PoliticsAside: Chinese Spy Balloons (and Much More) - A Conversation with General Robert G. Novotny

Congressman Porter recently had the chance to sit down with  Brigadier General (Ret.) Robert Novotny to discuss a number of items, including the Chinese balloon controversy and military modernization.

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to Politics aside.

0:03

We appreciate you tuning in today as you know, we've put together politics aside as an opportunity for me to introduce some of my friends that I really believe that helped change the world and are continuing to do so it's an opportunity for all of us to really please sit back, relax and put politics aside.

0:23

Certainly we're going to talk about politics but it will be in a sense of practical application as needed depending on the event and depending on what's going on in the world and today there is a lot going on in the world.

0:35

For politics aside to talk about, have a very special guest breeder, General robert G.

0:40

Novotny who is a better friend, a leader in in Nevada and in the world but also with us today as Stephanie walker, some of you may know is our senior Vice president, a senior part of the porter team.

0:54

But first general I have to read all the great things that you've done recently retired and start your own business, sky racer consulting.

1:05

But before that giving you the credentials, general officer, career fighter pilot, combat commander around the globe.

1:16

Your final assignment.

1:19

One of the, one of the greatest things is certainly the Thunderbirds at nellis, but you are the Commander of the 57th Wing at nellis Air Force Base.

1:28

close to 5000 employees and staff.

1:31

You've you've managed 36 squadrons, 12 installations and again we could go on and on and on.

1:40

But in in fairness to the folks who would like to hear some of your ideas and some of your thoughts will save more of that for later.

1:47

But, I guess current events, we're going to talk about some current events also want to talk about modernization of Department of Defense.

1:56

Talk about some of your ideas and suggestions on, on training,, communication and what's happening around the world.

2:03

Because, you know, hearts and minds of folks that are listening is the Homeland Security, National Security.

2:10

And we can talk about Ukraine.

2:12

We can talk about china, we can talk about what's happening around the world.

2:16

But I really like to start, by talking about what was merely a weather balloon.

2:24

And you know, today in Capitol Hill.

2:28

the House of Representatives passed a resolution pretty historic 419 to 0.

2:34

I don't know that that's happened in a long time condemning china, today as well in the United States Senate appropriations subcommittee on defense.

2:45

They too are having a hearing regarding what's happening in china.

2:52

and what we hear is that again, it's merely a weather balloon.

2:57

But when we talk about some of the issues, that's, I guess now china won't return our calls.

3:04

There appears to be a global fleet, maybe five continents, that, that there has been balloons, there's been supposedly now all these numbers, course, I'm reading it from the press.

3:15

So I'll quote now this information is coming from the general media.

3:20

But apparently you've had four other sightings through the years or recent years in our airspace.

3:25

So as I mentioned, the House acted on it today, House and as you know, general right across the street from from the capital and from the House of Representatives.

3:34

And also as I mentioned, the U.

3:36

S.

3:36

Senate is having a hearing today.

3:38

What's happening?

3:39

General help us out here.

3:41

Give us your perspective if you can please.

3:44

Well, first of all, congressman, thank you so much to you and Stephanie for inviting me on your politics aside podcast.

3:50

I really appreciate the opportunity for the dialogue and and I'm humbled to be here.

3:56

I love Southern Nevada, I love our Great States.

4:00

It's one of the reasons our family decided to retire out of our command at nellis Air Force Base.

4:06

We just didn't want to leave.

4:07

We felt like we were part of the community, so we're just really blessed to be hopefully a positive agent for for movement and change in our great State.

4:17

But if it, you know, for for somebody to postulate, I think what china intends to do in the global scale, if you're a westerner, I think would be maybe a little bit presumptuous, I'm sure there are quite a few scholars, there's probably lines of them that that begin to speculate what what this is, what is going on.

4:38

so I'm gonna jump into that line and I'm going to speculate on what I think china is doing and being that I'm a Westerner and being that I'm from the United States, I'm confident that I'll be wrong.

4:48

But I would say they're getting away with what they're getting away with.

4:54

I kind of look at china as no different than raising a young toddler in some ways.

5:01

And I don't mean that to be derogatory to a nation as with the history of theirs and all that, but the reality is unless they're told to stop and there are consequences, they will continue to test the boundaries.

5:14

, So I think you look at it from their investments globally.

5:20

they're all the way from Iceland to chile from africa to even in our own United States, they're making strategic investments around the world.

5:29

And given that they're the chinese Communist Party, there are very limited investments that will be made by business people without some connection back To a central government strategy.

5:41

if you look at their military activities, obviously they've militarized and even created islands in the Western Pacific, started all the way back into the early 2000s and they have built those up to some significant capability.

5:55

Apparently, the open source reporting as some of these balloons have come from one of those islands that was created.

6:01

, and they've militarized it and now they have a position in some of the most lucrative sea channels in the world, militarily obviously they floated the balloon over our country and several others and and I'll be honest, they got away with it.

6:16

So so I think what china is doing is exploring the boundaries of their of their influence.

6:24

What can they get away with?

