Podcast: Air Power Updates From KF-21 To Gripen To ShieldAI's X-BAT

After a busy week of news, Aviation Week defense editors break down the latest developments in the fighter, trainer and uncrewed aircraft programs in an action-packed episode. 

Steve Trimble shares a special dispatch from South Korea on the KF-21 program's production progress and KAI's leadership challenges, while Tony Osborne discusses Ukraine's potential 150-aircraft Gripen deal and Germany's new Eurofighter Tranche 5 order. The team explores the UK's search for Hawk T2 replacements, with contenders including the M-346, T-7, and T-50. Plus, Shield AI's ambitious X-BAT uncrewed concept and the UK's Vanquish carrier-based drone project. 

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AI-Generated Transcript

Robert Wall (00:30): Welcome to Check 6, where today we have a multi-target defense podcast lined up for you. So please strap in as we fire up the afterburners to power through what has unfolded at ADEX: fighter developments in Europe, trainer aircraft requirements and CCAs, and possibly even more. Bringing you all that today: our Aviation Week defense editor Steve Trimble from South Korea where he has been busy at ADEX and European Defense editor Tony Osborne in London. I'm your host for the day, Aviation Week executive editor for Defense and Space, Robert Wall. Steve, why don't you kick us off. Let's talk about fighters. And there was a lot of that at ADEX. Lots about the fighters and also the missiles that might go on them. Listeners will have to read all the amazing copy you filed from there to get the full picture, I think. But maybe you can give them a glimpse, some of the highlights of what you thought was particularly fascinating during your trip there.

Steve Trimble (01:23): Well, sure. Yeah, and thank you. And greetings from Jinju, South Korea just outside of Sacheon, where Korea Aerospace Industries actually assembles the KF-21, Boramae, the new fighter that they've been developing and now producing. And I was just at ADEX in Seoul for the earlier part of the week. Yeah, so it's kind of an interesting story about what's going on in KAI right now and all the activity sort of swirling around it with KF-21 sort of at the centerpiece. The good news is KF-21 is in production, the Block 1 version is on the final assembly line. There are eight aircraft on the assembly line. Actually the first aircraft is in paint and the next seven aircraft are in final assembly. So they're making good progress on Block 1. That's the air-to-air configuration of the fighter. That will be followed shortly by the Block 2, which comes with the air-to-ground package.

(02:17) Also on external pylons and mounts, there is still this notional concept for a Block 3 with an internal weapons bay that's to this point, still has not received funding and they're waiting and seeking to attract foreign investment for that. Amidst that though, kind of the bad news going on with KAI is that there is a lot of intense anxiety at the moment, I would say in South Korea over the leadership vacuum that they have going on at KAI really since June. And the story there sort of unfolds at the beginning of last December when some of the, I'm sure some of our audience will remember that the former president of South Korea Yoon declared martial law. And as a result of that, he was removed from office and is still under investigation as well as other members of his government. And the CEO of KAI was known as essentially a political appointee.

(03:15) They don't really have a political appointee system, but the way KAI works, it kind of falls into that category. So on the first day that Yoon's successor, who is Lee Jae-myung, was sworn into office on June 4th, Kang Goo-young, the CEO of KAI submitted his resignation on that day. And since then he has acted in an acting capacity because the new government has not yet appointed a new president of KAI. And so he's still in charge nominally, but he's not in a position to set long-term strategy. He's in a weaker position to negotiate deals, especially on the export market. And this has become a big concern within the country and within certain members of the aerospace community. KAI's union had a big press conference on the eve of this exhibition, ADEX, making a strong call for the government to appoint a CEO. And amidst this in this sort of broader ecosystem here, there's been talk for years about what to do with consolidation in this industry. You have three big defense primes. You have KAI, you have Hanwha, and you have LIG Nex1. And Hanwha and LIG Nex1 have been wanting to buy KAI for several years. KAI's financial results have been in decline for the last few years, even though their success on the export market has been growing.

