Ep. 492: Strait of Hormuz Update

0:00Come to the proceedings podcast. I'm Bill Hamlet, the editor-in-chief at the U.S. Naval Institute. It's Friday, April 10th, 2026. Good to have you on board, everyone. This episode is brought to you by Booz Allen from Rugged 5G on warships to unmanned systems deep below the ocean. Booz Allen builds technology that works, where it matters most. Their AI-driven mission-ready capabilities help the U.S. Navy operate and win in contested environments. No manual, no road map, no problem. Learn more at Booz Allen dot com slash defense. All right, the U.S. Israel War with Iran has been in a ceasefire status for almost three days now. My colleagues Bill Bray and Brian O'Rourke are joining me today for a quick round table on the situation. Bill is a retired Navy captain and deputy editor-in-chief

1:01of proceedings, and Brian has just moved up to the managing editor position for proceedings. So Bill, Brian, welcome. All right, so we wanted to talk about a few aspects of the war so far, including the current status of the straight-of-home moves. Just a reminder for our audience, the Naval Institute is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, aid political organization. So we're going to avoid partisan politics and focus on the military tactical and operational details. And we'll start first with what has most surprised you in the war so far. And I'll go first. And for me, it's the sheer number of reported strikes. So U.S. Central Command's website, I just checked it before we went live here, says 13,000 targets have been struck. And that is a staggering number of targets as somebody who spent a good part of my career as a Navy target here and an arrowing intelligence officer. And yet I also think it shows the limits

2:03of air power because Iran seems a bit undaunted going into the negotiations and where it sits diplomatically in this ceasefire right now. And I was also surprised by the sheer number of aircraft and special forces involved in the rescue of the U.S. Air Force F-15 Eagle, strike Eagle, the weapons systems officer. When that aircraft was shot down a week ago and then the rescue that happened on Easter Sunday, I've been reading that more than 100 aircraft plus special forces were involved in the rescue. And in my career as an arrowing intelligence officer, I did a lot of combat search and rescue planning during my career. But the size of the rescue package for this operation in Iran was at least three or four times what I would have expected. I was kind of blown away by the numbers. So for my perspective, so far the numbers have just kind of shocked me. 13,000 targets more than 100 aircraft on one

3:11rescue mission. How about you, Bill? You know, I have to say, I'm not surprised by that much. I mean, the sheer scope of the targeting is a good one because I didn't really think about that except we know that the plans for this has been worked on for decades and constantly re-done. I will say I think I was a little surprised that we seemed a little, we weren't really prepared. I don't think, at least not from the public information that I can gather, you know, and kind of qualify anything I say with, I don't have full information inside with the straight-of-her-mose, you know, being coming such an issue. I first went through there in 1991. It was a surface warfare officer. Iran was far less capable of militarily back then. They had only, the Iran or Accler had only been over for three years at that point.

4:13And the Gulf War, the first Gulf War, I guess, had just ended. And we, you know, tried to know everything we could know about the straight-of-mose. I mean, it was always an issue and over the years, it's always been thought, and I'm sure Senkham anticipated this possibility. I don't think, I'm not sure what you can do about it without taking a lot of risk to force. And so, you either have to take that risk of force and do it and clear it and keep the Q-Rats open and all that stuff, or you have to negotiate some solution to it. And that's kind of where we are right now. As Bill, you guys know, we just published a retired Navy Jag. Just went up on our website just a few minutes ago on the legal, international legal standard for the straight at the United States as, and the world, not just the United States, has insisted upon for more than 70 years. So it predates

5:19the Islamic Republic. Even under the Shah's regime, that Iran would periodically try to claim that the straight-of-hormose is territorial water that they can then, you could use innocent passage instead of transit passage, which is a distinction in the international sea law. And the US has always said, no, it's not. It's an international straight. And like, I think the author said there was 200 of these or so around the world. That's the law of the sea, you know, and so we've stood to that. And I hope, I hope, we don't pack off that. Yeah, right. Shouldn't be any different than the straight of Malak, the straight of Gibraltar, the, you know, the Taiwan straight, et cetera, right? I mean, this is, it should be open and free for movement of shipping from all nations without any kind of a toll booth, without any kind of contingent, yeah, agree. Brian, surprises to you.

