Episode 718: March Free for All

Summary

Sal and Mark delve into the current state of the U.S. Navy, discussing the size and capabilities of the fleet, the challenges of operating as a two-ocean Navy, and the potential for utilizing alternative naval assets such as offshore supply vessels. They explore the ongoing debate between manned and unmanned aircraft. Discussed some of the lessons on how to turn around a military quickly using the transition from the 1970s malaise, to the Reagan Era victory in the Cold War. The discussion also touches on military leadership, morale, and the strategic importance of aircraft carriers in contemporary military operations.

Show Links

• "Crash Fleet: An Emergency Shipbuilding Program”, by Lieutenant Commander Brian Adornato, USNR.
• German army struggles to get Gen Z recruits ‘ready for war’, by Laura Pitel.

Takeaways

• The U.S. Navy's fleet size is often overestimated.
• The Navy operates as a two-ocean force, complicating logistics.
• Alternative naval assets could enhance defense capabilities.
• The future of naval warfare will involve a mix of manned and unmanned systems.
• Aircraft carriers remain a cornerstone of naval power.

Chapters

00:00: Introduction and Overview of the Fleet Discussion
01:28: Analyzing the Current Size of the Navy
05:40: Challenges of a Two-Ocean Navy
07:48: Exploring Alternative Naval Platforms
11:58: Possible Role of Offshore Supply Vessels
14:47: Historical Context and Lessons Learned
18:20: Rethinking Naval Strategy and Resources
21:22: Utilizing Reserve Forces Effectively
25:02: Future of Aircraft Carriers and Naval Aviation
29:59: The Future of Manned vs. Unmanned Aircraft
34:38: Military Resource Allocation and Strategy
39:35: Generational Perspectives on Military Service in the post Vietnam recovery
44:39: Leadership and Military Morale

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And welcome on board everybody. We appreciate you joining us
for another edition of mid Rats and put forward the
altar call if you happen to be with that esteemed
cohort that is with us Live if you'd like to.
We've already got a few folks that have jumped into
the chat Kent Nec and a couple of brothers. That's
a great place, especially for today's show that if you

(00:20):
have some observations you want to share, or even some
issues that you would like addressed during the course of
the show, that's the perfect place to do it. You
got to leave and run off. If you don't already,
you can go over to Spotify, iTunes, Spreaker, wherever you
are and pick up the show where you might have
to have left us by subscribing to the podcast. It's free,

(00:41):
don't cost you a penny, and it's the best way
to keep up with you. And when I mentioned about
the extra joy of the chat room, that's because today
is in our free for all format. Mark and I
have some ideas that we want to chat about, and however,
we are open to questions or topics that you might
want for us to bring up during the Horse of
the day, and I'll be watching the DMS on Twitter

(01:02):
and we'll all be watching the chat room there on Riverside.
So we're going to go ahead and dive into it.
Because we cheated, we did a pre show. I think
we do want to talk about. So hey, Mark, good afternoon,
and why don't we kick it off with what you
and I both wanted to pick at, which is the
topic that remember us being very skeptical about back in
the previous decade when Maybus was second now and that

(01:25):
is how exactly big is our fleet?

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah, it's a some Some people may have noticed that
John cud and I had a He cited an article
that had question, you know we had a three hundred
ship navy or something. Anyway, he said we had about
two hundred and thirty USS ships that his worships, and
I said, it not that high. Basically, we have eleven carriers,

(01:50):
sixty eight subs, nine cruisers, maybe seventy eight destroyer, seventy
six destroyers, which I think includes the DDG one thousand,
which I think is a three ship group that we
don't know what to do with, twenty six lcs's, and
then we have eight mine warfare ships and several lcs's
are going to be going taking over that role with

(02:11):
their new mine hunting system that's finally coming to effect,
what fifteen twenty years later than they should. And we
have thirty four amphibs, and you can add all the
numbers anyway, done at it, we don't have that many
ships surface ships to fight. And then those sixty eight
submarines I referenced, those include the the SSBNs and the

(02:33):
ss gns. So how many of those are actually attacked submarines?
You can do the math yourself, but the navy is
not as big as many of us think, particularly if
you subtract the thirty four amphibs. You don't and you
and as John pointed out, you don't count the auxiliaries

(02:54):
which are operated by military Seal of Command and manned
by siv mars. So you know, and it depends on
how you want to count things. And the LCS accounting
as a worship now we've they've been improved, but you know,
there's a question there as to what we're actually doing
with those ships.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
I resigned myself to the fate of LCS years ago,
but when you look at numbers, you really have to
even if you want to be fair two thirds of
a ship, because she's not kind. A multi mission ship
has a lot of limitations. If many years late after
commissioning the first one, if they were really that useful,
we'd see them a lot more. So you've got to
be careful with that. And I think another thing did

(03:33):
especially when you look west towards the world's now largest
navy with the People's Republic of China. Unlike China, we are,
by requirement, a two ocean navy. The PRC can at
their luxury stay east of Singapore and south of No
Malaska and just focus on the Pacific. We don't have
that luxury. Regardless whether we have a conflict to the

(03:55):
west of US or conflict to the east of US.
We can't totally abandon one ocean or the other. So
that rarely is a situation that I think I was
going to say, that is a situation that you can't
really appreciate unless you take out the map and look
at that. And that impacts the amount of numbers of
actual warships that you can take west to the International

(04:18):
date Line if we have to, and if you want
to break those down by those ships that actually carry
usable offensive weapons. That means you have a VLSSELL that
fits something more larger than a hell fire missile that
even necks it down further. It's not a gnashing of
teeth or rending a closed things. But I think it's
important that we, as in all things, that we're honest

(04:40):
with ourselves and we're very upfront by what type of
battle fleet we can actually put west to the international
date line. Because those who play in the game, they
can whisper sweet nothings to each other in a hushed voice,
but they understand what's between the lines. However, a lot
of the civilian leadership in this country, they they don't

(05:02):
have that nuanced understanding. And they see two eighty two
eighty five preten whatever number you want to put up there.
They think that's the actual number of warships that we
could take west if we had to. And even if
you're optimistic and use you it takes three to make one,
or Brian McGrath says it's more like four or five
to make one. That's a very realistic number that I