(04:39) But there are other pressures going on amidst this leadership vacuum as well. You've got their biggest competitor in the aerospace market in Korea is the aerospace division of Korean Air Lines. So this division does MRO work for the military. They also have a research and development arm that does some advanced stuff with stealth UAVs and things like that. They've picked up three huge contracts in the past year. Actually just in the last month they were on the team with L3Harris that won the airborne early warning contract with the Global 6500. They were previously selected to produce a new standoff jamming aircraft based on that same Global 6500. And that's with L3Harris and Israel Aerospace Industries, which does the radar for the AEW aircraft. LIG Nex1 would do the standoff jammer alone for that. They also won the MH-60 upgrade contract here, which is something that has been KAI's bread and butter.

(05:37) In fact, all three of those programs tend to be things that KAI would win. So again, there's this concern about where things are going with KAI at a particularly interesting time for the KF-21 program and all that has still been unsettled. The government still hasn't made a decision and there's no timetable set out in the public for doing that. They have been waiting to get various pieces of the new administration still in place like the Minister of National Defense, and most importantly probably the head of Korea's Export-Import Bank, which owns 26.4% of KAI, which really turns KAI into sort of a public enterprise, even if it's not majority owned by the government.

Robert Wall (06:16): Yeah, very interesting. Did they talk at all about the export opportunities? I mean you were alluding to it. How is that market evolving for them?

Steve Trimble (06:25): Slow at this point. There's been interest and there's been a lot of talk with several countries, most notably United Arab Emirates, where they've had a couple of bilateral discussions that have been public as well as Poland, which has had some discussions about a potential follow-on order from their FA-50 deal. And really they want to leverage that FA-50 order base as the place to get a springboard for KF-21 in the export market. And with the Emirates, I mean there's just interest there, especially if the Emirates wants to fund the internal weapons bay upgrade for the KF-21, the Block 3 aircraft, and then they would have an aircraft with an internal weapons bay and some more advanced stealth features. So this is an aircraft that has not entered service. This is the most ambitious aircraft and weapons system that KAI has ever produced. I think it's probably natural that a lot of countries are just kind of waiting to see what happens. And over the course of the next year or two, we're going to see those first production aircraft go into service and maybe at that point you'll see some more activity and confirmed deals. Of course, a lot of that may depend on getting this leadership situation sorted out and also understanding if KAI's going to remain independent or within the current ownership structure or if they get acquired by one of the other Korean defense companies.

Robert Wall (07:46): And you were alluding to the fact that just how ambitious the program is, I mean, it's not just really just for them given the engine program that they have coupled with it really, and I think you talked to the folks as well. I mean it really, so much is hanging on KF-21 to really take Korea's aerospace industry on the defense side to that next level, doesn't it?

Steve Trimble (08:12): And just to level set there, GE is now supplying the F414 turbofan for the KF-21, which is a twin-engine aircraft, as I'm sure the audience knows, but Hanwha Aerospace, one of the biggest companies in Korea and the biggest defense company is in the process of trying to develop a new family of what they call long-life as opposed to short-life turbofan engines going up from, well, a 1,400 shaft horsepower turboshaft engine to a 5,500-pound thrust CCA-type engine, and then all the way up to a 24,000-pound thrust engine, which they hope to have ready in time in case that KF-21 Block 3 aircraft with that internal weapons bay actually goes into service. But this implies or requires a substantial investment by the South Korean government — $10 billion or more — to not only create the engine, but to create all the infrastructure for the metallurgy that would be necessary to produce a competitive engine at the fifth-generation fighter level for that aircraft. And then the operational, the test infrastructure. And it's a very significant undertaking for a company like Hanwha, which so far they've produced turbojets for cruise missiles, for Korean cruise missiles. But those are of course one-shot engines — they run one time ideally. And it's a much, much different situation when you're talking about a reusable high-performance fifth-generation sort of fighter.