6:27I guess sort of connected to what Bill Bray was just saying. It's surprising to me we've heard fewer calls from some of the usual quarters for the United States to actually join the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Some of these, as happens every time there's even just freedom of navigation operations or other sorts of things, there's the paradox that the United States is seeking to enforce something. It acknowledges as customary law, but where its position would be stronger if it were formal black letter law for the United States. So lesser things than this often trigger those calls, and I've heard very little about it, even as the ceasefire holds, and traffic still stagnates outside the straight. It just, I was sort of anticipating it, it hasn't come in. Yeah, no, that's a good point, right? We, we, we would have expect to see some

7:27commentaries on our website, on our social media channels, you know, perhaps even, you know, somebody writing a quick article for us on the need, the necessity, the urgency for the United States to finally ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Let's talk a little bit more in depth about the straight-of-humus right now. Our colleagues at US and I News have been covering this very closely, and in a story that they ran two days ago, so it was just 24 hours into the ceasefire. They, they quoted, I think it was a shell oil source who said, describe the straight, is both open and closed, depending on your position geographically and geopolitically, a Schrodinger's straight, if you will, referring to the, you know, the philosophical conundrum of Schrodinger's box, whether it's, you know, is it open or closed, right? And, and the, the straight

8:29is at this point both open and closed, depending on who you talk to, the, the Iranians are calling it open, but there's also, they're also enforcing what people are calling the Tehran toll booth, and, and, and shipping so far going through has been very limited, less than probably 10% what it should be, what it was on a normal day, pre-war. So, so Bill, you, we were just talking about this, you, and you mentioned an article that we just published today, retired Navy Jag officer, Captain Dolan, and, and he specifically points out the, the points, you know, in international maritime law, and says the United States should not let that become the new status quo. So, give us a little bit more because you edited his piece on, on those specific comments that he makes. Yeah, so I actually was a bit of refresher for me. It's been a long time, and so that's good, but I, so people are familiar, I think more familiar with the term innocent passage. So,

9:32initial passages that ships are allowed to pass through a nation's territorial waters when they're going from point A to point B in international waters, and so it, it, it, it means that, that people don't have to spend more money, basically, to go around these things if they're just going to. Now, you can't moiter in it, you can't do things in it for no good reason, but you can pass. So, that's innocent passage. The thing about innocent passage is, under international law, a country can suspend innocent passage if their security is threatened. So, this is what Iran wants. They want the straight and lose to be considered under the innocent passage regime, not transit passage. Transit passage is, you, you know, the countries, and it's not just Iran, it could be Oman, too, to the south of, in the southern passing, could, could suspend passage through there, or put other conditions on it, like pay us a tax, or something, or check in with us, or tell

10:35us you're coming through, and all that stuff, you know. So, the, the US position has always been, it's an international straight, international straights, international law are governed by the transit passage regime, not innocent passage. So, think about, so to me, what I'm just following the news, like everybody here, Iran sees an opening here, because of, they see, they see that they're reviving this position that is, again, it's, it's decades old, that they, they've looked for, to use the straight and lose as a, probably a money maker for, for one reason, but also, and, and they see an opening here to try to put this on the table. And, in fact, it was in their ten points, or whatever it was, a proposal. So, you know, Captain Dolan, you know, as a tire jagged, and he's got all experience with this, saw that immediately, so, see, this is what they're doing, and he's worried, without getting into politics, I don't get into politics, but he's