(05:25):
don't think that we are as open to each other about.
And the PRC has similar limitations when it comes to
maintenance but there are certain characteristics about our nation and
our requirements that's distinctly different from our greatest challenger in
the Pacific.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
Yeah. And what's happening is that, you know, we, because
our ships are so expensive even take so long to make,
we're beginning to look at people suggesting and rightfully so,
you know, stopgap measures to get a force that can
supply our fleet when it goes across the ocean. And
that's part one. Part two, fend our own shores and

(06:01):
take up pick up the slack of what would be
left behind when when all our big gray halls go
someplace else. And so there was an article in Proceedings
called crash Fleet Emergency ship Building Program by Lieutenant Commander
Brian Adornato, US Navy Reserve, and he, you know, he
makes some good points that there are a lot of
ships in reserve. We don't these days. Platforms don't matter

(06:23):
as much. There are a lot of ships off when
you I've argued for years about these offshore platforms. Were
used them to prototype the unmanned surface vessels. But you
know they can be manned. They can you can put
weapons systems on them. Our weapon systems aren't like the
old days where he had a sixteen inch gun mount
that required you know, eight decks and the huge storage

(06:44):
bind We have other things that can fit on these
smaller units and would provide homeland security along with the
coast guard units that are out there. You know, the
the the whole effort the Navy itself is making to
do unmanned stuff is important. By x posts today on
the number of ship boat builders in the United States

(07:04):
are like forty three hundred of these of these companies
making small craft. You know, if we really cranked the
levers and every one of those produced ten craft that
the Navy could use and convert to unmanned and arm
up in some way. You know, that's that's that's a
forty three thousand unit size unmanned stuff. Then you can
use these ampibs for something useful, which is to help

(07:26):
tote those things across the ocean where they could be used.
They're they're low cost snuffs since they're generally made out
of fiberglass, and we're taking lessons here from the bog
ammers of the the Iranians. But you know, we could
we can weaponize those things, use them, and they are
as expendable as anything much more expendable than say the
old pt Boat movie with John Wayne and Robert Montgomery, with.

Speaker 1 (07:48):
A couple of the systems that we already have developed
and we've talked about here a few times, like the
Mark seventy thick system, container eyed missiles that can carry
a couple of tea lambs are an S and six even,
and there's a few other variants of things. I mean,
there's even a maritime version of the iron Dome system.

(08:08):
And of course you always have the bolt On anti
ship cruise missiles for NSM and harpoon, and we have
the portable which is pretty much what the piratee system is,
is the Mark forty one VLS and a container, and
it melds up pretty well. With that innocent question I'll
put up earlier, is just saw an a notice about

(08:29):
the HCMS Sacksville, which is a Canadian Naval Museum ship,
which was which is one of the surviving Flower class
corvettes that before the Second World War was a type
of whaler, and there was as we always find out
when war takes place, we don't have enough ships to
cover second and third tier missions. In this case, it

(08:50):
was convoy escort and it wasn't a perfect solution, but
it was a ship that was already in production. Everything
was done. They just need to modify it. And they
did a good job in the core of the war.
But every time the ship came in, the good idea
fairy came down to the pier, not just with ideas,
but with boatloads of stuff that they were going to
improve on it. So they did nice iterative improvements during

(09:10):
the course of the war. And so I put out
a question, you know, what type of ships do we
have that the engineering work is done. They can be
produced all over the place in number. Are not a
perfect solution, but we'll displace water and you can slap
some weapons on it. And our favorite yardbird Byron he
mentioned what always is in the back of my head,
and I think we've talked about it here before, and

(09:31):
those are the platform supply vessels, offshore supply vessels osvs,
things such as the people use for construction support. They
use them a lot to the offshore hydrocarbon, oil and
gas wells. And they're they're interesting ships because they go
from one hundred and fifty to three hundred and thirty

(09:52):
feet long. They have the superstructure and the accommodations forward.
But then because they bring a lot of equipment back
and forth to the platforms, they have a huge flat
area in the back that is easily customizable with a
little bit of imagination and some weld qualified people. And
I think that is the right answer. If a balloon

(10:14):
went up somewhere and all of a sudden, we had
a big requirement that we didn't have time to have
a five year development cycle and three years to build,
and it had to be perfect, and it had to
meet all of navisty seas exquisite requirements. We just needed
holes in the water that can carry something forward. I
think that's the right answer. We probably also would give
us an opportunity not just for building them, but there

(10:35):
are a lot of them out there on the civilian
market in the place of in case of a real
national emergency, Uncle Sam can can take what it needs
to execute. So I think that's probably what we would see.
The modern version of the Flower class corvettes and similar
vehicles would be those offshore supply vessels.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
Yeah, and that follows along the fineavy tradition of calling
up like in World War One. I think they have
yachts and other private former you know ship's boats that
were being used for anti submarine operations. They'd fit them
up with a couple of I guess depth charges or
something and maybe a deck kun of some kind and
let them and turn them allers looking for submarines. You know,

(11:13):
that wasn't the best program in the world, but sometimes
you just got to do what you got to do
that would work. You know, an article that I talked
about from proceedings I'll put a link up on our
website or eventually says there are three hundred of those
offshore vessels right now that are are sitting idol. You know,
it wouldn't take a genius to say, you know, if
they're sitting iidol, we'd probably buy them for or rent
them for a song, harm them up, and then all

(11:34):
you need to do is find the people to operate them.
And I suspect if we got that many sitting idol,
there's some some offshore crew guys who would like to
earn some extra money, being chiefs or first class petty
officers or ensigns in the Navy, who you could organize
into squadrons and have them operate to provide some assets.

