Episode 729: High Summer Free For All, from the CNO, to unmanned systems, to ... Austria?

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander, an
Eagle one from Eagle Speak at Seer Shore your home
for a discussion of national security issues and all things maritime,
and Welcome board everybody to another edition of mid Rats.
We greatly appreciate you taking time to join us today,
and if you are with us live, I always like

(00:50):
to put out the invitation. If you go over you
can find the chat room. If you are so inclined,
you can hop right in there. We've got Kent and
NEC already in there. Welcome you aboard. If during the
course of the hour you have some observations you would
like to share, or even a question you would like
to direct to mark O myself, that's the perfect place
to do it, because we'll be in there with you

(01:11):
during the course of the show. That it is especially
applicable for today because we've got our ever popular free
for all format. We have our outline of a few
topics that have been bugging us for a while that
we want to talk about. But of course there ought
to be something that you have that you would like
us to chat about. Put it in the chat room
and we will try to fold it into the conversation

(01:31):
and if we make a comment, do you think might
be missing a little extra detail that you wanted to add.
That's a great place to put it to. We'll be
glad to be put on report at our own expense,
like you also do my little altar call at the end.
If you don't already, because everybody can't join us live,
go over to spreaker, iTunes, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts.

(01:54):
Go find us we're there and subscribe and that way
we'll be ready for you whenever you're able to come
join us. So, hey, Mark, happy August to you. We've
got for those in the in the glorious South like
we are. We've had a cold front come through today,
so we're having some good October weather with highs in
the seventies and eighties. But hey, welcome aboard. I was

(02:14):
thinking just kind of kick things off because we are
predominantly a maritime a podcast. We both have a navy background,
we would not be doing our job and we didn't
recognize that it looks like white smoke has come out
of opnav or at least a Senate. We have a Cno.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah, it's good news, and the good news is that
he's kind of a technical guy and a submariner, and
he runs. He wants the ships to be built and
we need more, and he's I think he's going to
do the CNO's job is really difficult these days because
he didn't really he's not an operational commander. He's a

(02:52):
budget guy, I guess more any thing else. You probably
know more about than I do. But I'm hoping that
he speaks the right lingo and gets people moving on
these projects that always get generated and then never move much.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeah, the old train man and equip and we've done
shows about the Polls, gold Water Nickels Nickels structure, but
there's hey, you can't do anything about It's a structure
we have. We need somebody who can get in place
and maximize that position. That best positions, not so much themselves,
are our Navy today. But I think that that more

(03:27):
than most any job, it's a place that you need
to have a mind towards stewardship in the long term.
So when you turn it over to your relief, not
so much everybody talks about what great things that you did,
but in ten years people look back and go, wow,
you look at the seeds that were planted by C

(03:49):
and O calledal that they're back in twenty six and
we're really starting to bear fruit with it right now. Boy,
that has set the standard for what we need because
a lot, I think you and I have been talking
about for so long, a lot of the problems that
we have is and it's natural because of the soup
in which they swim in and within a commute of DC.

(04:12):
It's not so much the palm cycle or the next
meeting up on the hill, but you have to find
some way to be able to lead and manage because
there's a lot of management that goes on in that job,
in that multi billion dollar operation that we have, that
is focused on the long term because the out years

(04:32):
eventually become the now. And you know, as you and
I were kind of talking in the pre show, a
couple of things we've talked about and we have been
I mean, you're well, in the out years, they'll do xxx.
We've been doing this long enough. The out years and
the long term, well it's twenty twenty five, it's here.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yeah, Well it's uh, we've got a lot of support.
I mean the second now has made I think eleven
visits to a ship lately. I think somebody's got the
memo that shipyards are important. He's also stressing, as our
good friend Hann said that the commercial ship building is
vital to naval ship building and and the justification for

(05:13):
a strong navy has always been that you have a
strong merchant marine that you can, you know, I'm sure
be able to go anywhere and do whatever it needs
to do too, So that's good. We've got congress people
involved and pointing money out and I think that you
know this is this is a good time to be
in the UH. Let's let's put our work gloves on

(05:36):
and UH start bended metal and UH and and can
engage in some experiments. I think that one of the
other things that came out is is UH the push
by one of the same in that group. Anyway, we're
pushing for these unmanned UH what they call them.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
I actually actually took notes.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
I have a cheat sheet modular Attack surface Craft program
and that's from them. I was thinking of PMS four
oh six, which is the groups it's pushing that. So
you know they have any idea and I swear as
I told you that they are stealing to your ideas
because they One of the descriptions that they use is
they want them to be non exquisite, which you know,

(06:24):
harkens back to the days when we used to discuss
Ford's not Ferraris and quit making the Tiffany class ships.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
Yeah, I saw that and it just put a big,
big grant on my face. And I'm glad you mentioned
Jerry hendricks Fords versus Ferraris and if people in the
audience will occasionally tell me sometimes people don't like when
we kind of preen our own feathers, but damn it,
if we don't, nobody will. But a lot of what
we're seeing today. In my intro I talked about long
term stuff. Jerry hendricks Ford and Ferraris is nine to

(06:57):
ten timeframe. I know you've been writing about this since
and you and I both I know we were talking
in the pre show and I've i'll put you on
the spot where Mac Mark dig this link up from
two thousand and eight. I'll put in the show notes.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
If I can.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
Somewhere around that time we started talking about the similar
issues the pursuit. That's one of the underlying characteristics of
the first decade of this century, especially the first half
decade that searched for the exquisite, the the high cost,
high fragility, the way the systems were pushing risk to

(07:36):
the side. And we've all seen the fruit. We've all
talked about it, and I know that we've actually talked
to Jerry about it here on the show, and I
think we've both written about it before. A decade ago
we had the X forty seven Bravo showed the ability
for an unmanned aircraft to land and take off, and
I remember we all it was kind of Lucy Charlie
Rout of the football where we were like, hey, this

(07:57):
is great. Let's build a squadron worth of them, come
up like a bunch of raiders from Battlestar Galactica in
the hangar bay. Give it to the air wing. Let
sailors work on it, let aviators figure out what it
is a good use for it. Do the simple things
like tanking first, and then maybe you could put some
basic reconnaisances of but let's just get them out there
see whether this is something we can do down the

(08:19):
road and the usual suspects of navire stuck a steak
through its heart and poured garlic in its intakes and
so we lost a decade of experimentation and the modular
attack surface craft. I guess we're supposed to call mask
Prairie Mask here, unlest let's all just recycle the same names.
That is, look on the surface side that they're going down.