11:38worried that the United States might actually agree that this is on the table, and the United States has not said specifically, we're agreeing to that. They've made a general statement that the plan is, quote unquote, workable from us, I think, a standpoint of starting the negotiations. So, it may very well be that the, that the administration says that one is not happening, you know, at all. So, I don't want to suggest that they are. I'm just saying that it is, kind of a ball in play right now. Right. And, and if the danger there, I mean, there's a lot of danger, but one of the dangers is that you could be setting a precedent that other countries could take advantage of. Notably, in my mind, is the Taiwan Strait, and that, you know, the Chinese could say, you know, no, no, no, this is an innocent passage regime through here, or certain places in the South China see where they, you know, control a group of islands, and they might, might decide that, you know, this is no longer transit passage, this is innocent passage, and therefore we have a say in who

12:41gets to go and under what conditions and all those kinds of things. So, it's a slippery slope, could be a slippery slope to move in that direction. Brian, any thoughts? Well, yeah, I mean, I haven't, I haven't read the Iran proposal, the component of the proposal bills referring to with the innocent passage regime. The other thing I've heard discussed in this context is the, the Montreux Convention that governs the Dardanelles, where it isn't an innocent passage regime, but Turkey has the ability to control military traffic through it somewhat akin to an innocent passage scenario, and that that might have been one of the big diplomatic mistakes on the early 20th century for a lot of purposes that it was a mistake Churchill made and that the United States should be wary of. And so that's sort of carrying it a little bit further where it could be possible to inadvertently negotiate our way into a corner like that. It's another reason,

13:45in my mind, not to come back to unclass, but it's another reason to be thinking about that because it gets people in a different mindset about what the rules are and understand that there is a governing set of rules. It isn't all negotiable all the time and adopting the convention could help focus our minds a little bit on that better, I think. Yeah, and to your point on unclass for people who are wondering why has the United States not, you know, is not a signatory to unclass. It goes back to, so unclass dates to 1982 and the opposition goes back to just one specific from what I understand, a specific clause or section of unclass, which had to do with deep seabed mining and at the time and in the wording of unclass it, it basically demanded that countries who had the deep seabed mining technology, the ability to do mining on the deep seabed for these manganese

14:48nodules, cobalt nodules, et cetera, that you had to share that technology with the rest of the world. And at the time, the United States was one of, if not the only country that had that technology, and so there was a group of senators who said, oh hell no, no international UN regulation is going to tell us what technology we have to just share with and give away to the rest of the world. So we had an article by our Davey Fef, Jim Halsel, right? Thank you. In the January issue about deep seabed mining and he mentions that, and Jim is working on his PhD and this is his area of study, and Jim points out that in 2025, 2026, that technology has already proliferated to many countries around the world. So the opposition that the U.S. feels to that particular part

15:48of the treaty is kind of overcome by events by now because many, many not only countries, but companies, large companies have that technology. I have to think, I almost wonder if there was some aspect of senior leaders in the Senate who were aware of the glomer explorer and the U.S. mission and the cover story for bringing up the K-129, the Soviet ballistic missile submarine. If that wasn't in their mind when they thought, oh no, no, we're not giving that technology away, right? So anyway, I don't know that, but I have to think that that could have been part of the reason not to support unclass at the time, but I will point out, and this is true for Bill in my career, every CNO in the last, you know, since the 1980s has advocated that the United

16:48States should be a signatory time clause, that it should be ratified by the Senate because we do treat it as customary law. We abide by the unconventional laws to see whether the United States has signed it or not. So anyway, that's always a good point. It's always sort of lurking the idea of unclass, and it's also, it's a key thing that when we point out behaviors by the Iranians, by the Chinese, by other regimes that is in violation of unclass, they will point to us and say, well, we're a signatory to it, and you're not, right? So you don't really even have the right to complain about another nation's behavior under unclass. You didn't even sign it. You're not even a signatory to it. And speaking of things prohibited by unclass, let's talk about mining the straight of our moves. Not deep sea mining, but straight mining. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I talked about this about a week and a half ago, I had retired Vice Admiral

