Attended defense symposium

Greetings. Sen. Greg Blanc, Rep. Mike Derby, and I had the opportunity to attend the Defense Industry Symposium April 8-10 at The Box. You may say, “Where in the heck is The Box?” Well, it has a Box Elder address, but that doesn’t explain it.

As near as I can see it, Box Elder is a town in at least three different locations. Box Elder is a boom town with a population exceeding Spearfish. The Box is near exit 61 with the group of motels that have an indoor waterpark, etc. It has a huge conference room with huge TV-like screens. It was built by the city of Box Elder on a TIF.

I’m a big fan of TIFs because they are one of the most creative financing apparatuses ever dreamed up, or maybe invented would be a better way of saying it.

Anyway, the Defense Industry Symposium was absolutely awesome! What a timely event with the war in Iran taking place. Here are some highlights. 

Major General Mark Morrell, the adjutant general of both the S.D. Army and Air Guard, gave a one-hour briefing on strengthening South Dakota’s security and infrastructure for the future. He basically went over a scenario where China takes over the United States without ever firing a shot. They can do this by shutting down our electricity, our cell phones and causing all our credit cards to be useless.

He discussed how using electromagnetic warfare fries the electronics on all components, including our vehicles. He went into minute detail using this scenario that scared the heck out of me. He also talked at the end about how his team is working on real solutions to prevent this catastrophe from ever happening.

If you ever get a chance to listen to MG Morrell speak, it’s a real treat. He is one of the sharpest generals I have ever met. After his presentation, we had breakouts on how to strengthen our readiness throughout the state.

The next highlight was the drones. We basically had a seminar on how Ukraine’s drone war is redefining modern day warfare. They even had drones flying around in the conference room and went over all their capabilities. Basically, the Ukrainians have turned the tide on their Russian invaders, causing huge casualties among Russian soldiers, and destroying equipment and infrastructure.

Later, we got to go out to our brand new Game, Fish, and Parks/Pete Lien Rifle Range. This is located 10 miles north of the Flying J truck stop at exit 61. It is not just a rifle range, but all sorts of weaponry can be shot there. We went to the portion of the large complex and had more drone presentations — this time, outside.

For me, the coolest part was that myself and an Air Force colonel got to shoot down drones! Yep! They had (at a cost of $1,200 each drone) drones that we got to take out. We were shooting M4 rifles, the replacement for the M16, M16A1 and the M16A2 rifles. It was my first time shooting an M4 and my first time shooting at live drones.

Rapid City has a company, “Freedom Munitions” that manufactures definitive anti-drone ammo. You can find out more at dronerounddefense.com. Currently, they have these drone killer calibers in 5.56 (M16/M4) and 7.62 (M60) for machine guns. The company has the capability to manufacture 350 million rounds annually. And it is right here in the good old Black Hills.

Early voting for the June 2 primary starts at your county courthouse on April 17.