6:25

And you know, I I wrote an op ed this morning that I sent over to the R.

6:29

J.

6:30

We'll see if it gets published or not.

6:32

And it's really a question of sovereignty that our country needs to have.

6:37

So I think there's gonna be a lot of tactical conversations that come up.

6:41

We need a better defense network, we need a better this we need a better airplane, We need better warning systems and those are interesting, but they're not compelling.

6:50

And I think what is compelling is a conversation nationally about what does our sovereignty mean and what are we willing to do about it?

6:59

It doesn't mean we necessarily go to war over spy balloons, but we definitely don't let them get a free pass in my opinion.

7:08

So I think this is a broader conversation.

7:10

It definitely needs to be at the strategic level with our elected officials where we're gonna say, what are what are we what what how much are we gonna let them push us on their exploration of their boundaries.

7:23

And when do we stop and and put our foot down and say, hey, that's gone too far.

7:27

We just need to be.

7:28

I think we need to have that conversation.

7:29

What do you think general again from from afar technology was really being deployed by chinese.

7:40

You know whether as you shared with the other day Likely they're not checking the weather at 65,000 ft right.

7:47

They can get a little lower maybe call up the weather channel to get some information.

7:51

What do you think was on there for technology?

7:54

Right.

7:55

You know that that there are limits at every altitude of every capability that that we know of.

8:01

Right.

8:02

So if I go in space I'm obviously farther away from targets.

8:06

We have incredible imaging platforms on orbit generally in the low earth sector of our orbits which get us closer to the ground.

8:14

But their flight time and their persistence over the target is incredibly small because they have to stay in orbit so they're constantly moving So I can get a quick snapshot in time.

8:24

Like a polaroid picture without the incredible resolution.

8:27

But I can't get a polaroid picture 15 minutes later because the satellite is already over Greenland if I get too low.

8:35

So I'm a reconnaissance aircraft, let's say we're very familiar in our own Defense Department with our unmanned aerial systems that were obviously quite pervasive in our counter insurgency activities in the Middle East.

8:49

I can get low to the ground.

8:51

I can soak the target is what we generally call it.

8:53

Great imagery.

8:55

persistence of around 20 hours or so given the model.

8:59

But I'm incredibly susceptible to the activity of of the enemy in this case so they can see it, they can hear it, they can obviously down it.

9:08

And in both of those cases we have really great tracking systems.

9:12

So we have the page post systems which is deployed across the Western United States and up in Alaska that we track all the space activity we can see and they're all catalog.

9:20

We have an understanding of what's up there and what's new and where things are.

9:24

And we have really good air defense sectors which track you know targets that fly fast enough to be reported on radar so we can see all that.

9:34

But a balloon is really kind of an interesting technique.

9:38

It is kind of the middle ground.

9:40

Right?

9:40

So they've been deployed since the Civil War.

9:43

We've used observation balloons in Civil War, World War One.

9:46

Obviously we had aerostats all over Afghanistan for self defense because they're slow.

9:51

They're static and I can get I can get sensors close to where I want to be.

9:55

So I think what this balloon was was exactly that probably a high definition capability, eight K 16 K kind of resolution that had a persistence about it that would allow them to collect very quality imagery data.

10:11

It would not take much at all to put other types of sensors such as radio signal and you know electronic intelligence, signals intelligence collecting capability.

10:22

I wouldn't be surprised if they use their own Verizon 5G networks to pump the data back to China.

10:27

So, but you can sit up there and soak and and they're tough to see in some cases they tend to be a little bit slower.

10:36

They tend to be, a little bit trickier for us to detect.

10:41

And we build our systems for generally speaking, fast moving objects like cruise missiles and enemy fighter aircraft, ballistic missiles coming in from maybe on the other side of the planet.

10:50

So that's kind of an interesting middle ground.

10:52

And I know we we had some intelligence on this one for a while.

10:57

so I'm confident that the Defense Department probably took some steps to mitigate some of the collection that was going on.

11:05

So to prevent some of the loss.

11:06

But the reality is it was up there for a long time and I'm confident it collected some good intelligence.

11:12

, do you have a couple of questions as well?

11:16

I do.

11:17

so coming from a space, I'm not quite, you know, I'm not a congressman or brigadier general.

11:22

So I wonder, you know, there's been speculation in the media on how many different stories to on how many of these types of balloons have flown over the United States in the past.

11:34

And I'm wondering from your opinion if the sort of reaction and and the media and the congressional hearings is related to the fact that citizens of America saw the balloon for once.

11:46

Maybe there was other balloons?

11:48

Or is this really more of an isolated incident?

11:51

And we saw it because it's the only one that there's really been.

11:54

What do you think?

11:55

It's probably the truth?

11:56

Yeah.

11:57

I think our elected officials are appropriately responding to their constituents in the sense that this kind of gripped a nation for a while.

12:05

I think, Republican democrat independent, we're all probably asking questions like why are we allowing a chinese balloon, which I think most people know was not a weather collection device.

12:17

I mean, I think, you know, not ever, you know, I'm confident some people hit the, I believe button, but the rest of us were like, that's not how china is going to work.