17:53Fawzi Miller, former Fifth Fleet commander on the show, and you know, he described, you know, a lot of people are obviously there's a focus on on mines and the threat of mines. And when I talked to him, he described, you know, the fact that this is a campaign plan. It's no surprise to anybody who's been involved in planning and military planning against Iran for the last, you know, two or three decades that reopening the straight in the situation where we went to war. Mines were obviously a threat, but Admiral Miller described it as a threat stack, a stack of threats that you have to sort of peel back this onion. And mines might be the the center of that layer. And then on top of the mines is the fast attack craft, you know, the bog hammer kind of threat, these vessels that can come at you at 40 or 50 knots armed with all sorts of different weapons. And then backed up by coastal defense crews, missiles backed up by shahed drones and

18:57ballistic missiles. And we've seen a lot of that in the last three years in the Babel Mendeb and the Red Sea from the Houthis who got all those threat capabilities from the Iranians. And so in order to clear, if there are mines, in order to clear those mines, you have to first suppress all of those capabilities so that your mine, your mine countermeasures forces, which don't move quickly by the way, and are fairly limited. And, you know, the the finding fixing and then clearing of mines is something that happens. I don't want to say snail's pace, but it happens pretty slowly and meticulously. It doesn't happen at 10 or 15 or 20 or 30 knots, right? It happens pretty slowly. So, Bill, any thoughts on that? Yeah. So we know Iran has a lot of mines. We know that they been focused on that, having that capability for years. I think about this. And unlike a coastal defense crews missiles or small boat attacks, those threats you can turn on and off

20:02quickly. You can launch missiles and stop launching them. You can order a small boat attack and then call it back or not do it. Once you put mines in the water, you can't undo it. And of course, Iran is thinking here, well, if we can get an agreement, then we need to export our oil too, so we need to get it out of the strait. So if you pull the mine cart out, my feeling is, and not a mine expert that you and you do that, you're talking about a long time before commercial shipping would be comfortable going through there. They would have to be, we'd have to have some deal with the Iranians probably to clear it with their help or at least they agree not to attack our clearing capability. Europeans may come in and help, etc. But so that's, I feel like the mine is the, it's not quite the, you know, last resort card, but it's close.

21:09Anybody who are watching Gilligan's Island knows what you're talking about with those fine persisting for a long time. Okay, we got another thing that that has come up in that conversation. A lot of questions we've been feeling, a lot of questions from, from general purpose press, the broader press is what's the ability of the United States Navy to deal with that threat, to deal with the mine, mine threat? You know, notably the four Avenger class mine countermeasures ships that were stationed in Fifth Fleet, stationed in Bahrain for years and years. We're sent home, you know, late last year and arrived in Philadelphia on a heavy lift ship just was in February or January, not very long ago, not before, not long before this happened. And what we have now deployed as part of Fifth Fleet are three lateral combat ships, the independence class, the lateral combat ships, which have a mine, mine countermeasures package.

22:14It's took a long time to get that mine countermeasures package, which consists of a lot of different things, unmanned surface vessels, unmanned underwater vessels. You know, they've got a helicopter capability that can grab and find. And then there's some special, so special forces, EOD capabilities once mines have been found and isolated, located, that they can be destroyed or can be dealt with. But it's three ships, right? Three ships. And notably, two of those ships were spotted in Singapore, refueling, bunkering, whatever, as the war kind of kicked off. So they weren't even, you know, really in theater when this thing started. And there's a lot of speculation about, you know, why would that be? Well, you know, probably because they had to get them out of the, out of Bahrain. They wanted to get them out of Bahrain before the conflict started so that they would be available. And certainly wouldn't be under threat from the Iranians when things kicked off. But

