Episode 735: October NATSEC Melee

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander, an
Eagle one from Eagle Speak at seer Shure your home
for a discussion of national security issues and all things maritime.
And welcome board everybody to another edition of mid Rats,
and we are live today. If you are with us live,
we already got some folks. We've got our good friend

(00:49):
the nurse, and Steven and Paul are already in the
chat room. We're doing our melee format today. We don't
have a guest, it's just marking myself. So we have
our list of about five our's a conversation we're going
to shoehorn into about an hour today, but that doesn't
mean that we're not interested. And if there's a particular
topic you would like for us to address, are just
a question you want to ask either one of us,

(01:11):
go ahead and hop in the chat room. We always
like to put out the invitation there for those who
are so inclined to give us your thoughts right there.
We'll be watching it the whole course of the hour.
And of course, if you don't already and you want
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go over to iTunes Spreaker, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts,

(01:31):
find us and subscribe that way, when you can join
us live, you can't catch it anyway. Like next week,
if things line up, we won't actually have a live
show because we've got a special guest that we have
to do a special time for. So we want to
do a live show. It'll be a pre record, but
we'll launch it at the usual time because that's what
kind of beats with everybody's battle rhythm. But hey, today,

(01:53):
happy beautiful Sunday here in October to you.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, except it's rainy and kind of chilly here us.
Much better than the thirty two degrees I had in
the mountains last weekend.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Well, here in the Free State of Florida, we had
Dutch like weather for a couple of Dutch summertime weather
for a couple of days, overclassed constant drizzle, and now
it's a chamber of commerce weather, bright blue sky, rip,
roaring seventy eight degrees. So it's time to whip out
the sweaters. I soa yeah, yeah, so it's not a

(02:25):
bad day. I'm sorry it's a little drizzly where you are.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
But I suggesting everybody we moved to Florida and just
avoid North Carolina because our weather is terrible, so we're
full stay away.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Well, I think the problem North Carolina has is you
have all those folks from up north who decide they
want to come down to Florida and they get exposed
to one of our summers and they go, oh no,
but they don't want to go back to New York
and New Jersey, so they go halfway up there, and
unfortunately they add to your Beltway commute up there in
the beautiful North Carolina vicinity.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
We do have a containment area for relocated Yankees. So hello,
is carry, North Carolina. The town of Carrey containment area
for relocated Yankees. Yep, yep, yep, we know Carry.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
Of course, the folks at Apex are getting a little
bit of that action too, but not as bad as Carrie.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Well what there's nothing to do with him, really, But
you know what happens is the parents retire and the
kids come down and visit the parents, so that the
kids move down. So it seems to be an ongoing migration.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
Well, goodness knows, they're not going there for the barbecue,
but it is a oh yes, oh you could to
start a slap fight about Carolina barbecue, which is on
the coast. I think up in the mountains all have
proper barbecue, but on the coast it's a different creature altogether,
but it's an acquired taste. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
Well, you know, we probably ought to talk about stuff
related to national security. And I think one of the
first thing I want to say is we should remember
this is the twenty fifth anniversary of the of the
al Qaeda attack on the USS coal and seventeen US
sailors were killed and thirty seven were injured, and it

(04:01):
prompted a whole bunch of changes in the way we
do business overseas and the whole the whole new Command,
which was eventually absorbed into the Naval Expeditionary Combat Commands.
But it has to do with the security button here.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Anyways, so and it's something that I think it's a
good I'm sorry I've jumped on you. I thought you
were done.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
Sr.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
No. I said, it's you know, when you look at
it from a distance, it's hard to believe it was
twenty five years ago. And you know, we had the
Skipper at the time. Kirk lippold On as a guest
years ago, and what if those have Those who aren't
familiar with There's been some very good stuff written about it.

(04:45):
I'd encourage you to go read it. It's a great
demonstration of what a crew and a leader can do.
There's also an after story there, the ugly things that
can happen in DC against great leaders. What have to
Kirk Leffold and his promotion afterwards? I think was a
great travesty from many years ago. But I always kind

(05:05):
of look at from a distance the attack on the
coal in that harbor in Yemen, which in a twenty
point twenty five context, if you told people, yeah, we
were going to pull into a harbor in Yemen to
get fueled, they'd tilt their head at you. It's like
nineteen nineties. It's hard to explain a lot of different
views came out, but in the beginning part of the
nineteen nineties started under the Bush forty one administration and

(05:29):
carried on to the Clinton administration that eventually led to
the ending of less Aspen's career Secretary Defense. You also
had the events in Somalia that everybody's familiar with with
Blackhawk Down, and I think the experience and what we
saw in Somalia in the early nineties and then twenty
five years ago what we saw on Yemen. You know,
those were two data points that actually developed a trend

(05:50):
line for what we would see for the next two
decades in our battle against that certain aspect of fundamentalist
Islamic terror in their respect and attempts to bring a
worldview closer in line with them. And it's not over
with it. I think it's past its high watermark, but
I don't think it's going anywhere. But so you can

(06:10):
get I think large pixel view of things with that
experience from the USS coal and I think that why
they were there and Yemen at the dawn of the
new century, so to speak, in the mindset and the
worldview we had at that time. I think it can
help inform people when they look at what happened in

(06:33):
two thousand and one at nine to eleven. You know,
how did we get here? How did we get so complacent?
It was a certain worldview and a certain estimate of
what the threat was and how you should mitigate risk
for it, balancing off other considerations. It's a useful thing,
I think to look at that doesn't form things about
how you look at national security and you look at

(06:55):
the world now that doesn't necessarily have to have anything
to do with the fundamental Islamic terror threat that were
related to both both of those items.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
Yeah, but I think it plays into also the the
the recent announcement that they're some kind of peace deal
uh involving Gaza and Israel and the placing of of
US forces apparently in Israel that will along with other countries,
we're gonna get involved to help implement whatever that deal means.