12:25

So I imagine our legislature and it sounds like the votes are obviously overwhelmingly in, in the direction of, we need to do something about this.

12:33

I'd also like to say as a taxpayer, You know, if I'm a portion of the, you know, what's the defense budget this year, $800 billion dollars plus or minus, and has been every year, for for a long time.

12:50

You know, if I'm a taxpayer, I'm probably going, hey, do we not, did we not Venmo you the cash to cover down on preventing this kind of stuff from happening.

12:59

So I hope what comes out of this is one some oversight where we kind of go back and look at our overall defense capabilities and say do we have a gap or a seam here that has been exploited and what do we do?

13:13

Sure that how did they know about that?

13:15

You know, how did they get lucky?

13:18

I doubt it.

13:18

So somehow they figured out that we might have this scene and what are we going to do to fix that?

13:23

So I think that's number one, Number two, I think some oversight on the command control reporting and all of that would be obviously good.

13:31

I'm not privy to those discussions that were at NORAD North com or at the obviously up with the defense level.

13:37

So, you know, but again, I think it seems like to the press and to the to the lay person in the United States that somebody in Montana with a camera found right, regardless of what the truth is, that's the story and there's a little bit of perception and reality problem right now.

13:54

So I imagine they're probably going, hey, like how do we not see this coming and all that stuff?

13:58

And then going back to the conversation about sovereignty, I hope there's a conversation about are we going to tolerate this in the future?

14:05

You know, because the rest of the world saw it, we made sure about that through our own, you know, our free press and our media, so the whole world saw that the United States kind of set and allowed this to happen.

14:17

Whether they saw, you know,, what was going on behind the scenes or maybe we were jamming signals or maybe we were doing things to thwart the collection efforts.

14:25

They're never going to know that, but they did see the balloon float across the United States for all time.

14:29

So hopefully that's what our, our, our legislators and our lawmakers are having conversations about.

14:34

So what if you were the pilot that shot down the balloon?

14:39

Talk about what it's like to be that pilot and what they were facing at that altitude with, with our equipment, right?

14:49

It's, it's at the tactical level.

14:51

It's a tricky little activity to, to do.

14:54

So we, you know, it's, it's interesting if you're, if you're following the news, the F 22 raptor, a group of them signed out of Langley Air Force Base in southern Virginia, just outside of Hampton were dispatched to go and and deal with the balloon.

15:09

They took off using call signs frank and luke was their call signs general.

15:17

This is important as homage to lieutenant frank luke who was known as the Arizona balloon buster in World War One.

15:25

And, and he was part of the 27th Fighter Squadron way back during the World War One era days luke.

15:31

Air Force base outside of Glendale.

15:33

Arizona is named in honor of lieutenant frank luke and that's home of our F 35 training base.

15:39

So they took off to go bust this balloon.

15:40

Now, I'll tell you, it's actually, it was probably very complicated activity.

15:47

A lot of people would say, well, they're just fighter fighter jets are doing, can we just use a bow and arrow?

15:52

And I don't mean to discount this, couldn't, you know, use a 22 rifle.

15:56

Right.

15:56

I mean all those, both those, all those airplanes are equipped with incredibly capable 20 millimeter gatling gun cannons that fire 90 to 100 and 10 rounds per second.

16:06

However, the altitude, the balloon and the speed at which the balloon is traveling create a tactical intercept challenge.

16:14

So generally speaking, when we are attacking other enemy aircraft were for the most part in the lower altitude, say 10,000 ft, about 20,000 ft.

16:24

Generally speaking, that happens to be where the most of these air to air engagements occur.

16:28

And the other airplane is doing 304 105 100 miles an hour.

16:32

So my closure to that other airplane, relatively speaking, is low.

16:36

So, you know, 100 and 100 and 50 knots of closure.

16:41

and so that allows me to do some marksmanship to put my aiming devices on there.

16:45

And if I wanted to use the gun, I can use the gun.

16:47

And it would be simple.

16:48

The airplane likes that kind of altitude.

16:51

There's a lot of air going over the air foils and the flight controls, there's a lot of air in the engine.

16:56

So the airplane performs really well At 60,000 ft, there's not much air.

17:01

So the airplane doesn't have all of those flight control responsiveness and the engines become a little bit testier.

17:07

So I need to go fast in order to keep the air coming over the ailerons and flaps and the tails.

17:13

So because I'm going fast, I have a closure problem.

17:15

And especially since the balloon is going nearly nothing 30 miles an hour, maybe in the windstream.

17:22

Now my closure instead of being 100 100 and 50 knots when I'm gunning somebody at 20,000 ft, my closure is up around 506 107 100 knots closure is very difficult to use the gun in that kind of proximity.

17:35

And then the altitude of the balloon.

17:37

Now we get into some even problems with employing the gun at altitude.

17:41

We might have some restrictions where, because when I shoot the gun, I have quite a bit of debris that comes out.

17:46

Now I may get ingested into the engine and so it comes very problematic.