(08:39):
And I did have I took notes and cheat sheets,
and I just for the listeners to know, Mark and
I don't have pre meetings to arrange our pre meetings
to our meetings to our pre show to do the podcast.
We kind of kind of come in just putting our
cards on the table thirty seconds before we go live.
But this is one area that we both overlapped. And
some of them notes that I took is they're going

(09:02):
to look at three type of designs. They want a baseline,
a high capacity, and a single load basically variants Alpha
Bravo Charlie. Again, I don't know the details, but that's
kind of what I'm reading between the lines here and
the baseline and this is modest and things that the
Mark you've written about and we've talked about here with
a lot of our guests is take what we have

(09:24):
now that we know that works, put that together and
then you can do the buzzer, light year stuff later
down the road. But let's get stuff displacing water, making
shadows on the ramp especially. So what they're looking at
is just putting together what they've already done in a
lot of the experiments that we've seen these smaller ships
but you know, crawl, walk, run. They're looking at the

(09:45):
baseline two forty foot equivalent units FEUs, you know, a
standard shipping container that we've seen everything from the If
you can do that, it can do the Mark seventy
expendable launcher that carries either the SM six which has
both air and anti service capability and also t LAM
well carry two of those have a twenty five hundred

(10:07):
nautical mile or range at twenty five knots, and a
power requirement for the baseline I think with seventy five kilowatts,
which can let you look down the road for directed
energy weapons in five ten years, whenever we have something
that really is worth the effort and the thing that
just puts a nice bow on this. And I don't

(10:29):
know when they're actually maybe is written in a different article,
but when they give the contract to when they want
a product is eighteen months. I'd for eight months. But
that's just me. But I'll take eighteen months to deliver that,
and it doesn't look like if And again I'm using
the power of optimism here, but people, I've been working

(10:50):
this for a while. If they have mastered the autonomous
engineering of the existing diesel platforms so that can run
autonomously when you look at both their primary, secondary and
tertiary requirements in there is things that we've talked about
about MCN how it can operate in that regard, it's autonomy,

(11:12):
and it's C two lash up. I'm sure there's a
lot of stuff in the skiff door that would alleviate
a lot of our concerns. So again I'm willing to
be heartbroken again. But it looks from the enter when
you look at where we were in this stage or
things like DDG one thousand and lcs, compared to where
we are in the stage with this program, this looks achievable, reachable.

(11:36):
It's not going to, i think, be blow people who
are into military fiction doors off, but it looks like
something we could actually put in the fleet if we
have it. Let's say they give the award in six months,
so twenty four months from now, that'd be the summer
of twenty twenty seven has something displacing water the summer

(11:57):
of twenty twenty seven, it deploys in twenty twenty nine,
does its third deployment twenty thirty five. Twenty thirty five
is really really close to where we are and are
right now. So I think there's a cause for optimism.
And this is something that they're also going to build
to not NAVISI standards, but commercial shipbuilding standards because they

(12:22):
see no MARS from darp up is a really neat
looking ship stands for no manning required ship program. So
without all the habitability issues heads and beds and galleys
and stuff that you see in the u USX one Defiant,
that's going to say we hope production time facilities. So
if you want to grow and distribute your risk and

(12:44):
get more VLS cells out there, given the limitation for
our frigates and our destroyers in the next ten years,
well I think this is a great opportunity to do
that and to learn a lot while doing it.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
Yeah, I don't. I just thinking of all the creative
people we have out in the middle of the country
building bass boats and stuff who could be turned onto
projects like this and go. You know, we need these
things to be like this and like that, and we
you know, basically we want to be able to run
across the ocean and hold a couple of containers of

(13:20):
missiles that we we're going to use and you know
after that, uh, they're expendable or if they can return home,
that's great. But otherwise, you know, what, what have you got?
What's your imagination? Say you can do? And they've got
they already got the designs using the offshore supply boats,
that's Great's let's buy a bunch of those. It's give

(13:40):
them to our sailors out there. Let's you know, let
them go out and play with them, you know, with
with not worth two or three. You know, let's get
a couple of dozen out there and then experiment with
the fleet. You know, how are we going to use
these things? What good is this? What would we like
to see that we don't currently have? What corners do
we want to be able to look around? You can
you can we build these things so that they launch

(14:03):
their own drone, aerial drones or some surface craft and
and you know that's that's really it's really embraced this
chance to to play with new toys and and to
see how we can expand our operations successfully and and uh,
you know, quit going back to the old playbook. Well,
you know we're gonna build destroyers and frigates because by golly,

(14:25):
we've always built destroyers and frigates. Things have changed, you, Yeah,
I was just I just wrote a thing on substack
for this basically, but in shore operations or even operations
that are not that close to shore, everything's changed.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
The fact that the Houthis.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
And and other people have these anti ship missiles that
they can launch quite a way. You know, you don't
want to bring your billion dollar ships within that range
unless you're fairly sure that you've got some way of
taking out what's being thrown at you. And you know
you're always going to fight the law of numbers that
that It's like the difference between a machine gun and

(15:03):
a volley of muskets. Machine gun doesn't have to reload
quite as slowly as the muskets do, so you know,
if you're gonna wait, if they can overload your systems,
they're gonna be leakers. We have to think about how
we're gonna address that. This is a great way use
this kind of vessel, the kind of vessels are discussing
to go in and take care of some of that stuff.

