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 good day everybody. We appreciate you coming on board for another
edition of mid Rats, and if you are with UH, if you're with
us live, I like the extended invitation for you to scroll down to the
bottom of the show page. That's where you will find it. Ink to
that room. Got it up and running. We've already got ne C Lee
and Paul sending the quarterdeck to welk you on board. And during the course
of the show, if you have some observations you'd like to share, or
if there's a question you would like for us to direct to our guests,
that is the perfect place in which to put it. And today we're going
to hit on one of the topics that since the doing show and twenty ten
any chance we have to go back to we like it. We sometimes call
it the unsexy but important because it's guilty on both charges. But what we're
going to do today is we're going to look at some of the challenges involved
with combat logistics because when you have a maritime power like the United States,
and this navy that is looking for ways to sustain a fight against the land
power that has four times the population as of last year or two years ago,
a larger navy and is located on the other end of the huge pacific.
Logistics are simply going to be a cornerstone to any operation you do,
always has been, always will be. But as we'll talk about today,
sometimes if you don't mention the obvious long enough, it can be forgotten or
can be found inconvenient because the only reliable way you can get the amount of
fuels, weapons and supplies that it takes to have a robustly sustainable force is
by sea. And with your warships, combat logistics ships, do we have
the force we need right now? And does our budget and our plans have
some realistic requirements? And today we got a returning guest, doctor James Holmes,
the J. C. Wilie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War
College and a distinguished Fellow at the Brute Krulac Center for Innovation of Future Warfare
at Marine Corps University. And we're going to use as a touchstone today and
we'll go it's on the show page, but we'll put in the chat room
too, an article that he recently had up at the Center for Maritime Strategy
titled more combat Logistics four Ships. Yes please, James, welcome back to
me. Threats gentlemen. Always a pleasure. It's been it's been way too
long, it surely has, and it's just going to be a pleasure having
you on board for the next hour to talk about the un sexy and important
that we always like talking about here, and just to kind of kick things
off. I mentioned the article that tapped me on the shoulders. Back man,
we got to get James back on to talk about this. What what
brought you to to put out a page worth a thought on combat logistics sports
ships. Well, it's it's pretty it's pretty straightforward. I very seldom pushed
material, let anybody any board, but whenever somebody asked me for material,
I always give it to them. The Center for Maritime Strategy at the Navy
League has been it's it's a fairly new creation. They are very they are
very aggressive and so forth. And they got in touch and asked me if
I would say something about the size of the of the combat logistics fleet,
which I think is uh which I think is well. I always have to
say it's way too small. I mean it's the the the I guess the
the theme of the pieces. Basically, if you lose the merchant fleet,
if you lose the logistics fleet, you lose the war. The uh.
So I did some scattering around and tried to estimate. I think I came
up with an accurate figure of how many ships we have available for sea left
in wartime. I can't I can't. I can't swear. I can't swear
that it's an accurate figure. But nobody, nobody's been in touch to say
I'm wrong. So I just so I take it that I'm at least in
the ballpark. And you know what, we we lost it that we lost
about twice as many ships as we currently have in the inventory in the first
six months of World War two, uh A damaged or song. And that's
just so, that's just we are in We are in serious danger, in
a serious danger zone on the ability to rete stage forces forward and then to
sustain them once once they're out there. So it's so if it if it
does anything to to help wake up wake up people in Washington, and elsewhere
in the country. I think it's I would be very pleased with that.
Well. I think one of the things you've touched on in your article that
it's important is that the Chinese have learned from the Japanese. We think they've
learned from the Japanese experience of not attacking the US logistics train, and you
point out that that that may be a rather large issue for us to address.
Kind of talk about that a little bit, because before we get into
the the combat logistics for a shortages, let's just talk a little bit about
the threats that they may face. Yeah, that's absolutely right. I mean,
it's it's one of the it's one of the perennial mysteries that we talk
about, especially in our intermediate level course here in Newport, which is which
is pitched at the operational level. Going into going into World War two in
the Pacific, Japan had a had a force of fleet submarines roughly comparable to
our own, and yet they did not do what we did, which was
so basically, I mean literally, on December seventh, the Admiral Stark,
the Chief and Naval Operations, Orders the orders the submarine fleet out into the
Pacific to attack anything flying a Japanese flag where they're it's a battleship, whether
it's a carrier or especially if it's a merchantman, a merchantman basically carrying supplies
to and fro within the Japanese Empire. I mean that's literally the center of
gravity. Literally, the merchant fleet was the center of gravity for the Japanese
Empire simply because it was an island empire with possessions that had conquered overseas,
and it simply had to have simply had to have that sort of connectivity along
the sea lanes in order to in order to supply the economy and all the
things that the japan needed to do. But they simply did not use they
did not use it determinedly in order to attack our logistics train. As you
pointed out, I don't. I mean there's a lot of there's a lot
of potential reasons for that. It seems totally I've always had a hard time
making sense out of it. But there was something, there was certainly something
in the Japanese warrior culture which inhibited them from thinking about thinking a merchantman as
as being something an important thing. Japanese submarines were all a submarine skippers and
crews were all about trying trying to sink warships and it just didn't work out
for them as very well, whereas the US Submarine Force sub did quite well.