(11:54):
Do a lot of the jobs that we're now doing
with DDGs and even nlcs.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
Yeah, and you can. You could poop poo their cabildies
all day long if you want to. But we're not
building frigates. We're not building destroyers for first tier missions.
And if you read back in my base of my thirties,
I read every first hand account I could get hold
of of the both US and German U boat and
submarine skippers in World War Two, as when they are

(12:18):
out there operating and doing what they did so well,
if they had a submarine chaser, or the Japanese had
a lot too, or one of those trawlers that they
knew was equipped with depth depth charges, they reacted as
if they did have a destroyer coming down on it,
because yeah, it may only carry you know, a half
dozen to fifteen anti submarine depth charges, but it only

(12:42):
takes one to knock out a sub And it's the
same thing if you have a bunch of ships out
there that aren't carrying you know, one hundred and twenty
eight land attack cruise missiles, but they are carrying a
half dozen of something that might be interesting, and you
have twenty of them, that really complicates an enemy because
now they no longer have this body of water. I

(13:03):
don't have to worry about or this line of approach.
I don't have to worry about it. It makes their
job much more difficult. Numbers matter, even if it's not
a first tier ship. Think the love the teenth and
nineteenth century definitions of I guess it hurt people's feelings
that we don't use them anymore. First class, second clap class,
third class, fourth class ship. And then you had your

(13:24):
brigs and your sloops, and they had a very diverse,
worse set of tools to choose from. And those empires
pretty much cover the globe with them.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yeah, and it's you know, we get worried about things
like escorting ships across the Pacific. And I think I've
said before that if you using modern aviation technology, which
means long range patrol planes and putting helicopters on the
decks of some of these vessels you're trying to get
across the ocean, and many of them already, especially our
military seedlift command ships, many of them already have flight

(13:55):
decks and can support and sustain helicopter operations. Know, those
helicopters can drop SOUNA buys you can you can, and
they can drop torpedoes and depth charges and things, so
you can you can escort vessels using that most of
the way across the Pacific. And that's probably most of
the way is good enough because the range of the
current Chinese submarines is such that they're probably not going

(14:16):
to to be bothering us too far east of the
International Dayline.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yeah. But and I think again, you know, you have
to look to prior conflicts, how regards how long they are,
ago to look at various conops. And I think you
made a very good point is there's not unlike what
we did in the Pacific. Everybody likes to talk about
the jeep carriers and the light carriers. Yes, you know,
everybody knows Tappy three. They were used in frontline, but

(14:42):
a lot of what they did was just burying aircraft
across the ocean. That you had a couple of JEP
carriers that carried a squadron to two and they would
get west of the Midway and Wake Island until they
got in range of the fleet carriers and then the
air wings would fly off to their to replace combat losses.
You had, I forget the technical term, maybe you know

(15:02):
it the tanker relay system where the tankers would come
off the West coast and would meet the fleet tankers
somewhere in the Pacific and transfer their loads, and that
made it much more efficient fight forward. So if we
have a low density threat east of the International Dateline
or east of Guam, wherever you want to draw that line,

(15:23):
that requires an escort, John Conrad, your concern, as we've
talked about for years, Yeah, maybe you can't afford to
have a DDG out there, But what if you had
a good enough former all shore supply vessel that had
enough service to air missiles to handle. If the Chinese

(15:44):
were lucky enough to get a unit or two out there,
or had the ability should a submarine show up or
something they think as a submarine, can go out there
and at least make it go away, just like our subchasers,
hence the name chased away submarines. They sunk a few,
but they got mission kills on a lot more. It's
an idea that has been used before with great success.

(16:04):
Technology has changed, the challenge has changed, but I think
the logic remains sound.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
Yeah, I don't. I don't have any problem with that.
I think that the challenge is that we have to
quit thinking that everything has to be perfect and we
just need good enough for a lot of this. And
somebody was talking about we'd have to to h on
the chat the same way we would have to give
physicals to all these guys that want for the offshore crew. Well,
Cirrosi's deliver is not a big issue if you're only

(16:30):
going to use these people for four or five years.
But I'm not sure whether medical other medical issues. We
want people who know how to operate the boats are
and are good enough sailors. They can they can do
the job, and are motivated to do the job. You know,
it's one of those things. And you know, we also
have to be aware. And John, there's an article that
John had in this Marine Corps thing that I can't
Marine Corps University publication. I'm going to put the link

(16:52):
up here a minute. I'll called carriers and amphibs and
he's talking about that, you know when and you you
mentioned it earlier. When civilian leadership of the Navy they
think of carriers and amphibious ships, and that is a
problem for us because he also points out in this article,
as many others Sampton Greedy Tan Greedy for another name.
You know, we've got a problem. They going after the

(17:14):
Chinese in their backyard is a hard, hard problem. And
our carrier aircraft don't have range, and we don't want
to put our carriers and arms away because they're expensive
and have a lot of people on them. So and
when're amphibs, they're slow, they're not well equipped defensively, and
we're going to put thousands of marines and equipment on
these things and send them east or west in this case,

(17:37):
that is that's a problem. And he's pointing out that
maybe we don't. That's not the navy we currently need.
So we really need to think. But we need to
think fast, because we don't have enough time to be
messing around with the waiting for the perfect solution to
our shipbuilding problems. When we have solutions that will be
would present a challenge to any enemy. As I said,

(17:57):
if you put forty three thousand small boats out there
that are armed and we can control them, and I
believe we could do that, then that that creates incredible
issues for anybody on the other side. And they don't
even have to be I mean, they could just carry
they could go out and sink on purpose and be
and lay minds that way if you had nothing else
to do, you know, let's let's let's make things hard

(18:18):
on the on the other folks.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
And I'll repeat what I think I've been saying every
third show now also because I think the concern is
where we going to get the people to man then
we don't have a huge emergant fleet roger that acknowledged. However,
one thing we do have in the Navy is actually
what we don't have is the Army and Air Force
do a great job of repurposing the experience they have

(18:41):
when people leave active duty to take them into the
National Guard, the reserves, and the Air National Guard doing
pretty much what they did on active duty, but on
a part time basis. The Navy Reserve, we don't re
don't recapture a lot of our experience at all. So
a little bit of imagination and uh, maybe a funding
line you could you could fill a lot of that gap,

(19:02):
or at least do some experiments out of a couple
of coasts. Nor iFolk would be a great place San Diego,
where you have a lot of people who leave active
duty and stay who might actually enjoy a reserve gig
that has a ship attached to it.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yeah, I was. I was CEO of a mobile inshore
undersea warfare And for those of you unfamiliar with that,
it is a command information a combat information center in
a box. So we had radars, we had we had
a sonar. We took SONA buoys and dropped them and
we you know, you can run those things if you
can do that from a shore base, and we could
also be mounted on a on a offshore vessel. Did

(19:37):
some operations with the Coast Guard and some other people,
and that provides the kind of asset you need because
it's the same same SONA. If I'm not too far wrong,
it was in your p threes and you know that
may not be the current technology, but it wouldn't be
hard to bang together some of those things again and
use those to make the undersea aspect, the ASW aspect

(19:59):
of using commercial type vessels viable.