(07:26):
But you know, that's it's it's uh, it's it's reflective
of some positive changes once you begin to take allow
serious action to occur to try and solve some of
these problems, because it's you know, and it's going to
be good in the sense that a lot of the
protests we've seen about I think about freeing Palestine and

(07:49):
all that stuff will probably dissipate if they if they
if this agreement holds.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yeah, I think those a lot of those protests, and
I think there's probably some true believers and and well meaning,
soft hearted people in the crowds, But just speaking for
myself here, I think a lot of those pro Palestinian protests,
they weren't. They were a medium and a conduit for
people to find their inner anti Semite and extrude a

(08:15):
little bit of jew hate. And I think the reality
of nobody should give these people a pass. Either we've
all seen the videos or at least the pictures from
the last seventy two hours plus of the thousands of
people walking back into places of Gaza that the Israelis
told them to leave because we have to fight now.
You also have the videos of the people in Gaza

(08:37):
trying to turn this in some type of victory. They're
not starving to death. There was no famine, there was
no genocide. You even have a little bit of a
civil war. There was a guy that almost became his
own mean I think if he did become his own
mean mister FFO. This guy ali Al Jeff Freer pronounced
his name right, anyway, He's one of these guys people

(08:59):
called it Hollywood where he was a journalist, he was
a doctor, he was an ambulance driver, he was a victim.
He was the same guy who was pairing all these
propaganda pictures and stuff over the weekend. He was killed
during a conflict between some of the clans and the
tribes in Hamas. So yeah, that day he found out

(09:20):
at the end, So I think there's there's a lot
more bloodshed. But I am concerned about and again this
is just my bias, and I've talked about this when
we brought the peer debacle so to speak. Yeah, this
this was a two year long war that has an
opportunity to buy more time, I guess until the next conflict.

(09:40):
There this this problem in these people with Hamas is
not going where. I just hope that those that are
planning our involvement in those of our allies that we
remember Somalia, we remember Afghanistan, we remember Maali, we remember Libya.
We are clear eyed about risk expectations and eight and

(10:00):
goals if we're going to have boots on the ground
there to help it. It's a hard situation. There is
no correct answer here. But I mean you have some
experience in the Balkans as well. That's a holiday compared
to anything involving Humas haswell, plo et cetera and so forth.
So it's not all olive branches and doves flying around here.
But I think it is a positive outcome that gives

(10:24):
folks an opportunity that doesn't mean they're going to take
advantage of the opportunity, but he gives the Palestinian people
an opportunity to perhaps find a better way than the
way that they chose after Israel withdrew from Goza last
and I think it was two thousand and five or
two thousand and seven. So there's an opportunity here. I mean,
Lucy and Charlie Brown in one way, but the international

(10:45):
community wants to give them a chance. We'll give them
another chance. See how it works out.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah, we still I think we still and I know
our European friends still have forces in Kosovo. I mean
that they break up. The breakup of the former Republic
of Yugoslavia was not I mean it was not. There
were a lot of people killed and needlessly killed because
of various ethnic and one day your neighbor's your friend,
and one next day, because he's something else, he's you're

(11:12):
killing him. You know that that stuff goes deep. The
memories are along and I'm you know, I'm not I'm
not hopeful that this something will come out of this,
But I think you're right. I think this is at
least on one side, it's a chance to buy some
time and regroup. You know, I wonder how long that's
going to last, but you know better better sometimes continuing
to jaw job rather than World War.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Yeah, it's an opportunity and I think it's also it's
a great chance here first of all, And I'm trying
not to be political about this because it's not really
political because both political parties have people that have this worldview,
this this academic, permanent state department nomenclatura point of view.
But I think this peace agreement and the bringing home

(11:54):
of the hostages, it does a few things going back
to what we talked about before with the you know, ceasefire,
and that started like they right after those twelve hundred
Israelis were butchered, people were calling for an ceasefire. But
it's a total repudiation of what I'll call at least
the Blink and Sullivan Western approach. You also saw it

(12:16):
in Europe about how to best try to resolve this.
If they had done anything else, but where we are
right now, it would be an even more suboptimal solution
to the issue. I think the Israelis could have gone
much harder on this, but this is somewhere in between.

(12:38):
But when you when you back up a bit and
look at where we were on sixth October twenty twenty
three and where we are here today on the twelve
of October twenty twenty five. Is look at Lebanon and
HESBLA is still an issue, but they've been significantly degraded.
Iran is not able to support them as much. At

(13:00):
least there's nice words being said by what little effective
government there is in Lebanon. They know they need to
extract Hezbolah from the power structure in the south. We
look at Syria. It's still a mess, but there is
an attempt and I think it's the right thing to
do from a real politic point of view. Even though
he had some former al Qaeda associations, but that's okay.

(13:23):
We brought in former Wehrmarkt officers into NATO nineteen fifty,
so Syria has potential lots more cards come out as
a better place than it was. I wrote about halfway
through General Mackenzie's book that he wrote about his tenure
at SYMCOM. When you look at a lot of the
concerns about Iran's missile force and what they can do,

(13:43):
how we can oppose it, Well, we have validated that,
and then we went back and we knocked Iran back
really hard in a way that a lot of people
said couldn't be done, shouldn't be done, could never be done.
It was done, and it was done well. And everybody
in Israel and the US who participated in that, I
hope they all get appropriately rewarded because it's really exceptional.

