilograms. Not dissimilar from a Tomahawk cruise missile. Oh, by the way, it costs $500,000, not $10.5 million. You know, and when you can do that sort of stuff. Now, I'm sure people might argue that a cruise missile is more effective than a Flamingo missile, but, you know, 10 Flamingo missiles. It's a bit like when I talk about tanks in the Second World War. There's a great scene where Patton, who was commanding the Allied forces at Salerno in Italy, came up against the German general, whose name escapes me. And the German general said, "You know, Patton, you're struggling, aren't you? You're losing 10 Shermans for every one of my Tigers." And Patton said, "No, I'm not struggling. I've got so many more Shermans than your Tigers that ultimately we will win." Which, of course, they did. So, it goes back to my point about Flamingos. And the way, at the moment, Ukraine is using drones, they're just swamping. Absolutely swamping. And what is brilliant. Again, without wanting to go into too much detail. They're also tying drones to weather balloons that fly at 10,000 feet. 10,000 kilometers. Yeah, 10,000 feet. And these drones are above the range of most of the Russian air defense, except the S-300s and S-400s. These drones electronically look like big Reaper drones or small aircraft. So, Russia is firing these 10 million. 5 million-dollar missiles from S-300 and S-400 at a balloon. And while they're firing at a balloon, the real drones are sort of sneaking through, which is why Ukraine has pretty much destroyed 50%, I think it is, of the Russian oil industry. But on the technical side. The refining side of it, not the entire industry. Sorry, you're right, the petrol. But when you come to the evolution of drones, when it first started, it was all about the electromagnetic spectrum. You could control that. You could control the battlefield. Then we saw fiber optic drones, which seemed bonkers. You know, I remember the first Gulf War, where the Iraqis fired a lot of anti-tank guided weapons at us. And the whole battlefield was strewn with these sort of cables, which were doing these anti-tank guided weapons. And then we overcame that. So now, Ukraine is the use of AI and the use of mother drones to sort of fly lots of smaller drones, thousands of kilometers. And then through AI, they light up and then hit targets. Now, this is something completely unenvisaged four or five years ago. And how can such a small country, small military like the Ukrainians, be defeating the great Red Army, as it were, because of innovation? And the other element to this is training. The other reason the Russians are losing so many people is that an infantry guy recruit conscript is getting about a week's training. A lot of them don't even know how to clean their rifles. And when you've got a rifle, once you've fired a couple of hundred rounds through it, it clogs up with carbon and you can't use it. So these guys, I mean, if they had a couple of hundred rounds to use. So again, but that sort of perpetuates through the whole thing. You've got these Ukrainian drone units, a lot of them sitting back, a lot of them with very untraditional military people in there. We go back to the whole diversity issue and all the rest of it. If you can fly a drone, then it doesn't matter. Even if you've only got one arm or one leg or whatever, you can do it. And I think actually in recent writing I've been saying to the British military, we don't all need to be able to lift heavy weights and run fast. We need a few of them. But the rest need to be good at Call of Duty, right? Entirely, entirely. In the video I made for The Telegraph about Challenger 3, you've got a sort of PlayStation hand stick that, I mean, luckily, because it wasn't too different from Challenger 2 that I last fired about ten years ago, it took me about two or three minutes to familiarise and then in the simulator to get a first round hit. But actually, had you been a kid who played PlayStation, you would have just got in there and you wouldn't need any training at all. You know, it says, "I'm gonna raise the line, fire." I mean, dead ease. Yeah, and I imagine AI is gonna be another huge area where, like, if this walkie's gone another four years, there might not be any humans on the battlefield. Perhaps exaggerating, but you know what I'm getting at. Yeah. I mean, I think, as I talked about in the last chapter, where we're going, it's about autonomy, autonomous vehicles, land, sea, and air. We still need the human in the loop. And certainly the way we've envisioned it with tanks, you'll have one Challenger 3 or one Abrams or whatever, but then tethered to it will be hundreds of autonomous vehicles. And that creates the combat power. So, you know, although at the beginning I've decried the fact we're only getting 148 Challenger 3s, if we have several thousand drones that can be controlled and manipulated by the Challenger 3s, then we can get there. And I sort of use Ajax, the recce vehicle, as an explainer. When all throughout my military career, our recce vehicle, is something, the CVRT, the scimitar. Fairly small recce vehicle with a few sensors, but a troop, three or four scimitars, would cover a frontage of about three kilometers. Now, one Ajax with its digital turret, its sensors, and its drones, one troop of three or