Speaker 1 (20:02):
Especially some of our frontline allies, like our allies and
friends like the Filipinos or even the Taiwanese, they would
love to have somebody walk off a plane with that
ability take this bay and make me feel more comfortable
with it.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
Well, my point was that that we have former sonar
techs that and if they want to be in the reserves.
There aren't too many reserve billets for sonar techs here.
These were you know, this was this was a unit,
these units and there were a whole bunch of them
for a while, uh that had billets for sonar techs,
that had billets for for radioman and and other people

(20:38):
you know, bos and mates and and cbs because the
way we operated. But you know, the reserves, the reserves
are really small right now, and they're very dependent on
the number of people who leave. There's a I don't
know what the exact I'm sure there's some formula that
says we can only have this many reserves, you have
this many people on active duty. But that's got to

(21:00):
change too, because there are people out there that would
be happy to be available if called on to do
the jobs that they were trained to do a while ago.
And yeah, they may take a cut and pay, but
you know, how long is this Are you going to
call them up for it? And what is the interest
if it's the safety of our country? That appeals to
a lot of people who served the Navy and then
got out for various reasons.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
Yeah, and if you need to grow your military capability
in an environment where you also are staring at unimaginable debt,
there's efficiency to be had if you have a national emergency.
The quote, well it take them ninety days to get
full of speed. Okay, Well, having somebody who's could be
fully up to speed ninety days beats having nobody to
get up the speed. So that may be worth looking at.

(21:43):
And speaking of, you know, we got the quick. One
thing I was also looking at kind of related to
the numbers was and we've had people arguing on both
sides of this equation. And as I have grown to
be more comfortable saying the because I was pretty much
brought into it for a while. This theory sounds good,
sounds logical, but facts in reality always seem to kick

(22:05):
it in the teeth. Kind of along the same lines
as if in the nineteen twenties, if we decide that
General Mitchell was right and Nimitz was right, so we
don't need anything but heavy bombers and submarines, and we
can get rid of surface ships, we wouldn't have won
World War Two. It's very seductive to look at some

(22:26):
things and not try to take a bigger picture. And
one I'm speaking about specifically, this is a number of
aircraft carriers we have is everybody wants to get rid
of the aircraft carriers. And there was a little little
bit of funky stuff that went on. I'm convinced it
wasn't by accident because I remember former Secretary Defense Gates
says that we need to in order to maintain what

(22:49):
he said at that point, twelve carriers, we need to
be decommissioning one every four years. Well, the last of
the Nimics class carriers and Nimmet's Hole one left a
few weeks ago for their theoretically final deployment fifty years old.
But when you look at the last of the Niemens class,
which was the George Herbert Walker Bush to the first
of the Ford Class from commissioning date to commissioning date,

(23:09):
that was about eight years. And you also had the
first Hole one of the Ford Class, Whole two is
the Kennedy. We're looking about eight years there. So in
sixteen years when we should have used the Gates formula,
should have commission four carriers, well commissioned two. Now right now,
when you look at it, it says, from the Kennedy

(23:29):
to hold three, the Enterprise looking about four years, and
the Enterprise to a hole four, which is the Miller
about three years, so close to four years, so kind
of getting back on step to every four years. But
there was a huge gap that we're going to see
just to be able to keep eleven carriers out there,
and it's going to drop unless they're going to find
some way to extend some of the Nemetzes beyond fifty years.

(23:54):
Because when we started going after the Houthies aggressively, the
sect f Hegseth ordered the let me make sure I
got my carriers right. The Vincent and her strike group,
which is one cruiser in three DDGs to head out
of into a pay coom to where the Truman is.
And they've extended the Truman, and every time something comes up,
it's like, we don't have enough carriers. We need to

(24:16):
have more carriers. We need to give them out there.
Maybe the Knimits is going to nuke it's way across
so the Truman can go home. I don't know, but
one thing I would really like to see is an
acknowledgment of this. If we're optimistically from a couple of sources.
I saw three years from Enterprise to Miller. Now the
other two CVN eighty two and eighty three theoretically are

(24:36):
going to be the Clinton and the George W. Bush.
We don't need two carriers named Bush. Maybe the new
SECT now will fix what Del Toro wasn't authorized to
do but did anyway. But anyway, if we can get
CVN eighty two and eighty three closer to three years
between commissioning Vice four or more, that might help relieve

(24:56):
what we're going to see here in the next ten years,
which is going to be even more short of carriers
than we actually need.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yeah, and I think we have to again, we have
to rethink what we're doing, you know, because carriers right
now are operating in fairly safe waters, relatively speaking, compared
to what they would do if they faced the people
who are now operating much more sophisticated anti ship crews

(25:23):
and ballistic missiles and the ranges that those things can have.
And we're just going to keep moving these things by necessity,
going to keep moving these things further offshore. The advantage
we have with the hoo Thies is that I don't
know where they're getting their guidance information, but it's not
exactly current because the carriers have been pointed out by
people before the carrier moves. The carrier operates in such

(25:46):
a way that it moves. So if you have a
fifteen minute delay and guessing where the carrier is, you're
not going to know where the carrier is. It's going
to be someplace else because they travel at high speed
or can travel high speed, and you have to know
which direction they're going and whether they're God forbid zigzagging
speaking is a guy used to follow carriers around under
spur That could be fun anyway. You know that targeting,

(26:08):
the targeting problem is hard, but it's it's not as
hard if you're a country like China that has satellites
and all kinds of ways of surveilling where our assets are.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
Yeah, we were kind of teasing the Huthi saying that
when they tried to attack the Truman, they were off
by one hundred miles, and I think the evening of
the fifteenth or the sixteenth, we downed a dozen of
their flying lawnmower drones as they tried to find the Truman.
We need to be careful. That's like the old joke.