(14:06):
And whenever all the details are known in ten twenty
years or whenever, I think it'll be even more impressive.
So Iran has been set back. Well, she'll come back,
but she's been set back. And when you look at
the rest of the Arab world, and we've seen him
last week, Jared Kushner showed back up because he has
a lot of credibility amongst the Golf Arab states try

(14:27):
and they're on board with the whole this whole Gaza resolution.
So when you're talking about Saudi Arabia, Cutter Bahrain, their
situation relative to Israel is also much more positive for
everybody than it was back before the seventh of October
of twenty three attack. So if people are looking for

(14:48):
reasons to be to be optimistic and will take good
over worse, I think where we are right now. It's
a pretty good place. It's a shame that all those
it took, the slaughter, rape and kidnapping of the Israelis
in the war that followed to get us into this place.
And of course there were Palestinians who were killed in

(15:10):
the conflict who were non combatants. But that happens in war,
in every war. That's why you don't let your government,
are your rulers, take you into stupid wars because these
things happen. But I think at the end of the day,
if you want to give a thumbs up to everybody,
I think you can. You can do that. We'll see
where we are a year from now. But the table

(15:31):
is set for good people and hard jobs to make
everything a little bit better if they can take advantage
of the opportunity.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yeah, I think that going back to the coal the
Iranian fingers were all over that as bill as fingers
are over. That turned out Sudan was found responsible, although
you know that's because they were at least I think
in those days that's where al Qaeda was, Sma bin
Laden was hiding hanging out. That was before we took

(15:58):
him seriously enough. So you know, it's it's going to
be an ongoing issue until there's a regime change in Iran.
If that happens, it would be great. Otherwise we just
got to keep an eye on them. But you know
you were talking about that, we sent a message to
the world again with the way we and the Israelis
managed to get into Iran airspace. I think the Chinese
kind of might have taken a gulp at that. And

(16:19):
also keeping with that, the news came out a week
or so ago that we had the Ohio USS Ohio
the missile conventional missile carrying submarine show up in Subic
Band the Philippines now and apparently been operating in the
South China Sea. So you know, we're getting good at

(16:41):
sending some of these messages and notifying people that we're
not going to roll over lightly and just concede Chinese
hegemony over things, nor we would let the Iranians claim
hegedomy over over the Middle East.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
I'm one of the first people to jump to the
front to say that. You know, Presidence ops is a
primary mission for the US Navy and peace time and
submarines aren't good at presents off. But there's a little
asterisks there down to the bottom. Our ssgns, which are
the first four ohio ballistic missile submarines. For those aren't
familiar with that, we're converted to basically cruise missile launchers.

(17:15):
Is it one hundred and fifty eight? I think it's
one hundred and fifty eight maximum load out of key lamps.
They got a big pile of them, a big pile,
a large portion of our inventory, and we have four
of them, which means you can get one and a
half or two at sea if you need to, maybe
more if you got lucky with their maintenance schedule. But
that makes a point when you have one of our

(17:35):
ssgn's surface and visit a place like the Philippines. That's
not because they want to get some good Filipino food
for the weekend, which I hopefully they get some taken
out to the ship. They may have some of their
culinary specialists on board the submarine may be Filipino, so
you know, lucky for them they might get some good lumpia.
But it does a couple things, just like you outlined.

(17:56):
It sends a signal about what capability we can have
park right in your backyard if need be. But it
also signals the closeness of our relationship getting back to
where it should be with the Philippine government and people,
because we're just not going to let one of our
ssgns float into any harbor. And I think it just
underscores that connection We've talked about a lot. When you

(18:17):
look at you know, who are our great allied friends.
People always talk about Japan and Australia, and you know,
the Philippines has a special relationship with the US coming
back one hundred and thirty years. But that connection went
sideways for a while, but it's going back in the
direction we want to. You can't advertise its strategic importance

(18:39):
and China is really pushing against her. So it's good
that we're able to help underline that. And I've said
this to people who matter and to people who don't,
and I'll say it again to this audience as good
thing that will put me in front of in charge
of submarine construction. But I would just like to use
this as an opportunity again to say yes, our ballistic

(19:00):
missile submarine, the Columbia class SSBNs are important, they're good,
we need to build them, we need to replace them.
But I would really like to see a SGN variation
of that. I know we can do it with a
Virginia class with their Virginia payload module, But the Virginia
payload module and our blistic missile submarines they like the

(19:23):
Zoom Waltz, can only carry twelve once we get them
out there and deployable. Now a if member serves me right,
the Columbia class has only sixteen blistic missile tubes in
it that you could stretch that by an additional four
and just PLoP Virginia payload modules in there. Nickeload up
with a mixture of TEA, LAMB and conventional prompt strike

(19:44):
as an asset nobody else has, and as the Ohio
and the other three SSBNs age out because they really
probably need to be decommissioned soon, I think they're gonna
start to decommission them here pretty soon. When they're gone,
we no longer have that ability to have a heck
of a lot of punch that can show up anywhere.
If I would, if I was running the world, I

(20:06):
would have Houle one be the a Columbia SSBN, whole
two would be a gn B N gn B nng NTO.
We get at least four to replace them and accept
risk on the strategic side, because where we are going
to need those a cruise missile and conventional prompt strike
in volume more than I think we need one or
two more ballistic missile submarines. But the strategic people will

(20:29):
get Itchyi's I if I say that too often? Yeah,
I every time I see one of the Ohio or
one of the other three ssgn's, I get a little
bit of the sads because I know they're going away
and that brings away a really unique and powerful capability
that our country has.