23:18also they could be in Singapore because I think US military people and planners knew it'd take a while before we were ready to peel that back, peel back that threat stack as Avramila described it and get the mine countermeasure ships in there. The US and I news reported that after the cease fire, Iranians said, oh, there are mines out there, which is why, you know, the ships have now got a route in this area and very close into Iranian territorial waters up around some of the islands that are closer to the coast rather than the main traffic separation scheme. And so the few ships that are going through the through the strait seem to be moving through that route rather than through the normal traffic separation scheme. I noticed that Selmer Cagliano, who we are following his Twitter feed very closely in all of this and he goes by what WGOW shipping,

24:21what's going on with shipping. And Sel is a proceedings author of several times, has a very successful YouTube channel and is probably one of the greatest experts on this, particularly on maritime shipping around the world. So Sel, thanks for joining us today. You could probably correct three or four of the things that we've already said, but it's great to have you on. Anyway, Brian, any thoughts on mine warfare? It's bad. I mean, I think it illustrates what we've been saying for a long time in our pages or rather authors have been saying for a long time in our pages that it's the cheapest, easiest way to do things. And I agree with Bill Bray, they haven't put, they haven't played that card very fully yet. Holding it in reserve is probably a good strategic move, but the simple threat of it is enough to slow everything to a halt. People are afraid to take their ships through. The notion that there's one mine of float means there's probably more

25:24mines of float and you have to, or on the seabed, and you have to avoid them. Sandy Woodward's famous quip that every ship can be a mine sweeper once is very much in people's minds with things like this. And hopefully this will be a spur to enhance the mine countermeasures capabilities that Navy has. The new lateral combat ship module based on the common on man surface vehicle seems like a good option. We'll find out for real soon enough. It won't be, it won't be sweeping of San Diego for looking for test things that will be doing the real job. And hopefully it says up to the task as testing suggests it will be. Yeah, the Navy tends to get religion about mine warfare. Every 40 or 40 years, we certainly got religion after Gulf War I desert storm when we had the USS Tripoli and the USS Princeton hit mines in San Diego, Roberts during the Ronorak War. There was a big effort to establish mine warfare command down in Texas. I remember

26:31back in the 1990s, and then sort of withered, it withers when budgets withered. And so one of the first things that we tend to cut is focus on mine warfare so that we can maintain preserve shipbuilding. But we lose sight of it at our own risk, at our own peril for certain. Let's talk for a few minutes about areas of greatest concern, or what you think might come next that worries you. Well, I'd like to go back to the first thing he talked about, though, which was 13,000 targets. And it reminded me a little bit of a completely different situation in many ways, but is the Balkans more, especially Kosovo? We ran out of targets. You know, we ran out of a legitimate military targets is what I mean. And we're not winning, right? And that's still hadn't made. So you get to a point where it's like, there's not much left to bomb. And there's pop-up

27:33targets here and there, but it's not. And then that's why you kind of heard, you know, the secretary and others saying, you know, well, there's dual use, you know, bridges and things like that. I'm not a jag. I'm not an expert. I do keep just worth theory at the Naval Academy. We had a good discussion in the class yesterday about some of this, but which is, you know, what happens when you really are out of targets and the regime is close standing. And they've taken the best punch. And I kind of feel like we're almost at that point. You can either negotiate a solution, have some, you know, status like we had way back in the southern watch days where you just have this state of play where you, you know, to use the part of the Israeli term, mode of law and every now and then, you know, keep bombing when things start, when they start to build stuff back up. Of course, you got the straight-off news problem, which makes that difficult,

28:35right? So you can't, you're looking for a way to resolve it. Or, you know, you have to take some more aggressive military action and to actually physically move the regime, which I don't think anybody thinks that's a good idea. So, you know, that's the problem here. It's a, it's a difficult problem. But I get the sense that there isn't much left to bomb. There was a two or three months into the Afghanistan war. Somebody put that question to Donald Rumsfeld at a press conference, you know, said, you seem to be running out of targets and Rumsfeld paused and corrected them and said, let me be clear, we're not running out of targets. The Taliban are running out of targets. And it was, it was a good line, you know, it was good for the home front and everything. But it did obscure the fact that what do you do when you've killed everything, you can legitimately kill, but you haven't killed the regime. You haven't killed the entity. And that, I think, is my big concern about what's next bill is what happens if the religious leaders