four Ajax will cover 60 or 70 kilometers. So you've got, you know, massive increase sort of in capability there. So I think autonomous, the other element, the other human you need in the loop ground. So you'll hear people saying, holding ground, you still need something physical there. And it's about endurance. I mean, things are getting better. One of my reasons for saying that the tank will endure, I've been on operations in tanks where we haven't refueled or anything or stopped for 48 hours. Now, at the moment, we don't have drones that have that endurance. I'm sure we will do. And we don't have other capabilities. So once you've held ground, you still need humans there. But I think autonomy is exactly where it is going. And AI will enable it. But I'm no great expert on AI and all the highly technical things. And I'm sure there will be some, I hate to say nerd or whatever the politically correct term is, sat in the back with his computer that can probably do a heck of a lot more damage than I could in my tank. But again, it's AI. It is, you know, anybody who's used AI will just see the power of it. You know, I'm a writer. I write books. I try and not go near AI at all anyway. But, you know, very occasionally, in fact, I had to write a eulogy for an uncle of mine who I didn't really know, had served in the military for 40 years in a regiment that I didn't really know. And I reached out to his regiment and said, tell me about him. And I'd only met him once in my life, bizarrely. And I got 400 pages of stuff. And I had to do the eulogy. And in like two days' time, I just went, right, chat GPT, give me a 15-minute eulogy of all this stuff. And it did. And it was brilliant. And I suppose even more, after I gave the eulogy, a number of people, you know, some generals and others who served with him said, Hamish, you've got him absolutely right. I can't believe you only met him once. And I said, well, that's what people told me. But it was AI. Running a business for as long as I have, you start to notice a pattern. 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But that type of hybrid asymmetric warfare is at the moment that we need to be most concerned about by the Russians. We are not going to see Russian paratroopers landing in the mail. We are not going to see T-90s driving up Constitution Hill. But what we are, what we know, or what the security services tell us, and I have no reason to doubt them, is that all the other attacks that are happening, and the tests, and you may have seen in the press last week, the American government saying that the Russians were going to attack Poland, or one of the Baltic states, to test NATO, to test us out. So when it comes to a threat, one doesn't see that the current Russian military, in the position it's in, can really do much more than it's doing at the moment. But the tip of the Russian spear is not the Russian ground forces. The Air Force doesn't. The Navy doesn't really exist, and the Navy doesn't really exist. It's everything else. What the Russians are really good at is the espionage, is the asymmetric warfare, the cyber. And that is the big threat to us. That's what we must be resilient against. And I mentioned the chemical attacks because, again, it's an area of my expertise that I dealt with, I commanded the UK's CBRN and NATO's defence forces. So I saw it firsthand and I saw it with the Peshmerga, and I saw it with the Russian forces. And I think not a lot of people know, it hasn't been widely reported, though I've written about it quite a lot. Russia is using industrial amounts of chemical weapons on the front line in Ukraine. Has been for a couple of years. Admittedly, it's something called chloropicrin, which was one of the first chemical weapons used in the First World War. Most people know it as CS gas, riot control agent. But it is illegal under the Chemical Weapons Convention and has a similar effect. If you don't have a gas mask respirator, you know, anybody who's had any CS gas will know how really unpleasant it is. And what the Russians were doing is firing it into trenches. People were getting out and getting shot and they were making a bit of ground. Then, through a whole host of various avenues, actually the British, funded by others, gave gas masks to every Ukraine soldier. So then it didn't become an issue. But that's with something like chloropicrin. So what am I concerned, you know, if they escalated, something like the Novichok programme that we saw in Salisbury. Now, you know, if chloropicrin is toxicity one, Novichok is 40,000, 50,000. So it's on a on a slightly different scale. So I think what when it comes to what is the threat from Russia, it is it is those sort of threats, the asymmetric and the hybrid that we need to. And we know the Russians will test all the time. And the Russian secret services, you know, GRU, et cetera, are still pretty good and still all over the place, and they are the ones that we must protect against, certainly from the home base. And I expect it's the same throughout Europe and to a slightly lesser extent, the US as well. Because what's really fascinating and you can talk about this, obviously, with your background in chemical warfare, is the idea of a dirty bomb. And what are the risks to the UK from that type of warfare? Whether it's I