Robert Wall (09:42): Yeah. Well great. Well, we're going to, apologies for the audience because I told you we were going to just be jumping around here, but there was just a lot to pack into this Check 6. So we're going to jump over to Europe, Tony, lots of fighter developments also here in our backyard. So why don't you give us a quick update, including the big news this week.

Tony Osborne (10:05): You bet. Really because since the last Check 6, we've seen Eurofighter top-up order from Germany for an extra 20 aircraft in the Tranche 5 — that is a new tranche of Eurofighters. We've seen various bits of Gripen news, which I'll go into in a second. We've also seen a top-up order or a planned top-up order from Denmark of all places for the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. And then from Sweden we've had news of a fighter demonstrator as Sweden gets ready to think about developing a new combat aircraft in the 2030s. It's basically setting out a series of decision points in 2030 so that the government can then decide whether the country should go ahead and build a new combat aircraft that will replace those Gripen C/Ds and ultimately the Gripens in the future. We also had the delivery of the first Gripen E to the Swedish Air Force.

(10:56): And then yesterday as we record this, we had this significant letter of intent from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for Ukraine to buy as many as 150. Initially probably 100, but up to 150 according to the Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson for Ukraine, as it sort of considers the next step in modernizing its Air Force. Obviously Ukraine already has transferred F-16s from countries like Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. It's already taken on Dassault Mirage 2000s from France, and it will probably receive some Gripen C/Ds as Sweden takes delivery of Gripen Es. But now it's thinking about the next step. And so these could be financed through various methods, but one of the most eye-opening methods is potentially the reuse of those frozen Russian funds in European banks that could be reopened and then used to re-arm Ukraine. So this is sort of after a busy couple of weeks of European fighter activity, it's been astonishing to see so much movement in just a few weeks. But certainly the Gripen, the letter of intent for Ukraine is certainly the icing on the cake I think.

Robert Wall (12:03): Yeah, I mean interesting also in a way from the industrial perspective, as we've been spending so much time focusing on talking about what comes next and as you just alluded to the Swedes starting to think about what comes next, but key to keep the industrial base alive until then. And obviously the German Typhoon order, that's aircraft being built in the early 2030s really and delivered around that timeframe. So keeps that line open. And Gripen obviously has been, and Saab has talked about the need to, even though they have two lines now, but the need, the demand is there to go up in production again.

Tony Osborne (12:42): It's quite astonishing because if you look back at 2017, there's a lot of people saying, well, after the final deliveries of the Tranche 3 jets to Qatar and Kuwait and even they were looking shaky at one point that they might not happen once those four-nation deliveries have been completed, where was the next order coming from? Would Eurofighter production have to shut down? And now we have another 17 years of production.

Robert Wall (13:07): Well potentially.

Tony Osborne (13:08): Well, so the last will be delivered in 2034, so that's 17 years on from 2017. But it's an astonishing reverse of fortune for that program in particular. And then of course you look at Rafale, which is seeing they just delivered their 300th for Israel and there's another 280 aircraft to go. It's a stunning change of fortune for European fighter programs.

Robert Wall (13:33): Yeah. Can I ask maybe a bit of the skeptical question, how confident are we that any of the Ukrainian Gripens are going to get delivered?

Tony Osborne (13:43): That's the big question, isn't it? Because a lot of it depends on the financing. I mean, Ukraine is obviously at war, it's seeing massive hits to its national income. It's throwing all of its money trying to fight the conflict, and Russia has been gaining ground recently. So one wonders whether how real this will be, I guess only time will tell. It all depends on getting access to that finance and so on. Yes, it's a very, very difficult thing to really firm up. And of course all that could change if Zelenskyy finds himself out of power or decides to have an election. There's so many different potential permutations of the next few years, but at least they have some kind of agreement with a nation to try and at least just begin to think about the modernization of their air force perhaps while the country's still in conflict or perhaps post-ceasefire. Although given the current peace talk situation, we're really not sure if that's going to happen either.