(15:25):
I mean, I just I think that your possibilities are
great for this kind of program.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, but I can only imagine when I was deep
into the Navy com systems a couple of decades ago,
plus time flies and you have fun. I can only
imagine where we are at this point right now. That
enables us to have with if we're doing our coding right,
our ability to have these ships operate autonomously. It's it's

(15:51):
pretty exciting, and not just on the surface. And I
think along the line to ver Admiral Meyer, piece be
upon him the it learn a little, test, a little, learn,
a little test, a little, learn a lot. Anyway, you
look at what we have besides the Defiant, they've also

(16:14):
been playing around for a while, just a couple of
the systems underseas, the the Manatar Ray u UV, and
we're getting ready to do some fun stuff with the
Orca extra Large u u V. Both of those come
along with that all important item called payload. A lot
of the preliminary experimental stuff does doesn't have the ability

(16:34):
to do that. And you know, just like with the
old X forty seven bravo, you know what you can
bring fuel in, you can bring other things with as well,
So that gives the ability to to experiment in different
mission sets that you know. It's one thing to you know,
take whole one USS constellation to go in someplace really

(16:58):
really dangerous and it hits a mine or eats a
missile and you've got fifty dead sailors to deal with
in twenty POWs. But if your biggest worry is the
fact that they've managed to get a grappling hook behind
the stern of a XLUUV, if you've designed it correctly,

(17:18):
you'll be able to make sure they don't get access
to the real sexy stuff. But that's a different matter altogether,
from not just a national crisis point of view, but
also from an escalatory d escalatory as we've seen when
the Chinese have pulled up some of our sea gliders.
It's one thing if somebody digs up your unmanned systems,

(17:38):
or point our hoothies have shot down how many of
our UAVs over Yemen. Kind of shrug your shoulder at that.
But when you're writing letters because you got dead sailors,
that has a very different national reaction. So having these
systems in the fleet sooner more than later, I think

(17:58):
it gives our national command authority a little more flexibility
on projecting our national interest or sticking our nose where
maybe people don't want it to stick it that we
would otherwise have with manned systems. And we're not the
only people doing this, and we might as well be
the ones who are doing it best and doing it earliest.

(18:18):
And I think if we can tap into and not
blunt what really is one of the comparative advantages of
the American national character. That is risk taking, that is imagination,
that is celebrating the strange and weird person that has

(18:41):
some great ideas as opposed to trying to force them
into another system. We fight that on a regular basis,
but I think at our core we have more of
an opportunity than most nations to discover those hidden jewels
of human capital that can really make a huge difference
and bring it into the national security arena to our advantage.

(19:04):
And I think this area will attract already has really
attracted those types of personalities if we can just design
the system not to strangle them in their grave or
put them in unproductive areas. There's there's a lot of
growth potential here. Not to replace per se the Navy
and its capabilities of twenty twenty five, but to enhance

(19:26):
them in areas that otherwise might be limited because of
larger concerns that come with MANN systems.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
Yeah, I've it's the I'm sitting. I was sitting air
watching the DDGs fending off the hoothy attacks and the
and the carrier aircrafts and all the rest of it,
and I was thinking, you know, we used to have
these long linger drones. I mean, these things that were
almost like the Gossamer Condor, remember that, that really light

(19:55):
aircraft that could stay up forever basically, And you know,
why are we not having one of those hanging over
where the houthis live and work along with other kinds
of you know, whatever kind of lingering munition system we have,
and we don't have to put ships in danger. I mean,
we could do this from above and with with the

(20:20):
systems that we already have the knowledge to make and use.
And if we can't get it, then we need to
take a lesson from the from the Ukrainians, they put
a bunch of their their drones. They have these almost
like a pop up mind but just like a pop
up drone, the drone detects activity and it goes after
what it detects, you know. And it's so it's lying
on the ground or wherever it is, and maybe sitting

(20:42):
in a tree someplace, and it detects something, it goes
after it. I don't understand why we're not exploiting that
kind of knowledge and technology take care of problems like
the the Hohothies say, running out there there their hardware
so they can attack ships and it doesn't cost much
and it's low risk to humans. And as we just said,

(21:05):
you know, all it takes is one leaker, you've got
a problem. So if we can minimize that possibility by
being a lot smarter than we have been by taking
a billion dollar ship and putting it fifteen miles off
shore on the Red Sea.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
You know, let's talk about the economics of strikes. It's
amazing the things that are well hidden in the attic
of your mind that will pop out, talking about investment
versus you know, chasing people who live in very primitive
situations with very advanced weapons. But sometimes there's advanced weapons,

(21:40):
you know, do you want to take a huge risk
and invest a billion dollars or do you want to
take almost no risk and invest a few hundred million dollars?
And we have, I think coming a really nice intersection
of opportunities here that are you're gonna if you're gonna

(22:00):
have a Battlestar Galactica uniform, then you gotta start thinking
like Battlestar Galactica. So old sal here has a mission
for our space force here. And it goes back to
when I was still in diapers and you were I
was prev I was previngt a fleet ran the fleet
back in the in the late sixties. There is an

(22:22):
initial concept the Rods from God, which was the theory
of in orbit nothing explosive, You don't have to just telephone.
I don't know how big they were. It depends upon
what source you get from. But a small telephone pole
sized uh tungusen rod in space that you can use

(22:43):
as a weapon doesn't need explosive because it has F
equals m A and a couple of Einstein theories behind it.
But we have relatively nowadays low cost to get stuff
into orbit. We have unusually precise targeting even from space

(23:05):
autonomous systems in space. What's the Air Force little mini
space shuttle thing. I think it's next mission. It's supposed
to go up in orbit for a year doing whatever.
It's yeah, yeah, you know, when you're looking at a situation,
whether the Iranian nuclear facilities are many launch facilities are
the three gorgeous damn whatever, You're looking at something that

(23:28):
needs a lot of tender love and care, and you
want to measure minimize risk. Look at comparative advantage. What's
another comparative advantage that America has, Yes, the Chinese and
the Russians, And if you want to be generous, heck,
the Indians could do this too, and probably israelis. You know,
let's look again at the Rods from God program. The

(23:49):
only in my using my Google food while I'm talking,
the only really legal restrictions that I can see, speaking
of me and diapers is the nineteen sixties seven Outer
Space Treaty that prohibits the placement of weapons of mass
destruction and orbit. Well, a bunch of tungsten in orbit.

