We Are Talking About Bombs on Target (From the Joe Piscopo Show)

Piscopo: I love this piece we’re going to tweet out: Operation Epic Fury, by Dr. Rebecca Grant, on how America’s air power is crushing Iran’s terror regime.  Walk us through this. It’s been quite spectacular, in a very positive way.  (Highlights below and full clip of the segment here.)

Grant: Yes, this is a spectacular performance by our service members, and this is air, space, and naval power. We’re not talking about boots on the ground, we are talking about bombs on target, and such an array from our B-2 stealth bombers that dropped 2000-lb. guided weapons, right down to just everything in the inventory; two aircraft carriers, of course, a lot of land-based fighters.  But Joe, I’ve got to tell you we almost waited too long.  The size of this Iranian target set is driven by getting after all the ballistic missile capabilities, taking out Iran’s Navy – eleven ships sunk so far – and then the leadership that supports it all.   We are so fortunate to have this incredible precision air and space power to be able to do this campaign.

Piscopo: You quote the President in your piece, saying that the Ayatollah was unable to avoid our intelligence and highly sophisticated tracking systems, which are working closely with Israel; there was not a thing that he or other leaders could have done about it, and we’re just getting started. I mean, we heard President Trump talking about the big wave coming up.

Grant: The “big wave” to me means we’ll see more bomber strikes.   The B-2 this time flew from the United States, making another 37-hour trip.  Of course, you know we only have 19 B-2 bombers total, that’s the total, and I noticed the Air Force just last week accelerated the new B-21 Raider, which is going to be the replacement.  But back to the theater, we’ve also seen B-1 bombers carrying out strikes; typically they’ve flown out of Oman in the past, don’t know where they’re coming from this time, but I think we’re going to see now that the integrated air defense system is really completely has this will enable the bombers to go in and hit multiple aim points at each target set.  The military used to call them designated mean point of impact, that’s right where the bomb will go, and these big missile research and construction facilities require a lot of aim points.  The bombers are going to do repeated, persistent sorties, and then the Commander, Central Command, Admiral Cooper, and General Caine will be looking at the restrike options, looking at the bomb damage assessment, and they will go back in and hit as long as they need to, to make sure that Iran has no military capability left. That’s the number one task for America right now.

Piscopo: You write: “…the astonishing blow of Operation Epic Fury was a surge of hope.  Donald Trump was right to seize this moment.”   It was now or never, you thought maybe if we waited a little longer, that would have been too late?

Grant: Now or never, because, Joe, it’s taking hundreds of aircraft and the Israeli Air Force as well to attack this target set.  It’s already a big job. You know this is gritty, dangerous work. Look at Iran’s response.   They’ve attacked from Cyprus, all the way down through the Gulf.  What this means is that the fighter jets up there right now are doing both offense and defense at the same time.  They have to be able to be up in a consistent combat air patrol around our bases, around the Gulf states, to go after drones, etc., while there are also other aircraft carrying out offensive operations.  We have a big enough force to do this, but it is taking everything we’ve got. They’re doing a magnificent job, but they really had to do it right now.  I think Secretary Rubio has laid that out beautifully.   We could not wait any longer, and I’m so glad that only President Trump has the resolve to carry through.  But I’m really thinking about the pilots, the maintainers, the munitions troops that build the bombs before every sortie, the planners, the Space Force watching missile indications, the sailors, everyone.  You know, we’re probably looking at close to 50,000 American service members involved in this right now.

Piscopo: With the extraordinary capability of the F-35, is there another generation coming out after this, by the way?

Grant: There’s the F-47, which Boeing is making right now. Don’t forget F-22 is in operation there as well, along with a lot of F-16s, two carriers, that you know we’re running 24/7 operations, they’re barely having time to change the landing wires on the deck as they keep these operations going.

Piscopo: Rebecca Grant writes, and here again we retweeted the article, “no one is running out of munitions.  Don’t forget dozens of U.S. Air Force C-17 flights were tracked heading into Saudi Arabia and other locations recently, which were stuffed full of munitions and other supplies they won’t run out anytime soon.  For the Navy, underway replenishment ships are standing by. Larger missile reloads could take place at regional ports.”  This is amazing how we do it, yeah.  On the timeline, the President said about a month, maybe 4 weeks. What do you think?

Grant: That sounds right to me, because they have to take the time to make sure they’ve done the damage that they want, and sometimes that takes a little while to really analyze not only the immediate kind of gun camera film, if you will, but other overhead imagery, indications of movement in and around the targets, and then if something didn’t get hit, if there was a hung bomb, they’ll go out after it again.  Also, when the Iranians are shooting, that reveals more targets: more mobile missile launchers, possibly other locations, and we are not going to stop until Iran has no military capacity.  We want to see a better regime there, but the task of this campaign and the metric for success is to destroy this Iranian military target set.

Piscopo: It’s indicative of success here when you see fewer missiles. One missile is too many going into Tel Aviv or into Israel, but the percentage is much less at this point, which would indicate that Iran is running out of weaponry, correct?

Grant: Yes, it’s dropping their ability to launch, and then a lot of them are being killed, quite frankly.  It will never be completely suppressed, that threat, but it’s going to drop down a lot, and we already know that our aircraft have the ability to work in that area.  So any targets that come up will be struck, as the President has made very clear.  The 1991 Gulf War, which, by the way, took nearly six weeks of air strikes; they were going after a large Iraqi army there, all those years ago, so it was a bit different, but we’re going to see this take the time needed because we’re doing this all, really, with air and space power.