17:50

So, the team elected, I think with all that data out there, the team elected to just go for the easy button and and they killed it with an aim nine x sidewinder Heat seeking missile.

18:00

, the challenge with that is it appears I think that the missile in order for it to get a good lock on probably locked onto the payload which was hanging below the balloon.

18:10

And I know there's been a lot of speculation if I could just pop the balloon, it might float down.

18:14

I imagine it looks like from the video.

18:16

I don't know for sure.

18:17

It looks like the missile hit the payload because that's what it was able to acquire.

18:22

And, and so we did quite a bit of damage I imagine to the payload.

18:26

Obviously it fell into the water over a vast area and the collection efforts are ongoing.

18:30

I think I read this morning that was reported that the collection effort is extensive and it is over a wide area.

18:37

So in the process of downing the bloom and might have created a really difficult recovery problem for ourselves.

18:43

Had we done it over land or or something else or really different method.

18:46

I think, I think they used the only method that was tactically available to them that that mitigated loss of, you know, a fighter pilot in an airplane.

18:54

You know, and, and at some point, I think they, we're hoping they'll be able to piece it all back together at the Quantico folks in the FBI.

19:03

I feel like you just described the plot line to the next top gun movie.

19:06

Top gun three balloon blow up.

19:09

I just got very reminded me, you know, it's like, I think tom cruise, I don't think tom cruise will sign up for that one.

19:16

You know, we can let's see, it's never say never.

19:21

I kind of wanted a little bit too kind of along those lines.

19:25

Some levity there on a movie reference.

19:27

You know I think some people bystanders, regular americans are a little confused by china opting for balloon tactics.

19:36

It feels very World War Two.

19:38

You know, I think people are used to thinking of cyber and things that seem high tech and balloon seems a little old fashioned.

19:44

So you explain that why they we might do that because of.

19:49

Exactly.

19:50

So you answered I think your own question and the reason I think they chose it is because it's ambiguous.

19:56

Right?

19:57

So they're doing cyber all the time.

20:00

We're losing terabytes and petabytes of intellectual property in this country to china all the time.

20:06

So they're already attacking some cyber.

20:07

They have orbit, they have, you know, satellites on space.

20:11

So they're collecting imagery and electronic intel and they're doing all that already flying an airplane over our country would weigh too provocative.

20:20

That's an e that's that one for us would be easy.

20:22

We would see it.

20:23

Our systems are built for that.

20:24

We would say it's a chinese warplane and we would shoot it down.

20:27

I don't think there would be any question of sovereignty there.

20:30

We would say that's a chinese warplanes shooting down a balloon lives in the gray area, especially if I can sit around and say, you know it's a weather balloon and and I'll be honest with you, this is, this is, you know, in my opinion, you having a little bit of study.

20:46

This is how they would love to operate, right?

20:49

So why be overt if I can be ambiguous and gain the same, if not better results?

20:55

we've seen Putin and the Russians for a decade use ambiguity.

21:01

You know, little green men,, to accomplish all manner of things, take Crimea.

21:07

you know, many, many years ago moving to the Donbass region and I'm not talking about last year, I'm talking about moving into the Donbass region, blamed it on separatists.

21:16

It wasn't us, these are not the droids you're looking for.

21:19

And, and we as a country struggle a little bit with that because it isn't the big scary monster that jumps out of the closet.

21:28

You know, the days of the Russians coming over and fold the gap and we're engaged in tank on tank battle.

21:32

I don't think that's ever gonna happen.

21:34

Nor do I think we're going to go to war with china.

21:36

I don't think that's gonna happen instead.

21:39

What I think is gonna happen is China and these other countries are gonna live about one step below, right?

21:45

They're gonna live one step short of conflict and they're gonna just be patient and say if I went to conflict level, maybe I could get my results quicker, but it's at great risk if I live just below it takes longer.

21:59

But I don't invoke the great Bear or you know, in this case the great american war machine.

22:04

Right?

22:05

I mean, the United States was that it's basically almost a default stage of war all the way up until Pearl Harbor.

22:13

And and I mean we we it wasn't until Pearl Harbor.

22:17

It wasn't until 9 11.

22:18

It wasn't until the bombing down in Havana Harbor.

22:21

You know, I mean until we get so so Stimulated that we go to war.

22:25

Look at World War I another classic example.

22:28

We basically watched millions and millions of people die.

22:31

And it wasn't until late 1917 and we decided to get involved.

22:34

So we're, we're slow to act.

22:36

But when we do, we're serious.

22:37

So if I can stay at a level that prevents America from acting, I might be able to get what I want.

22:43

Anyway.

22:43

That's why I think the islands in the western Pacific Movement in Africa Movement in South America, there's there's apparently there's a research facility that china is completely funded in Iceland.

22:53

So they've got a foothold in the arctic, you know what I mean?

22:57

And so if I can just stay right below direct conflict, I might still be able to get what I want general plus they invest in real estate near our base is right around the world.

23:07

And even here, you know, in the States, they invest in infrastructure and I'm not gonna put you on the spot and ask you what you would have done on the balloon issue, but you touched upon some of the politics and you know, when I say politics aside, we still talk about it and what it means in the context of the world.