doubt it would be the Russians, but it might be a terrorist organisation. Or just a lone terrorist. Well, I think we sort of put them all together. CBRN, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear. I think the dirty bomb is a radiological piece. I actually think it's a bit of a chimera, as it were. It's never been used. It's never been successful because actually, radiation is one of the good things about radiation. It's very easy to detect. I think we've been involved and no secret at all in helping the Ukrainians secure their nuclear power stations because there have been a number of occasions where the Russians have appeared to attack them to create an improvised nuclear device. And everybody knows about Chernobyl. There are still sheep farmers in North Wales who can't sell their sheep because their grounds infected were from Chernobyl. But having said that, if you can identify a threat, particularly radiation, you can avoid it. And without giving any secrets away, the United Kingdom, like the US and others, has a lot of monitoring capability around the place to detect anybody trying to move radiological material. And if you blew up a dirty bomb in Westminster, it wouldn't have a great impact. It would provide a bit of contamination. It would be hugely expensive. It is our open source knowledge that every building in the city of London has to be insured against a dirty bomb. Because the only way you can decontaminate a building that has radiation in it is to remove it. And something like the Shard, which I think costs five billion to build, you know, if that became irradiated, you would have to take it down and build a new one, which presumably in these prices would be double that. So I think it's a real issue. What concerns me, I mean, the chemical bit, I think, again, the chemical weapons we know are quite easy to identify and we know what to do, although Novichok was designed so that NATO sensors couldn't detect it, which is why it took us 18 months to clean up Salisbury. But things have moved on. I think to me, the real concern in this area is biological weapons. And I am. Excuse my ignorance. What are biological weapons? Biological weapons are pathogens. People are plague, plague, which. Covid, mate. Covid. Plague which killed half of europe in the middle ages um anthrax the amerithrax anthrax attacks in the u.s after 9 11. um some people think covid but covid is so covid is very until covid happened me as a biological weapons expert i discarded that as an issue because um biological weapons take quite a long time what we call the incubation period of most pathogens like anthrax or plague or whatever else or ebola about four days so if you want a big bang people are going to be able four days also well yeah it's not something a terrorist would want but covid a very and not very um virulent pathogen you know death rate less than one percent um brought the world to a standstill for three or four years now if you think if you were a terrorist and you could do that that that's pretty good um our annie jacobson uh wrote a brilliant book last year or the year before called nuclear war which goes through a scenario of how nuclear war can start now i'm just reviewing her book that's published in two weeks time called biological war and a lot of it comes actually from from covid a little bit of work i did at cambridge um we with the explosion in synthetic biology enhanced by ai um and now that we know the genome dna so well you can actually manipulate things so you can manipulate things so you can manipulate things so we did a tabletop exercise at cambridge of whether we could splice lassa fever which is a hemorrhagic fever and there was an outbreak in in suffolk a few years ago luckily it only kills three people but only three people caught it and it killed them 80 mortality rate could you splice that with covid which is very transmissible so you had a very transmissible but 80 death rate and you probably could or you certainly could in the near future so once you get into that sort of vector now in annie jacobson's book she talks actually it's about plague that's been manipulated and if anybody has not read the book i am pilgrim uh which after you bought my book you must really i think it's the greatest book ever written it is fiction but it's about jihadists who manipulate actually the smallpox vaccine um and it you know potentially brings the world to a standstill so um all these shock horrors that we're going to see in the next few weeks are going to come back and i think it's going to be a really good book and i think it's going to be a really good book and i think it's going to be a really good book and it's going to be a really good book the thing that keep would keep me awake at night is the bio threat because of everything that's gone forward it's it's um it's it's a cheap person's nuclear weapon if you like and the reason that people like i are concerned is we spend virtually no money on trying to prevent it happening so the chemical weapons convention which has done a great job and removed 90 of chemical weapons from the planet we spend half a million 500 million dollars a year to make sure that it doesn't happen the atomic energy agency non-proliferation we spend billions on it but the biological uh weapons convention