(26:37):
Before World War One, the British Army was used to
chasing people through the desert armed with nothing but a
club as they had their lee infield. It's a little
different than the German Army. We just need to be
careful that we respect the fact that those anti shiplistic
missiles that the HOUTHI are lobbing at our carriers are

(26:59):
the moleivalent of a single shot forty five seventy rifle
versus a modern mauser of the row and from the
mid eighteen hundreds of late eighteen hundreds of technology. And
I'm concerned about that a little bit. But smart people
I think are very aware of that is just finding
the ability to get the holes in the proper sensors

(27:24):
and weapons forward. So, like you said, if we have
to take our carrier strike routs west, but we keep
moving them east because the threat's too big, then we've
pretty much seated a large part of the battle space
to whoever wants to take it, who has that modern capability.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
Yeah, and that's I mean, what's sun sou say that
the best general can win without fighting. I mean, if
you create a situation where your opponent looks at what
they're facing and goes, oh, well, it's not worth it.
What you know, we have to find some of the
way to deal with that, and that is winning without fighting.

Speaker 1 (27:57):
And one of the one of the keys to that is,
you know, not just the carriers with the air wing
we put on it. And I'm really looking forward whenever
we finally get the stats, and a lot of it
will be classified for years, maybe we'll get some good
data and a half a decade or more. But there
was the announcement that came out this week. They're calling
it the F forty seven, which is interesting, but in

(28:18):
GAD has been announced that Boeing's going to produce that.
Evidently the prototype has been flying for a few years,
so they know what they're getting in theory, and we
should be able to produce those in numbers. It's designed
to take the place of the F twenty two that
was produced and relatively, I think it was like one
hundred and sixty seven, of which a couple of dozen

(28:38):
of those aren't even combat capable. That'll be nice if
we can get that in production sooner more than later.
The Navy version of that is the FA x X, which,
now that Boeing has gotten in GAD. I would find
it exceptionally unlikely that they're also going to get the
FA xx because they have very different requirements. Thank goodness,

(28:59):
we're not trying to do an F one eleven or
an F thirty five where all services have the same
platform ands that we compromise into suboptimal systems. But I
read a few months ago that Lockey Martin has backed
out of the competition group for the FA xx for
the Navy, which left Boeing and Grumming. But if Boeing

(29:20):
is going to be taken in get my guess is
this decision has already been made, they just haven't finalized it.
An announcement that means that whatever no that Grumman is
developing will be the Navy's new aircraft. I think the
last aircraft that had a Grumming flavor on it was
the Aborted eight program back thirty some odd years ago.

(29:44):
It was canceled by then Secretary Defense Cheney. But it
would be nice to have something with some Grumman blood
coming back in. I was really curious when that announcement's
going to go and what in those final requirements concerned range.
I'd be very interested to see what that aircraft's range
is compared to the super Hornets that it will replace,
and eventually it'll fly with the F thirty five, which

(30:06):
doesn't have the best range in the world because in
the Pacific fight for the Navy and for the air
Force too. But they've got their own issues with these
new engines, the ability to do supercrews, a long ranged
carrier based aircraft carrying long range standoff weapons. Again going
back to what we were talking about with what a
lot of militarized afshore supply vessels can do for you,

(30:30):
that complicates the enemies scheme of maneuver when they don't
know what vector or what body of water is or
is not safe for them to assume there's no enemy.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
In Yeah, it's an interesting you know, some people are
saying that the current F thirty five maybe one of
the last man fighters. I don't know, I don't know,
you know, I know that the I'm sure the fighter
pilot community has a totally objective view on on the
on the approach to that, but I'm certain that they're

(31:04):
with the idea of these uh wingman unmanned wingman things
that the number of manned aircraft is going to diminish.
The question is are they going to be the management
are able to manage these these unmanned aircraft to make
them do what they want to do. What kind of
way you get into the communications aspect of this and
how we're going to tile this stuff together. My mind

(31:27):
just goes all fuzzy on app. It's a complicated problem.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
Yeah, I think some people, and if people take this personally,
that's fine with me. It's probably intended to. I think
there's a lot of people that are reading too much
military fiction and aren't thinking broad enough, or are relying
on exquisitely designed vignettes when they say that we're not
going to have manned fighter aircraft anymore. Technology and computing

(31:50):
and AI and sensors will enable expanded use of unmanned
system but there are some missions that you're not going
to give to an unmanned aircraft, for instance, interceptions unknown
aircraft coming in from point X. You need a human
being that is physically there that you can rely on
and who is accountable. You're not going to rely on

(32:13):
a video stream or a data stream coming from a
remote platform that can be blocked, spoofed, or otherwise bothered.
You need a human in that loop. And that's just
just one example. So people can theorize, but I think
the first nation to decide to have all their aviation
be unmanned on a tactical point of view will regret

(32:36):
that decision sooner more than later. So I would let
somebody else make that mistake while we continue to develop
proven systems, manned and unmanned that meet our requirements. When
you get your theory ahead of your practical experience, that's
when you get things like the original manning concept for LCA.

(33:00):
That's where you get the list of ah, let's produce
a hundred navalized one hundred and fifty five millimeter gun
that you can't use all the other one hundred and
fifty five millimeter ammunition and you can only use special
bespoke weapons. And that I believe would have been related
to the have some commonality with the ex caliber round,

(33:22):
which is useless now and Ukraine because the Russians have
found a way to mess up with its guidance system.
So yeah, I listen and I'll entertain that. But I'm
very suspect of those that look at me straight in
the eye and with confidence tell me that no new
aircraft should be unmanned. I don't think they're they're fully briefed.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
Yeah, I think that there's a certain a certain aspect
of the way human pilots fly that is different than
what you can. You know, you don't have to. You
don't have to. They have to. They have their own issues.
You know, they can't take the sharp turns that an
unmanned aircraft can because of the g forces and the

(34:05):
other things that would affect operations. But they, you know,
you're the intuitive ability to understand what's going on. The
ability is that some people have to get the big
picture as they're doing things that they can see more
than just what's right in front of them. They get
the whole bottle wax, so to speak. Uh, you know,
I think that's would be mentally difficult if you're a

