Reopening the Strait of Hormuz & Saving Downed Pilots

**Ryan Evans** (0:09)
You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense and foreign affairs. My name's Ryan Evans, I'm the founder of War on the Rocks. The biggest military challenge facing the United States right now as far as Iran is concerned, is the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has de facto closed through threats of mines, drones, missiles and other strikes. This very thin, very narrow strait is the waterway through which 20% of the world's petroleum exports flow. And President Trump has threatened to strike Iranian power infrastructure and other infrastructure if Iran does not reopen the strait and allow passage once more, not just to chosen ships from Iran's favored nations, which still according to Iran's new tollbooth system must pay $2 million per ship but to all legal commercial traffic. To help us understand these issues, I invited two experienced retired admirals with exemplary service records onto the show, admirals Jamie Foggo and Fozzie Miller, both of whom served in and around the Middle East and have extensive experience on these matters. We recorded this on Friday when we had just read the news that an American F15E had been shot down over Iran. The pilot had been rescued at this point, the weapons system officer still had not been rescued, but admirals Foggo and Miller walk us through how the Navy and other services work together to rescue downed pilots in combat zones. Enjoy the show.

**Jamie Foggo** (1:31)
I'm Admiral Jamie Fogger, United States Navy retired, currently acting as the Dean of the Center for Maritime Strategy, the Navy League in the United States.

**John Miller** (1:38)
And I'm retired Vice Admiral Fozzie Miller, former 5th Fleet Commander.

**Ryan Evans** (1:43)
And tell me more about the time that you two spent in the Middle East and when you were there and what you were doing.

**Jamie Foggo** (1:49)
Yeah, I'll go first because I didn't serve in the 5th Fleet AOR. I was next door in Naples, Italy and Admiral Miller was a 5th Fleet Commander when I was a one-star. But we had this kindred spirit between the 5th Fleet and the 6th Fleet. And the bosses I had as 6th Fleet Commanders, Admiral Harry Harris, who's famous and Admiral Frank Pandolf wanted to maintain a relationship. So we would do 5th Fleet, 6th Fleet staff talks. And either 5th Fleet would come out to Naples, which was a good deal for them, or we would go to Bahrain, which was also a good deal for us and spend a day and a half working through problems where we could help one another. So it's always important to be able to provide support to your brothers and sisters next door.

**Ryan Evans** (2:35)
And you had a key leadership role in the campaign that ended up toppling the Qadhafi regime as well in Libya.

**Jamie Foggo** (2:41)
Yeah, that happened really fast, Ryan. It went like this. Humanitarian operations during the Arab Spring in January, February of 2011, and within just a few weeks, kinetic operations, establishment of a no-fly zone, dropping a lot of ordinance for the next nine months.
19,000 sorties and 9,600 precision-guided weapons in that campaign.

**John Miller** (3:04)
I was the fifth lead commander from 2012 to 2015 Previously, I'd served as the deputy commander in 2005, 2006 I deployed out there, really almost every deployment I made from the time I was a commander, 05, so I spent a fair amount of time in the region. During the time I was there, 2012, 2015, there were a lot of things going on, including the ISIS crisis, if you will, which is when the Islamic State invaded into Iraq from out of Syria. And so that was kind of the last 15 or 18 months of my tour out there, was spent trying to get that particular situation back into the right box. And then the entire time I was out there, of course, we were always concerned about the potential threat that Iran was for, not only the nations that were in the region, but for Europeans or Asian nations that wanted to use the Persian Gulf for peaceful commercial purposes. We always had to deal with the potential Iran threat.

**Ryan Evans** (4:02)
You must have worked pretty closely with General CQ. Brown, former chairman, when you were out there for the ISIS campaign, right?

**John Miller** (4:08)
I did. CQ was the deputy Air Force Central Command commander while I was out there as fifth fleet for about a year, so we served together. We seldom saw each other in person. I saw him every day on TV. And, you know, had a chance to work with him when he's a wonderful man.