i think we spend a hundred thousand dollars a year on it um a lot of it is because and i might be being disingenuous to big pharma a lot of it's because big pharma doesn't want us poking around in its laboratories but it's making stuff that's going to make a fortune on but i think what we we need to get really serious about biowarfare and i think once people have read this book it's going to make a fortune but i think what we we need to get any jackson book and read iron pilgrim they will agree with me uh but again it's not any threat it's the threat you ignore that it's really dangerous the threat you focus on that and any threat can be suppressed you just need to put effort and money into making it happen so that a long answer to your question on biological warfare it's interesting you mentioned that because my father he was a biochemical engineer in the soviet union and one of the things he always said to me was this is the thing no one's talking about but by logical weapons are the most dangerous weapons that people will ever make uh and they may well be coming i i was it's interesting i sort of made it as half as a joke about covert but there's i mean we've had uh lord uh ridley on the show and and others talking about the origins of covet as your perception as someone who is an expert in this area did you think this was a virus that was likely manufactured perhaps not as a weapon but manufactured nonetheless um well matt ridley and i have very similar views on this but i think it's a very similar view to what you're talking about so you do then and his his book is is is excellent i um i i don't think it was deliberate no um but a little bit like annie jackson's book there are so many what we call bio-safe laboratories around bio-safe laboratories go from one to four bio-safe three and four is where the really nasty pathogens are kept places like um portland down in the south of england edgewood in maryland and um and they were military research places in the last 20 20 years we've gone from about 10 of these labs around the world to about a couple of hundred and that's that's level four and level three there are now thousands so there are thousands of laboratories around the world a lot of them in some of the dodgiest places in the world and there are millions of scientists completely unregulated who are dealing with these pathogens now a lot of it is is big pharma trying to make sure that we have the medical countermeasures to deal with them but not all but but the opportunity for accident and the way that things developed in wuhan um it must it absolutely must have come from the laboratory all this stuff about hemorrhagic fever coming from wet markets and eating bats is you know i don't get it and i don't think anybody who who understands the basic gets it and i don't think anybody who understands the basic gets it and and the fact that by it buys a threat today because we we move around so much you know the the the the the plague the black death in the middle ages took ages because people were basically traveling at three kilometers an hour we're now traveling at 600 kilometers an hour whatever it is so so the ability to spread it around um they're in the issue so i think there is i agree with with people like matt ridley that yeah it must have been an accident from wuhan and and i think most people except for the chinese authorities accept that um which is why going forward we must make sure it doesn't happen again and my the answer to that for me a two-fold first of all regulation that we haven't bothered with and the other one is is monitoring now i was involved post-covid with helping the government others come up with schemes and i think that's you know, how could we have prevented COVID? Well, we didn't have the technology at the time to do it. Everything was happening so slowly. We were, you know, you were given a sample and 24 hours later, you were either clear of COVID or you weren't. When Omicron arrived in the UK from South Africa, it took us five weeks to work out that it had arrived and where it'd come from. Actually, we have now developed sampling techniques where we can almost do DNA analysis in real time or near real time. So the scenario I always paint, that aeroplane that came from South Africa, if you could have tested everybody, because all you need to do is test the air that they're breathing very quickly. If there was this new virus on the plane, you could have then quarantined them and dealt with it. Five weeks later, when we knew it, 400,000 people had come from South Africa and those 400,000 people had traveled the world and spread Omicron around the world. But if you could have stopped what they call patient one, then you could prevent it happening. We have the technology to do it now. And a few years ago, well, when the report's done, to provide this sort of technology and monitoring system in the UK would have cost about 10 billion pounds to set up and a billion pounds a year to run. Now, we now think, well, at the time, think, well, COVID's over, it's not worth it. If COVID becomes something like plague, spending that money would be insignificant. So that's, I think, the area where we can do stop all these things. But we go back to this business about where do we get 20 billion for defense? Where do we