Updating the nuclear triad for the modern age and Toloka's underwater drone

If diplomacy keeps failing, could Tomahawk missiles and a green light from the White House

change the course of the war for Ukraine and help it finally end Russia's illegal invasion

Plus, North Korea flexes its muscles, test-firing an ICBM in advance of a presidential visit to the Korean peninsula

And NASA's new ride takes flight, what the X-59 could mean for the future of supersonic air travel

Hello and welcome to Weapons and Warfare, a show made for people who want to know more about our national defense

Our goal is to help you have an informed conversation about what's happening with America's military

For Straight Arrow News, I'm your host, Ryan Robertson, and we start this week with the nuclear triad

Originally conceived in the 1950s and implemented in the 1960s, The triad was created to guarantee the U.S. could carry out a second-strike nuclear attack

even if some of its nuclear capabilities were lost in an initial strike

But like every branch of the Department of Defense, the nuclear triad is in need of modernization

And that's the subject of this week's debrief. Oh, it's thought just being ready is the point

It keeps the villain check. Keeps the world straight. They see how prepared we are

No one starts a nuclear war. The recently released Netflix thriller, A House of Dynamite, plays out a scenario people have worried about since the dawn of the nuclear age

a missile armed with the ability to kill millions headed towards the United States

with no clear picture of who launched it. Now, Netflix definitely took some artistic liberties with the movie

following an established Hollywood pattern when it comes to movies like this

but the actual threat remains very real. So much so that at this year's Air, Space, and Cyber Conference

the Air Force Association gathered three generals and a senior executive from the defense industry

to talk about what, in their opinions, the modernization of the nuclear triad needs to look like

Our triad is what our nation needs to assure allies and deter potential aggressors that would

threaten our own land. And it's proven. It's proven over five decades that it works. Now we

need to modernize it. Quick recap, in case you're wondering what is the triad, it's America's nuclear

deterrent. It's composed of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, SLBMs, and long-range strategic bombers. Land, sea

and air, the backbone of America's national defense since the days of the Cold War

The Cold War, to us, contextually, what we're facing now is vastly different

A lot of it is the mindset, but certainly it sets the stage so that you can maintain strategic advantage

And so, you know, we see a lot of promise both in the programs of record, but also in the legacy systems that we have existing today

Those programs of record, General Parker mentioned, are pretty significant. First up, the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider, the eventual successor of the B-2 Spirit

With a buy of at least 100 aircraft, this long-range stealth bomber can deliver both conventional and nuclear munitions

We know that, you know, the capabilities that the B-21 will bring into the mix

especially as we talk about the more advanced defensive systems that we're seeing

we're really looking forward to this capability. And so at the end of the day, for General Cotton, he has to provide a range of options to the president in order to preserve the decision space for the president

And so the triad, in our view, remains the most effective, the best way to do that

We now not just have one, but two aircraft in the test program. And if you think about it, very advanced aircraft, very complicated aircraft built to production processes

performing exactly how we expected them to, which is really a testament to all the great work that was done in the model environment

before we actually built those aircraft. When it comes to the land-based element of the triad, some might be thinking, what's wrong with the Minutemen 3

Unlike bombers and submarines, it's never actually been used. Why can't it keep doing the job

On the flip side of that argument, some might say the fact it's only ever been fired in testing

is proof that it's done the job, providing deterrence for more than 55 years

And as Brigadier General William Buck Rogers points out, it's not just about what the Department of Defense is doing

The adversary gets a vote. With this world changing, the requirements for an ICBM fleet may look different in the future

and do look different. And that's where Sentinel comes in, right? We have to be more responsive to the threats

when it comes to the land leg. So we need, and that doesn't include

just head-on kinetic type threats. That includes things like cyber. So Sentinel, a core part of Sentinel

is actually making sure that we are cyber secure, making sure that we bake cyber into that system

and that we can defend it from not just, like I said, the traditional kinetic type of attack

but also cyber and non-Kinnetica tax. So when can taxpayers expect to see these next-gen ICBMs online and ready for duty

If a report from the Government Accountability Office is any indication sometime in the 2050s Various delays and cost overruns have plagued the program since the contract was awarded to Northrop Grumman in 2020

Despite the setbacks, though, Northrop Grumman's Ben Davies said things are moving along

We've now had the opportunity to prototype and test every stage of the missile

and they very much performed as we expect them to, which gives us confidence as we push forward on the path to get that program into flight test