(24:09):
It's not really a weapon of mass destruction as we
all understand it. So again, it would be useful for everything. No,
but if I'm given the option of having to go
do something like Iran with seven aircraft with a few
hundred supporting, or some guy dressed like Admiral Odama from

(24:31):
Battles Dar Galactica walks in and says, actually, we've got
twelve rods from gods that can do more than that.
All you have to do is green line it. That's
something sexy. So it kind of folds in because it
would be an unmanned system. It's not like in nineteen
sixty seven where you just keptn't put something like that
in orbit without having people babysit it. It just just

(24:52):
takes the ability to experiment, and from what I've been
able to see an open source when people are well,
what about the militarization of space? Got news worship made.
It's already militarized, we just don't talk about it. So
I think that that also is something that that technology,
just like with the unmanssistance we're talking about here, that

(25:13):
we're getting an intersection that I think it's worth looking
at again, something that generations that people have said, boy,
this is a great capability.

Speaker 2 (25:21):
Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, hind line and the moon
is a harsh mistress. You know, he had the kind
of that concept that was going to be shooting rocks
at Earth somehow. And then Jerry Purnell in the Mote
in God's Eye, Larry Nevin and Jerry Burnell they had
they had the rod from God concept, and you know
it was and we propose that somewhere, I think, and

(25:42):
I talked about it, and one other brought one of
our other shows, and you know, one of the space
science guys jumped up and goes, you know, there's some
kinetic there's some real issues aiming that stuff, and and
all that. I thought, well, yeah, okay, you know, we're
smarter than we used to be. I wonder, I wonder,
you know, how how much we would trust systems making
sure that these things were actually as accurate. Who would

(26:04):
like them to be. We don't want them going off.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
And if we can do the hypersonics being launched from ships, yeah,
flying through windows x thousands of miles away, we could
probably adjust the algorithm from space.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
Okay, there you go. I mean, you know, I'm confident
engineers at the scientists going to work stuff out. But
it's and it's I mean, it's not that much different
than I guess the system that was supposed to be
on the DDG or dd D when there is d
D one thousand. Weren't they supposed to have high velocity
sticks that we're going to shoot some that were the

(26:39):
same thing, right.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
Yeah, they're extended range one fifty five. They are going
to be we're going to be putting a dozen of
the conventional what whatever we're calling conventional prompt strike. Can
we just give it a name, call it Thor's hammer
or thing like that. That's a great thing about the
sparrow and the PX and all that other stuff, as
we're giving them names as opposed to numbers and designators.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
Well, I was thinking of the rail gun. I mean,
then the rail gun it doesn't shoot an explosive thing.
That's the whole thing. It was ethicals. M. You're gonna
use that formula to shoot I don't know, rebar that
the guy you're at mad at and if it works right,
you know, you can carry a whole much more rebar
than you can five inch or eight inch rounds.

Speaker 1 (27:28):
Yeah, it's it's always an interesting time. It just depends
whether it's positive interesting or negative. And there's it's easy
to be negative. It's easy to be really cynical, and
I think that's actually helpful because it stops you from
doing stupid things. But there are some movements right now
that again going back to our opening talking about the

(27:49):
new cno man train and equip the recruiting problem in
the last nine months has turned around. So some of
the things that were done in the bad years to
keep our recruits in maybe those can be dialed back
so we increase the additional quality objectively speaking of what

(28:10):
we're doing it training if we can and I don't
have the figures in front of me whether we're doing
this yet, but if we can claw back from the
quote Joint Force unquote the amount of days we have
our fleet steaming forward as opposed to giving them enough

(28:31):
time to come back and properly maintain their ships, get
their depot level maintenance, and get their training done so
they're at a higher readiness state. And the equipment part,
I think at the top of this list has got
to be the submarine problem, the constellation, and going back
also to something that you mentioned earlier on in the show,

(28:54):
show Me what You're the higher up you go, the
most precious thing, kind of like when you're a kid,
and you're parents. The most precious thing is time. Look
at what your senior leaders are investing their time in,
and that will tell you, in a large extent what
their priority is, probably based upon what their boss has

(29:15):
told in their priority is. And his first few months
of his tenure, what did you say, eighteen shipyard visits
eleven eleven? Yeah, it was eighteen months eleven shipyard visits
by the Secretary of the Navy. That's a lot of
his time and travel with everything else going on and

(29:35):
learning the new job and things like that, And so
that tells you where a lot of that focus is
going to come from him. And so now that we
have the CNO officially in place, I don't think that
he needs to go in with a complete blank slate
with the second nov with you know second, now, what
are your priorities? I think it's it's pretty straightforward. And

(29:57):
given the technical nature of nuclear submarine and the fact
that the new CNO went to an ACC school with
a degree in engineering, he knows he knows differential equations.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
But he's a wolfpack guy from NC State.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
Well, what can you say? You know, you do, you do,
do the best you can with what you have. Not
everybody can go to Duke, not every Only Andy McCabe
can go to Duke. So it'll work out well. I
think we have the right people in place. Congress. We're
going into an election year, so we'll probably get another

(30:35):
what five months of productive work until everybody goes into
election mode. But good things have happened during election years too.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
There's more too. Did you know that Ben Coleman has
been nominated to be the Assistant Secretary of Navy from
Manpower Reserve affairs.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
Ben's a solid guy.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
Oh well, he's he He left the Navy because he
didn't feel it was aggressive enough in promoting good young
officers with ideas is I can't wait to see if
he if he does in fact get that job. I
think he's talked to Congress or the committee about the
Farm Service Committee about it. But if he does get

(31:12):
that job, I just see talking about revolution military affairs.
I mean that's gonna you know. That's the thing is,
you can't you know, people have always done things certain way.
They've they've got to learn that the as Dylan said,
the times they are changing.