23:26

how, how far can we, or should we allow this to continue with their, you know, pushing that envelope, pushing, pushing the balloon, you know, how far, how long should we take that?

23:41

Well, I, I think that's the great debate that, that we need to have in some, at the national level congressman, I think we need to sit around and say, what is our sovereignty worth?

23:50

I think we also need to be cognizant that everybody else is watching, Right?

23:55

So, you know, people, you know, thinking back to our elementary or middle school days, if we saw a little johnny in the corner getting away with shooting spitballs at sally then and the teacher didn't do anything.

24:09

Then everybody else started shooting spitballs.

24:11

And I don't mean to boil international politics down to middle school behavior, but I'll be honest with you.

24:16

I don't think it's much different.

24:17

So we need to have a decision and say, hey, are we ever going to let this happen again?

24:21

We can come out with a dumb are so we can come out and sanction them and stuff like that.

24:24

But the next balloon we see, will be a real test for this country.

24:28

Do we shoot it down instantaneously?

24:30

And we go, okay, that's what's going to happen.

24:32

We're not gonna let you apply these over our country again, that, that might be a great signal to send.

24:38

Or do we say, hey, it's really no big deal.

24:41

We're able to button up all the classified stuff, let the thing flow by.

24:44

We're going to show great restraint.

24:46

You're not going to get our feathers up.

24:49

I don't like that option.

24:51

So, you know, I'm an option that everybody's watching.

24:54

And so I think we can, I think we can stand our ground as a sovereign nation.

25:00

Listen, we went to war in 1991 because Iraq invaded kuwait and we didn't like the violation of the standard sovereignty rules that have been in place since 6 16 38 16 48 the Peace of Westphalia, the President of the United States just two nights ago, got on tv and said we stand for sovereignty essentially.

25:19

He goes, should we stand for sovereignty when he was talking about Russia invading Ukraine.

25:23

And I think we should, and I think we should stand for our own sovereignty.

25:27

So we need to have a discussion at the highest levels in our government.

25:31

And I think we ought to war, gave these things and say if another one of these balloons comes across us or a friend's country Canada, what are we gonna do about that?

25:39

And I'm, you know, I'm also like you, I'm cautious in being critical of decisions made, especially on monday morning and not being privy to all this information.

25:51

That is all the information that's coming into the to the Defense Department and to the White House.

25:57

But as we, you know, as a young man growing up with the Cuban missile crisis, I remember of course technology, you know, media transparency, it's a whole different thing.

26:09

But of course we as a young man, we were of course very concerned at that point.

26:15

But we're going with this is in an area that that I know that you're deeply aware of and that is the modernization of our military, our defense.

26:24

How are we and what should we be doing?

26:26

You know, the multiple administrations now getting more engaged in some of the politics of defense and questions about, you know, trust of of whether the F.

26:38

B.

26:38

I.

26:38

C.

26:38

I.

26:39

A.

26:39

Or Defense Air Force or even lack of trust for corporate America.

26:43

But talk about if you could, you're you're experiencing what your thoughts on modernization of military in 2023 we have without a doubt, the world's greatest military that's ever been created technologically intellectually character based leadership, all volunteers.

27:05

so in the history of of the human events.

27:09

without a doubt we have the best.

27:11

Now the minute we sit down pat ourselves on the back, you know, somebody's gonna who's gonna grind it out work harder than us is gonna all of a sudden show up one day and have a thing and we might find ourselves at a disadvantage.

27:27

Okay.

27:27

That said, I think there's, there's a balance, I think rob, rob, nobody's personal opinion.

27:38

we have an unbelievably great military.

27:41

there are things that we definitely should continue to work on and modernized to stay pace with what we believe the adversary is doing, networking all of our sensors together, networking all of our weapons systems together, being able to reach out and touch targets from farther away.

27:56

, continuing to work on accuracy so that we decrease, you know, the loss of civilian lives.

28:03

I think we're probably one of the best countries in the history of warfare to ever emphasize that.

28:09

So all of those things, speed of intelligence, speed of decision making, all those things.

28:13

Those are all things that we're currently working on modernizing right now across the majority of the services.

28:18

However, whenever something goes bad, the military, the military's answer is we need more money.

28:24

So I think I, you know, if I, if I were in charge for a day, I would definitely invite a lot more oversight on, on the, on the business practices of the Defense Department.

28:39

Okay, So I don't think there is theft and fraud.

28:43

I'm sure there is at some lower levels of, some small, but, but nobody in the military is a business person and here's the reality for all the listeners, right?

28:55

You could be a mediocre commander And, and and completely mismanage your budget in FY 22 and in Fy 23 you'll get more money.

29:09

So, you know, in a small business world, that's unheard of.

29:13

It's unfathomable.

29:14

So how do how do we fix this?

29:15

You know, I, you know, we just had another D.

29:18

O.

29:18

D.

29:18

Audit in november and they failed it for the fifth time.

29:21

Now that's you know, when we can we can have discussions about that.