(34:25):
drone pilot sitting on the beach somewhere, or if you're
trying to use AI to operate these things, because unless
they're very good at sorting out all kinds of oddities
that are out there, I think a lot of mistakes
could happen rather quickly using those concepts.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
Yeah, and you know, we're it's funny ways, it's good
to talk about, you know, the future developments and for
the fighting Pacific, what we have to replace the F eighteen.
It's it's important if we if we get it wrong,
we're in a little bit of a bucket of trouble.
That's why we have the super Hornet, because we got
a little bit of a bucket of tree. Then we

(35:00):
have just military one on one, one oh one, and
some interesting fantasy theories I think have been out there
to explain it. I think a little bit of excuses
in cope. I have my own very no shock here,
my own little cynical response to it. But we now
in response to the border security, we have two DDGs,

(35:23):
which as we empty VLS cells in the Red Sea,
I don't think we have a surplus of DDGs to
do border security in the Gulf of America and off
of I believe we have one in one of the
to the east and one to the west. I don't
know if what we're going after in Mexico with the
cartels really requires a DDG or is that really the

(35:46):
only thing that is available because we've under resourced our
coast guard.

Speaker 2 (35:50):
Yeah, you know, I've seen a number of justifications. I'm
and it's you know, a lot of it has to
do with the AEGES system and all that. And you know,
if it's I did some operations with the effect it's
Customs pilots to work for me for a while. And
you know they were flying this P three with a
radome on it. They have a pretty good air picture.
If you're using Customs aircraft, I think it's still in operation,

(36:10):
and there's no reason we can't use air force assets
to provide the same kind of picture, or even a
shore base all those things. The shore based aircraft with
the rate omes, I mean, it's the carrier based aircraft
with the rate homes. You know, we got a base
right there Corpus Christian you could fly out of. It's
unlike it you have to go far to do the job.
So I'm confused. I don't unless we expect I mean,

(36:32):
that's that's I don't even know what that is. It's
like using a a one oh five howitzer to squish
ants or something. It doesn't make any sense to me.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
And it's also frustrating the fact that there's a lot
of As most people know, there's a lot of inertia,
and any type of military and government system where like
the old dark humored British song about the First World War,
we're here because we're here, We're here because we're here. Yeah,
we have a half dozen US Coast Guard cutter stationed
out of Bahrain. Okay, I mean maybe maybe we should

(37:07):
have three of those in the based out of pasco Gooula, Mississippi,
and three out of San Diego to help help with
the mission. We have our DDGs and then we can
send our DDGs east, UH or West. I That arrangement
has been around for decades and I don't really think
that's the best use of the US Coast Guard. And
there was a real interesting I.

Speaker 2 (37:28):
Want to say, doesn't have something to do with with
law enforcement having that you know, either have a ship
with an alley an ld out on it or the
Coast Guard guys because US Navy, I mean this uh
can't do can't arrest people and all that good stuff

(37:50):
because you know, and I think it's a mix up
on the Posse Comatatis Act. But the idea was you
could use there our Navy ships to provide the info
that the and deliver the law enforcement detachments. But the
Coast Guard guys had to do all the legal side
of it.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
Yeah, I read where the DDGs will have Coast Guard
debts on them in order to do that, and we've
done stuff like this before. An absolute beautiful ship. Shame
we only built one, but the old USS Long Beach
CGN nine. Her last deployment I think it was ninety
three or so, it was in the Caribbean to encounter

(38:29):
narcotics because she was available and she's about to be decommissioned,
so they sent her out there, the most glorious thing
for a nuclear powered cruiser with beautiful missiles on it
to do. But she could with her radar and it
weren't even as she could cover the Caribbean pretty darn well,
So you had that capability. But yeah, we've done that before.

(38:52):
I just don't think with a lukewarm fight taking place
right now and the Red Sea that maybe there's a
very good excuse in the skiff that they could explain
to it. But the optics of having DDGs off of
Mexico while we have our Coastguard cutters defending the coast

(39:13):
of Bahrain and Cutter and Kuwait, it's not a good visual.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
The Coast Guard was over there, I thought originally because
we were doing the global War on Terror and they
wanted to get involved in that, and then correct, I'm
not sure what happened after that that we've kept them
over there, but I can't imagine it's the kind of
duty that those young people thought they were going to
get into when they joined up for the Coast Guard.

Speaker 1 (39:35):
No, but I just realized it was forty eight minutes
after the hours, like, wait a minute, Because the great
thing about mid Rats is the elder statements of mid
Rats actually was not on a big wheel during the
Vietnam the post Vietnam era, whereas I was, so you

(39:56):
I just know about it theoretical and listening to my
da AD's friends who were Korean War veterans, so they
had that whole point of view of the nineteen seventies.
But you remember the nineteen seventies. You were in the
military in the nineteen seventies, and you know the struggles
that we had after the Vietnam War, and it seemed,

(40:16):
I don't know if you want to draw the line
at Grenada or whatever, but there was a certain impression
of the military of the nineteen seventies, and the baby
boomers were never going to be able to military people. Well,
that actually worked out. Okay, everything worked fine. And there
was an interesting article in the Financial Times as Germany
looks at trying to get above two percent and get

(40:38):
their army going. And I wanted to ask you about
what you saw in person as we turned from what
was generally saw as the problematic US military of the
early mid to end of the nineteen seventies. A lot
to be proud of afterwards. Is it was titled that's
kind of funny German army struggles to get gen Z
recruits ready for war and I remember a gen X guy.

(41:00):
People say, oh, these gen X slackers will never make
good military people. I think we did okay. But here's
a little quote from the article. I just wanted to
get your take. What advice you would give to the Germans.
I'll try at the laugh of it is kind of
funny to read quote from the Financial Times, and I'll
link this over on the show page. As a podcaster
and a freelance journalist, journalist Ole Nymann Nimoyn, I think

(41:22):
maybe I'm bad with German names anyway, admits he enjoys
freedom of expression and other democratic rights in his home country.
Of Germany, but he would not fight or die for it.
In a book published this week titled Why I Would
Never Fight for My Country, the twenty seven year old
argues ordinary people should not be sent into battle on
behalf of nation states and their rulers, even to fend

(41:45):
off an invasion. Occupation to a foreign power might lead
to a quote shitty unquote life, he told the Financial Times.
Quote but I'd rather be occupied than dead unquote. Neumann,
a self described Marxist, does not to be representative of
gen Z in Germany, but his stance and his striking

(42:05):
honesty about it tapped into a wider questions facing Europe
as it re arms on the scale and has seen
since the Cold War. And they have actually have a
picture of this guy. I don't know. I won't say
what he looks like anyway, So that's that's the take
of the article, is they're going to have a problem
because the new generation doesn't want to rise to the occasion.