Steve Trimble (14:43): Can I just add, I mean the operational impact, if Ukraine were able to actually take delivery of these Gripens, Gripen comes with the Meteor and this would allow their fighters to stay at low altitude and launch those missiles so that they would have a chance against those MiG-31s with R-37Ms and Su-35s with R-37s. And it would give them a real chance at having air defense way beyond what they have right now with F-16, the F-16 Block 15 MLU configuration aircraft, which are decades old and way outclassed by what Russia has. So from an operational standpoint it's absolutely significant. If they could get those aircraft.

Robert Wall (15:30): If they're going to get Gripens in the near term, those are not going to be the Es. You could make a case, well, the Swedes could give up some of their production slots to give them to Ukraine. And yes, that's true, but the Swedes are also on the border with Russia, so I don't see that necessarily happening. So I think E with Meteor absolutely is something you can absolutely make the case why this is super valuable for the Ukrainians, but that's a discussion for the war in 2029, not 2026, I would argue.

Tony Osborne (16:01): Well one other fragment of this is that Zelenskyy said that some aircraft could be delivered in 2026. The interesting thing is that obviously none of those Gripen Es will be ready in 2026, so there's a good chance that that is probably a batch of C/D model aircraft that would give them an initial understanding of Gripen operations and also access to Meteor as well. So maybe some of that learning can start being pushed on too.

Steve Trimble (16:28): Well, and Saab aircraft deliveries or Gripen deliveries have been painfully slow. And so Ukraine would be at the back of already a pretty long queue of Swedish and Thai and Brazilian and Colombian orders. So

Robert Wall (16:43): To Tony's point, I mean they had talked about the Gripen C/D deliveries and then put them on hold because the Ukrainians were so busy absorbing the F-16. So I mean that is obviously a more near-term possibility. So good point on that. All right, I think we're jumping to the next topic trainer aircraft, Tony, we'll stick with you. The UK is in the market to replace its Hawk trainers and unfortunately that also means we have to talk about display teams I guess, but I'm much more interested in the trainer part but still take it from here.

Tony Osborne (17:17): I'll try not to dwell too much on the Red Arrows. Put it like that. Thank you. This time last year there was a chat by the chief of the air staff Rich Knighton, and when he was asked a question in this Q-and-A session, he said, what is your biggest worry? He said he was particularly worried about the situation with the Hawk T2. This is the advanced jet trainer that the UK uses to train its pilots for the Eurofighter Typhoon and the F-35. Essentially a series of engine problems have been seriously impacting the operation of that aircraft. And it turns out essentially the number of flying hours is half because the engine life has shortened considerably. As a result we've had to send students off to various different parts of the country and this was essentially unacceptable in his eyes.

(18:04) And so now there's an effort now to start thinking about a new jet trainer to replace the aircraft before 2040, which was its out-of-service date. So we were reporting this week that two major manufacturers have now thrown their hat into the ring. Those are Leonardo and Boeing. Leonardo is obviously offering the M-346 and aircraft in its Block 20 variant, which has more advanced cockpit and more advanced avionics. And there's also the Boeing T-7, which is probably the less likely of the two aircraft given that it's actually quite late, but it's not been delivered to the U.S. Air Force and that's obviously going to take the majority of the deliveries in the next few years. And so whether that aircraft will be fully available for an RAF need is unclear, but we now have two companies that are putting their hat into the ring and we expect more to follow. There's no formal program yet, but that should be launched fairly soon. It's not just for the T2 either. It's also for the Red Arrows. I have to come back to that because it's a very political issue in the UK. I think I put in the story that they are as British as Buckingham Palace or fish and chips.