29:25

But I think proper congressional oversight with, with like where's the money going?

29:29

What are we getting for the dollar being spent?

29:31

How, you know, how many people do we need in the Defense Department?

29:37

I think so, as a public servant you were and I was, but you know, elected officials.

29:46

as soon as they cut a budget, I don't care what it is.

29:51

And it may, there may be 100 of these same programs, but you cut one program again, whether it's education or defense or Children, your you millions of dollars are spent saying that congressman so and so, or senator cut the military budget.

30:10

And it's it's jeopardizing families and kids.

30:13

So that's part of it.

30:14

Right.

30:15

You run into that with?

30:17

Absolutely.

30:19

Oh, absolutely.

30:21

I'm pretty confident there are significant prime defense contractors that make very substantial political donations to pacs in things that nature because that's what businesses do, right?

30:32

They invest.

30:33

Now.

30:33

That doesn't matter.

30:34

You know that general.

30:35

I know.

30:37

But the reality is nobody is going to get elected for Congress that says I'm going to slash the defense budget.

30:42

It's a it is a headline.

30:44

I mean, absolutely is it's used, but I'm not, by the way, I'm not disagreeing because I've seen it.

30:49

But I and I'm sorry, I interrupted your train of thought, but like what would you say?

30:53

What areas would you suggest?

30:55

Right.

30:55

And so I'm not I'm not advocating necessarily slashing defense budget.

30:59

What I'm advocating for is being more efficient with the money that is being spent.

31:03

Right?

31:04

So I think the Defense Department gets a significant amount of money, but they spend a lot of money on overhead.

31:10

We spend a lot of money on infrastructure and facilities that are money pits, Right?

31:17

So we've got to get our legislators together.

31:19

We've got to have conversations about streamlining infrastructure, streamlining overhead.

31:25

We have office space.

31:26

So the pentagon is the largest office building in the world and we have multiple office spaces outside of depending on Crystal City Arlington, you know, where we have to put overflow offices right?

31:36

And we're relatively at peace right now.

31:39

I mean, we're not in Afghanistan anymore.

31:41

So we have this massive 500,000 contractors that worked for the Defense Department was the last count.

31:47

So, so we're spending a lot of money and I just think we could do a better job of that if we had some business rules that came in, if we had a little more oversight.

31:56

I'm also not, it's not all the Defense Department's fault.

32:00

I think two year money is better than one year money so that we can make smart contracts and we can build out three year money would be even better.

32:07

So we know that the way the money is appropriated, it comes down in the in the defense, in the, you know, in the budget this year, the budget didn't really flow till january, which meant after the holidays, money really probably didn't flow until, you know, mid january.

32:20

And so now they have a 12 month budget that they need to spend in 8.5 months.

32:25

You know, we have c are for the most part we consistently have those are difficult business operating rules for the organization to be efficient and effective in because so we gotta, I think we need to have that conversation with the senior leadership of our legislators and our defense part and that that conversation exists, but it just doesn't seem like anything is going in the right direction.

32:49

I would say there's some spending practices that need to be improved, some smart business oversight, some smart business auditing.

32:57

and I think you put a little bit of pressure on the Defense Department, you know, when I was a general officer, I'll tell you I had a very large staff.

33:04

So it's just what it is.

33:06

I was a general officer at one point on the staff and there were two of us and we had three secretaries.

33:12

So we had a union challenge.

33:14

We couldn't we couldn't thin that out.

33:16

We didn't need three sector.

33:17

We need one, but we had three.

33:19

So we've got some rules in place that we got to negotiate.

33:21

I'm a small business owner and zero.

33:25

Right.

33:26

So there's no way I'm spending that money yet.

33:28

How low I can tell you if you see my calendar, it's a hot mess.

33:32

And so I could really use some help with that.

33:33

But I'm not willing to put that money out there to do that.

33:36

So I'm just gonna have to stay up late on sunday to make sure my calendar is all sorted.

33:40

So there's a lot of convenience that comes with the Defense Department.

33:44

There's a lot of people that you know, we we could we could give a little appetite suppressing too.

33:48

And I think with all of those things in place, I think we'd be able to get more firepower for less money.

33:53

Steph.

33:54

Don't don't tell the Defense Department don't tell him.

33:57

I said you've seen all this firsthand on Capitol Hill.

34:00

What are your thoughts stuff?

34:02

Yeah.

34:03

So it's interesting because I worked on the appropriations on the committee work for a member of the committee for a long time and the defense appropriations in particular and the N.

34:14

D.

34:14

A.

34:15

Process is pretty overwhelming.

34:16

I would say for congressional staffers in a general sense those who are more deeply involved in hast maybe the committee that the House Armed Services that phrase for those who don't know those more deeply involved in the committee have a bit more of an understanding but it's really its own world and you know I don't think and I'm really editorializing now.

34:37

I don't think that a lot of stuff feel empowered to question budgetary decision making when it comes to, you know, you've got officials coming in from the pentagon and they're saying hey this is what we need and all these stoppers and their bosses want to do is make sure that the military has what they need.