Thank over eleven hundred vessels of all types that by the time of World
War two wound down, including not just I mean so eleven hundred merchantmen and
then various warships and then and it was just a it's just a devastating blow
to Japan. One thing. One thing. My friend and co author Toshiyoshahar
did a he recently did a monograph down at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Affairs basically looking at the lessons that Chinese strategists, Chinese analysts have drawn out
of the Pacific War. And I guarantee you that's a that's a big one
is go after that, go after the logistics train, and dust impose a
cost on the United States. That way, if you gave me command of
the PLA today, I would take that anti access in the area denial network
they have that they have constructed over the last twenty five years. I would
actually target the logistics fleet and ignore the battle fleet in a sense something because
as people as people in this audience well know as well as as well as
you do. If you if you take away the logistics, the fleet goes
away within a few days. Even a nuclear power come back and is I
mean it's still in these regular resupply if it's especially if it's an aircraft carrier
that has an air wing that is that is thirsty for fuel. So even
even even carriers are not going to be able to sustain their presence in their
Western Pacific, in China's backyard, it deprived of that logistical supports. It's
so I think that's uh. I think the historical, the historical element element
is huge. Our Chinese friends are ardent students of history. I don't always
agree with the conclusions they draw from studying it, but they oftentimes do draw
conclusions that are very helpful for them in the operational sense. And I think
this is one of those. And it doesn't just apply to the sea and
going back to World War two, you know, that's one of the you
know, constant lessons through all of written history and the the Chinese culture has
a longer history than ours do. They were they were writing stories while my
ancestors were still chasing sheep around Scotland barefoot and mud huts. But yeah,
if if you have a strong force that you don't want to fight, you
starve it to death. You don't let it feed itself, you don't let
it get fresh water. And that translates into to combat effect in this and
even short term history. I was I was thinking as I was getting ready
for the show. A real good friend of mine from college, you graduated
a couple of years behind me, But he made the mistake of going Air
Force Rozzi as opposed to Navy Rozzi. But he's about to retire after thirty
two years of active duty, and he joined right after Desert Storm. And
that you have an entire generation of officers who as Jo's when you're so,
they weren't even thinking in the nineteen nineties because they were just trying to get
their getting their calls and getting up on step. But we have an entire
generation of leaders who grew up in that post Cold War end of history.
Six sigma just in time delivery, and we have saw an incredible shrinking of
our logistics force, and we had a lot of our resupply ships went from
USS to us NS, which is almost a great argument to get in with
people after a few beers, But we find ourselves having to look again at
what it means. You know, we don't have the Red Band or Northern
Fleet of the Soviet Union to run things again. But the People's Republic of
China, their navy and their rocket forces, they have it snuck up on
everybody. But as the distractions of the dust of all the distractions in Central
Asia start to fade, even though we're now worried about Ukraine and Israel and
everything else, when you look at the force the Chinese have, and you
bring this up in your article, it's not just your nineteen nineties NBA just
in time delivery of peacetime supplies and training supplies. We need to think about
what we need for sustained operations, but also to do something that people don't
like to talk about. But you mentioned it right in your opening, that's
combat loss. That means we can't have a quote efficient combat logistics force.
We need something that is resilient and for lack of a better phrase, had
a lot of redundancy. And you know, those numbers I think could be
really interesting to play out absolutely and I hope. I certainly hope as we're
doing wargaming. I don't do any classified work at also, so I can't
say with any real precision of what's going on in wargaming. I know I
know that I know that war gaming here in Newport is going on all the
time, and I'm sure it is that at similar places around the country.
I've I'm contested logistics in particular, but I certainly hope that we were building
in that look like like you said, you don't you don't need to be
efficient. You need to be effective, and that means redundancy. And that's
for anybody who's ever been an engineer, as you all have. As you
all have, you always want to have a spare at least one's fare for
everything, simply because you're going to probably the chances are being what it is,
you're gonna you're gonna need that spare and you're gonna lose the primary the
uh and you sort of hit it. In fact, you and I have
been you and Buy for a long time have been running on parallel tracks on
the you're talking about that basically that forgetful Are era right after the Cold War,
at the end of his the end of history esus. You saw it.
I saw it when I was teaching here in swats I was back after
Desert Storm. I was back in Newports. It's just to teach engineering.
And in nineteen ninety two I remember being handed a copy of a little book
called From the Sea, which was basically the Navy and the Marine corps first
effort to make strategy for the post Cold War era. And the preamble to
that literally says, we own the sea for all time. I mean exaggerating
slightly, but you can look online and it's it basically says the Soviet Navy
is gone and there's no challenger on the horizon, and therefore we should reinvent
ourselves into a force that no longer has to worry about fighting for command of
the sea. We can basically assume that we can project power from the sea
as a safe haven. And that's I think that's where you saw the just
in time logistics and all that, and all those those sort of fads from
the business, from the business world make their way into into naval operations.
I think I think we've always been a little bit and you mentioned doctor Deming
once in a while. I think that for some reason, the military services
are very prone to to to leap at business fads. But that way,
it felt like that was that was on steroids. If you did If you
do that, if you say that, you own the seat and you don't
have to worry about it being challenged at See at that point, at that
point, you don't have to worry about the challenges to your logistical system.
And if you if you stop worrying about that, preparing for that, building
assets for that, you're really you're really setting yourself up for failure, because
the next challenger is coming along, even if you don't know who it is
or when it's coming. See better, you better, you better be ready,
You better be fatalistic about about these things. If we get through this
competition with China and Rossia, Iran and everybody else, I certainly hope we
take that lesson away and put it to work for us in the future.
Yeah. I having been on the on the Service Force Fleet during the Vietnam
War off the coast of Vietnam, people do not understand how rapidly you go
through a munitions I mean there were three or four carriers there, so we
were I was on an amyship amoship. So we were re arming them at
night and we were re arming destroyers during the day. And you know,
we weave the country. Uh we ran out of ready ammunition, even though
we had Subic Bay, which had a fairly large inventorious stuff in its bunkers.
Uh, we ran a five and two. They were bringing that stuff
in in C fives and and then we you know, they there were like
two am ships on online. We had AoE S, we had AO R
S, we had a brunch of oilers out there, and we were all
busy as all get out. I don't I'm just convinced that people who didn't
were weren't around, and we weren't contested either. I mean, this was
this was just US bombing. We were contested a couple of times, but
uh, this is just US bombing or shooting at Vietnam. I don't even
I don't think anybody who hasn't gone through that kind of think gets glimpse or
has an idea of how how bad things can be when everybody goes Winchester,
especially since we have all these these ships now that thank goodness for trying to
do something about it, but can't load their vertical lot cells. I think
you know we're we are way short of what we need and way short of
the capabilities we need to keep the fleet and action. And I'm sure you
have thoughts on that. Yeah, it's and it's it's almost a what we're
seeing today is almost a rhyme from the nineteen fifties. And and people out
in the audience who haven't read this before, it's a nice short article from
Samuel Huntington, who was a professor at Harvard, very very famous in the
nineties for his for his book on the Class of Civilizations. But he in
nineteen fifty four he wrote a book of the name, or not a book,
but an article for the Naval Institute Proceedings, calling for the Navy after
World War Two to reinvent itself as a transoceanic navy. And it almost feels
like from the sea. He basically says, look, you get this huge
fleet coming out of World War Two, You've sunk all your major competitors.