Speaker 2 (20:45):
Yeah, well it's it wants some good news that the
Japanese is working. They just there's an article from the
war Zone. Japan will arm its submarines with long range
cruise missiles and they've already let out a big contract
for a news stand enough capability for its submarine fleet
as well has improved NI ship missiles for its destroyers.
Contracts have been issued for mass production of both these weapons,

(21:07):
which will come as the country boosts its ability to
attack both land targets and enemy surface warships to counter
the threats from China and North Korea. I will put
a link up to that on the page or a second.
But that's great, dudes, because you know they've got the
capability of being a tremendous asset. They have nice submarines,

(21:30):
and these are not going to right now. I don't
think they're going to be VLS launch, but they're gonna
be two blaunched. But you know, we need that kind
of help from our allies in that part of the world.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
Yeah, and it's great that's gonna be Japanese too. For
those that have have had the pleasure of exercising or
serving with, the Japanese are just tremendous professionals. Their ships
are top of the line. No, they haven't been proven
in combat for a very very long time, but the
Japanese quality is such that if you had to draw
on paper what type of partner nation you would like

(22:00):
to have as an ally, Japan would would hit about
all those boxes. And on the political side of the house,
I think in some ways yes, in some ways no,
but they have the potential to be reaching a little
more than Germany getting past its twentieth century hangover, so
to speak. Their new Prime Minister, she is from what
I've read, I think she would be inclined to continue

(22:24):
the expansion of the Japanese military up and beyond two
percent of GDP. I think they're they're above one percent now,
and I believe they have a trend to go up.
They build world class warships there, they're conventional submarines. Having
having played around with them in the past, they're they're
no kidding. I'm glad there are our friends, I'll put

(22:45):
it that way. They are slowly rebuilding their carrier force
though they they're even calling it cv MS, which is
multi purpose. They had something else besides called an aircraft career,
but we all know what it is, and most people here,
I think, have seen the videos of both US and
British F thirty five Bravos operating off the Japanese mini carriers.

(23:10):
So it's another data point along the line of should
things get furry in the Western Pacific, and politically Japan
decides to stand next to us, We're going to be
able to have some really reliable partners to take care
of some airspace and some water space, so we can
probably concentrate on things that they won't do, but they'll

(23:30):
take care of what they can.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah, it's important. We should also probably there's an interesting
article in Foreign Affairs, which I'll put a link up to,
talking about the fighting China fast and slow, the real
logistics challenge in Taiwan straight. And I am stunned because
that is an unusual article I think, to appear in

(23:52):
Foreign Affairs where somebody has actually noticed that the big
issue is we've got a great big ocean between US
and the Western Pacific and how we're going to keep
how are we going to keep our troops supplied or
our ship supplied and how in Taiwan. You know, it's
a pretty pretty decent, decent article to answer those questions.

(24:15):
I commend people. The reading has written by retired I
think Air Force colonel and somebody else, but they're you know,
they make some really good points that sustainment of operations
is the key.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
It's the fundamentals, it's the what we like to call
the un sexy and important. And it's good that this
depth issues are being raised in a journal like Foreign
Affairs because you get a little bit of a wider
readership that might not catch it because there have been
some good articles written in other places. I know we've
talked about it here for regular basis, and we have
talked about it on both of our blogs online. But

(24:52):
that's a certain audience that may iy not be found
over at foreign affairs, but by going to foreign affairs
it gets in the right years. And that's, you know,
the one thing. The older I get, the more I
appreciate the fact that you can't assume that the people
that are in positions of power and influence at the

(25:14):
veriest highest level or anything other than human, they only
have twenty four hours a day, and at the very
senior levels, you've got eight people trying to pull you
in twelve different ways every minute, and you that's why
it's great. It's important to have a good, good staff
and excellent chief of staff so you can focus on
what's important, and sometimes important details will slip through the cracks.

(25:36):
Like I think I've mentioned here before, back in the
previous decade, there was an exceptionally high level, an influential
person and government who the national security arena, who made
certain assumptions about what submarines could or could not do
in the Baltic And it took somebody who had a
background in there to tap this individual on the shoulder
and introduce them to a couple of fundamentals that anybody

(25:59):
who warn a naval uniform knows intuitively, but those types
of misunderstandings or misconceptions can lead people, you know, good
people in hard positions to make decisions based upon assumptions
that are woefully incorrect in a dangerous way. And we've
seen examples of that where people make decisions not because

(26:20):
they're stupid or not because they're malicious, not because they're
trying to undermine something that they there was nobody in
their circle that was familiar with some of the fundamentals
of the areas that they were operating in. They could
interject and say, I'm sorry, X is actually y. And
so it's it's good to see that in foreign affairs
to raise that issue, and it's just another reference people

(26:43):
can use when we come to arguments about what can
we do to build the gap in strategic sea liift,
strategic airlift? How are we really going to replace the
capability for red hills and fuel for instance, as in
ourticle that came out a bit ago talking about it
was a little overheated, but as we say, we were

(27:06):
coming near the end of our sixteenth season of mid Rats,
Time Flies twenty twenty eight is not that far away
and of the three zoom walts we have, they're all
going to be converted to carry a dozen of the
conventional prompt strike missiles, which I kind of talked about earlier,
and they're all going to be stationed in Hawaii. They're
already modifying the piers because they have different power requirements

(27:26):
than your standard ISSHU naval ship, and they're also going
to deploy actually stationed in Hawaii some of the initial
Virginia class SSNs who have the Virginia Payload module that
will be able to fire the conventional prompt strike So rightfully,
we are going to have our conventional prop strike weapons
all located in one place, you know, the submarine nukes.

(27:48):
But as with the rest of our surface force, except
for our aircraft carriers, everything else is conventionally powered. So
if you want to fight west of Hawaii and you're
not going to have the strategic stories of Red Hills,
that's going to have to come via ships. So if
you start asking hard questions about logistics, and you ask
the following questions about who's going to carry it, how

(28:09):
are they going to carry it, and how much can
they carry it for how long, that can lead people
to uncomfortable places really fast. In twenty twenty five, we
have a you know, we're not that we're out of
time to fix it. They are a ways to fix it,
but it's not going to be a quick thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
I think one of the solutions that they proposed to
at least temporary. You know, they call for a temporary
logistics system, which makes some sense if you're you know,
the difficulties is sustaining a force when you can't necessarily
have any hard I mean you can, you can hard basis.
It's an interesting concept, but he says. The article says,
oh quote, US should invest in expendable and autonomous systems

(28:46):
such as disposable cargo drones and one way gliders. It's
written by Air Force, I remember, which is pre program
rule routes and onboard sensors to keep forces stock with ammunition, food,
other supplies during the critical early stages of the conflict.
And and has China depleted its missile, arsenal attack and