(42:25):
Blah blah blah. What I was told and what I
saw from a distance, in what I saw in middle
school and then saw the change in high school. It
really had to do with, yeah, changing policy and procedures.
But it was also about leadership and messaging that helped
bring around a problem. How long how long was that
period of time that you saw where things were quote

(42:47):
challenging or bad to when you had the turnaround, because
it looks like it was only seven eight years.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
Yeah, I would say, yeah. I would say actually from
seventy four to the end of the Carter administration when
and Reagan got elected and there was there you know,
it was we hadn't done we didn't we didn't win
the Vietnam War, and so there was a lot of
discontentment there. Raft A lot of people had joined the

(43:13):
service because of the originally because of the draft and
that that had ended. You know that the services were
cutting people because they were they were too large. But yeah,
morale was not real high in the services population, many
of whom only had heard the anti war slogans from well,

(43:36):
I don't know, nineteen sick whenever we first got involved
in Vietnam until he finally left, but that was what
they were brought up on. So you had a bunch
of people who were anti military, anti war, anti establishment,
many of whom now occupy government offices by the way,
and so yeah, it was an unpleasant period of time
to be in the service. And but you know, underneath

(43:57):
all that, there was still a core of people who
wanted to serve their country and who you know, when
we went to the all volunteer force, you could then
do things, you could weed out. It was really hard
getting rid of people for a while. I mean, you know,
you had all these programs. So if you got somebody
got caught using drugs, they'd go through a screening process
that could either put back in the service or they'd

(44:18):
get uh you know, some kind of uh you know,
eventually you could have I guess in some ways you
could discharge it. But it was it was a complicated
process and was made more difficult by the by the
Carter administration's approach to things. When Reagan took over and
the and the system became if you got caught using
drug it was a zero tolerance policy suddenly kicked in.

Speaker 1 (44:39):
Yeah, I remember the posters. It was like not on
my watts, not on my ship, not in my navy.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
Yeah. Well, and and that changed a lot of things
because once it was understood that your shipmate was no
longer going to be well theoretically, it was no longer
going to be buzzed out of his mind. Then you
you know, people really began and they you could lose
your job and stuff. People began to take things a
lot more professionally. And I think my overall thought was
at the end of involuntary servitude and the military, the

(45:08):
end of acceptance of behavior that shouldn't have been tolerate,
drug use and other things. You know that that brought
a whole different group of people in who were proud
to serve. And it kind of kicked back up when
we when we went to Greata and you ended up
with movies like Heartbreak Ridge, where you know, the military
was actually portrayed a fairly positive light and and all

(45:28):
of a sudden things kind of kind of turned around.
And then it didn't hurt that that with the as
we got along the Gulf War and other things. Gosh,
when did the first stop gun movie come out? Eight
four eighty five? Were there? Remember? Yeah, I don't go
anyway that that that played a big role in changing
a lot of people's minds because everybody I knew then
wanted to be fire pilots. Yeah, I think that. I think,

(45:49):
I mean, you could you could probably stick it right
at the biggest change came with the the all Volunteer
Force and the end of the the Carter administration moving
into because you know, everybody's down after the disaster and
Iran and try to rescue the hostages, you know, a great,
a great, very challenging operation and just happened to run

(46:13):
into Murphy's Law. But you know, there was a lot
of stuff and then it just kind of changed around
because Reagan brought that kind of optimism that was missing
before that. The long, the long hangover from Vietnam, I
think was kind of over there.

Speaker 1 (46:27):
Yeah, I would I would offer to my German and
European friends that I wouldn't take that article by Financial
Times all that seriously, because really what it takes, it
takes solid leadership and standards and drive. I was always
impressed with the German officers I served with when I
was a NATO. Their their professional core is exceptional, Their

(46:50):
n c o s are outstanding, so kind of like
which they've got a higher base to build from. That's
that's one thing. The great things that were done during
the Reagan era of the nineteen eight It was that
was led by the officer and enlisted personnel who worked
through the nineteen seventies, and they were that cores that

(47:13):
built such an impressive structure that won the Cold War.
It's not like the people who joined the Navy and
from nineteen eighty one can really claim the fact that
we fought one, not fought, but positioned in one the
Cold War, though they did in ways. It was really
those group of people that served in Vietnam and served
through the nineteen seventies. Then when they were given the

(47:35):
right direction and guidance and the right leadership, they were
able to write the force and do some impressive things.
And I would offer to the Germans if they're feeling
MOPy like that that they're interviewing the wrong people, they
absolutely can turned to.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
Yeah, I think you could find it. I mean, at
any point anytime in any country, you'll find some clown
like the guy they interviewed saying, you know, well I
better better dead than red. I mean, I think that
was the one of the old mottos. And you know,
there's they don't have a clue, they don't have a
clue of what it was like. Uh. Then some of

(48:11):
us saw the harm that was done, the damage that
was done by the forces of evil that were trying
to take over countries. I mean, if you look at
the death toll, just look at Mao's China, you know,
the death toll that his various efforts to control the
population took the you know, I mean millions of people
dead for no good reason, the Cambodians and the you know,

(48:32):
the killing fields, all that stuff. Anybody was keeping their
eyes open and knew what was going on. You didn't
get You didn't get less concerned about communism. You've got
more concerned about it because you could see that these
just like with the Islamist terrorists, you know, they don't care.
Life means nothing to them. And unless you get that,
and you see where the threats are, the China's again,