Why don't you, Why don't you really? And you need a reason for
being. You have to be able to put it to Congress and the American
people and presidential administrations. Why do we need it? Why do we need
a battle fleet, but he basically says the Navy should rein reinvent itself as
a as a as a powered projection for uce that doesn't have to worry too
much about about fighting for command of the seed. The Soviet Navy didn't really
start becoming a thing until Admiral Gorshkov's era in the nineteen sixties, so for
at least a few years there, we were sort of in the same mode
that we've been. We've been in well for thirty years now. At this
point, it's over over thirty years since the Cold War ended, so it
feels like we have so it feels like that was sort of a sort of
a premonition of what we have now, except that it's gone on way too
far now. But yeah, I mean, and I think the Cold War,
the course of the Cold War sort of confirmed what Huntington said, In
the minds of most people there was that we didn't have to worry about we
didn't have to worry too much about contested contested logistics or being challenged at see
off Korea, Vietnam, or so forth. Into the nineteen seventies. At
that point, at that point, people started getting religion, especially especially during
the Arab Israeli War of nineteen seventy three, when it's when it became obvious
that that the Soviet Navy had become a force to be reckoned with. At
that point, the the the different Administration's President Ford, President Carter and so
forth started getting started getting serious about that. And then of course we had
the sixteen one hundred it's the six hundred ship navy build up in the nineteen
eighties, and and that got us through. But it does feel like it
does feel like history has repeated itself, except in a more virulent form.
It's and you also, I think you have sometimes we can be our own
worst enemy. And I think there can be well intentioned people, smart people
who just have bad ideas. But sometimes bad ideas can have knock on effects.
And I think the tide is receding here. You probably have a better
view of it up at the War College, and we do down here in
the provinces. But one thing that one of the windmills I tilt against whenever
I get a chance is two of the higher profile advocates or sells people of
this way of thinking is Bob Work and Michelle Flornoy and the whole thought that
the best way to think about war in the Pacific was the seventy two hour
war, where we have to prove and make it clear that if any war
comes up first, seventy two hours would be so dramatic and so destructive that
nobody would dare try to do that. Well, if you run your entire
operation based upon assuming that you're only going to go seventy two hours, you
can quickly talk yourself into not wanting or not seeing a requirement for a large
merchant marine not to have requirements for a large combat sustainment force, because you
say, well, everything's forward, and everything's going to go forward, and
we'll be done in seventy two hours. Have you seen things similar to that
that have helped people justify the state not just of our combat logistics sports,
but in the merchant marine that we have that is supposed to back it up
and defeat it. Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, you're
not going to get to me to say the thing a negative about Bob Word,
who's a friend of mine, was I think the idea of the seventy
two hours at least I hope that this is the case. I mean,
it's it's a great idea, but as you know, I mean, it's
we hopefully live in the world in which the scientific method still holds. Way,
I mean, that's to me, that's a proposition. It's a hypothesis
that you should then rigorously test, I mean, be skeptical of it.
Can we actually can we actually do that? And I think I think I'm
with you on the on this particular one, because I mean, how many
times or how many times in military history have you seen seen powers go and
go into a conflict and assume, you know, make assumptions that were actually
not not things that were self evident, they were simply a sort of me
sort of mean is that that shape a particular combat and went into a into
a conflict. So my answer is, if it's possible to do that,
that's a very powerful deterrent. But to deterrent if you can communicate it to
the other side. But I think that's uh. I mean, think about
nineteen fourteen when all the powers thought that they were going to march off to
a shoot to a short and inglorious war in Western Europe, and and and
when the First World First World War. You gotta be very skeptical about that
kind of stuff. If we can do it, if it's actionable, then
fine, if we can't, but I think that but I think the we
we ought to air on the side of skepticism just because so often what you
think is going to happen. I mean, the adversary is going to change
the nature of the war around you. I mean there's just furious things that
can happen because your antagonists gets a vote in how you in how your war
plans and your operations work out, and he's getta cast in against you.
There's no question about that. Yeah. I think one of the other things
that's kind of disturbing to me is that the the Red Hill Petroleum Facility in
Hawaii is being closed. I'm not sure we have any kind of adequate system
coming online it's going to take its place, except we're going to rent some
big tankers and have them do something. But that just points out the necessity
of having since most of the ships in the carriers now operate on some kind
of fuel, having a system to get that fuel go forward. And uh,
that means we have to protect seed lines. We talked about this a
little bit, but you know, if if the bad guys have submarines that
are capable of reaching to mid ocean or to the coast of Hawaii. Uh,
then we're going to have to have escort ships, some kind of vessels
that commandment. We could probably do something with phs and unmanned systems, but
this, you know, this is much more complicated than just saying, okay,
we need we need you know, five new AOEs and and then we'll
solve all the problems. I mean, this is this is some some uh
some brain poweries to be put on this. And and I'm assumed someone somewhere
is running numbers, but I'm as a marine sergeant taught me one time,
assuming is a very dangerous thing. Yeah. Well, you know what they
say about the assumptions that make an ass out of you and me. I
mean, that's that's that's that's that's concentrated wisdom right there. Yeah. And
by the way, so I think of all the things of yours that I've
read and in a long time, that was the most effective, the most
effectives to me, that you that you that you did a few a few
weeks ago when we had I can't even remember who it was, somebody had
some of the Depentagon test is essentially testifying that closing the fuel dog, the
fuel storage facility in Hawaii made no really didn't have any impire impact on our
operations in the end of Pacific. I mean, that simply cannot be true.
So it's the I mean, it's I mean, possibly it's true that
we could work around it, but it seems really hard to really hard to
believe. I mean that's I mean, that was one of the whatever.