(29:08):
disposable logistics tools, US and allied forces could turn to
more permanent infrastructure delivered supplies by air and c You know,
I'm in favor of this. I mean, this is the
Marines have talked about this already. They've they they're looking
at the drug cartels and using some of their semi
submersible type craft to to supply the marine units that
they want to put on the beaches and Philippines and

(29:30):
other places with their with their little missile, little missile,
they're not a little missile launchers, but missile launchers you know,
and create we need to create targeting problems that you know,
how do you how do you cause problems for somebody
with a with a large number of missiles, You create
more more problems than they can deal with. I mean,
that's you flood the zone, and the Chinese want to

(29:51):
flood the zone against the US. We need to repay
them in cond.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
Yeah, the I think that the theory of that is helpful,
but I don't think that's ultimately going to be the
solution for any type of extended conflict. I think, as
we've seen in Ukraine recently with their unmanned ground vehicles
the Russians, I think the Ukrainians are doing it a
little bit too. For resupply in hostile areas gives you

(30:15):
ability to get some volume, but one thing it doesn't
do is it doesn't give doesn't give you a lot
of stuff you can move. There's nothing on the drawing
board that I'm aware of that can really bring things
in volume. It's a good way to resupply enough to
keep you going for a while. But how do you
get the heavy volumes of bunker beans and bullets out

(30:38):
out to the front. That requires really really large ships.
I don't think we have the drones that can bring
the volume there. However, that might be helpful at the
last one hundred nautical miles so to speak, if you
need if the Marines are on all these little tiny islands,
you only have so many C one thirties that can

(30:58):
go there, and you don't want to have some of
your few very large logistics ships getting inside of too
many threat range rings. Then you transfer from the small
to the large. But I think you have to have
the large capacity to get you to at least whatever
longitude Guam is at, and then west of Guam you

(31:21):
can probably branch out to some of the smaller options.
I do wish we could experiment with that more. I
know there are some companies, including one up in Boston,
so East Coast and West Coast that are working this challenge.
But like we've talked about before, let's get somebody these
prototay types out to the fleet for people to be
able to play with and see what utility they actually have.

Speaker 2 (31:42):
Yeah, I mean the article does address the long haul
and discusses the fact that we are severely underfunded in
the in the targo capacity of the fleets. We sort
of have both us and our allies. I mean, we're
we're we need to but you need, you know, some
kind of stop This is argument for a stop gap,
temporary thing until you can bring forth things like we

(32:04):
did in world work. You know, those those indispensable but
not essentially disposable cargo vessels, and you know, make them bigger,
I guess, but you know that just invites they're just
bigger targets. Anyway, It's an interesting article. It's worth reading
because it's does discuss a lot of the issues and
propose the solution which you know, so many people were
just shrugging their shoulders these days. You get kind of

(32:26):
tiresome watching that go on.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
Yeah. One thing that has been talked about for a
while two that we are seeing movement on as well,
is as opposed to continue appreciating the problem of our
multi causal inability to design and build chips here in
the US, that we can do some gap fillers by
leveraging some of our allies, and for instance the icebreaker
deal I wrote about it last week with Finland, where

(32:52):
we are going to have the first few are going
to be built in Finland and then we will build
the rest at the DAVY, the purchased shipyards. That the
DAVY ship building is improving there down in Texas, and
I know that the South Koreans also are making some
steps here and they've the Secretary of the Navy has
been signaling quite well, this is direction you want to

(33:14):
go to, and other people with the South Koreans as well.
I think that's really really smart because that buys us
time and gives us capacity that we just don't have
right now.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
Yeah, there's an article out that the Hunway I guess
the name of the company, Philadelphia Shipyard, has hired the
former head of an admiral, the former head of PEO
Ships as they're president for US Shipbuilding. So I think
that's some of us may have disagreement with NAVC, but
it doesn't mean that this gentleman should shouldn't see Admiral

(33:45):
Tom Anderson, who was the PEO of Naval Ships C
Systems Command, and he's going to it's you know, he's
going to be I think it's important. He's going to
know people. He's going to know the system. And all
they need to do is make sure we can somebody
gets a cattle proud to apply to the the people
who fund this stuff and let's get this gone an.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
He has a network people return his phone calls. So
that's that in itself is a value. And when a
lot of these guys are hired, that's in a way
what they're really hiring is somebody who can explain the
Byzantine system. And if you need to talk to this
individual or that, it's like, well, I have his personal
cell number and to do his work number. If he

(34:25):
doesn't call me back, I'll text his wife. You know
that type of thing. It's it's an underappreciated networking capability
that can be used for good. If you define a good,
is us getting where we need to be on shipbuilding
and repair.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
Well sadly, you know we have some history. We know
that when Mark Vandrust went to up to where Wisconsin too,
you know, yeah, he was he was, you know, he
got shafted by the Navy. I mean that the design
there was no need to do with the kind of
redesign work they did on those frigates. And and you know,

(35:00):
I don't I pity him because and the people are
working up there, because that's you know, that's just totally
messed up a program.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
Yeah, that was the Empire striking back.

Speaker 2 (35:09):
Yeah, well, we don't want that to happen with the
South Korean company who's wanted to work with us in Philadelphia.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
One of the new people just came into the administration
and we've talked about it here before. It's in our
un sexy but important category is mine warfare. And there's
a lot of things about mine warfare that we're just
not ready for prime time. We're decommissioning the last of
our mind warfare ships. We're trying to make lcs work.
But the new Undersecretary of the Navy hung Cow retired

(35:38):
Navy captain EOD officer. One thing people probably don't appreciate.
Besides the surface warfare guys who work the mine warfare issue,
our EOD guys know a lot about mine warfare because
it really neutralized mind. You need those guys who understand
why things go boom. I think that as we look
at this shortfall, that if you need somebody in senior

(35:59):
political leadership in the Department of the Navy, if hung
Kow is sitting in the chair, he is going to
understand ninety five percent of what you're talking about with
mind warfare. Whereas your standard issue of political appointee. Great people,
smart people, but their eyes glaze over when you start
talking about mine warfare because they really don't know anything
about it. Besides, if they're lucky, they's like, yeah, during

(36:21):
the Gold Wward, we have a cruiser hit one or
so that. First of all, hun Cow has a lot
of the characteristics I always like in political appointees. Is
even though he wasn't elected, he ran for Congress, he
ran for Senate. He's got good political connections. He's got
a fingertip feel for politics. So and I know he's
got a bone in his teeth because he's an EOD guy.