34:54

So it's not, I think it's right now it's a chance to have these kinds of conversations because the last thing, you know, a lot of staffers on the hill are quite young and the last thing they want to do is you know general and the body comes in and say I need this like do you you know, that's a tough dynamic.

35:11

So but that's civilian control of the military.

35:15

And I got a I got an interesting data point here.

35:18

So the national defense authorization act that just came out in the right at the end of the last year, 4000 something pages 4400 pages the first one that came out was one page long and that was like in the 19 seventies and during the Reagan era when we were spending arguably one of the largest defense increases.

35:36

And I think I don't I don't even think the N.

35:39

D.

35:39

A.

35:39

Got over 100 pages.

35:41

So here we are now fast forward 25 30 40 years.

35:46

And now the table of contents alone is bigger than the N.

35:50

D.

35:50

A.

35:51

For like the last 30 years.

35:53

So so I need to be careful on what I mean by oversight because you know, some of our legislators will say well there's oversight is in the N.

36:00

D.

36:01

A.

36:01

And how much more do you want?

36:02

And I would say no I think we need some business practice oversights and I want and Stephanie your point.

36:08

I want I believe in civilian control of military so I want our legislators regardless of their military experience.

36:15

I mean the vast majority of legislators don't have military experience.

36:17

I want them to question me, make me show my homework, make me put my facts on the table, make me show what I think the investment will do and and what I think the byproduct to national defense and american security is and then have the have a debate on the hill or in the committees asked is that a funding priority or not for this cycle?

36:36

So I'm I think that process is good.

36:40

I'd like to see some business, some business spending practices, you know, general part of that.

36:44

and Steph, I'm sorry to interrupt you two.

36:46

But you know, defense appropriation act defense touches everything.

36:51

So a member of Congress or the senate that that is a christmas tree because there's defense here, there's defense there so that you know it piles on and there's not really a whole lot of legislation that actually passes okay.

37:06

But N.

37:07

D.

37:07

A.

37:07

Normally has to and normally it's pretty bipartisan.

37:10

But anyway, so part of that politics side, not politics aside politics side is it's an opportunity for a whole lot of special projects.

37:20

And Steph, we have had conversations in the past about the base realignment, you know brat.

37:27

Do you see that?

37:28

You know and we have clients in some shape or form in every state and they're always paying attention of course to how important that base is.

37:37

Do you sense?

37:38

We'll see some of that and in their future realignments?

37:44

Yeah.

37:46

I think it's for all of us because it's it's like let's flip this coin.

37:51

What do we think, Steph, what do you think?

37:53

General what do you think?

37:55

Yeah, I mean I do think so.

37:56

I think, well I think so because I think that's something that we've been seeing through our work with our clients across the country are some of these realignments.

38:04

And some of you know because I want I want us to reach into sort of a discussion on programs for individuals disabilities on bases that have been interestingly touched by by some of these changes.

38:16

but yeah I do think so.

38:17

And I think it's interesting because when you're talking about budget, you're talking about oversight at all boils down to this, right?

38:23

Because you get down to this sort of base level, you get down to these small programs level and it ends up becoming sort of a penny pinching war down there at the ground.

38:32

But the budget is so huge it gets a little confusing about how that's happening.

38:36

So I don't think I can have anything more intelligent to say to that, but it kind of connects the dots for me on this sort of huge budget but we have this penny pinching issue down at the sort of gear level of of what's happening.

38:52

I here's my thought on the base realignment and closure process.

38:56

I think I hope we'll have another round eventually.

39:00

I mean the Defense Department is openly in favor of that and and the rationale for that is is my metaphor here is we have quite a few installations in the I.

39:12

C.

39:12

U.

39:13

we have quite a few installations in hospice care essentially.

39:17

And so these installations to get them back to a combat readiness level to an efficiency level to I don't want to say profitability but to a point where I can sustain them with the funds I'm given would take such a massive infusion of capital to get a base back from the dead.

39:35

So I mean we have bases with asbestos and you know, leaking pipes and all these things because when the money flows and there's, we're able to reprogram some of it invariably based money.

39:48

We call f srm right facility, sustainment renovation and modernization money is one of the accounts that gets robbed all the time.

39:55

So we we we tend to we tend to gut that thing for weapons.

39:59

We tend to get that thing for training.

40:01

We tend to get that thing for other activities.

40:03

It's generally fence, it's got some, it's got some boundaries obviously from the, from our legislators and the rules.

40:09

But we get into that account from and we take a lot of risk there, which, you know, the old joke, you know, 30 years ago when I enjoyed the military was the air force had the best basis.

40:18

You know, we would build the officers club first.

40:20

We would build a golf course first and then we build these beautiful facilities for our airmen.

40:24

And then we'd go to Congress and say, oh my God, we forgot to build a runway with and then we would say, okay, here's more money build a runway.

40:29

And so the army and the marines and the navy would always give us grief because we have these fantastic bases.

40:34

The navy over there was like, we're building ships first and then they run out of money and they go, we need money for a base.

40:39

And they're like, no, no, no, you only get money so well we've really kind of flipped the script on that as a base as a, as a two time base leader.