Announcer (19:06): They

Tony Osborne (19:06): Are part of the national identity and any previous attempt to get rid of the Red Arrows or even if the government had appeared to look like it was about to get rid of the Red Arrows, was met with very bad headlines and very politically embarrassing and so on. So they will be the first organization that will receive these new aircraft probably in around 2028, 2029, assuming a program goes ahead. And hopefully we'll find out more about that later this year in the defense investment plan.

Robert Wall (19:33): And as you pointed out again, we've discussed outside this podcast, I mean it almost sounds like the Red Arrows replacement, at least from the public backlash kind of concept or what may happen around that could be more of a driver of a decision than the actual requirement to train pilots.

Tony Osborne (19:51): That's quite a scary thing, isn't it? But in the last few months there have been two front-page headlines on the most widely read newspaper in the country that relate directly to this. And the moment a headline like that appears on the front page of The Sun, the government listens sadly in some ways. And so one of the stories suggested that the M-346 was a Russian aircraft and that was put out there by another manufacturer, which we won't talk about. And there was another story about how the Red Arrows are running out of aircraft. So these capture the public's attention. Then people ask questions, well what is going to replace the Red Arrows? Will it be a British airplane? How British will this airplane be? Because the Red Arrows are so much a part of that British establishment, they're part of the British identity. And so of course

Robert Wall (20:40): Just to cycle on that theme, the big question, who does BAE get involved with? And you've kind of written about that at times.

Tony Osborne (20:48): Yes. And we still don't know, and I have my own ideas, but I'll keep them off the podcast for now.

Robert Wall (20:55): To tie it back to where Steve is, of course at DSEI, Lockheed, it was I believe had the T-50 displayed there because they're teamed with KAI on that program. And in the Union Jack, which was something we've seen before done at DSEI on armored vehicles. I had not seen it before with a model of an aircraft. So obviously they have their eye on that program too.

Tony Osborne (21:21): Absolutely. So there are various real options I guess at the moment are probably, as previously mentioned, the M-346, T-7, the Korea Aerospace T-50 is another option. It's in production, it's able to deliver pretty fast as they did for Poland. And the other option could be, and I say could be Turkish Aerospace Hurjet, which Spain's ordering despite it being a fairly immature aircraft. Other options could be PC-21, maybe even the L-39NG, Skyfox because there are efforts to try and make those more attractive as F-35 conversion trainers. But I think that the UK will probably want something slightly faster, something more advanced, hence probably going towards that sort of transonic supersonic sort of trainer type.

Robert Wall (22:08): And Steve, you were talking to folks out there on T-50 as well as you're in Korea, so not just the UK, they still see quite a bit of prospects in the market for that airplane, don't they?

Steve Trimble (22:19): Yeah, so T-50, I had the pleasure actually on Sunday night of attending the Eagle Night event that KAI hosted right before ADEX in Seoul to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the entry into service of that aircraft. And I got to meet the chief designer of the aircraft whose name I'm going to butcher is Young Hun. And his story about how they actually created the T-50 is amazing. He was flying in an F-4D and he had his opponent lined up and he was on his tail, but he got too close for an AIM-9X. So he wanted to switch to guns. This is all in a simulated mock dogfight of course. So in the F-4D, you had to reach down and flip the switch in order to switch to guns. And as he did that, he couldn't see where the other fighter was.

(23:16) He looked back up, the fighter was gone and he wanted to change that. And he came back to his squadron the next couple of days he rigged up this electronic system, he created a switch on the throttle and he got it to work on a bench, a test bench. And he showed it to his squadron commander who said, we have no authority to touch anything on this aircraft. We cannot change even a little switch anywhere. And so that was where he got his motivation to develop a Korean-built aircraft, albeit with the T-50, with significant Lockheed assistance. And that was really where the motivation came from for this entire indigenous development program within Korea, which is extensive and not just fighters, it's everything. So just an interesting little anecdote there, but they did talk about where they want to go with further sales. They invited all of the countries that they wanted to sell the aircraft to. The UK was not there.