(36:43):
So hun Kow going in is the under I hope
he develops a good partnership with the Secretary of the
Navy and the rest of the I have trouble calling
it the war department, but here we are. So I'm
really optimistic, maybe a little bit inside of enthusiastic about
hung Kow come in there, simply because he'll he'll know
the acronyms. He's high energy. And there again, if you're

(37:05):
looking for reasons to be positive, the new undersecretary is
I think a reason to be positive.

Speaker 2 (37:10):
Yeah, and he's he's uh. He's also fits right along
with Hegseth and the other non DEI people that are
that have come into the Department of Defense, because he
was pretty adamant about that early on, which didn't earn
him any friends necessarily, and in some political circles. But
they're the same political circles that are stopping our troops
from getting paid, which raises that other issue. You know

(37:31):
that the President says he's gonna get them paid at
least for the next payday by has directed the Secretary
of War to use some money they apparently have found
to do that. And that's already got a number of
articles that I read on can can the president really
do this? And and that's a good question. But once
it's done, what are you going to do? You know,

(37:51):
gonna pach him again?

Speaker 1 (37:54):
He gets I'm laughing. I mean, it's it's serious, and
you know, we all know you gotta got to e
five with three kids. It's not a laughing matter when
when people are telling him he's not getting his paycheck
in three weeks, so he's gonna miss it, he's gonna
miss his credit card payment, et cetera, and so forth.
But a lot of these articles I've read feeling between
the lines, they really wanted to use this as a

(38:16):
political cudgel, and that's gross. And because this has been
taken away as a political cudgel, they're mad, and that's
just gross. That's one side of the coin. The other
side of the coin is from the dawn of human history,
especially when you have a volunteer military, the number one
responsibility of a commander in chief is to make sure

(38:36):
his forces get paid. You can delay everything else, but
you got to make sure that they get paid, because
that has a primary, secondary, and tertiary messaging. And some
of the mercantilistic complaints that I've seen online by these
people who are upset because you know, well, if you're
taking money from weapons system purchasing and our experimentation or this,

(39:01):
that and the other thing, it's like, I'm sorry, but
I would much rather have all the primary and former
members of the E for Mafia get paid on time
than to have General Dynamics have to wait an extra
four to six weeks for however long it takes for
the politicians in DC to get there, get their ounce

(39:21):
of flesh out of this to work things out. Yes,
it's disruptive, Yes it's going to upset somebody building a
weapon here. But everybody should get paid or nobody should
be paid. And I think that's a very very nice thing.
It's taking it off the table. Let the politicians find
other cudgels to beat each other with, but list make
sure that our soldiers, sailors, airman's marines. I think I

(39:44):
have to say, guardsmen, now guardians or whatever they are,
let's make sure they get paid. And I like you,
I've read those articles and in theory I should be mad,
but it kind of makes me laugh. I think it's
really transparent.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
Yeah. The one of the other things we can do is,
and I encourage people to do it, is to provide
money to the Navy Marine Corps Relief. It is an
organization that does loan money, provide money to our sailors
and marines who run into financial difficulties. It can happen
to anything. Can be emergency to leave because your family members,

(40:17):
you know your has died, or something you need to
get back for funeral. There's all kinds of stuff like that.
But they also can loan money for this type of thing.
I see that the exchanges. If you have the what's
it called the Exchange Star whatever it is, it's the
credit card for the military exchanges, they're not going to
charge any interest on money that's run up at the

(40:38):
exchanges when you can buy groceries, and if you can't
pay it right away, they're going to defer any interest
payments you can get. When you do get paid, you
can take care of that later on. I think that's
a good, a good thing. Irritating, asked the cub. By
the way, the coastguardsmen are not going to get paid
unless there's some special provision for them to do so,

(40:58):
imember the president DHS. Yeah, yeah, I would. If I
were the president, I'd say, you know, I'm activating the
Coast Guard to be part of the Navy and go
ahead and pay them that way. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
Basically, what's going on in Venezuela. I just just a
little sidebar conversation here. I'm glad that you brought up
Navy Marine Corps Relief because one thing that's come up
in the last year, and I think it's great that
it's come out there is kind of float along with
what doje was doing with that team. Is it kind
of pulled back the sheet for people to look at

(41:28):
a lot of these charities and the Combined Federal Campaign,
the amount of waste and how little money fifteen cents
on the dollar actually gets to the people who need it.
Because in many cases these are griffs are they're inefficiently
run organizations. That has caused some people to be hesitant
to give. And I think the stuff that came out
this summer about Combined Federal Campaign, I wouldn't do anything

(41:51):
like involved with that, But the Navy Marine Corps Relief
Society and the other services have similar organizations. I have
seen nothing, in matter of fact, just the opposite about
the those being griffs. Those do really good things. So
if there's anybody out there who maybe has held back
because they they don't want their money just going to
pay for somebody's vacation home, take that money and give it.