Whenever and Limits showed up and showed up on in late December of nineteen forty
one, to take charge of the Pacific fleet, he looked around, and
he looked around at the things that Japanese had done wrong, and that was
one of them. They spent so much time working over the battleship fleet that
they that they had not attacked the fuel storage facilities, which ended up being
absolutely critical to our ability to stage and sustain operations in the Western Pacific against
Japan. They simply had their they simply had their their centers of gravity wrong,
and they went after the wrong thing something by attack, attacking things that
were gonna I mean, battles were about to be so support assets and not
the not the primary bearers of the battle fleet. But it's yeah, it's
and I have not heard anybody. In fact, I'm not entirely sure i've
heard anybody addressed to address that. It seems that we seem to be just
sort of waving aside that reality that you're talking If you're talking about a massive
increase on demand demand for shipping to transport to fuel and stores and ammunition and
what not to the Western Pacific, so that has actually made things much worse.
Yeah, Slim Mar Cogliano, I know you're familiar with and we've had
them on here before. Right before the show, he mentioned a thread of
his that he had up there, and uh, the second part of the
thread, he has a demonstration about how those supplies ultimately get to a four
deployed strike group or amphibious Readiness group is if not just your fast about support
ship. That's stage three. And if you've you know, moving the stuff
on to the warships, you can call that a fourth stage. But the
second stage are the shuttle ships. And then you have the first age,
which are those merchant ships which move it from the ports to where it needs
to be, whether they're tankers or cargo ships, and if you know,
we lose red hills like I. One of the things always frustrating me is
I wish everybody didn't have an online you know, Google Earth Map, they
had an actual physical globe in their office, because you really cannot appreciate the
distance of the Pacific until you physically put your hands on a globe and have
to rotate it. But that distance from La San Diego, Seattle to Hawaii
is long enough. But if you can't even get what you need in Hawaii,
then you've got to do that distance from the west coast of the US
to Guam. That the heck of a reach. And to do that math
you know, your your first aid and your second stage ships that just screens
whatever you have. It's not enough because you've got another half of the ocean
you simply have to cover. Yeah, absolutely, if it's sort of too
it's sort of two things. I once the geograt once the geographic thing.
I would, yes, everybody please get a globe. Yeah, I get
an actual Globe's that I have one on my desk. I have one next
to my next next to Archie Bunker's chair, here and here and here in
Barrington that I that I use when I'm working at home. But if you
don't have a globe, I want you to get out there and google Richard
ads Harrison, Richard Aids being ed E. S Uh And the title of
the book is The Fortune Atlas of Worlds of World Strategy, and it dates
from the Second World War. He was he was a master. He was
an absolute master of political cartography. If you get out there and you look
at you look at those maps. A lot of those relief too, obviously
because he was writing for a World War two audience. But he does things
like he will zoom in and and he will show you what exactly I mean.
For example, one of my favorites is that if you're looking from the
Solomon Islands in nineteen forty two or forty three towards Japan, you're basically seeing
just water and but but but anyways, there's just a lot of a ton
of great imagery that will shape how you how you look at these at these
problems, these problems of strategy, operations and tactics. So that's so,
yeah, that's so, that's I mean, that's he was great at conveying
ideas visually. And the other the other thing is, yeah, I mean,
it's I mean, it's it's kind of disturbing. I don't you guys
may be more plugged into this was but the Navy what was probably a couple
of years ago that Admiral gil Day came out and came out and said that
that these very these various merchant vessels, they're gonna go. They're gonna go
without convoys. You don't because we don't have enough escorts to provide them with
protection to get submarines or air attack or whatever whatever might be brought against them.
I mean, that's really it seems like that's if you look back over
certainly so that's certainly the last couple of centuries of history. It seems like
that's one of the most forgetful areas is convoys. It seems like we're always
that. It seems like we in the Royal Navy before us, are always
forgetting the lesson that you have to have. You have to you have to
do convoys, You have to supply convoy escorts in or in order for those
things to get through. If anybody doesn't, if anything, the body doesn't
believe that. I tried to find a copy of Greyhound with with Tom Hanks
which of course takes place during World War Two. A wonderful film. It's
not a lot of dialogue in it, but it really conveys exactly what it
was like to do convoy escort duty and also in just also how critical it
was, especially if you didn't have air cover in order to in order to
to help fend offs submarines at see. But but yeah, I could Yeah,
I couldn't agree more. Yeah, a few weeks ago, maybe months
ago, I did a I just kind of was thinking about that. That
exact issue is how do you if you don't have escort hips, uh like
gray Ound, how do you how do you keep track of of your and
what's the threat? I mean the the that the the churity of time and
distance work both ways. With the Chinese they've got they've got the same issue
we have in reverse. So where where do you have the where do you
have the need for these escort vessels or or some kind of system. And
that's that was what I was saying earlier, that that with the P eight
and the range that has, you can probably cover most of the distance between
Guam and Hawaii have provided you also have some kind of sensors out there keeping
track, you know, like the unmanned stuff that could go along at the
same speed as the is that some kind of uh uh supply force and as
long as you had helicopters that are capable of of taking care of submarines.
I mean, that's your that's your best hope, I guess. But uh,
you know, I don't know if anybody else is thinking along those lines.
I didn't get much feedback on that on that thing piece, and uh,
maybe you don't have to write a stronger one down the road. Yeah,
I mean it's a well, like I said, I I haven't done
any well, I have done wargaming, but not on these on these topics
and anytime recently. But the but yeah, if you do here, you
you do hear disturbing rumors out of out of different war games that we're basically
we're basically assuming that whatever you need, whatever stuff you need, whether it's
fuel, oil or a fuel or ammunition or stores, is there at the
time when you need it. And that's if that's the case. If that's
a if that's if that's an assumption built into what we are telling ourselves,
that's a that's a really dangerous thing. But yeah, so I mean,
these are all hypotheses. I mean, it's you mentioned on manned I love
the P I love the P eight, it's it seems like a wonderful airframe,
and so and so forth. But if we are just assuming that these
things are going to work as design, I mean, that's always I mean,
that's that's just a hypothesis. You have to try to vet it,
you have to try to falsify it. As Carl Popper told us a century
ago, these these things are all theories, and theories theories exist to be
debunked. If you can't debunk it, then at that point yet that sort
of becomes your work, your working model. But I certainly hope we are
being very ruthless with ourselves about trying to debunk our ideas about how we're going
to do things in the end of Pacific. Because we don't do that,
reality might do it for us. Yeah, it's the kind of what we
mentioned before is well meaning people, smart people. They can have ideas,
they're just not the they're not the right ideas. And it is that.
