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Read highlights from the interview below:
Rep. Pfluger on the deterrent posture of the United States:
I think on the strategic front, you have to have this situation where the Iranian regime knows that the United States of America, and hopefully our allies and our partners, and many of whom are in the Middle East that have received missiles into their cities and into their ports, that they come together and we mean business, and that's where we really need our allies and our partners to step up and to say enough is enough. And I think that leads to the credibility of deterrence. It leads to the credibility of finding a solution. And you know, the president is trying to create leverage, no doubt, and he has done that through action. And it's time for the regime to lay down their arms, to lay down their nuclear weapons, and to become a transparent country that can once again be respected, because they're so far from that right now.
Rep. Pfluger on the need to invest in airpower and the Air Force:
The Department of the Air Force is the smallest and the oldest and yet the most tasked department of all the military services, responsible for providing joint air power solutions that have been able to take down a nuclear regime, that have enabled the extradition of Nicolás Maduro, that have enabled the ability to have air dominance, air superiority inside Iran to achieve other military objectives. And so the Air Force has long been the service called upon to execute very difficult but highly strategic outcomes. But even with a smaller budget than the other departments, the Air Force is being tasked to do all of these things. That's why you get into a state where I believe we are over-tasked, and yet have the oldest and most aged fleet that we've had in decades, and maybe ever in the history of our service. So we absolutely need to recapitalize. We need to go faster to produce weapon systems to be ready, because the threats that we are required to face and deter include the Chinese Communist Party, and unfortunately, over the past two to three decades, they've made great strides in their technology and in the number of the weapon systems that they have ready to go, and that's a totally different threat than we face in Iran. One can just look at that environment and know that the Department of the Air Force and the Space Force will be heavily tasked, God forbid if some sort of conflict should arise there.
Rep. Pfluger on current munition stockpiles:
Well, we need a mixture of high, low, exquisite, non-exquisite, inexpensive weapon systems that can achieve a variety of effects. And I think the Secretary of the Air Force will say that in any of his hearings that we need to be going faster. And you know, the game that has been played is how inexpensive and how fast can you produce something that achieves the objectives that may be in the effects that maybe last decade was so exquisite and so expensive that you didn't want to use it. And now we have to change our mindset and our mentality, and I'm proud of the Air Force and all of our services for doing that. We need the military industrial complex to also come alongside. And that's where the innovative startup projects and companies really play a big role, and we're rooting for them on.
Rep. Pfluger on the pipeline of warfighters:
The services are going as fast as they possibly can. Recruitment is up. We have finally gotten rid of the DEI and divisive policies that Joe Biden championed that really hit our readiness and our lethality so hard, and I think we're finally emerging out of that mess and out of that fog. But it does take some time, and especially when you're talking about highly skilled positions, whether that's airmen or any of the positions that the Department of the Navy and the Army have. So we're always worried about training, readiness, lethality, and want to instill that pride and that focus in all of our services.
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