get 10 billion to make sure that a pathogen doesn't bring us to our feet again? Might be easier to get that money probably more than defense because, you know, one would expect industry and the economy to be happy to pay for it. But at the moment, they're not. It's easier to scare the public. Wanting it as well, because, I mean, if you look at COVID on your telling and Matt's telling, it's the most deadly, one of the most deadliest events in human history, but it's the deadliest industrial accident by a long, long way in the history of humanity. And that was not something people wanted to believe for a long time. But I'm glad we're finally coming around to the realization. Here's something nobody tells you about getting older. You can eat well, exercise, do everything right, and still feel like your body is running at about 70 percent. Tired after lunch, sluggish after meals, not ill exactly, just not quite right. A lot of the time, it comes down to digestion, whether your body is actually breaking down what you're eating and absorbing it properly. If it isn't, the protein, the healthy fats, the vitamins, a lot of that passes straight through you. You're eating the right things and not getting the benefits. 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The link in the description. The code Trigonometry. That's it. So if you're already thinking about trying it, this is the sign. Go to bioptimizers.com slash trigger or click the link in the description. Use code Trigonometry and grab it before it's gone. We wanted to talk a little bit about Syria before we wrap up, which is a place you've spent some time in. You mentioned Alshara. Alshara, who's the new leader. Some questions about him, but you mentioned you were actually pretty happy with the way things have turned out. Yeah, very. I mean, I first started going into Syria in 2012, 2013, sort of purely, slightly by accident. I'd spent an awful long time in Afghanistan, and my wife had sort of had enough, said, right, time to do something else. I've only had two good ideas in my life, and both were in Afghanistan. One was we had to deal with a whole bunch of chemicals from the Taliban, which they use to synthesize poppies into heroin. And we found about 100 tons of this stuff, and it was basically acids and alkalis. It's the recipe for a massive fertilizer bomb, and it was outside the barracks in Lashkar Gah. If it had blown up, it would have killed everybody there. So I was actually there in an intelligence role, and I remember a guy from MI6 coming up to me and said, we understand you're the world's expert in chemical weapons. You've got to deal with this. I thought, well, I'm not going to deal with this. I'm going to deal with this. I'm not. I'm really not. But anyway, it's got a very long story short. We had this issue. There's a lot of fighting going on at the time. Porton Down, the laboratory down in Wiltshire, were telling me to take it into the desert and blow it up. And I was going, you must be joking. There are 3,000 people, 3,000 Taliban between me and the desert. No way. And then I sort of said, well, hang on. We've got 50 tons of acid, 50 tons of alkali. Why don't we mix them together and turn it into a chemical bomb? Into pH 7 water. And the great brains at Porton Down about a day later came out and said, yeah, that might work, actually. And it did. The other thing that I was doing in Afghanistan was using DNA to track terrorists down. And because when we were doing biological weapon analysis, we were basically doing something called PCR, which is DNA analysis. And in Afghanistan, we were sending all the DNA off terrorists we were capturing back to the U.S. And it was taking 14 days to come back. I suddenly went, well, why don't we get this kit out here and we can do it in a couple of hours? So we did. So we turned a 14-day process into a three-hour process. And we were, you know, you made that bomb, your DNA's on it, you know, off to jail sort of thing. And then somebody said, well, that's great. We can commercialize this. But once I left the army, then a great mate of mine who was an ex-soldier was running security for CBS News. And he said, Hamish, we've got this. Chemical attack, we think, in Aleppo. Can you take our guys in there and do it? And I thought, ooh, yeah, sounds like a lot of fun. So we did that. And it was the first major thing. I can see why your wife gets annoyed. Well, well, it gets worse. It is all in my memoir, Chemical Warrior, so I'm not breaking any confidentialities. But actually, once we did that, when, because Syria was really difficult at the time, lots of. This is under Assad still. This is 2012, 2013, very much. Lots of aid workers were being picked up by ISIS and al-Qaeda and killed. So it was really difficult. But once I'd done that, then the BBC got on to me and said, oh, God, can you take one of our teams in? And this. So I then sort of thought, yeah, it's only a couple of weeks. And the slightly funny, funny sort of inverted comma story is, I was off. I was with the BBC in a place called Saraqeb in May 2013, covering another chemical attack. And somebody came in to my wife and said, Julia, what's Hamish doing in Syria? She said, he's not in Syria. He's in France. And they went, well, I think you ought to turn on the BBC. And there I was. And