I like how you mentioned the scientific method because I think one of the things
that can can be a weakness is a a misuse of a very honorable characteristic
we have in the military is a difference to seniority and being supportive of people
up high. And you have very senior people if they don't work inside of
a culture that encourages questioning and encourages wrecked challenging of ideas. You can have
good ideas that they go forward, go forward, go forward, but they
are because they're never really asked the hard questions. The hard questions are just
kind of hand waved away. And you brought up something in your article that
I hadn't really thought. I hadn't made the connection before, but when I
saw it, I went, yeah, somebody needs to really work on that.
And you can see hints for people have and that's the acronyms or us
e ABO, the Marine Corps Expeditionary Advance based operations. If we are going
to have a bunch of Marines scattered about the Pacific making a nuisance of themselves,
that just creates a not just a more numerical challenge to keep them supplied,
much less to get where they need to be. But that's where I
think people are thinking about it, but also a different classes shit because what
we have seen is therese combat support logistics ships that we have now they're huge.
They're because they're big, they're very efficient in peace. But we've gotten
to the point in some of our warship classes, like our anthems, that
the loss of just one unit, it's not a tactical era, it's not
even an operational concern. It can become strategic. So, okay, if
we're going to do this with the Marines, where are the combat logistics support
that will enable it. That's a hard question. I don't think anybody's answered
yet. Yeah, I mean that's a well, let me let me make
a philosophical point and then I'll come to the war operational point that you were
talking about. Ideas. I mean, that's absolutely critical. I mean we
we we really need to be self critical. It really in all phases of
life, but especially in military affairs, just because the consequences are so great.
Every every every term, when I have a new class come in,
I bet, in fact, we just started. We just started Thursday.
I want to say. On a new term. I always we sort of
have an admin session where we say, you know, well, welcome to
Newport. You know, here's where the here's where the head is here's where
the here's where the food is, and so forth. But I always,
I always tell my my new students that I have a hidden agenda for them
that's not very hidden. Actually, I want to make the devil's advocates.
And the reason I say that is because we need we need, we need
opposition, we need to be skeptical of ourselves. In the in the medieval
Catholic Church, the church, their church fathers, when they were considering a
candidate for sainthood, they would appoint a liar to basically go out and dig
up dirt on the candidate is and basically argue against the candidacy by by fair
means or foul don't, and thus provide the church fathers the maximum amount of
information they could have in order to make a wise choice about whether to make
this person a saint. I mean, that's that's where the term this the
devil's advocate comes from. Be the devil look or look for reasons that the
that the prevailing idea or the our theory or hypothesis is not true. So
I and so so I hope we were I hope we are grooming a generation
of skeptic systems out there, and into the force, and just because I
think even even even if the criticism is wrong, it doesn't really matter because
it makes us think and it makes us smarter as a whole. So that's
so, that's that's kind of my that's kind of my agenda for for all
the younger generations. We're you and I, you and I and and you
and I are and all of us are trying to raise the next generation.
I hope we're raising a generation like that. But uh, but yeah,
I mean, I mean, just all these ideas about how to support how
to support forces of forces. I mean, you're quite right, and I
have to once once again, I have no idea what the gaming is showing.
But if you're gonna just if you're gonna do distributed operations, if you're
gonna do expeditionary, advanced based operations and basically scattered forces all all over the
theater, cases are you're not going to be able to rely on a on
a on a huge on a huge job on a huge JEV logistics ship to
go out there and supply all those things. Can you do it? On?
Man? Can we can? We can? We have a new a
new smaller class of ship. I mean exactly what there are the answers,
and I don't have a clear sense of this. I mean, I hope
it's going on in the classified world, but but I simply don't have a
lot of competence that that's the case. Yeah, I was. I was
amused by an article the other day. In fact, I did a blog
post on it where not really amusing, but it's interesting. Uh. They
had an oiler out refueling an unmanned ship. Uh, and the way they
did that was it was a but yeah, it's pretty interesting. Uh.
They put a team of sailors from the oiler on board the unmanned vessel and
they rig up a hose that was towed to stern of the oiler for a
stern refueling while underway. Interesting. Okay, yeah, I mean it wasn't
alongside, But I guess, you know, you don't have a whole lot
of choices if you're gonna do this operation. But I thought, well,
somebody is thinking, you know, somebody is somebody has actually put two and
two together and going, you know, if we're going to use these things,
they're gonna out of fuel. We're going to have to find a way
to refuel them. So that that that was good news. And despite what
Lee says, he says unmanned logistics is an absurd concept. I don't think
it is. I think you can do all kinds of things if you're creative
enough, and we certainly have enough creative people. I agree with you.
You know, somebody asked us, think, okay, what if we had
very large semi submersible tankers that just popped up and somebody from the gets on
board and sets up a fuel rig and you go from there. I mean,
it's it's uh. Is that absurd? Is that totally impossible? You
know? I think we need to think out I hate to say this because
thinking outside the box is such a cliche, but we really need to think
a little a little better about what the concerns are. What are how we're
going to solve these problems, especially in days of limited manning and people who
don't need to be interested in serving some you know, if we're going to
grow the force, take care of the marines on the beach and all that,
we really do need to look at at unmanned operations and and stealthy systems
to get to get equipment ashore. I sure hope somebody is looking at that.