40:47

I have watched our our infrastructure just die the death of 1000 cuts.

40:53

And so how do we fix that?

40:55

We either have to have a spike in funding, which I'm not sure that's gonna work because we're really kind of throwing good money after bad because some of these things will just never get back online.

41:05

Or we have to just basically take some of these installations out of hospice and go shoot them and and close them down and clean them up and turn them over, you know, turn them over to the private sector and maybe they can repurpose them and which a lot of these, you know, former brock bases have have turned into really good civilian use areas and staff you you start to touch upon individual disabilities.

41:29

Can you share?

41:31

Ask some of your questions as well please.

41:33

Yeah.

41:34

So you know, general, sorry, this is a bit of a left field, but a lot of the bases across the country employ hundreds thousands of individuals with disabilities through.

41:46

It's called the ability One program which the department, the number one customer, it represents a tiny fraction of the defense overall budget, but it's a huge impact for people with disabilities and one of the most special things I've seen through this program though it employs people with disabilities of all kinds.

42:02

is though veterans with disabilities, veterans especially those who have come back for more who are having a hard time reentering the competitive workforce are able to be sort of realigned with mission through work on bases.

42:16

I wanted to just sort of ask you kind of your thoughts on how important that is for veterans to have opportunities to stay connected to their mission after they're done with their service.

42:26

Thanks Stephanie.

42:28

I do quite a bit of work in las Vegas with our veteran community.

42:31

I'm on the board of honor flight where we fly some of our veterans back to Washington D.

42:37

C.

42:37

And see all the monuments.

42:38

I'm sure you've seen them when they come home from the airport.

42:40

That's great.

42:41

And I work with the USO on the board of the USO here.

42:44

Obviously take care of some of our active duty folks and our veterans as well.

42:48

it is a unique, it's a unique thing separating from the military.

42:53

You know, I've done it.

42:55

and when you go your many, many formative years of your life, generally speaking, you know, 17 18 years old until you decide to separate from the service.

43:03

You're really baking in a lot of your vision, your your soul, your character and stuff and when you take your uniform off, there's a lot of times where that's kind of a shock to the system.

43:13

So how having these veteran opportunities for folks that we can capture that experience, you know, we can capture maybe that continuity.

43:21

Those are great programs and I do think they're important.

43:24

So I think the cross of the question is how do we balance a program that that is good where we're retaining talent and capability and culture and character and competence, but at the same time potentially decrease some of those opportunities by by closing basis.

43:40

So my answer to that is closing a base does not necessarily mean the units on that base go away or the activities on the base go away.

43:48

But it's the infrastructure.

43:49

That's the problem for me, it's the pipes and the electrical and the buildings are falling apart and the rent and all that stuff.

43:57

We, we have ma I mean we're having this podcast on zoom.

44:01

So we have completely changed the way we do work in our country.

44:05

Either remote work or we have modernized our facilities where we can do more.

44:11

You know, unique ways of doing business.

44:13

When we bring people together.

44:14

I'm saying we take a look at those and see if there's ways where we can close an installation, relocate some of those missions to other places that will cost money.

44:23

Right?

44:23

I mean you guys, this is one of these guys spend money to make money so that relocate some of those missions, they'll move out of state possibly or move out of these districts and I still think many of those jobs would still exist, maybe not the base landscaping.

44:37

But I gotta be honest with you, I mean, you know our based landscaping is almost zero.

44:43

You know, most of our facility maintenance was all in house or contracted.

44:47

So those, you know, some of those jobs will still be around, we would lose something for sure.

44:51

I don't think they would directly impact the veteran community as much as we.

44:55

But I think consolidating some of these activities onto smaller footprints which would free up dollars that are being spent on facilities are just never going to get to a healthy point.

45:07

So I think maybe there's a balance would have to do some math and take a look at it for sure, Stephanie to make sure.

45:12

But you know, then I got a broader question, you know, what's the purpose of the Defense Department, Right.

45:18

I think the purpose of Defense Department to defend the nation and we ought to be, you know, stewards of our taxpayer dollars and stuff like that.

45:25

And if, you know, obviously we've pitted that now, it's a little bit of a jobs program for veterans.

45:29

I mean is that one of our core competencies?

45:31

We could have that discussion at the, you know, we can debate that too right.

45:36

Our time is coming to a close.

45:39

But Stephanie, anything else you'd like to ask the general, Well on today, I'm looking forward to continuing this conversation later.

45:47

But if there's anything you'd like to ask, Stephanie, Yeah, well I'll call you so we can pitch our top gun three storyline.

45:57

General, I'm just happy to understand now that it's not merely a weather balloon.

46:03

I appreciate your thoughts, insights and again, so much more to talk about.

46:08

Love to have you join us again, Brigadier General robert G novotny, thank you for your service, your hero to all of us and we do appreciate you being a part of our program.

46:21

And we would ask then, as we put politics aside, please join us again in the future, we would again just want you to sit back in the audience, relax and put politics aside all the best.

46:34

Please be safe.

46:35

Take care