now Hamish to Brett and Gordon from Syria. And she went, oh. Anyway, that took a bit of explaining. But then when I got back to the UK, and I came here and berated people. They just weren't interested. And somebody said to me, and we had a vote in part, it was a big chemical attack, you might remember, in September 2013, August 21st, August 2013, when 1,500 people had died. And the British government were voting whether to go with the Americans and flatten Assad's chemical weapons program. And I was in parliament and briefing the prime minister and everybody else. And they voted not to. For administration. They voted not to. evidence of the chemical attacks which we did from 2014 up until when assad fell and you know the proudest thing in my life is that the evidence that the un has the evidence the french government are using to prosecute assad now has my dna on it so that for me and it was when when assad fell in november 2014 um i was in in december i was the new government got in touch because a lot of the new government were guys that i've been in it live with and said you must come to tabascus and in december 2014 2024 russia today put out this big piece saying it was my fault that a sad file i was the reason i said i went i certainly weren't um if i had any tiny bit to do with it then i'm delighted i said it's the syrian people assad killed half a million of them that's why they rose up and once they rose up they realized that syrian army was useless and the russians faded away as quickly but it it was going to damascus and meeting a whole bunch of ministers um and getting the word from from the ministers and and and via them from al-shara the line was isn't it strange hamish you know we've been trying to kill you for 10 years and now we've invited you back for you to give us advice i think you brits call it real quality um but i'm you know despite i i first saw um hcs as it were al-qaeda turned into hcs in about 2015. so so life became a little bit easier after 2015 because although they were al-qaeda they weren't they weren't trying to well people like me as a very dear assyrian friend of mine uh called gunnam um who who is a doctor and uh and still lives in the middle of the united states and he's in the middle of the united states and uh and still lives in the middle of the united states and spends a lot of time in syria he he always says to my wife you know i i could have i could have got 10 million dollars for your husband and we would have split it and julia always said yeah yeah i'm happy about five million dollars and in fact funny enough he he took me back there he was part of the team we went in in january uh 2025 and uh they all joked yeah your wife could have had five million dollars and uh she would have been very happy but anyway i'm i'm not being slightly obtuse but now going back there to see so many happy faces being able to go around the country without fear of your life um and and there's real opportunities and it is a secular place i talked about going into the oldest church in christendom with the imam of holmes and then the bishop of home showing me around the the the the main mosque in in holmes uh so i i'm you know i'm very confident and very hopeful but the west is not in christendom i'm not interested in syria syria is sort of sorted um and the british government haven't even opened an embassy yet so but i've actually told the prime minister i need to be the ambassador let's open an embassy oh it's too dangerous we haven't got a building i actually rang up one of my syrian friends the other days any chance getting a building for british embassy in damascus i can offer you five or six different buildings that we'd see anyway that's uh i live in hope but syria is a wonderful place 99 of the syrian people are wonderful tammy regularly hauls stuff to her kids at college that's why she shops at bj's wholesale club saving up to 25 off grocery store prices beef jerky microwave meals laundry pods even they can't screw up have you met my kids and with bj's gas she gets there for less they call me the road warrior this is your home road warrior mom home of the save join for just twenty dollars at bjs.com mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months only Open soon. Limited time offer, new members only. BJ's, home of the save. I realized before we wrap up, we should talk about tanks very briefly. Because our booker, Billy, who you know, we were sitting around, I think it was on one of our America trips. And I was like, well, you know, looking at the stuff in Ukraine, the tank is kind of obsolete. And he went, no, it's not. And I think he got that energy from you. So why is the tank not obsolete? Well, that is a really good question. What I would try and frame, the tanks have been around since basically 2016, 1960. 