Finally, the sea-based leg of the triad. While it's not exactly in their wheelhouse, the assembled Air Force flag officers all seemed to understand its importance

The sea-based leg of the triad, right? It's the most survivable. Okay, and as we transition from Ohio class to Columbia class, we'll be guaranteed that advantage well for decades to come

The new Columbia-class submarines, formerly known as the Ohio Replacement Submarine, is the U.S. Navy's next generation of nuclear-powered ballistic missile subs

The first of 12 anticipated Columbias is expected to be delivered in 2028 or 2029 and should be ready for service by 2031

Time now for some headlines you may have missed. I'm joined now by senior producer and Air Force veteran Brett Baker

Brett, we just got done hearing about the modernization of the nuclear triad

You know, I know a lot of folks have a lot of positions, but those nuclear weapons have provided the U.S. and our allies with relative peace for the last 60 plus years or so

Absolutely. And just like anything, there's a time for change and it's going to cost

It's not going to be a cheap process, but it's something that definitely probably needs to happen sooner rather than later

You bet. All right, let's get to those headlines. It looks like Ukraine's war against Russia's illegal invasion is destined to enter a fourth year

And talk is growing about what it could mean for the cause if President Trump approved the delivery and use of Tomahawk missiles

Back in September, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked the U.S. to sell tomahawks to European nations who would then in turn sell them to Ukraine or give them to Ukraine

Matthew Seville, the director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, says that green light would be a welcome sign by NATO and Ukraine's European allies

It's very much a material contribution that runs against some of the ways that the president has been talking about supporting Ukraine

I mean, he has made more U.S. military equipment available to buy by European countries to give to Ukraine

But a donation like this would be actually the first major military support agreed by the Trump administration

as opposed to delivering weapons that had been previously approved by the Biden administration

To this point, the president has denied Ukraine's requests for use of the long range missiles

but is also growing frustrated with Russian President Vladimir Putin's refusal to reach a peace deal

Brett, Tomahawks would be a powerful weapon in Ukraine, no doubt. This whole conversation, though, reminds me of the talks around Abrams, F-16s

and these other deep strike weapons under the Biden administration. Well, everything is a bargaining chip, and then depending on which way the wind is blowing that week

It's hard to know what the president is thinking in regards to what kind of help he wants to give Ukraine or not

But definitely those would be, and we joke about the use of this word, a game changer for Ukraine

So I hope that that's kind of something because this thing needs to end at some point

And someone needs to make a move that's going to be decisive enough to force the other one's hand

And I hope it's Ukraine. That's what, you know, I think the majority of the free world wants

And I certainly know it's what Europe wants. So it would be nice to see some action on that front for sure

You bet. Every time the U.S. has deployed tomahawks, it's always been a decisive move

we saw tomahawks being deployed part of the strike against the Iranian nuclear sites

there was a bunch of tomahawks deployed from submarines in that strike and so submarines from Ukraine

would be able to strike pretty much anything in Russia and there's enough mass there

like Ukrainians can make some deep strike weapons of their own and they are but they don't have the mass yet

because pretty much everything that they make as soon as it comes off the line it's being shot so to your point

Hopefully the Ukrainians get that extra piece of the puzzle to tip the scales in their favor

All right. Speaking of missiles, in advance of President Trump's visit to South Korea last month

their neighbors to the north said they recently conducted successful cruise missile tests

the latest display of its military capabilities. North Korea's official news agency said the sea-to-surface missiles flew for more than two hours

before accurately striking targets in its western waters. Brett, Rocketman is going to Rocketman, I suppose

Absolutely. You know, one of the real kind of like intel I can bring to this is my experience

I was stationed at Osan Air Base in South Korea, 1990 to 91

And back then, his father was in charge. But we called it saber rattling

It's a lot of just making noise to make noise so that they don't forget you're there, I suppose

I don't think any of us... Yes, they are to be taken seriously

How serious is the threat I have to think that they know that they may have the upper hand in anything if they were to strike first but that would not last long So it not in their best interest to actually do anything

But making noise and making people, well, what are they up to now, does seem to be their game

Right, right. I mean, it's kind of what they do, right? To your point, South Korea, they've always had this enemy at the North

They've been prepared constantly, fight tonight kind of mentality across the country

So yeah, to your point, North Koreans might be able to – yes, you've got to take them seriously