(48:53):
it's the Chinese, you know. I mean Mao told Nixon
or Kissinger that guys want nucas. We've got a lot
more people, you do. We can we can withstand a
you know, nuclear attack. And you're going, well that that
is not that is one of those really bizarre I
just you know, we've got so many people we don't care.
That's an amazing attitude.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
Yeah, and he wasn't bluffing. He really had that attitude.
And yeah, it's I don't know if we have, really
because I always kind of grant a bit when we
hear people talking about here in twenty twenty five, precedented,
this precedented that you know, if you look at the
fifteen year period, which is the same period of time

(49:34):
from twenty ten to now, of nineteen sixty five to
nineteen eighty. You mentioned it, and it just came to
mind as you were talking about the Cultural Revolution, the
Vietnam War, the killing fields of Cambodia, and you can
kind of bookend it at the other at the end
of the nineteen seventies with the Iranian Revolution and all

(49:56):
the secondary effects. We're still dealing with. Things are actually, yeah,
they're there are some challenges things to be concerned with
right now. But those who live be from nineteen sixty
five to nineteen eighty, that's a benchmark. I don't think
we've really looked at or talked about much about the
not only the rapid change and the shocking change, but

(50:17):
it's just some of the unmitigated horror of that time
period that we really don't haven't seen the last fifteen years.
It should keep people humble, also be a little bit
worried because the nightmar Is fifteen years like that could
absolutely show up again.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
Oh it goes on all the time. You look at
the Rwanda and the Hutus and the Tutsis, you know that,
and what was going on Somalia the first time we
got involved there, and you know it led to Blackhawk
down in our tales between the leg withdrawal, the barracks
bombing in the Bay Rout that killed all the Marines
and got us to leave that time, even when Reagan

(50:55):
was president. So you know, it is a march of
these fanatics. Don't here what brand of fanaticism they have
with islamis their you know, beliefs or communism, they you know,
they don't they don't ever stop. And you know there
has to be some forces that that and some group
of people will stand up against it. And you know,

(51:17):
so far, for the most part it's been the United States.
Now you can look back on our history in the
last few years and go, well, you know, we tried
to do the right thing in Afghanistan. We tried to
do the right thing interact. But the underestimation of how
large the problems were and what they were trying to do,
I think really cut deeply into the souls, the people

(51:39):
that went over there and fought and came back and
got and got sent back and back and back. And
you knew that, you know, we were it was the
Battle of Sisyphus. You were pushing it rock up hill,
but it was rolling right back down. We were trying
to do something that couldn't be done. That is the
other side of it is we need a much more
realistic approach. And this is what I thought we were
gonna get with Colin Powell, and we did get at
first was you know, they if you're going to go in,

(52:01):
do it, go do it big, and then get out.
You don't have to you know, the whole nation building
thing we weren't going to do. Then we ended up
doing every place. You know that his original tenants, which
he took from somebody else. I can't remember who the
original originator of those things was, but you know, those
those were great ideas that we should still listen to,
even though we didn't always didn't listen. He didn't even

(52:21):
listened to himself after a while.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
And when I was a NATO staff officer, I had
a because you have to put something on your walls,
I had a picture of Colin Power and Powell and
his thirteen Rules of Leadership up there, and I took
it down in two thousand and eight. But for for topics,
I'll explain over beers sometimes. Yeah, it's I think you're right.

(52:45):
He his theories and that realist view. It would have
been nice if it won out, and I think we
could use a little bit more of that. That's why
I'm willing to give a lot of grace and leeway
to Bridge Colby. I'm not aligned with everything Bridge said,
but I'm not fully aligned with anybody. That's okay, But
having a realistic view of things, I think that helps

(53:06):
making the hard and correct decision. Whereas yeah, we can,
we can do this in Afghanistan, that was the soft
and easy decision that actually didn't accomplish anything but what
it accomplished in the end. So that is the sad
reality next to the fact that we're already over so
we got.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
Yeah, well, well you know, let's go on. I mean it,
the the ability to get people whipped out of shape
for no good reason, but to have them turn violent
is it's like what Tesla is facing. You know that
why people would would do the things they're doing to
other people's cars had nothing to do with the Tesla,

(53:43):
you know, because they don't like the guy who founded
the company, although they loved him when it was because
he had these electric cars were good for the environment.
It's it is. If you want an example of how
mob terror gets started and how it can ratchet up
so quickly, that is that is a great example.

Speaker 1 (53:58):
There is a little switch in the human and brained
that for some people is eagerly easily tricked off like that.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
Yeah, and it's been noted in a lot of a
lot of books I used to read, and we'll probably
read more of.

Speaker 1 (54:11):
Well, that's great because that would give us more things
to talk about in the future. You got anything that
you're at your bubble around that this week that people
might see.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
No, probably more on all this, you know, the car
I'm really fascinated by the way we're looking at the
carriers and how this is going to change. But I'm
much more anxious that we get moving on these alternative
you know, there was a big discussion with the last
CNO about you know, she was going to crank the
levers of whatever and get this production going on these
other assets. Well we need to now is the time.

(54:40):
There is no there is. We're running out of time.
So I hope that Secretary of Hexith and whoever our
Secretary of the maybe is going to be, and all
those forces and DD get moving on this stuff.

Speaker 1 (54:51):
Yeah, I've I don't know whether I want to write
on it or not. But one thing I'm looking at
for tomorrow is Wall Street Journal had an article that
folk because this is some of the challenges with my baby,
I e. The Constellation class frigate. I may just have
to take a deep breath and uh and write on
that tomorrow, mostly just quoting other people's words because uh,

(55:12):
it's uh, it's a it's a sad thing. So that's
about all I've got to start off too.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
All right, Well, then the next time we get together, well,
I'm sure we'll have great ideas. We're a wonderful guest.

Speaker 1 (55:20):
One of the others. So hey, thanks everybody. We had
a real active chat room today. I appreciate it. And
until next time. I hope everybody has a great Navy day.

Speaker 3 (55:29):
Cheers to reside, Paddy A, Mike Mondoney want to marry
me and a.

Speaker 4 (55:46):
Friend Cody for You'll be to blame hold me folding
all the a way to dimpleary. It's a long way
to go. It's a long way to diplar ary to

(56:12):
the Queen, go think on it fair well, lift not well.
It's a long long way to dippery. But my wide,
my day,