1960, yeah, World War I. 110 years. The first big tank battle was the Battle of Combré. Interesting, one of the big issues of my, it was the Royal Tank Regiment, the regiment I commanded. One of the big issues of the tankies at Combré was the Germans throwing grenades and sticky bombs onto the top of the tanks, where it's weakest. So they built metal cages to prevent that happening. Wind forward to probably about 2024, and FPV drones dropping hand grenades onto tanks, put cages on. But literally the day after Combré, everybody's saying, that's it, the tank is dead. And that's been happening throughout history. What has happened is the tank has evolved. The tank originally was there to sort out a problem of machine guns. So how could the infantry cross the trenches to attack the enemy without being mown down with machine guns? Well. The tank was there to prevent that. It was a tank, a land ship as they were, the Royal Navy actually started, in fact, Winston Churchill who started off tanks, and tank was a OPSET, operational security acronym for what it actually was. But it did what it did. I mean, a few years before, it was gas. So when the Germans started using chlorine, that was terrible. And the Germans made a lot of ground, but then we got gas masks. So the tank was there to prevent that. The Second World War, things developed and evolved. You know, better armor, quicker, the holy trinity of firepower, mobility, and protection, you know, still sounds good today. So, yeah, a lot of people are saying, where does the tank fit in? And you see so many tanks brewing up, as we call it. Well, Russia has lost about 5,000 tanks in Ukraine. Now, I explain it because the Russians aren't big on protection. They like firepower and mobility. They're not too bothered about the people inside it. They can be washed out in a new lot, put in sort of thing. Whereas Western tanks, the American Abrams, German Leopard, British Challenger, protection is a big deal. So despite the fact the Brits only gave the Ukrainians 14 Challenger 2s, 13 of them still exist and are driving around. And I think the way that things have evolved, I mean, again, the Ukrainians have been brilliant with their tanks. Certainly the Challengers and the Leopards. If you believed every report coming out of Ukraine's social media, there are about 5,000 Challenger tanks in Ukraine. They're here, they're there. And again, people are fixated by it. And the way that the Ukrainians are using these Western tanks are sort of like long-range snipers. Because they're still really effective. You know, if you can suppress the drone threat, the ability to knock out another vehicle at three to four kilometers is still there. And you don't see British, French, British, German, or American tanks. German or American tanks brewing up because we protect our ammunition inside. I think the way we're going forward and the way I describe in the final chapter of the book is, although it's all autonomous, we said before, you still need a human in the loop. So I think going forward, you'll see much fewer tanks. Challenger 3, I think Challenger 3 is probably the last, it might be the last man tank we ever produce, or certainly the last tank with four people in it. You probably don't necessarily need four in future. But Challenger 3 is the first digital tank so that it can work with all these other drones seamlessly. I mean, it's bloody difficult. I mean, as a young tank commander, even with a year's training, it is quite a difficult job. I sat in Challenger 3 in Ajax and I'm just covered with flat screens of sensors and everything else. And people are complaining about these new tanks make you sick. And I go, yeah, bloody hell. Maybe for not like Billy and others and you guys who are used to on your phones and laptops all the time. But for us old fellas, driving around with all these screens makes it difficult. So I think the tank will still have relevance when we think about fire protection and mobility. You still need to be able to hold ground. And if you can increase its lethality through autonomy, autonomous vehicles in the air, on the ground, then I think they will evolve. And the final line in my book is that I'm sure in 100 years from now, I'm going to be able to hold ground. I'm going to be able to hold ground. And I'm sure in 100 years from now, somebody like me will be talking to somebody like you about something called the tank. It's really interesting you say that. The reason I was more skeptical about it, I guess, is if a $50 drone or a $500 drone can blow up a multi-million dollar tank, that seems like a losing battle over time, right? Yeah. But I would counter that by saying it can't now. Can it now? So a $50 drone. Maybe not $50. A $500 drone dropping a hand grenade or a two or three kilogram explosive or something would not take out a Challenger 3. Because the Challenger 3 will either shoot it down before it even gets there, or with its defensive aid suites, it wouldn't penetrate. So now, if we're talking about something like a cruise missile, so we're getting. Is a $5 million. $5 million cruise missile. Could that take out a $5 million tank? Yeah, probably could. But then again, to my eyes, that's sort of evened up. Are you going to use your $500 cruise missile that's really designed to attack headquarters and all the rest of it to try and find a tank in the Ulu? Maybe, maybe not. It's a balancing thing. And I think until fairly recently, say the last 12 months, absolutely the drones have had their way. And I think that is. Is right. What I'm seeing now with the development of hard-kill defensive aid suites, the drone is becoming less. The FPV drone and the electromagnetic spectrum, again, with the jamming and everything else. Now, no doubt people will get rounded. But the focus on