Admiral Paparo Goes Salamander at Brookings

real talk on drones and magazine depth

I guess this is Paparo week, as on the UNCLAS Read Board podcast and another soon to come up which I was a guest, Admiral Paparo, USN, Commander of US Indo-Pacific Command, has been on the receiving end of my praise.

He remains one of the clearer-headed senior leaders out there when it comes to the challenge proposed by the People’s Republic of China, what real power is, and what tools will make the difference for our forces tasked with bringing the fight west of the International Date Line.

At the bottom of the post you’ll find the full conversation with Commander of US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Samuel Paparo with Brookings’s Lynn Kuok and Michael O’Hanlon, but there are two parts I want to pull out of this exceptional discussion.

First has to do with a regular topic here for well over a decade; the shallow depth of our magazines. As our friend Bridge Colby continues to remind everyone; our readiness in the Pacific is being weakened by the transfer of advanced weapons to Ukraine and Israel.

At the ~:33 minute mark:

…with some of the Patriots that have been employed, some of the air to air missiles that are being employed, it is eating in to stocks. To say otherwise would be dishonest. … If there are X inventory of the United States of America which is fungible across all theaters … that can be applied to any contingency… none are reserved for any particular theater, but any can move with alacrity to any theater, inherently it imposes costs on the readiness of America to respond in the Indo-Pacific region, which is the most stressing theater for the quantity and quality of munitions because the PRC is the most capable potential adversary in the world. … (prior to signifiant transfers of weapons to Ukraine & Israel) I was already dissatisfied with the magazine depth. I’m a little more dissatisfied with the magazine depth. You know, it’s time for straight talk.

The second part is a very welcome take, polite but firm pushback against the Transformationalists who continue to try to weaponize fried air.

By the 50-min mark you can feel where Admiral Paparo is just about had enough of the TomorrowLand fetishists who have read too much science fiction and consulted too few engineers. Yes, those people who, hiding behind their union card credentialism, insist that they hold the secret formula, they have the magic beans.

We should also respect the law of physics. That is, the Pacific is a contested space of about 8,000 miles of ocean by 8,000 miles of ocean. So, a pocket drone that can stay airborne for an hour ain’t going to do it.

…

How are we going to sustain everything else if we completely give up on air and maritime superiority in the Pacific? 

“Oh, let’s just quit on everything. We’ve got some drones”

“Alright, well, the PRC has 2,100 fighters. They’ve got three aircraft carriers. They have a battle force of 200 destroyers.”

“Oh, well, roger; we’ve got a couple of drones. No problem.”

Note at the 59-minute mark he refuses to say anything about the “thousands of replicators” The Pentagon claims will be in the Pacific next year.

That speaks clearly to me. 

As an extra bonus, there was a DEI question around the one-hour mark, where he gave the perfect answer—with a smile. BZ.

We have some good 4-stars out there. Paparo is one of them.