War Lab — Episode: “Recon-Strike Since Desert Storm: Speed, Sensors, and the Logistics That Win (or Lose) Wars”
How do you turn sensors into strikes fast enough to matter — and keep them flying when the runway’s been cratered? In this episode we trace four decades of hard lessons: from the U-2 shootdown and Vietnam’s Lightning Bug to the long bureaucratic battle over drones, then forward into today’s race for JADC2, AI-enabled kill chains, quantum timing, and the brittle logistics that could grind modern power projection to a halt. We unpack why technical brilliance won’t save you if the organization, doctrine, and supply chain can’t move at the same tempo.
What you’ll hear:
A clear narrative of how unmanned reconnaissance evolved — and why organizational culture, not just tech, repeatedly stalled progress.
How JADC2 and agentic AI aim to collapse the OODA loop, and the real limits that keep the “decide” and “act” stages slow.
The brutal operational reality in the Indo-Pacific: missile salvos, anti-runway submunitions, tanker closure times, and what REDR + Agile Combat Employment can (and can’t) fix.
Concrete logistics fixes the transcript argues for: push-based buffers, forward pre-positioning, delegated sustainment authorities, and redesigning supply doctrine for contested, degraded comms.
Why listen: if you care about whether America’s ISR-to-strike edge actually holds up in a peer fight — and how to stop brilliant sensors from becoming useless paper promises — this episode stitches history, doctrine, and hard operational math into a single, urgent argument.
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