Defense & Aerospace Report Defense & Aerospace Air Power Podcast [Apr 02, 26] Season 4 E12: Spicy and Smoky
Apr 2, 2026
Doug Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at IISS and airpower analyst, discusses a new report on UAVs. Conversations cover UAV roles and definitions, ISR and mass requirements, lessons for China from recent campaigns, NATO’s reliance on U.S. airpower, and platform-software sovereignty. The chat closes with a lighter note on whiskey picks.
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Air Power May Not Deliver Regime Change
- Air campaigns can be tactically extraordinary yet fail to achieve regime change.
- Doug Barrie highlights Iran: strikes damaged infrastructure and nuclear progress but cannot guarantee political collapse without ground forces.
Attrition Strategy Can Buy Time
- Repeated strikes can delay or degrade an adversary's programs without toppling a regime.
- Barrie uses the phrase “mow the lawn” to describe revisiting targets over time to keep Iran's nuclear and missile capacity suppressed.
Wars Reveal Need For Weapons Depth
- Observers like China will prioritize resilient air defenses and deep weapons inventories after watching recent campaigns.
- Barrie stresses inventory depth because high consumption rates of both strike and interceptors were visible in Iran and Ukraine.