(42:12):
The Navy Marine Corps Relief or the other services versions
because they do really good things just like you outlined
and more. And if you give a dollar, more of
that dollar is going to go to the people who
need it than about anybody else.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
It's it's as you said, the other services have similar programs.
And you know, whatever whatever service you support, go ahead
and go ahead. And you know you don't have to
throw You could throw big money if you haven't, but
you don't have any donation. Any donation is welcome. And
I agree with you about the Combined Federal Campaign. I
used to hate those things when they would come around
and demand basically, we want one hundred percent participation in

(42:49):
the Combined Federal Campaign out of your unit. You're going,
I don't. I don't like what they're doing. I can't
track the money. I mean, you know, anyway, that's another
that's a story for another time. But yeah, you know
the Coast Guard speaking of the birthdays and the anniversary's
got the anniversary of the coal that the Navy's anniversary
two hundred and fiftieth year is coming up. There's a
big thing. They're going to send a bunch of ships.

(43:10):
Maybe are already saying the Coast Guard and Navy vessels
up to Philadelphia in honor of the Navy's birthday. And
so here we have a funny situation where the sailors
may end up getting paid for the Navy sailors, but
the coastguardsmen may be out of luck doing their work
for free. So I really think we need to get
this thing straight down. It also is somewhat surprising me,

(43:33):
although I'm grateful for it. Sometimes the retired pay continues.
It's a mandatory pay for all the former all retirees
from the military services, but the active duty pay does
not fall into the same kind of mandatory thing. I
think Congress needs to take a look at changing that law.
I mean, not not taking it away from the retirees

(43:54):
like some of us, at least extending it to the
active duty people. To this is just silly to go
through this every time they decide they have a big
budget squabble about something.

Speaker 1 (44:06):
Yeah, for those few that don't know it, the Navy's
birthday is October thirteenth, That is Monday, So that's we're
recording this and doing this live on the twelve. And
the Continental Navy was established in seventeen seventy five pre
constitutional and they are having some special events and Philadelphia

(44:27):
and also evidently in nearbyd New Jersey. Or are they doing
something at the pier or to Earl where the big
aos used to hang out. I don't know, but it's
a good occasion and two hundred and fifty and next
year will be two hundred and fifty for the US.
I've got a couple of things that i might do
to celebrate that. Yeah, it's it's an excuse. And it's

(44:47):
also Columbus Day. So if you have those bank holidays,
I'll actually be at my paying gig that we give
you an opportunity if you want to participate in that.
And I'm sure there are some local events taking place
as well. If people are looking to do something tomorrow
with their day off, why not go hang around with
some sailors.

Speaker 2 (45:07):
Interesting totally in really, but it'd be interesting to see if
the current administration advertises Columbus Day or we're back to
or will they encourage usiting what is Indigenous People's Day whatever.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
Well, I read an article that there's a movement to
because during the crazy times that started about five years ago,
they ripped down a bunch of Columbus statues. They're looking
at putting them back, which that would be interesting to
see how that's done, because a lot of that's a
local concern. But I think I think the present administration
is more of a Columbus day than it is an

(45:39):
indigenous person's day, especially at least from a sailor point
of view. They're at Back when I was stationed in Norfolk,
they had a couple of ships come through that were replicas.
It wasn't all three, the Nina, the Pinta, of the
Santa Maria, but then also over Jamestown they had replicas

(46:00):
the ships that the English brought over to settle Jamestown
in and anybody who spent time at sea, when you
see how small these ships were, and what Columbus and
his crews did when all they knew about was Yazores
and the Canaries, and they said, well, the Basque said
there's something out west, so let's go see what we
can find. That's an incredible story. And it's unfortunate that

(46:21):
we've seen in the last few years that people are
judging fifteenth century people by first century norms, which you
can't do. You have to judge people by the time
and place at which they exist. I think that's an
incredible story, and I'm hoping that we'll return to be
given to giving Christopher Columbus and his fellow sailors the
de that they've earned by an incredible feat. When you

(46:43):
want to back up, what would the world be like
without the North and South America as it is here
in twenty twenty five, I think the future got a
net positive out of it. I'll leave it at that.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
Yeah, it's yeah, those ships were extremely small and how
you know, the living conditions were not exactly ideal. But
speaking of ships, our good friend James James Holmes has
an article in National Interest on the on what to
do about battleships because it seems to be President Trump

(47:15):
seems to be in love with the idea somewhat of battleships,
but I think he maybe abandoned the idea of bringing
back the Wisconsin, the Alabama, the New Jersey, and it's
the other one. Think there's four or five of the
museum ships now anyway, so it out put the link
up to it. It's what what James is suggesting is

(47:36):
that the idea is not silly, because as the print
pointed out, aluminum hauled ships have issues with survivability in
or certain conditions, and there is something to say about
a twelve inch thick hall to stop things. Although you
know there are other other issues with battleships that that
trend maybe transcend the we may be better off with

(47:59):
with fewer, small, more heavily armships and go from there.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
Yeah, I don't. He's usually with us live, but he
must have something come up. But we can all think
or blame John Conrad because he was really beating that
drum the summer about battleships and regular for mid rats
will know from when we've had doctor James Holmes on
a few times as a guest as a junior officer.
He was on I want to say the Wisconsin. He

(48:23):
was on the Wisconsin. Yeah, he was an injurying officer
and I think weapons officer an a gunnery officer, so
he has a saft spot. He knows battleships more than
anybody else. But I don't. I think we're long past
being able to economically activate those those battleships. But it does.
It does raise a lot of issues about survivability about

(48:45):
to lose use an old Cold War term throwweight. We
originally tried to fix that with the Zoom Waltz, but
we decided that artillery shells that cost as much as
a standard missile probably in a good idea, So we're
trying to make something out of that. I think the
the the gunfire and the armament argument's good, but that's expensive.