29:40are less powerful, but still influential. And the IRGC really becomes the central player, as opposed to one of a competing centers of power, which is my, I know, around expert, but that's been my perception is that there's been a bit of a jockeying for position over the years. And I don't know whether it's better or worse to have the IRGC calling more of the shots, but it seems worse from my limited perspective. Maybe one of you has a different thought on that or a different take on that. Yeah, I've had a lot of conversations. In fact, I was involved with the Naval Academy Foreign Affairs Conference this week, which is, there was about 170 or 80 midshipmen and students from other universities, NROTC, West Point Air Force Academy, foreign military academies. And you would, of course, you know, this was, this topic was, was front of mind for everybody. And in the discussion came up about, you know,

30:41the next kinds of targets and we were starting that conference on Tuesday when the president was making really big threats about Iranian civilization. And so there was some confusion among students as I'm sure, you know, midshipman and Hamlet would have been confused at the time about whether striking things like bridges and power plants, power plants, power electric, you know, power plants would be some sort of a war crime, right? And I have been a target tier. I've been through joint targeting school. And there's certainly lots and lots of examples in war from World War II on where the United States and others have struck things like bridges and power plants. Those are dual use targets. They are legitimate military targets. The military extracts value out of, you know, being able to move things across bridges and railroad lines and, you know, substations, switching stations, power stations. But, you know, the risk there is always that you

31:43do so much damage to the country and to the economy that then you're, you know, what are you left with afterwards, you know, and having to rebuild it, having to, you know, you end up in a, in almost like a no-win situation. Sure, we've, you know, shut down all your bridge traffic, but at the same time, you know, we've left a country that's going to need incredible amount of help and assistance to come back afterwards, which I think everyone would like to see Iran come back into the, you know, the brotherhood of nations, but just under different, you know, under different management, right? So, yeah, that's certainly, that's what's on my mind as we're in the ceasefire. You know, what comes next? And if the ceasefire doesn't lead to some sort of a negotiated settlement, we end up being back into a hot war like, okay, you know, what comes next? Because as you point out Bill, it's a great line, you know, the the adversary has

32:48has taken your, you know, taken a pretty big punch and is still standing. So, where do you go from here? Yeah, there was a, you know, real quick to follow up on that. There was an article in the Atlantic to the other day. I can't remember the author's name, but an Iranian, Iran expert, and the author's point was that pain on the people is good for the IRGC, not bad. Um, their, their ability to, you know, that is sort of underpins their legitimacy in a sense, which is, and that's why one of the, you know, underlying principles of the going back to the Jikpoah was keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, relax the sanctions, relax, you know, let their economy improve, let the people taste it. And that, because Iran has a pretty vibrant civil society as we saw just this winner with all the protests. Um, and now that doesn't necessarily

33:49it's going to work, you know, and it's certainly, but it's one approach. Um, so, you know, the idea that I think you can just make everyone's life miserable and the IRGC is going to say, you know what, we can't take it anymore. I think that's not going to happen. Yeah, no, that's a good point. I think, you know, we saw that for decades of sanctions and, you know, just tight restrictions on the North Korea, right? Is it, you know, the sanctions made things really miserable for the average person, but it didn't seem to loosen the, the, the amount of control that the regime had, you know, on the country overall. It didn't, didn't make their lives miserable. It made the average person's life pretty miserable under a tighter, more, more strict control. I want to take a second. This isn't a call in show, which is unfortunate, because Sal Mercogliano has joined us in the chat. Um, and he has promised an update on innocent passage versus transit passage in his next update. So thanks for joining us, Sal. We appreciate

