Welcome to mid Rats with foul from Commander Salamander and the Eagle One from Eagle
Speak at Sea or Shore your home for a discussion of national security issues in
all things maritime. And welcome avoid everybody, and welcome back to ourselves on
the aforementioned style. Of course, we have Eagle one from Eagle Speak with
us as well. We are your co host from mid Rats. For those
that have forgotten, being that we've been off the oft the air for a
few weeks, I don't know if you want to call that sick leave,
our rest and relaxation week, or are just life is busy? Maybe a
combination of all three. But we are back and in style today and lucky
for everybody here this is the ever famous mid Rats melee free for all format.
What that means is we are open topic, open mic, open ideas,
open minds, and also open phones. If you look over at the
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Or you can jump into the chat room. We already have Jack and we
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you for free, and then we will be available for you at a time
it's more convenient. And hey, Eagle one, it's good to talking to
you. A good afternoon. Yeah, it's it's been a long time and
we should probably explain to people just out of the kindness our hearts, that
illness did play a part in this. Our absence and then the other perfect
way. Sometimes we just as Seal said, we just get busy and Sunday
becomes inconvenient for family reasons and other stuff. But we're back. I'm glad
to have everybody with us. I'm sad to say that my chat room doesn't
seem to be working today, but I'll see if I can fix that as
the show proceeds and go from there. Right before we started, yeah,
I restarted right before the show went going because I was having the same problem
and it's come back up. The woman let me make any comments. I
was gonna say hi to Paul and Jack, but it won't let me leave
a comment. However, it is scrolling. I can't see it, so
it just might be um, just a little fidgety here and there. I
didn't put it in the show notes, but I was. You inspired me
during the pre showed discussion, and simply because nothing will elicit more excitement than
saying US Marine Corps. Maybe that'll bring him out of the woodwork. Um,
it's uh, it's you know, it's a big hell call. But
um, you brought up a topic that I think we definitely want to touch
on, because especially before we went into our availability period in February. It
was and it's still bubbly enough as a conversation point. And that has to
do with the various nascinations ideas and retro concepts with a modern twist that we're
seeing in response to the US Marine Corps EABO concept and the Western Pacific and
the various ways are trying to answer the question about with the relatively lower than
desired number of traditional amphibious ships in our fleet, how exactly they're going to
be able to do the deployment, care and feeding of marines scattered all over
the various islands atolls over in westpac Oh, are you there? I guess
I should have put a question more minute. I would have rolled out,
because that's something that I know you've been doing a lot of thinking about.
So, um, you know, what are like the top couple things that
pop into your mind that are either either interesting, controversial, or just uh
seems like it might be an answer. Well, I think we've discussed before,
but we should raise it again. I mean, the light amphibious worship
the marines are looking at supposed to be was supposed to be a low cost,
minimally armed where we thank you sorry, Uh, I didn't get that
we have a heckler. Yeah, we're supposed to anyway, low cost,
low speed, really fourteen not capable. It was supposed to be able to
hide among uh, commercial traffic and all kinds of stuff. And then and
then we find the Marines saying, well, uh, when the Navy says,
well, we want to more armament, that we want to be able
to protect the people who are driving this ship, the Marines go, well,
you know, really, even though it says worship and its name it,
we're not. It's not really a worship. It's just gonna drop marines
off and then go hide somewhere and stay out of harm's away. Well,
that that seems difficult if you're gonna move marines around so they're not trapped on
the same little island or big island that that that mutation and go hide somewhere.
That seemed to be a great idea, And then DARPA came up with
another super duper idea, which is this, well they're calling the Liberty Lifter,
which is a ground effect aircraft capable of ground effect flight and being able
to fly up to ten thousand feet um to carry payloads similar to that of
a of a C seventeen Globe Master. And they not only have come up
with this concept, they've actually put out money, I guess for teams to
start preparing a design. So what they're saying is this thing is going to
be capable of on water operations up to C state five extended flight close to
water ground effect, but the capability to fly out of ground effect allergies up
to ten thousand feet. And the General Atomics team is working with the Maritime
Applied Physicess Corporation and Aurora Flight Science is and who are working with Gibbs and
Cocks and recon Craft. Got enough people involved, money gets spread everywhere.
Are looking at a twin hall midwing design to optimize on water stability and seakeeping,
which means you we have actually two aircraft size you know A fuselages and
twelve turbo shaft engines to propel this thing. I can't wait. And it's
supposed to be low cost too, of course, So yeah, I want
I want to see this thing. I want to want to I want to
I want to ride in one is what I want to do. I love
the you know, the when I was when I was a young officer,
the Caspian Sea Monster, the the ground effect aircraft at the Soviet Union had.