Speaker 1 (31:27):
Yeah, and I think Ben has two things that are
coming with one. He's got a bone in his teeth
that folds into what we've been talking about during the
course of the show, you know, finding finding the right
environment that our comparative advantage over a lot of nations
that we have, and that was one of Ben's frustrations.
I don't want to speak for Ben. People can go
and research Ben Coleman himself, and I hope he gets

(31:47):
confirmed sooner more than later. But we just got our Cno,
we have to be patient with the system, et cetera,
et cetera. He also has a very good knowledge and
I would like to hear more from him about again
one of my one of my hobby horses, the US
Naval Reserve. Of all the services, I firmly stand by

(32:07):
my statement that the US Navy captures in their reserve
component the least of all the other services when it
comes to the investment that we've done, and our officer
and enlisted personnel who for many reasons, the best reasons
in the world, had decided to go pursue their path
of life in the civilian sector after serving their nation

(32:29):
for a few years. And I think there's a great
opportunity here for Ben if he has the bandwidth and
the charter to do so to maybe look at how
the reserve component could hopefully be expanded and be put
in a position to add as much value to the
Navy as the Air Force Reserve and the Army Reserve

(32:52):
and the Air National Guard and the Army National Guard,
which are quasi reserve forces. Insert your Constitution law four
hour discussion here does for the Army in the Air Force.
So again, we were looking for, you know, reasons to
be optimistic. I think Ben is going to an extremely
important job, and he's a right guy with the right

(33:14):
energy and the right background to, if nothing else, point
out some of the things that people have been wanting
to be pointed out for quite a while.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
Yeah, and people need to know that he was part
of the original innovation cell in the CNO camp whatever
that group was called. You know. So he's a long
time change kind of guy. Let's make some change. He
was a I think he was a F eighteen correct
fox trot. We want to hold that against him, so yeah, anyway, cool, yeah, yeah, pointing.

(33:47):
Those guys are all over the place, so I guess
that's going into midsummer. When I was a NATO guy,
I learned the hard, learned the hard way that if
you wanted to get anything done, you had to get
it done.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
Before July and after the fifteenth. So before the first
of July and after September fifteenth except four December fifteenth
through about January fifteenth, you couldn't get anything done eight
because there's the Europeans like their holidays, So it's kind

(34:26):
of nice in the middle of the summer. In the
finest traditions of the American tradition, we're still working. We're
still gettingything done, though I don't think we're going to
get very many confirmations done because the Senate is going
to take their summer vacation. I'm not getting in a

(34:47):
summer vacation anyway, but they're not going to give the
president the ability to do recess appointments by having the
Senate coming to session for a couple of minutes every
three weeks or something like that on parliamentary maneuver. So
I don't know when Ben is going to be confirmed
and the other people that are still waiting. That's that's
one weakness of our system is the fact you can

(35:08):
have it. You know, when you go to parliamentary system
where you shift power right almost right after election. In
many cases, they've got a team ready to go to
the shadow cabinet. Other people boom boom boom, off they go.
Our system, we takes a long time to get in place.
So here we have the new administration has been in
power for most of the year, but he's going to

(35:31):
take over a year before he gets his full team
in place. That I guess, you know, you slow things down,
and it gives people time to think, et cetera, et cetera.
But it can be kind of frustrating here. So I
guess we'll have to wait for the next tranch of
appointments for the Secretary of the Navy to get his
full team in place, and the Secretary of Defense in
the Air Force and everybody else. I don't know. I

(35:53):
can't here in the fall.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
Can't he do recess appointments if they were actually recess?
You know, there was a big apparently there was a
big push to demand certain benefits for the Democrats that
the President said no to. And but I'm a little
fuzzy on recess appointments. But I thought, I thought if
the Congress actually wasn't recess, he could appoint a lot
of these people without having to think at them confirmed

(36:16):
through the Congress.

Speaker 1 (36:18):
Yeah, I think recess appointments are only good for a year,
so you have to go through the process anyway. You know, somebody,
somebody like Ben or other folks just be preferable. I
would rather wait and get them in and then let
them focus on their jobs, opposed to going well, you know,
I only want to be in the job for a year,
and if I do X, then I'm going to run

(36:39):
into a problem with Senator Y, and then that will
create problem Z. So I'm not gonna be able to
take action on it for another year. Time's too short.
I just that's one of the things about having a
narrow majority. And of course the House doesn't ha anyth
to do it. But even in the Senate, what is
a three a three vote margin, and it makes moving

(37:03):
a little difficult. But that's how our system is designed.
So the overall benefits positive, But for our Selfish needs
awarding the second half to have his whole team in place.
It's not the most ideal thing.

Speaker 2 (37:13):
In the world. Well, we're always learning from the people
in the chat room. Kent says. The recess appoinment is
good till the next elections. It would be a year
and a half. Oh for you know which, In the
year and a half you could do a lot of
good or a lot of damage, depending on who you are.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
So okay, Kent, as the mid Rats podcast parliamentarian. Would
the next election be the twenty twenty six congressional election
or the twenty twenty eight presidential election? Don't charge me
per hour either, he says, yes, So Kent is actually
in politics. He gives it. Okay, twenty twenty six, Thanks Kent. Yeah, see,

(37:52):
I told y'all we are in the chat room. We're
watching what y'all say. Yeah, I mean, see what else?

Speaker 2 (37:56):
What else? So people are worried about escorts or merchant ships,
and I gotten a little discussion about that too, because escortianships,
and we've talked about this before. I think escortianships across
the Pacific is a challenge if you don't have enough
destroyers and frigates and all that stuff, assuming you have
a threat. This is another place where I think we
could be a lot smarter. You know, you can. What

(38:17):
are you worried about? Worry about submarines, but a couple
of anti submarine helicopters on a deck on a merchant
ship or you know, tow an LCS behind a merchant
ship until you can get until they have a place
where they can operate with down running out of fuel
and let them carry helicopters, I mean, you know, and
also use the assets of unmanned aircraft or manned aircraft.