They are a nuclear-armed country. But any kind of opening volley would be probably North Korea's only volley if you game it out

All right, finally, NASA's X-59, a supersonic but quiet jet, soared over the Southern California desert in late October in the first test flight of the experimental aircraft

The X-59 was built and designed by Lockheed Martin to break the sound barrier with little noise

possibly paving the way for faster commercial air travel. The sleek-looking jet, and it does look very sleek

took off from a runway at Lockheed's Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California

about 60 miles north of Los Angeles. The X-59 is designed to break the sound barrier with a sonic thump rather than a boom

It's touted to be able to cruise at Mach 1.4 at an altitude of 55,000 feet

And, Brett, might make the hop over the pond a little quicker. I got to imagine the price of fuel for that thing, though

It's going to be ridiculous. So quicker flight, probably not a cheaper flight

That is most doubly a fact. I think the real interesting application, kind of the reason why I picked that story is

eventually that's going to find its way into the military. I have to believe if this is a successful venture

obviously it would be great for, because, you know, for the most part

a supersonic flight over the U S is largely banned. But I have to think that at some point, if it works

that's going to be something that comes towards the military's way. Sure

I want to know at what level does a thump become a boom? Is there like an

intermediary, right? Like the sonic thump? Is there a sonic crack in between thump and boom

A sonic slap? I don't know. I'm going to have to find

a supersonic, hypersonic engineer and talk about that. Alright, Brett. Really appreciate it

as always. We'll see you next week. See you next week. Just like UAVs and UGVs come in all different shapes and sizes, so do UUVs, unmanned underwater vehicles

And I'm going to talk a little bit more about this Toloka 1000 behind me with a gentleman from the company

We're not going to show his face for security reasons, but just want to say thank you so much for joining us today

Oh, thank you. It's a great opportunity. Thank you. So the Toloka 1000, it looks like a submarine, basically just one giant unmanned torpedo

Well, it's actually more like a sort of unmanned submarine, so there is no crew, but it can do all the stuff that submarine does

It has even diesel engine on it, so it's like old-style diesel electric submarine, but high autonomous

It can connect to the Internet while it's on the surface and send all the data it has acquired during the mission

and can perform long-term missions up to three months or even a half a year

depending on the fuel capacity and the battery capacity. Okay, so that's good clarification there

It's not necessarily a strike vehicle. It can be a strike vehicle, but it also can be a reconnaissance vehicle

It can perform demining operations, mining operations, service, sleeping mine. You know, when it detects acoustically someone, it can go right to the target

It has optical, thermal, and acoustic targeting systems. We have a sort of Shazam for ships where we can measure by yzing the acoustic signature

define what type of ship it is, and even in some cases define what model of ship it is

Shazam for ships, that's a good term. that's a good term. As far as where it's made and stuff, built here in Ukraine

Yeah, it's built in Ukraine, but we use companies from all over the world, components

You bet. In this show, I mean, obviously we're trying to attract some international investment

maybe some international customers. Have you had any folks from outside of Ukraine stop by and

kind of question you guys about what you got? Yeah, it's quite prominent here. Everybody sees

a big sub and wants to know something about it. And we talked to some companies that are also in

naval field. We also talked to military officers of European countries and also in the US

So there are plenty of interest for low cost underwater sea factors. And what we do in Ukraine

is basically low-cost, low-tech, but highly effective. So we are good in implementing software

but the hardware is not so sophisticated. Makes sense. Augmented low-tech. Now, this is the Toloka 1000. How long is it

It's exactly to fit in a standard 20-foot container. But you also make different varieties of unmanned underwater vehicles

Yeah we have three base models One is something like 1 to 2 meters fully electric with a range up to 100 kilometers

and the payload up to 15 kilos. The other one is the middle one with a payload up to 500 kilos

and the range up to 1,000, 1,200 kilometers. And this one has a range up to 2,000 kilometers and a payload up to 5 tons

All right. Thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate your time. You're welcome. Thank you

All right, for our comp check this week, we are checking back in with our friends over at RedCat

to find out, you know, what's going on with their Black Widow drone. Here to talk a little bit more about that is Stan Nowak with RedCat

talking about the Black Widow. Stan, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it

So last year we kind of introduced our audience to the Black Widow and its mission sets

