EXCERPT:
POLYMEROPOULOS: "Jonathan, look, we’re behind the curve on timelines. In the beginning, we had some senior officials talk about, you know, an 18-month training timeline, training evolution, and that wasn’t true. It turned out to be four months. But as we've said on this program many times, and Admiral Stavridis has been very open about this, this is a bit late. Now, this has a lot to do with kind of the future of the Ukrainian military, but I don’t think it is going to affect the current fighting season. But let me go back to the ATACM issue. That would. There’s a lot of talk in the administration, well, maybe there is an inventory issue on ATACMs, or perhaps there’s fears of Russian escalation. But on inventory, let’s do a proof of concept. That's what we argue in the piece. Give them 100 ATACMs and see what happens. And on Russian escalation fears, look, the Ukrainians are hitting targets inside Russia every night now with drones, so I think they’ve blown past this idea of escalation. You know, the article is a policy prescription on something that can affect the battlefield and do so now. I think it is really important that the administration do this."