(38:39):
P eights have a pretty good range. Then you're talking
fifty five hundred miles from roughly from La to Guam,
and another some eleven hundred miles or something from Guam
to the Manila So you know, within that range, I'm
pretty sure a a P eight can fly that for.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
Yeah, it's got a good range the and it can
actually be refueled in the air, but it requires the
Air Force probe whatever the technical term is. It doesn't
it can't receive like our carry aircraft does and our
and everybody else in the world does with the probe
and drogue routine. You have to have that special US

(39:24):
Air Force connection to do that. It's funny if you
ever really want to trigger one of those P eight guys,
go well, if y'all can receive fuel, don't you give
fuel too? If that always gets a fun reaction for
good reasons.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
Yeah, probably not be a popular concept for them. Wait
a minute, we don't want to be tanker guys.

Speaker 1 (39:40):
I guarantee you there we go, Oh the the USS forward.
What's a P eight on top of them? Eighteen hours
a day for the next six months. Make it happen
and your matritype patrol aircraft just becomes a permit tanker,
So I can I can appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
Yeah, John, P eight is small compared it, but when
you consider that they'll put a buddy tank on fat
every few people these days, you know, I'm not sure
any aircraft is too small to be a tanker.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
Well you know, that's like people will make fun of
a pocket gun. Okay, well, you know, a thirty two
APC is a small gun, but it beats no gun,
So you know, take what you can get. Sometimes it's
not like we are producing viable tankers by the boat.
But I still think the math is interesting about the

(40:28):
number of casey one thirty five's that we still have
and are a plan to try to replace that number.
It's it's interesting, especially when you get you know, five
or six beers into a CAC one thirty five guy
and talk to them about their actual readiness rate. It's
very interesting, but they're slowly replacing it. I don't know
what they fixed all the problems with the new tanker,

(40:49):
but I think they have. It just took a lot
longer than they thought. The airbus that was the competitor
with the pegasusts, they were going to build that in Alabama,
but that what do they call it, the three point
thirty something. Anyway, that tanker works pretty well too for
our allies, so that's good.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
Yeah. Well, my dad was flying Case ninety seven's, which
were the old version of the I guess the BE
twenty nine, but made enlarge. They could carry fuel, but
they were so slow that in order to refuel the
befifty twos, they had to climb up to altitude and
then go into a dive so the befifty two wouldn't
stall out trying to get fuel from them.

Speaker 1 (41:30):
Yeah. I'm a huge fan of President Eisenhower, but I
have my critiques of him as well. One of it
was his whole new look view and all the nuclear
war by products that came from it, and again, trying
to compete with the huge masses of Soviet commissional forces.
They had to find some solution unless they wanted to

(41:51):
spend even more money on national defense than they already were,
but had the unnatural acts that were done in the
he's and sixties in the nuclear arena. Arena was interesting,
but they did some great things too. When you look
at how let's go to back that timeline we were
talking about with these very relatively primitive existing technology unmanned

(42:15):
surface vessels that we're going to be putting in the water,
compared that technology feet in that production feet compared to
how quickly we develop ballistic missile submarines. It's just it's
amazing how nimble and fast and relatively successful we were.
We did lose a couple of attack boats, which is
how we got our sub safe program that made us

(42:37):
even better. But I think the development of the ballistic
missile program is a feat of engineering and program management that,
right next to the standard missile and the EGIS program,
is something that, boy, that's a great benchmark for anybody
to look at, something to be proud of. It'd be
nice to have a modern version of that, But there

(43:00):
will be eventually. I just don't know what program that'll
be our winner will show up, but there's a lot
to be our previous generations had greater challenges and accomplished
great things with fewer technical resources. So if we can
get out of our own way, a much richer nation
is ours should be able to leap some of these

(43:22):
barriers that we have without having to do what we're doing.
And it's fine reaching out to South Korea and going, hey,
show us how to building ships. We've kind of forgotten how,
but that's okay. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
You know, when the BFG twos first came out and
were delivered to the Air Force, they had a wing
problem and they kept falling out of the sky. They
didn't cancel the BEFGY twos. They just fixed the problem
and then went back get it. I mean, they lost
a lot of crews, but that was the way it
was done in those days. It's just a different risk
We're much more risk averse than we were back in

(43:59):
those days, and that needs to we need to get
over that. I mean, it's one thing to be risk
averse enough to develop these these unmanned things. And what
really irritates me is that maybe was in the front
of this stuff. We had these unmanned aircraft. World War two,
we had these unmanned anti submarine drones, they dash units

(44:22):
in the fifties and sixties coming off our destroyers, and
it's difficult to imagine that we managed to squander all
that and usually because somebody, probably I think in the
I hate to say this, but in the aviation world, said,
you know, we really need to have a manned aircraft
to that mission because you guys are losing too many
of these cheap drones. Let's see if we can lose

(44:44):
lose a manned aircraft instead.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
I mean, even during the First Golf War we had
the overhead spotting by unmanned systance. So you're right, we
which you know now everybody's doing and we can't get
enough of that video from you reign of doing that.
But the Navy was doing that in the nineties. We
were ahead of the game, but then we just kind
of lost our mojo during the nineties more than most

(45:09):
people did. The Air Force, however, was able to get
the Predator, which then became the Reaper UAVs. I remember
the first time I saw the armed Predator Reaper. It
was at it I don't know if I can well
back then it was classified, so I won't say where

(45:29):
it was. But in a very remote place with it's like, hey,
what's that weird pein what's hanging from those wings? So
they the CIA and other government organizations, they they lapped
the Navy, but you can really see that under on
and above the Pacific. There is a lot of opportunity

(45:53):
to make up for some of our shortfalls because we're
not going to be able to build shipyards like the
Chinese have, just can't and if we could, we don't
have time to catch up to them. So we've got
to find some way to get additional assets out there,
and a good secondary effect of it as well. We
all know the welcoming committee that's going to be there.

(46:14):
If we have to move any sizable force west of Guam,
if the Chinese have to try to discriminate between fifty
targets as opposed to thirty targets, then that that's great too.
And these are our large enough ships that they can
help distribute the risk in that regard as well.