Yeah, so why, I mean we that's from In fact, I
would say this is not just a military thing. I think it applies a
cost to all society these days. I mean, we we really need to
get back to an experimental ethos in which in which we don't just sort of
wave away difficulties. Because it feels like it feels like you read the daily
news and just about just about every day, somebody somebody's just sort of making
a leap from a from an idea to to a conclusion that this is what
we should do. But yeah, absolutely, yeah, I could not agree,
could not agree more with that. We just have to be critical of
ourselves because if you've i mean, if you if you just assume the way
difficulties you're you're asking for trouble and it's and again that's just it seems like
that's just a proven reality across military and diplomatic history over the last however many
years that we've been studying, at to twenty five hundred years or however long
we've you know, pick pick your favorite start day. But uh, yeah,
that's I mean, I think they're related to the related question you raise
is probably a bit it's a bigger. It's a bigger one. The logistics,
I mean, And I don't know, actually I don't actually know what
to think about unmanned. I mean, it's when we talk about unmanned and
artificial intelligence and all that kind of stuff, those seem to be like possibly
fledged factors as well. And this is another another area in which I hope
we are being very self critical about this, because I mean, it's I
always look back to the twenties and thirties, the Inner War era, in
which you saw this experimentation going on with military aviation, with aircraft carriers,
with submarines and so forth. And the tendency is, the tendency is at
first to see new technologies and new ways of doing things, as in auxiliary
to what we already do well, which I think was the case with the
aircraft carrier in the nineteen twenties before military aviation caught up in aircraft became a
legitimate striking platforms on their in their own right. But it just feels like
we're in another one of those areas eras here a century later. I don't
I don't actually see what the what the revolutionary contribution on mand makes, uh.
I mean, I mean executly, what what's the What's what's the actual
tactical and operational and strategic value of that? Maybe it reduces costs. I
mean, the Air Force likes to talk about affordable mass. Mass is a
good thing. We have to have mass. But but the executive does that
actually constitute a revolution in how we are doing things? And I think I
wish we should be asking ourselves at just about every day. Yeah, especially
if you're dealing with logistics involving fuel. I think between the the Greens and
the attorneys, the risk of having tens of thousands of barrels of petroleum products
to and around there with no one to be strictly held accountable could be an
issue. Uh. And I think also there's there's the problem of something that
we've been reminded of this weekend. Is again if you keep them at high
seas as one thing, but you know you have off of Yemen they have
seized two merchant ships. Is you know you mentioned the statement by Gilday and
I know if you want to get John Conrad face to turn beat red and
the clause to come out, you know you mentioned that scenario to them where
you tell our merchant ships yet just get underway. We can't escort you.
It's a dangerous planet out there, especially if you're going to be engaged.
And if we do ever find ourselves we kind of touched on this earlier.
If we find ourselves engaged in a major conflict with the People's Republic of China
west of the International Dateline, the smart money will tell you not just it's
not going to be short, it's not going to be localized. It will
one way or another metastasize into a global conflict that will affect all ships on
water. And you know, it's one thing in peacetime. I was I
asked somebody earlier today, what are the insurance rates right now going through the
Red Sea, Because I think the folks at Lloyd's aren't going to like their
ships being taken by the hoothies. But that's that's a legitimate problem to look
at. You maybe you could use unmanned in theory to be phase stage two,
a four stage operation, but again without a person in the loop,
it doesn't solve the larger problem of the fact that you need merchant sheep ship.
You need merchant ships, you need redundancy, and you also need reliable
nationals to man them and operate them, which again is another thing that we
haven't been strong of in our lifetime is having enough American citizens or Allied citizens
that you could really rely on in time of war to really Yeah, you
actually raised two very good points there. I mean, one is the I
mean, that's just the idea that insurance firmsploids. I'm not even sure who
else does that. Bro time insurance Loyds seems to be the domin there's a
player in the player in that field and has been for a long time.
But I mean if they're I mean, if there's a risk to shipping,
if if it's surance rates goes up, I mean, that's that is that
didn't that affects what shippers are willing to do. And we thought we saw
this very clearly back in the back in the in the two two thousand and
eight to ten time frame or thereabouts when when the piracy off Somalia was it
was. It was a major thing that at that point, at that point,
you had shippers thinking about sending sending, sending cargoes all the way around
the southern tip of Africa into the South Atlantic and then and on that way
up rather than rather than risk sending them through the Red Sea or through the
Gulf of mon and into the Red Sea. And so it's so it's the
economic aspect aspect is actually I mean it's really it's really huge. It's and
I think it sort of goes on. I mean, it's just not something
you normally think about. We'd like to think about guns and AMMO and taxics
and whatnot. But though the economic dimension is actually huge. So that's a
so, yeah, it's I think I think I lost my train. I
thought there was a second point in there, but I seem to seem to
have lost what it was finding the mariners that either are oh yeah, Americans
or Allied that you can rely on in time of war. Yeah, I
was actually we haven't mentioned the hand today. I was just gonna I was
just gonna bring up a Mahonian point when you when you look at in the
Hand and is in his book The Influence of Seapower upon History of his his
signature work. I mean, that's the first ninety pages of thereabouts of that
he I mean, he's been talking about the fundamentals of seapower, What does
the nation possess the right stuff to go to see and make itself a seafaring
power of note and what like you mentioned one of those is I mean one
of those is I mean it's basically demographics. Do you have enough people for
the for the size of your territory, but that's but also do you have
enough specialized people to support just to support seafaring industries, include the including merchant
mariners, including and including ship building. I mean, these are these are
things in which we are way behind our Chinese friends. I mean, if
there's been a there's been a light out of a PowerPoint presentation floating around out
of the out of the Office of Naval Intelligence the last couple of months,
that's uh, that contends that China has two hundred times our our our shipbuilding
and industry. I mean that they simply build a ton of ships and we
simply don't. Anymore. Good news is our allies do Japan and South Korea.
But with the fact is that we have by American laws that that inhibit
our ability to go out and actually procure ships from them. And I think
that's something we need to get to consider as we as we progress in this
competition with with with China. Yeah, that's it's an very important issue.