(24:23) I don't know if that meant that the UK just didn't show up, they had other things to do, or if they're not on the list anymore, I don't know what that means. But presumably UK is still, if they want to buy it, they're still welcome to buy it. But the other countries were Kazakhstan, Germany, Belgium, Egypt, UAE, Bangladesh, Jordan and Algeria, those are the targets for the T-50, not least of course is the U.S. Navy that wasn't mentioned either and U.S. Navy wasn't present. But I am sure KAI and Lockheed want to sell T-50 to U.S. Navy for their T-45 replacement and potentially also as this tactical surrogate aircraft in the model that has been pioneered by Israel and Finland and Italy using essentially trainers in tactical aircraft squadrons to build proficiency while not adding hours to much more sophisticated aircraft that are more expensive to operate like the F-35, that kind of thing.

Robert Wall (25:29): Well great. Well thanks for that. And then I guess we'll jump to our last topic for the day. Lots of activity also in the CCA world. We'd be remiss to not touch on it, not least this week, Shield AI unveiling a new concept which is quite large, quite ambitious, quite curious. So Steve, do you want to maybe start there?

Steve Trimble (25:54): Yeah, actually I mean I could talk about it. I mean one of the more interesting I guess to me an interesting anecdote is that I talked to the guy who was the chief engineer for V-BAT as Shield AI is calling that aircraft a couple years ago. That's Armor Harris. He was brought from SpaceX and they asked me if I wanted to interview him. This was in March of 2024 and I thought he was coming in to do AI. So the first part of our interview was all about AI until he said, I don't really do AI, I'm here to do aircraft. And I didn't expect that. I really thought Shield AI was really more of a software company. Sure they did the V-BAT, but I didn't think they had a CCA that they were planning to build. And so we talked about that and he said, let's just say I think that it will be unlike anything anybody's ever seen before.

(26:48) He's talking about this new aircraft that they just unveiled. Truly unique. And the reason for that is that we're at a unique time in aviation history where there have been a lot of people who have built a lot of airplanes just in pure, just in the pure hardware space, maybe you can make your airplane 10% more performance, that sort of thing. But where we're at today is with the infusion of software into the hardware that enables you to do things that were never thought possible and he likes to use space. To use a space example, you had a human landing the shuttle, an astronaut was actually on the stick landing the space shuttle, but Falcon 9 is fully autonomous when it lands. And so you're able to perform a landing maneuver that a human can never perform. And I didn't know it at the time, but he was really hinting at what was going to be possible with the V-BAT with this vertical takeoff and landing capability because the plan is that they're going to vertically take off this aircraft, which by the way is 22,000 pounds maximum takeoff weight with an F110 engine full afterburner and a thrust vectoring nozzle from an F-16 program or perhaps the F-15 program from the 1990s.

(28:06) And then after it does its mission, it comes back to that spot, it goes into a vertical position and lands vertically and then a nose hook comes over and stabilizes it. Obviously that's not something a human can do reliably and it is only possible because of this type of AI software. Now that's not to say that I don't know if they can do it and they think they obviously can, but this is a big challenge for them. But we are into this era where we're revisiting so many concepts from the 1950s that were proven completely beyond the ability of a human pilot to manage. And we're trying to pull that off again now with this AI software and maybe it's possible, but it's interesting to see all of these concepts getting a second life, especially with these non-traditional startup companies that are willing to make a huge bet on this. It is not going to be cheap to do this.

Tony Osborne (29:14): Is this a UCAV or a CCA? Because as Robert just mentioned, it's enormous and it's got a big engine in it, it's going to be expensive. Is this closer to what the French are doing with Neuron NG than what we traditionally see as a low-cost CCA?