Speaker 2 (46:34):
Yeah, and you know, you know how you make that work.
You can put you could put fifty little speed boats
in the water with the radar reflectors or other enhancements,
and you know they they look exactly the same as
any other large thing out there. So unless you unless
you're going to eyeball each one, you can waste a

(46:55):
lot of ammunition trying to figure out who's.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
Who before we leave the Pacific. I think let's move
back to something we talked about over in the pre show,
because we've had her on a guest here before and
I wrote about something recently. We've both written about it,
and we talked about it quite a lot. Because everybody
likes to get out their map of World War two

(47:18):
and all the little islands hither and Yon that we
either had to claw back from the Japanese or we
just bypassed and let the Japanese surrender after we nuked
the mainland. But one of those islands that should be
at the top of everybody's head is Saipan. We had
over fifteen thousand casualties to take back this little tiny

(47:40):
island over near Tenian and a lot of these Confederated
states of micron Asia, they're independent, but they are affiliated
with the US Carter Area maassinations there. But the People's
Republic of China has made huge inroads there with a
very teenth injury mercantilistic combination of trade, bribes and Compromont

(48:10):
right under our noses, and Cleo Pascal has done great work,
more than almost anybody else. And if anybody was interested
over at my sub stack, I last wrote about it
on the thirtieth of July. But the bold faced item
here and a lot of this has to do with relationships,
and actually talked specifically about this offline with Cleo, because

(48:31):
a lot of international relations is just an extension of
personal relations and a lot of the mistakes that you
make in your interpersonal relationships, you can see those same
patterns between nations because they're all human institutions and we
all have the same brain stem, just wired differently from
person to person and nation to nation has their own

(48:52):
priorities and stuff. But while visiting Guam, I believe the
governor how to be personate Arnold Palacios, I believe a
Northern Mariana Islands from Saipan. He died under unknown circumstances
is probably the safest way to do it. As funeral

(49:12):
I believe might have been this weekend. I don't know,
but it's one of those things. He was one of
the few leaders in these islands that was standing up
to the Chinese corruption in the Chinese bad faith acting
that's going on in his neighborhood. And he did not
die of natural causes as one would expect. Maybe he did,
and maybe he had a congenital heart defect. We don't

(49:34):
know yet, but it's one of those things that you
have to send a message to the other island nations
that China's done all this stuff for you, but Uncle
Sam is here for you as well. It really would
be nice if we flooded the zone to help the
local authorities to find out how the governor died under

(49:55):
questionable circumstances. The FBI should send some of their people
out there at the funeral. I hope we sent a
very high profile delegation there. It matters. Thousands of Americans died,
tens of thousands were wounded and missing to take these

(50:17):
little tiny islands back in World War Two. If we
have to fight again in the Pacific, it's going to
be against China. And if we have to at D
plus zero, all of a sudden realize that we don't
have access to these associated nations anymore because the Chinese
Fishing company fishermen all of a sudden showed up in

(50:38):
little uniforms at the airport and have taken it and
we're going to have to expend time and resources to
take it back all because at peace we weren't paying
attention to people that we really have. When I consider
a senior partner, junior partner, obligation, servant leadership, everybody's supposed

(50:58):
to read those books. Why don't we practice it? Said,
I thought that I've had that in my scan in
my newsfeed. Try to get more information on it, because
it's a lot more important than what you would think
from the amount of news that we heard about it.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
Yeah, I think Cleo was disappointed at the representation by
the federal government was not very high. And you know,
she shot that she thought that sent the wrong message.
You can, people want to follow her on on x
you can do that because she she does post prettyregularly there. Yeah, that,

(51:37):
I mean, the whole uh, the part of the deal
was that they begin if you can get into Saipan,
you don't need a visa, And apparently what was happening
was Chinese and nationals were getting from Saipan to Guam,
where you do need a visa, but they were able
to get in and then they then they kept finding
some of these Chinese nationals around the military bases. Now,

(51:59):
you know, I lived on Wam. It's not a very
big island. It's kind of hard not to be a
near a military base. But you really don't want strangers
walking around Adderson Air Force Base or naval station there.
I mean, it's just there's a bunch of resort hotels
on Tumont Bay and other places that that this where
the if you're gonna if they are going to sneak

(52:19):
into the country, that's where they are to be headed.
But apparently it's not good enough for them. So it
is a problem, and it needs to be fixed, and
we need to keep an eye on that, very close
eye on that. I had a great thought while you
were talking one of the other things we need to
be concerned about. I was looking at the at the
navy oiler situation, and the fleet oilers were building the

(52:40):
new Lewis class and naming them all after apparently all
kinds of interesting people. And we're supposed to have twenty
of those, and they're supposed to replace the Kaiser class eventually.
And right now we've got I think four have been delivered,
ten ten ten or are procured, eight under contract, and

(53:04):
four more active. Yeah, anyway, it's it's a slow program.
And if and if you're going to have a fleet
and support the operations in the farther in the Far East,
you need to have all those oilers out as soon
as possible. I know that there are limitations and how
fast they can build them, but you know it would

(53:25):
be nice they could crank up the delivery schedule. Those
things get And it's not that the Kaisers are bad,
they're just they're just getting along in the tooth and
and it's time to replace them. Three of the Kaisers
I think have double hall, which is not required for warships,
but but it is something to be concerned about and

(53:48):
we need to we need This is one of those
cases where cno and and a second to get need
to get in there, start start raising a hell about
how slow slow this process is to get these these ships,
the design of which we are familiar produced. Let's see,
we're can rack set it.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
Up because we need more than what's outlined there. Everybody
knows that. And it's also one of those things that
everybody's been involved in the war games. These are high
value units. And when you have surface fleets that are
mostly except for your submarines and aircraft carrier they run
on oil. That you can have all the ships west

(54:27):
of the International date Line that you want, But if
you can't get your tankers to get past the International
date Line, because every time they do, they're eating a
missile because they can't defend themselves and you are not
escorting them, then you are combat ineffective. And we don't
just need the bare minimum for peace time operations. We
need a flexibility to replace combat losses, just like we

(54:49):
did in the Second World War. We've talked about the
Neoshio a few times, and in the modern context, where
as opposed to having lots of f oilers out there,
if you only have a few, they become an even
sexier target because you know that, okay, they can do something,
but your console takers cannot. We've been doing a lot

(55:11):
of console taking as well for now. But you know,
there's no reason why we should not be building more
than we already have and building a little bit faster.
Because the kaisers are a little creaky, I guess it
would be a way to describe it.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
Well, yeah, they were supposed to be around for thirty
five years, and I think the report I was looking
at so that the oldest one had reached that in
twenty twenty two or something. I didn't realize it were
that old.

