The War Lab: Exploring the Future of Conflict

Recon-Strike Since Desert Storm: Speed, Sensors, and the Logistics That Win (or Lose) Wars


Listen Later

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.

Subscribe to War Lab for deep, source-driven episodes on the future of conflict.


...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

The War Lab: Exploring the Future of ConflictBy CJH