Steve Trimble (29:31): Yeah. I mean the line between a CCA and a UCAV is very blurry and sometimes it can be the mission versus the design of the aircraft, but it is certainly going to be an armed aircraft that is capable of performing a mission on its own or in collaboration with crewed aircraft. One of the things I don't really understand about it, and maybe they explained it, I just missed it during their presentation, was how you refuel and re-arm the aircraft in that vertical position, especially if we're trying to do multiple sorties. Yeah, it does seem like there are some operational challenges, how you move it around. I mean a 22,000-pound aircraft, even if it's on a trailer that's incredibly nimble, it's just going to be hard to move around.

Tony Osborne (30:16): It's quite interesting. All the images show it on a TEL truck, which is usually used to drag around Patriot batteries. So that's a big truck. Also, you carry tanks on the back of it. So yeah, that's a big vehicle to drag it around.

Robert Wall (30:30): Wow. It'll be interesting to see if we ever get to see it fly. Lots of lots to observe there. Tony, just real quick on the CCA, also a bit of activity here. The UK has talked about pursuing some additional CCAs. We knew the RAF was looking at them. Now you're looking at some carrier or at least ship-based ones. So what's going on there?

Tony Osborne (30:52): Yeah, so just to follow up, so obviously we already have an autonomous collaborative platform based on the Tekever AR3, which is the Storm Shadow. Now we want to start looking at the so-called Tier 2 as a slightly larger, almost more like a collaborative combat aircraft platform. The Royal Navy wants to launch such a vehicle from its carrier probably in 2026 under a program called Vanquish. So they want to prove that the ship can have a hybrid air wing of crewed and uncrewed aircraft. Vanquish could be part of that initiative. And so the test, this will be a test program to prove that Vanquish can be launched from the carrier, but also the RAF Royal Air Force is hand in glove with that initiative as well, we were told a few days ago. So yeah, there is an active effort to bring an ACP to test on the carrier, but also have something in service by the end of the decade as well.

Robert Wall (31:49): All right. Well listen, I think we kind of have to wrap it here before we sign off on what I think was hopefully people will agree was a thrilling podcast. Thanks Steve and thanks Tony for making it so much fun. I do want to end on what is a bit of a sobering note I guess, or a sad note at least for me. And I think for Steve and a lot of us on the defense beat reporting scene, as many of our listeners might be aware, the Pentagon in recent weeks has been trying to impose pretty unprecedented and dangerous restrictions on the press and the work that we've been doing there literally for decades. As some of you may know, Aviation Week has had a desk in the Pentagon as part of the newsroom there and the press corps there. And we've covered, we've been to war with the military, we've covered the events there.

(32:43) We've had access to some facilities, obviously in the Pentagon, unclassified when we've been in a SCIF. It's very clear there's a big light on, there is no access, illicit access. Anyway, the Pentagon, the current administration was trying to enforce new rules that would really hamper our ability to gather information for you, our listeners. And so along with the other credible media, we unfortunately had to make the decision not to sign up to that and have had to give up our desk at the Pentagon that we've had, as I said, for decades. Again, I had that desk many, many years ago. So even though I'm now in London, for me it was a particularly sad moment. Somewhat shocking too. And really it's a missed opportunity I would say, because some of us reporters had access and interactions with the military before Steve, for example. So even before we had these roles, we had those relationships.

(33:46) But a lot of the other reporters, especially more the mainstream media that aren't trade, have not, and you really saw people come in, their eyes were opened to the work ethic of both the military and the civilians working in the building. The hard work they do every day, got a much better understanding of what drives military families, what drives military programs. And I think this is a real loss. And I can't say it often enough. It was a very, very sad day. I think it was a very sad day for Aviation Week. I think it's a very sad day for the military and it's clearly a sad day for American democracy because as an American reporter, it was always great to be overseas and be able to tell people I work at the Pentagon. No democracy else had that level of access. No democracy would give that level of access and the fact that America has stepped back from that I just think is a real, real shame. So with that slightly sad note, I want to thank you for joining us for this episode of Check 6. And please check back soon for another episode. And thanks for your time.