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Published · transcript-backed

David Rosenthal: belief

30 May 2023 Acquired Lockheed Martin

“"We learned the first night of the Gulf War and for many nights after that, that stealth combined with precision weapons constituted a quantum advance in air warfare.”

— David Rosenthal

Source trail

Everything needed to verify it.

Speaker
David Rosenthal
Attribution
Verified speaker
Claim type
belief
Recorded
30 May 2023
Publisher
Acquired
Episode
Lockheed Martin

Transcript context

…They came in under the dark of night, no one knew they were coming. They hit a bunch of the high value targets. These wars now tend to be these overwhelming force at the start, and then long, long drawn out battles after that. This set the stage for what modern military engagement looks like. Yeah. A few quotes here that are in Skunk Works. First from the Secretary of the Air Force at the time. "We learned the first night of the Gulf War and for many nights after that, that stealth combined with precision weapons constituted a quantum advance in air warfare. Ever since World War II, when radar systems first came into play, air warfare planners thought that surprise attacks were rendered null and void, thought in terms of larger models to overwhelm the enemy, and get a few attack aircraft through to do damage. Now, we again think in small numbers, and in staging surprise, surgically precise raids." Another quote here from one of the pilots that flew that night. "To put it in domestic terms, if Baghdad had been Washington, that first night we knocked out their White House, their capitol building, their Pentagon, their CIA, their FBI, and took out their telephone and telegraph facilities. We damaged Andrews Air Force Base, Langley, and Bowling, and we punched big holes in all the key Potomac River bridges. That was just the first night." This thing is deadly. The Nighthawk very much worked.…

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