Speaker 1 (55:36):
Yeah, it hasn't been a very good time. I just
I just realized we've already been talking for an hour
before we leave. I wanted to mention one thing that
I mentioned during the pre show, because we haven't talked
about Europe at all. One of the more interesting things
that I heard with there's so much negative news about NATO.

(55:56):
Everybody likes to complain about it, this, that and the
other thing. Well, it can't be too but the Austrians
like the Swiss, though the Swiss have a longer tradition
of it. The Austrians were involved in World War Two.
The Austrians were like Germany. They were broken up into
four different sectors or two sectors anyway. The Soviets had

(56:17):
half of it, but it was allowed to become an
independent nation after World War Two. It's been neutral. Vienna
has been a great place for espionage. Their foreign minister
Minel Reisinger had an interesting statement that got a lot
of attention for you NATO people. Quote, there are currently
is no majority in parliament. Are among the population in

(56:38):
favor of joining NATO, but such a debate could still
be very productive unquote. That sounds a lot like the
conversation that started in Finland and Sweden before they assessed
into NATO. I think would be a multi year process
if Austria wanted to. If Austria did that, all of
Central and Western Europe would be Besides the little principal

(57:02):
principalities decides of half of a US county are members
of NATO except for Switzerland, if Austria were to come
on board, but it's kind of a reach Austria, like
for instance, Switzerland spends zero point seventy six percent of
their GDP on defense. Their are neutrality is they're free writing.
But the Austrians haven't been doing much better. They've done

(57:25):
they've been spending point eighty four percent. They said they
would like to be by two percent by twenty thirty two.
In the president environment, nobody's going to be even allowed
to think about coming into NATO unless they're spending two
percent of GDP. So thirty two is when they're going
to try to reach two percent. So maybe they're a
political system is trying to increase that conversation. So here

(57:49):
in seven years they might be able to assess in
it's that wouldn't be a big gain for the Alliance.
The population of Austria's less than ten million. It's basically
the approximately the population of Hungary, or if you combined
Denmark and Norway together, that's a little bit more than

(58:09):
the population. From an American perspective, their GDP is equivalent
to South Carolina and their population is equivalent in North Carolina,
because we want to reference things to the best part
of the US, and so that would be like adding
South Carolina's in North Carolina to the Alliance. But it
would be neat if NATO is able to clean up

(58:31):
its line, so to speak, to bring Austria in. And
those that has done NATO's staff duty know that they've
had staff officers in the Partnership for Peace in the
major headquarters for years. They're solid folks. So anyway, if
this is our optimistic show, that's another bit of optimism,
the fact that even Austria is trying to get on
the NATO train. But to quote the Commander in Chief,

(58:53):
they have to pay their first share.

Speaker 2 (58:55):
Yeah, it's it's interesting because when I was in Austria
a few years ago. That a really strong kind of
anti military sentiment that I gathered. I guess the Russian
actions in Ukraine are waking up people a lot more
in that part of the world. And I would have
I would have thought I couldn't get over how anti

(59:18):
military they were in so many ways.

Speaker 1 (59:21):
Yeah, they had a rough twentieth century from a military
point of view. They lost the rest of their empire.
Besides Galicia, which is now Western Ukraine is in NATO
for those that aren't familiar. In Austria was the core
of the Austro Hungarian Empire, which was broken up into Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia,
part of Serbia, and the Czech Republic, Slovakia, parts.

Speaker 2 (59:44):
Of Poland, and spent Spain. Yeah, come back far enough.

Speaker 1 (59:51):
Yeah. So yeah, And they they got spanked real hard
in the First Gulf War and then they were got
themselves involved in May at that point in the Second
World War and didn't come out very well and either one,
so I can appreciate their anti war. However, they also
had the experience of a lot of the former Habsburg Empire.

(01:00:15):
They experienced the felicity of the Russians during the Soviet
occupation and what has happened in Ukraine has just reinforced
the fact that maybe it's time now that the generation
from World War Two have mostly passed on to their
just reward, that the younger generations need to look at

(01:00:38):
the twenty first century in a twenty first century context,
and for them it's got to be collective defense. And
the only way to really get that in Europe if
you're facing your traditional enemy to the east, though the
Austrians might offer there's a threat to the southeast too,
different topic for a different day. Then they need to
be a part of NATO. And that's part of the
maturing of their lodical class getting over the twentieth century,

(01:01:02):
which is is a big reach form. But as a
as a as an old NATO hand that that interested
me and I'm just wanting to bring that up.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
That's good stuff. Let me let me close out my
stuff today with a recommendation that people read the it's
a nice little article by Lieutenant Commander Jack Rowley, retired
in the US n I. It's to Proceedings July issue
Building the Hybrid Feet Fleet and of nothing else, and

(01:01:34):
there's a section there said a generational change in US
Navy battle formations, and I think that is really the
the thing we need to really focus on changing our
mindset generationally.

Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
Yeah, I'll put that link in the show page so
people can can access it and give it a good read.
All right, all right, well hey, always a pleasure and
thank you everybody. We had a real active and informative
Thank you very much for the standard instrument back up there.
We had a great chat room today. Really appreciate everybody
taking time to join us today. Until next time, hope

(01:02:10):
y'all have a great Navy day.

Speaker 3 (01:02:12):
Cheers Molly to need replies, worry Paddy all, Mike man Looney,
want to marry me and all leave a friend of
be Codily for you being to blame for love fly

(01:02:35):
love me sill flding your name.

Speaker 4 (01:02:42):
It's a long way. It's a long way. It's a
long way to the ny.

Speaker 3 (01:02:59):
All about I think on it fair well live not well.

Speaker 4 (01:03:07):
It's a long long way to get away. But my
wife my name

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