We would last I think last time we had a guest on, we had
Claude Barraby who was talking about his book about Rickover. One of the things
in the in that book which is basically Ricover's work, uh memos and letters
and stuff as he talks about uh he he was sent originally to Okinawa to
uh set up a name, uh maybe repair facility on you because he was
an engineering duty office, right and uh and he took a look at that,
and the think got wiped out by a typhoon. But he took a
look at it and said, I really don't think we need to have this
stuff on shore. We ought to have a floating system to take care of
the ships as they get damage and all that. And even before the show
started we talked a little bit about about the bullets beans and black oil and
Henry eccles. But you know that in those days of the large, very
large drydox that could hold up to battleships and all that, Uh, you
know, should should Is this another concern which you had was let's not get
dependent on shore basis and all these let's let's have mobile platforms for for repair
and all that. Yeah, I would. I would love to see more
tenders and in floating DRYDOCKX. And whatn't I mean? I mean you mentioned
you mentioned Eckyl's Uh. You mean you mentioned Eckyl's uh. And by the
way, if anybody wants to know about logistics of it, he wrote a
book called The Just in the National Defense, which is an absolute must read
if you're interested in this field. But yeah, I mean recently, the
well, it was probably during COVID, that was a couple of years ago
that the Naval Institute reissued a book from the nineteen eighties called the I think
it was called the Pacific War We Considered or remember I can't exactly remember the
title, but it was it was really great. It was it was.
It was a collection of essays from from protagonists who had taken part in the
Pacific War maybe, and they were all really great. I mean, there
was an article Jimmy Jimmy Thatch talking about how he invented the Thatch weave and
sort of fighter tactics to compensate with the Japanese zero and so forth. But
you know what, the vast majority of the vast majority of the articles in
there were about not necessarily logistics, but unsexy stuff. It was about the
beach preparations, if you're as if you're a if you're a c be and
maybe it was it was about all those things that you do to enable the
battle fleet and and the and the and the Marines and the army to go
and do to go and do their thing. And that really that really,
that really stuck with me just because it's I guess I hadn't put any serious
thought into it, but you know, the end glamorous stuff is really the
absolute necessary stuff. In fact, I've been, in fact, as I
was getting ready for the show to that, I've been looking back to some
of my some of my some of my favorite reads on logistics. One of
my favorites that comes from Martin van Craifeld, who is a he's still alive.
He must be very old at this point. He's in this Rael Israeli
military historian. But it's called the Supplying War and what he does, it's
and it's all about armies. So it's so in that sense it so it's
very much a ground warfare thing and not a naval thing. But but he
goes back and he looks he goes way all the way back to the Thirty
Years War and comes up through World War Two and looks at the key determinants
of logistics, and he talks about change the changing character of war from for
a, for example, back in the in the Napoleonic era, armies basically
pray that they basically plundered their way across the countryside rather than relying on extra
on external supply. He moves into the mechanized age, especially especially after especially
after eighteen seventy one and into the World one one era, when when the
warfare becomes mechanized, and at that point ammunition becomes huge, whereas in the
previous in the previous era, and it all then about food stuffs and then
what the army needed to live on as it's as it roamed across the country.
Just just just just a wonderful book. It was it was reissued,
I goesha, Actually, I think this edition is now twenty years old,
but it's a but it's still it still reads very fresh, and I think
that I think there's a lot of goodness in there for people who are interested
in the logistic. I mean, he talks about the quantity, the quantity
of of of different supplies that's demanded, whether it's precision guided to musicians or
all the things that we need today. And also and also just the complexity,
and so he spends a lot of time talking about mobility of forces simply
because of the friction that involved in the in the logistical system. I mean
that that imposes a limit on what a force can do, where it can
go, how far I can go, what it can do when it gets
there. So wonderful, a wonderful book and one that I would commend to
everybody. Gonna pull together a few different thread threads here the mentioned Claude Brave
and I also mentioned earlier about well I didn't mention, I just put it
up on Twitter. Salmore Cogliano tapping on the shoulder. He has a nice
little thread that I think is a good companion to our show. He didn't
know we were doing this topic, but it does flow together pretty well there.
And Mark mentioned earlier about thinking outside the box. You know, what
do we do should we find ourselves inside? Everybody but Admiral Davidson's favorite phrase,
the Davidson window, where we've got to do what a nation has to
do, and you know, we can look back to the First World War
and the OP NOV. Back in January of twenty eighteen, they formed what
was called the Naval Overseas Transportation Service, and one of their jobs was to
look at how we can and seize German ships to make up for the US
merchant marine shortfall. And the People's Republic of China does have a huge fleet,
and our friend Claude has a good fiction writer's mind. I'd like to
get him and a few overcaffeinated and underemployed helo pilots and service warfare officers and
go, okay, guys, put on your ipatch and grab your parrot.
How are you going to go out there and seize for me one hundred Chinese
flag merchant ships. Go. That's an interesting concept that we've actually looked for
before in quasi recent naval history. I don't know if the lawyers up at
the War College have looked at that option at some point. Yeah, I
actually don't know. I actually don't know either. I certainly hope that all
these questions are being asked. Actually hope Claud's actually listening. I actually have
a story to tell him that he's going to make it. Very jealous.
I've always I've always wanted a copy of the nineteen forty three version of Edward
vide Earl's book Makers of Modern Strategy, and I finally got one. It
was very expensive, but you know what, but I look on Amazon and
it said it belonged to Admiral Rickover, and I thought that was the coolest
thing in the world. Apparently is the second wife died last year and somehow
Amazon got got hold of his book collection. So at that point I pulled,
I pulled the pulled the trigger on that stuff, on that on that
very cool book. I don't have many first editions in the house, but
but I thought that was really a great a great edition from one of the
greats. I mean, as far as when you, I think the bigger
point you're actually talking about in in fact you mentioned fiction. I think that's
uh. I mean, fiction is a way of imagining things. Yeah,
I would like to I would love to ask claud Claude about this. Get
him in the room with Peter Singer and with August Cole and so forth.
I mean, start thinking. And Apple's for redis, by the way,
who's become a fiction writer in his own right, in his own right?