Ukraine at the moment is deep strikes with flamingos and others and all the rest of it. They're not really worried about Russian tanks. Now, I suppose the final bit I was saying this, if you can start maneuvering again. We've had a static trench warfare in Ukraine for four years now. But if you could maneuver, a bit like you might remember the Kursk offensive in September 2024, when actually a bunch of tanks and loads of drones broke into Kursk, took about 1,000 square kilometers of land and held it for three or four months. Now, if you could do that now and then multiply it, you could then see. What we call maneuver coming back in there, and you could gain traction. At the moment, the Ukraine is quite happy. Ukraine's doing the deep battle. And I would say that maybe in their strategic planning, once they've won the deep battle, they'll then focus on what we call the close battle and maneuver. And if you think. Ukraine's been really clever. They've cut off Crimea. They've cut off routes into the Donbass. Russian logistics, their front line, are running out. They can't get ammunition and fuel through Crimea, and they can't get it through the Donbass because they're being suppressed by drones. Now, I personally think, and Ukrainians seem to be much better at this than any of us lot, there may be a time when actually Ukraine decides to break through and break out. It's creating the conditions to do that. They'll still need the ability to maneuver with tanks. And we've seen the U.S. Leopard, our infantry fighting vehicle, has been tremendously successful in Ukraine. And none of us really saw that. So that is why I still think there is a role for something that's armored that can maneuver in future. But it's trying to spin the innovation to stay one step ahead of the enemy, which at the moment, Ukrainians are doing. And we need to learn every bit of that as we go forward. Well, Hamish, thank you so much for coming on the show and for making Billy's day. I haven't seen him look this happy in years. Final question is always the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? Before Hamish answers the final question at the end of the interview, make sure you go to triggerpod.co.uk where you'll be able to see this. Is manning a tank now one of the most dangerous jobs a soldier can do after Ukrainians demonstrated that a drone or two can destroy tanks with relative ease? Do you think there's a concerted effort to undermine the military by the left wing of politics? Do you think there's a conflict involving NATO at the beginning of next year? What would be the single biggest weakness of Britain's armed forces that the public that the public either don't know about or doesn't fully appreciate? And what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? Well, I, I suppose I was going to say the bio threat. I think that's that's what really concerns me. And we've covered that in in quite a lot of detail. So and one doesn't want to say that we're not talking about that. We're talking about the bio threat. I don't want to overly terrify people. I think if you if you accept my premise, that there is single threat, but you just have to look at it head on to do it, then that's what I'd say on the bio side. I think the other element that we're not really talking about, and probably for good reasons, is the clandestine world, the espionage. And it's something that Russia has invested so much time and effort in. But actually, I think they are losing the war. The human intelligence, the spies, and all the rest of it. And I know it's changing. But I think Russia traditionally really punched above their weight, because that was their world, the whole espionage. And of course, Putin, that's the world he comes from. But I think they're losing the war. I think Ukraine is showing us how the SBU are just unbelievable. People remember Operation Cobweb, where they attacked the Russian strategic aircraft 2,000 kilometers into, Russia, by hiding drones in a truck and then attacking it. That was the Ukraine Secret Service who did that. And I think that unseen and unheard world, it's going on all the time, all around us. I think one thing where Britain probably punches above our weight, and I know that a lot of us military people say that, but I think in the security world, I think we're still getting there. So not that we should talk about it, but there is a lot that goes on under the surface that people don't see. And it's really part of the whole defense and security piece. You know, that part of our defense and security must be absolutely funded, because it produces such huge capability. But I suppose when it threats and all the rest of it, bio to me is a concern. And when people have read my book, do read Annie Jacobson's Biological Warfare when it comes out, and Iron Pilgrim, which I think is a really good book. I mean, it's the gracious book ever written. Hamish, thank you so much for coming on. Head on over to triggerpod.co.uk, where Hamish is going to answer your questions. I know what's probably a very disconcerting question. If the UK cannot restore its military capability to protect power, should it consider negotiating with Argentina the status of the Falkland Islands? We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Open soon. BJ's, home of the save.