Kind of, you know, fill us in on what's happened since then. Well, what's interesting is that we've been able to not only be the program winner for the short-range accountants program for the U.S. Army

but now we are actually in the NSPA catalog for the European Union and NATO

And that's a huge deal for us. That opens up a lot of doors to work with those frontline forces that are essentially going up against Russia as well along the Ukrainian border

So we're here for our allied partners. We're here for our coalition partners. And Black Widow really is going to be the program of choice for a lot of those countries over there

And it seems like it's kind of opened up some doors for you in some other areas as well

And really, you know, the last year, Black Cat's really expanded in other domains beside the air

There were some USVs that you're also rolling out. Can I talk about that as well? Sure, yeah. I mean, so when I was brought on board on Red Cat about three years ago

our mission was to become an all-domain company. That's exactly why I was positioning it for the last three years

And we've now done that, right? We've just unveiled a new division called Blue Ops, which is our maritime division

solely focused on uncrewed surface vessels. But really, the thread to pull for all the main operations is that all these things are going to be integrated together

So imagine swarms of boats holding swarms of our aerial assets. When you're starting to look at the next great conflict, which is going to be a completely different battlefield environment than Ukraine

we're talking about island chains, we're talking about hundreds of miles, you need delivery systems for these small drones because they're very limiting factors, right, from range and endurance

Well, let's get them close to the fight. Let's use larger fixed-wing aircraft and do marsupial deployment as well as uncrewed surface vessels to actually get these things closer to the fight

And I wanted to bring up the marsupial development, so I'm glad that you did. You just mentioned fixed-wing aircraft dropping stuff, but there's also unmanned surface vehicles that can be marsupial because they're going to launch other things

Can I talk about how you're trying to really develop out this marsupial drone inside of a drone concept

Well, so we've been working with a hive company for a while called Sentient Robotics

And that started, again, give us these ideas of deploying a massive amount of aerial assets from uncrewed surface vessels and, again, from the fixed-wing assets as well

When you start to look at even the U.S. Army, you know, we are in the SRR echelon

But if you're looking at MRR and LRR, the fact that we have an advantage because we're the smaller stuff, we can actually be integrated into those larger systems

And that's really where all this is going is all these echelons starting to work together so that the U.S. Army and other coalition forces can take advantage of these integrated systems and deploying these small drones for much larger drones

The same for the uncrewed surface vessels, right? It's how far can I go? Let's just say I'm getting towards a beachhead

I need to form a control point in an area. Well, I can send these drones as opposed to people and keep people out of harm's way

And everything's being operated from the rear. So that's really where it's all headed. And that's how you're integrating into the Army's MRR program

the medium range reconnaissance, is through that kind of integration. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah

So you're going to start to look at the other echelons actually holding our Black Widow systems or our FANG systems

and being able to then be deployed from under wing. Again, being able to go a lot further than we can go just under our average drones

and then being deployed. But they're all retrievable. That's what's great. They can be a tridable, but they can also be retrievable

Really appreciate your time today, Stan. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks so much. Yep. All opinions expressed in this segment are solely the opinions of the contributors

All right, folks, that's going to do it for us this week on Weapons and Warfare

But before we bug out, I want to highlight a hero from Mississippi

Jessica Bond was sleeping at her home with her two kids in the house

when her son woke to the sound of their dogs barking at something in the yard

Her son tried to grab video of the animal, but... He said, I can't get a clip shot

He said, but mine, it's the monkey. So I said, oh, snap, let me get my phone and let me get my gun and let me call the police and stuff

The monkey she's referring to was part of a lab experiment at Tulane University's research center

The 40-pound primate was described as aggressive and escaped after the semi-truck carrying it crashed on the interstate

I'm not going to take my chances with my baby versus an infected animal

So, I did what any mother would do. And I got out and I shot at the monkey

That's right, Bond. Jessica Bond wasn't going to wait around and see what this escaped, dangerous animal would do

She embraced her Second Amendment rights and took out an immediate threat to her family

As a former farm kid from Nebraska who had to grab a gun a time or two to protect myself and our property

I just have to say bravo Zulu, Miss Bond. Your kids are lucky to have a mom like you

And that's going to do it for us this week on Weapons and Warfare. As always, if you like what you saw and or heard

please like and subscribe to our social media feeds and download the Straight Arrow News app today

That really is the best way to get all of the great content that SAN puts out

So until next time, for senior producer Brett Baker, video editor Brian Spencer, and motion artist Dakota Patio

I'm Ryan Robertson for Straight Arrow News, signing off