They they h August and August and Peter call it fac fiction intelligence, and
it's basically the use of its basically the use of imagination, sort of the
use of fiction to imagine alternative futures and figure out how we might prepare for
them. And that's really that's really what the I mean, that's really what
it's all about. Trying to figure out what the nature of the coming conflict
is, what your adversary is likely to do, how how you might adapt
to that, and and and basically defeat that. And I think it's a
very I think it's a very powerful way of of of thinking about the future.
I find that I find that you know, I didn't. I sort
of wandered into this over the last few years. I read more and more
fiction and less and less sort of a drive you know, political science and
and history and so forth, just because I get more benefit out of it.
And I also get to get a lot of benefit out of it in
the classroom because students really respond to it. So yeah, trying to whatever
you can do to catalyze your imagination, I think is a good thing.
Yeah. I think that that's when we were doing the Navy con stuff,
the the science fiction thing that that Clod actually put together initially, and people
were talking about you know, uh Honor Harrington series and and Star Wars start
Star Trek and all that stuff. Yeah, I mean, I whatever whatever
else. You know, if you've got great ideas because people are thinking about
the future, well I don't understand why we're not. We're not paying more
attention to it. And I know for a while we had groups of people
who were looking at that and trying to go, well, this is totally
unfeasible. Uh, you know this, this might work, but we're never
gonna get funded kind of stuff. But you know, yeah, we've that
is thinking in a different in a different frame of reverence than well, you
know, historically we did this and we'll just keep plodding along that path.
Yeah, I mean, and I love science fiction, by the way,
I've had the last few years i've been I discovered I was kind of a
late comer to Audible, but I discovered it maybe five years ago. And
I started off by listening to classic science fiction that I hadn't listened to or
I hadn't read since I was a kid. I mean, I read,
but when I read, when I listened to the Foundation series. I was
like, man, you know, this is actually this is actually a series
about green strategy. It's about history, it's about that, it's about really
big themes, and it's it. It just sort of struck me. And
I didn't know anything when I was a kid in high school, so it
just struck me in an entirely new way. But I would actually, I
mean, I would actually, I mean it's just sort of it's not necessarily
even science fiction, but I would say just fiction, just fiction in general,
or even poetry. Sometimes you can you can glean a lot of insight.
I'm a I'm a huge Joseph Conrad fan, So you're gonna, you're
gonna, you can I'm gonna that's sort of my go to person to look
at on big themes about you know, about human nature and society and so
forth. It's a it doesn't have anything to do to do with my name,
but Lord Jim is sort of my sort of my favorite novel. But
I get insights out of that at all times. So I would urge people
to just basically decide what they're I mean, decide what your intellectual capital is.
I mean, if it comes out, if it comes out of your
favorite your favorite fiction book if you want to know about Russia, and I
mean read Dostoyevsky or a Pushkin or what I mean. It's just so you
just have to have to tailor tailor your own intellectual capital to help you to
help you see what may come and what we might do about it. Yeah,
I think we've got to be careful. Evidently, Salimor Cogliano's listening to
the show and he just sent me a note. And I'll know about you,
but this is I have not used this term before. If you're looking
at something to wake up your students up there at the War College. He
mentioned to me the right of angry if I'm pronouncing it incorrectly, which I
probably am. A n gary and I'll read the definition for you from the
Oxford Public International Law. You'll appreciate that mark angry is a white belligerate states
enjoy in times of war or international arm conflict, to use or destroy in
case of necessity and subject to indemnification, neutral property present and there are in
occupied territory, such as merchant vessels and civil aircraft, their cars or other
objects. And we use that during the First World War to seize neutral Dutch
merchant ships that happened to be in our port. So my question would be,
I think I know the answer if things click off, do we have
anything for the coastguard to stop neutral shipping from leaving our ports that happened to
find themselves there. Because I don't know about you, I'd rather apologize after
war than to be at a D plus one and be about one hundred and
fifty merchant ships short. That's an interesting idea. I need to think more
about the right of hungry a n G A R Y. That's an interesting
one. I'm not sure I'm familiar with that one either. I mean,
I guess if I wanted to get some traction on that, I would probably
have sort of our standards, sort of our standard Texas and the international relations
and political science fields on the laws of war is Michael Waltzer's book book Justin
and Unjust Wars, which talks about you know, just an unjust resorts the
war and how you actually conduct yourself in war and so forth. But yeah,
that's the that's kind of an inter It's been so long since I've said
the maritime international law that I think I think I might have to take a
pass on that one and see what I mean, it makes sense. I
mean, there's there's what I mean, there's rules of expediency in wartime that
don't exist in peace time. But but yeah, well, and actually,
in the sense our Chinese, our Chinese friends are trying to repeal the laws
of the the law to see and water is close to them. So in
the sense it might almost be paidback if you if you had such a precedent.
Yeah, it's it's fun to contemplate that. James. We've We've kept
you for an hour. It's been most amusing and interesting and scary. Uh
what are you working on now? When can we get you back to talk
about it? Uh? You you can welcome back anytime. But the what
I'm working on right now is, and I'm not, for various reasons,
personal reasons, I'm not making very fast progress on it. But the Naval
Institute earlier this year asked me to ask me to do a what they are
what they're calling it basically a primer on China as a as a as a
contender. Basically what you would like to everybody in in the navy uniform to
do about China as an antagonist and how we might go how we might go
about how we might go about handling that challenge. So it's a it's it's,
it's, it's it's basically just sort of a back to basics. Look
at China, looking at look at looking out of a Mahania of a Mahanian
metrics that does trying to possess all the possess all the the the metrics that
led it to go see go to sea and make itself a great seapower.
And I think the answer, I think the answer is yes, But I
guess we'll see how it comes out, uh, sometime next summer when I
actually finish it. Well, hey, don't don't feel like you need to
jump into it now if you're heading into the holiday season. And it's just
been a pleasure having you on for the last hour. And yeah, I
think I'm coming out a little more scared than I did coming in. That's
that's good for me. Uh, that eats me juiced. And I look
forward to the next chance to talk to you, James, and I hope
you and yours have a great holiday season. And yeah, you as well.
And thanks for everybody for listening in, and thank you everybody for joining
us. For another edition in midrat and unil next time. We hope you
have a great navy day. Cheers. Want to marry me and leave a
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