34:54you being here and we'll try to get you on again sometime soon. Yeah, and I'll point out another question that we've gotten from the chat is Axiom's of Dominion. People keep talking about our decades of plans. Somehow we never got a proper drone doctrine. Iranian drones are particularly impressive from a technical or production perspective. But why don't we, why don't we have a proper drone system or counter drone system? And I think that's a really, it's a really great point. From everything I've been reading, in fact, we've had, you know, quite a few authors address the idea of drone warfare. And what we're all learning from the Ukrainians, right? That the, you know, what's happened? The, the, the ability of the Ukrainians to adapt in this mode of warfare has surprised everybody. It certainly surprised the Russians, but I think it's surprised the United States. And that's, that's, we're almost taking our lead off of that. And you've been reading about how Ukrainian advisors have been in a lot of the Gulf cooperation countries states

35:59in the last month advising UAE and Qatar and Saudi on how to deal with Iranian drones that are part of this war. So I think there's a lot, there's a lot of learning that's happening and a lot of folks are studying what's been happening on the battlefield in, in Ukraine, Russia, Ukraine. One of the under reported drone things is it has certainly been reported, but not very extensively, is the US Department of War is producing its own Shahed drones that captured a few and reverse engineered them. And they've been used in combat. It's called the Lucas, the low cost unmanned combat attack system. So, you know, our adversaries are learning from us and we are showing the ability to learn from them. So, all right. Well, we are kind of running out on time. I didn't want to stretch this out too long. Any, any saved rions, rounds before we, before we close off today, Brian?

37:03Just eager to see what happens. It's always a fascinating thing to open the morning headlines, before I get out of bed and wish I'd close my eyes and go back to sleep. May, may you live an interesting time? We are certainly, certainly doing that. Bill, how about you? Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm very interested in the, in the, maybe forced posture going forward here, as the ceasefire goes on and, in the negotiations, led by the Vice President, take place. You know, the, the Ford went to Kroesha to get all that damage repaired from the fire. And I believe H, the USS George HWM is now deployed off the East Coast. And so Ford is on a time line for like 11 month appointment at this point. And so that, that, that's interesting to me. And, you know, we all talked in other places recently about the wear and tear on, on the force and the effect on the tension and in the personal effect. It comes with the cost.

38:09Yeah, even, even the CNO at our Maritime Security Dialogue last week, last Tuesday, so about 10 days ago now, you know, he, he, he, he recognized that and, you know, didn't, didn't, uh, slap it off, right? He, he was asked about impacts on readiness, about the Ford. And he said, you know, of course, we'd, we'd prefer to keep our carriers on a seven-month deployment cycle, not a 10 or 11-month deployment. That's, that's tough on them. And he said, you know, we're, we're churning through a lot of munitions in this, in this fight, about 800 Tomahawk land attack missiles so far as just one example of a, you know, exquisite weapon system that needs to be reloaded, you know, into the magazine. That's part of the $1.5 trillion budget request that has dropped is for something like about almost 800 Tomahawk land attack missiles to replace that stock for the Navy. So that, that is certainly something that conversation. And again, our, our Collins over at US and I news are covering the budget requests

39:12in great depth and detail. We'll be watching that. I'm, I'm going to do an episode of the podcast with Senator Tim Shee, uh, Republican of Montana, who sits on the, uh, the Senator Armed Services Committee. He'll be in our house on Monday, the 13th of, uh, of, of, yeah, 13th of April, just a few days from now. And I plan to talk a lot about the, uh, defense budget, the request, what he sees as the, the most important priorities and what he'll be trying to, um, make sure, you know, gets shepherded through to success, uh, in the fall in that, in that budget process for, uh, for 2027. So anyway, this is a great conversation. Thanks guys. And to our, uh, the folks who joined, uh, logged in and joined us live. This was great. We'll, we'll probably have to do more of this, um, appreciate the questions and, uh, and, you know, uh, stay tuned for what comes next. All right. Uh, this episode, yeah, this episode was brought to you by Booz Allen for rugged 5G

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