I mean that was to strike terror and all the hearts of US surface
warfare guys, because I could go fast it well, you know, it
was like an airplane, but harder to find because it was going to be
down below a lot of radar range, and they had all kinds of missiles
and it was really cool looking and frightening. So if the Marines can move
around with something like this, maybe this is maybe this is the answer to
that fourteen knot question that I posed earlier, that they can go around in
a hurry with with these liberty lifters. Yeah, if people haven't looked at
the picture, I wouldn't encourage in just to google DARPA liberty lifter I would
put in the chat room, but again won't let me um. Well,
first of all, I just kind of figured being the aviation maintenance officer responsible
for doing the CMU in the dailies and the weeklies on all of those engines.
But I was lurking on a few people who have good knowledge of a
seaplane, and a couple of folks that have into this radical thing called Amphibious
Warfare School, who described based upon the pictures they have taken that assuming something
that big and slow would make it to the beach without getting a wing blown
off. Because you can see what you want to about an amphibious ship.
Most of them can take up a few hits and keep moving forward if you
don't hit the engine room. But they said that there's very limited number of
beaches you could actually do that and be able to not breach your hull or
not be able to leave again. You'd have to hit the tide just right
on the right type of beach. And if you took a couple of the
individ jels actually made the effort of looking at possible places in the Pacific,
you would actually want to use this, and they go, you can't use
this anywhere, unlike, I hate to say it, unlike something like a
traditional seaplane that you can actually open up the cargo door and dump people into
a boat. If you need to this thing, you have to open up
its head like you do want to C five to be able to scorge things,
so it has to be on terra firma, so it's really limited.
It looks like a maintenance idea. I think it's a neat idea, but
is it actually practical in a wartime situation. I don't really think so.
The light amphibious warfare, which is kind of the traditional you know, LCUM
landing craft medium or LST landing ship tank designs. But you know why I
have an LST if you don't have any tanks. Even the Marine Corps got
ridden theirs. But there's also some real interesting riding on different options there.
And one of the things that the Congressional Research Service did a nice report on
it. Again, people can look it up. Ronald' rourke and his legion
of people who work over there should all be given three cars or something.
They do great work. But I think it's a page twenty or twenty two
of that document. It outlines something that you know, you and I have
talked about this a lot. We've talked to John Conrad, Salmrecagliano, We've
talked to Brian McGrath, Jerry Hendrix, we talked to all four sorts of
folks about this, and you know Huntsman as well. I had to do
it at the industrial base. Now the Navy again the efficiency versus effectiveness point
of view, it has faded and it discusses it page twenty or twenty two
of the document. The Navy has stated that it would like to do the
most efficient thing. We just have one place, one shipyard build it.
But there's an argument that can be made if you want to open up the
aperture a bit. It may may it will cost more per unit, but
from an industrial point of view and to help us maintain a diverse a shipyard
capability that scalable, that the smart answer is actually to build them because you're
going to build them a number if you do at and it's not a real
complicated warship, it's not a nuclear submarine. Building at many different shipyards as
possible to spread the money around and that way you have more people, more
welders, more electricians, more ship fitters, more supply chains in local areas,
more facilities in local areas. It can keep their door open. That
this would be an opportunity to do less of an accountant being counting solution is
to, you know, maybe build one or two less units, but build
it at two, three, four or more shipyards and help the longer term
priority, which is maintaining our industrial base and our skilled workforce. I thought
that was a really, really good point. I'd like to read more details
on it, but I haven't seen anybody besides the references in the CRS report
really address that. Yeah, I think. I mean, if if I
understand what they're trying to do with these these smaller ships, is that would
be perfect. I mean, that's how they build LSTs. They were building
LSTs, you know, on the on the Mississippi River. I think they
were building them all over the country, and that makes perfect sense to me.
Let's spread the word, the workaround, get people excited about doing these
jobs, and uh, you know I got I'm also to remember LSTs that
were from the world were two era, and I don't understand why we have
to reinvent the wheel they were they were. If you're only gonna do fourteen
knots, you don't need to have much more than a than a World War
two LSC because that's what they about what they could do. So were they
sure? Do you remember whether they were they were steam plant or were they
diesel? Uh? Well, I think they were diesel. I don't I
don't remember specifically, but they're the modern marine diesel um plants that are being
produced right now. Really. I mean, it's hard to say a diesel
engine sexy, but if you're an engineer, they're sexy. They're modern,
they're efficient, they don't require armies of people to maintain them. There's um,
if you can get past gas turbines on some type of warship and just
have a diesel, it ends there's a lot of Yeah, you may give
up some speed maybe, um, but boy do you gain some other things.
You know, maybe you don't need to do twenty eight knots when twenty
one will be fine. That's you know, it's it's something to think about.
But I think you're right. I think they were diesels, but a
much older generation diesels. The new diesels just are impressive. Yeah, there's
a great book about prime movers and the diesel engine. Umw it disaffected the
big diesels, the great big the great big ones. You're talking about the
it's really amazing. So at some point I'll remember any book is remember we
talked about it quite a few times last decade. Is um one of the
what are the like right before the drop flopping the latorial combat ship reached the
drop floping phone stage, is you had the CEO at the time I don't
know which one it was. Maybe it was greener, I don't know.