(49:07):
It cost a lot of money. Whether you're gonna it's
perhaps less expensive initially to have them conventionally powered. I
know one of the things that killed CGX is there
was there was discussions about making a nuclear powered and
that makes it really really expensive. But that's wonder reason
why battleship's disappeared, because they were expensive to operate, to

(49:28):
man and a train and equip and when you're at
peace and you allow the accountants to take control of things,
it's quickly the battleship gets priced out and you wind
up having a bunch of light, thin skinned ships out there.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
I gotten a little I got a little argument with
John Conran about he didn't you know it's like these
big guns are great and a less something. Well, you
have no idea of the logistics train involved involved in
carrying sixteen inch ship and bag powder to resupply those
large ships like that. I mean, it's you know, it

(50:06):
is a it's a massive undertaking when each shell will
weigh somewhere between fifteen hundred and twenty five hundred pounds,
and yeah, thank you, Paul. And the barrels for those guns,
I mean, you know they didn't you can't shoot an
infinite number of rounds through a through a battleship gun
and not have the gun suffer some some wear and tear.

(50:26):
So you know, it's and it's and the crews just
to man that the turrets on those things that you know,
huge number of people involved in that operation. And you know,
I've put up the past videos for these things, and
it's it's it's too complicated. Now we if we're going
to put a lot of money into ships that we
need to protect, well, we need to work on the

(50:47):
the rail guns, the what's the electronic the uh, there's
a word for directed energy weapon systems. Let's dump a
bunch of money into that. You know, let's really work
that that problem, because that's that's where the future is
and and a lot of this stuff. What John James
does point out in his article is that our current
strategy is we we are. We don't worry about the

(51:09):
armament of the or the protective shell of the battleship.
We worry more about fighting off the things that are
coming at you, which which is a good point. That's
that's exactly the approach we've taken. We can have We
think we could have lighter skin ships because we've got
these systems to fight off incoming missiles and it's not.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
Like they're completely unarmed. I remember back in the day,
and I know he was one of the officers on it,
but Artley Burke Hall won when they were bringing her online.
A lot of kevlar in that ship. But they've tried
to I remember that Admiral burg at the time. I
think his phrase was this ship was designed to fight,
so should you type of thing. And they've they've done

(51:51):
what they can to harden the ships as best as
he can. But when you're going to be that size,
if you want to carry lots of weapons, then you've
got to make compromise and trade off your moment, arms, center, gravity,
all that stuff. So everything's a compromise, and that's one
of the reasons why we kind of got in trouble
with the with the frem is. We weren't to convert

(52:12):
into the Constellation class frigate is, we weren't willing to
make those survivability compromises in a way that will allow
us to get holes in the water faster, which we've
talked about here before. So yeah, everything's everything's trade off. However,
what I have been told also is before we could
build any battleships, we would have to build new foundries

(52:32):
because we don't have any foundries here in the US
anymore that can produce barrels that size. We barely have
enough to produce replacement barrels for our one hundred and
fifty five millimeter guns for the army.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
Yeah, so it's sad to say that, but yeah, we
need to you know, we just again we can we
can make life harder for anybody who would challenge us
by by making some smart decisions and not trying to replicate.
Don't need to replicate World War Two. We need to
think uh far beyond that. You know, I don't want

(53:05):
to say star wars, but you know, these these these
systems we could have if we put enough money into
developing them adequately, and we're doing something. Drones. Drones are improving.
We just sent some something called the Global Autonomous Reconnaissance
Craft under an exercise up the North Atlantic. They are
capable of disrupting the US, attacking US, these protecting critical infrastructure,

(53:29):
all kinds of good stuff, and it's you know, it's
good that we're playing with these things and get them
out there as many as you can out there. This
reminds me that the anti big ship thing reminds me
which is what's his name? We had him on years ago.
But his argument was, look, the big ships and these
multi capable ships, the DDGs and all that. If you
lose one of those, you lose more than just the

(53:49):
gun mount. You lose more than just the missiles. You
lose asw capability, you lose a whole bunch of other
stuff that those ships do. And that's why you don't
want to put all your eggs in one back. And
that I think that is still true. We need to
we need to think less, you know less the accounts
all like them all in one place, because it seems like, well,

(54:09):
it's just we just can use the same hole to
do a bunch of things. That's great until you start
losing those halls. So we need to we need to
really think hard about how we want to look our
mayor navy to look. And I think it's I think
the h the the realistic approaches smaller ships which carry
out slightly different missions. It's sort of like the the
what we've iterated to with the lcs. Suddenly they're doing

(54:31):
instead of doing three potential jobs and having to change
out their systems every time they want to change the mission,
they can do maybe one thing really well, mine warfare
or or whatever. You could probably with the helos that
be carried on they could probably do some other things too.

Speaker 1 (54:46):
It's kind of the flip side of that distributed lethality.
It's like distributed risk as well. Don't have all your
eggs in one basket when you you can't afford to
have lots of big baskets. But hey, we've already done
over an hour and didn't even get to all of
our top.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
And when you said five hours worth of notes.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
Well, as this is my joint qualification for the day.
Having worked for one too many army general officers, one
of who is an artillery man, he'd always end his
meetings with any saved rounds. So you have any saved
rounds there, Mark, I don't think so.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
We'll take care of those as we go along.

Speaker 1 (55:23):
I think we've got it sixteen years. We probably got
another year or two. We can do this, I think so.
And hey, we had some great conversation there in a
chat room, and I appreciate everybody. Join us for another
edition of mid Rats and again next week. We won't
have a live show, but we're doing a pre record.
But keep an eye on the announcements because assuming our
guest is able to show up when we do the
pre record, it's going to be a great show we're

(55:45):
all going to enjoy. But until then, hope everybody has
a great Navy day.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
Cheers.

Speaker 4 (55:56):
I'll fix that, my lonely one to marry me and
leave a friend of becardily for you being to blame

(56:18):
for love eily, love me, silly faulding your tame.

Speaker 3 (56:27):
It's a long way to disper It's a long way.
It's a long way to diper army to the Queen.

Speaker 4 (56:44):
Go becdi farewell lestwell.

Speaker 3 (56:52):
It's a long long way to Differay's but my wand
my flour plo

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Episode 735: October NATSEC Melee

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