Stated well, in response people's concern about the survivability of lcs, well,
you know, it's really fast, you can run away if combat ever shows
up. It's like, I mean quick calling it a combat ship if you
don't even then for it to go on Harm's way. And I think kind
of a self owe or a self goal in this whole discussion, is you
know of the light amphibious warfare ship is you know, the W stands for
warfare, And yet they're talking about it and strictly a peacetime sustainment point of
view, saying that, well, you know, we're not going to have
these things chugging around the South China Sea in time of combat. They're going
to you know, go away, retreat, get out of harm's way.
I don't think with the size of our fleet we had the luxury of designing
that conopts for war. And I think I'm willing to put a paycheck on
this if that comes, those ships are going to go on Harm's way.
We don't have that luxury. Sailors are going to be asked to take whatever
ships they can to accomplish the mission at hand, and they're not going to
be able to look up at you know, seventh Fleet and go sorry Avril.
Um. You know General Burger said in twenty twenty two that I'm not
allowed to go into harm's way with this boat. I mean, it's just
not going to work. I'm not saying that these things need to be bulletproof.
You can, you can assume some more risk. But I think at
off the bat saying that this is just a piece time asset, I don't
I don't understand that. I'm willing to be educated, but I when I
first read that, I thought it was in this print until I saw them
three other four articles. I just think that's that's put the entire the entire
operation, I think in jeopardy because it doesn't solve it doesn't um answer the
following question. And then specifically, anybody in Congress can just ask why should
I buy something for the military that the military can't use at war? It's
a valid critique. Yeah, I think I wonder if that was a response
to the criticism of the fact that this thing is so lightly armed, and
um, you know that they response to that is well, yeah, it
is lightning arm because we don't really intend to make it. It's not gonna
it's not going to storm. The beaches can drop guys off and and and
then and then go away and come back and pick them up later on.
I mean, I assume that's kind of what the thought process was that in
defense of the because you know, the marine. The marine idea was that
these things would be very inexpensive to build, and the Navy got into it
and said, well, no, it doesn't it doesn't provide as enough weaponry,
and it doesn't provide enough safety for the for the for the cruise,
the Navy cruise, and you know, like essentially double the cost I think
or one point five times the Marine Corps guess and what it would cost.
So I just you know, which isn't too surprising since once the Navy gets
involved in and matters like that, they want to they want it to be
Tiffany and not m Renault or or which you know, you go go and
there are are very admirable things about you know, how we design warships.
And we'll see whether we screw up the Constellation class frigate, which is you
know, okay, um, it's good that we have a higher survivability standard
than perhaps a bunch of our allies. Uh, you know, if you
need a ten but you have a nine point seven, you know, is
it really worth what you need to do to get that additional point three?
Don't know? As we saw with the most recent examples. You know,
you can go back to the coal. Thank god, that was a long
time ago. We had Kirk Lippold on to talk about that, but you
also had the mccanon fitzgerald with no notice. Our sailors do damage control exceptionally
well, and a lot of that's the way our ships are designed. But
I think you can overdo it in some regards if you have a smaller ship.
I which, again it goes back why I thought the argument about the
latorial combat ship where we'll bravely turn itself led in the face of the enemy.
It's not a response. You don't want a disposable ship. But you
you know, there's nothing wrong with acknowledging the fact that you know you have
a trade off here, especially in your smaller ships, that yeah, they're
going to be more vulnerable. That's why we're building them in number. But
uh, you know, not everything can be a titanium encased sphere, because
then you can't do anything else. I think that the the macro argument,
not necessarily the one that's being made, the macro argument for bringing in an
LSM LST, because I think we got rid of our last LST in the
mid to early double zeros. Maybe I think that argument can be made.
I think we added an episode right after that, one of the many actual
disasters in Haiti where it was our heavy lifts and any lift rotary wing,
but also our amphibious shifts are the only ones that can get ashore. You
know, there's a lot of capability at having things besides a large deck am
fib that can get personnel and material across the beach and the LSM LST size.
It's it's something that is missing from our toolkit. Some of our allies
have it. There's no guarantee that when you want your allied equipment, allies
equipment that they're going to one show up and two if they do show up,
their national caveat to will let them get within XX nautical models where you
need them to go. Spoken like a true NATO hand. I'm still in
therapy over dealing with NATO national caveats. I'll recover maybe next decade. Oh
man, Well, speaking of things that affects sailors. You you you put
in the the blurb for the show that we're gonna talking about San Diego's parking.
Tell people what that's about. Yeah. Well, and again this I
would I would ask for the indulgence to our kind and gentle listeners, indulge
me on this I have there A few things will trigger me, a lot
of things will turner me, but um one thing that really really frustrated me,
especially and um uh the the juicy center of my career. And when
you're true, when you're on. I have a preference for small and medium
sized basis, mostly because you get better support for your sailors, you can
get some things done more effectively. It's it's a better quality of work,
better quality of life. I'm extremely biased against Naval Station Norfolk, Naval Station
San Diego at large and you know, and asked Jacksonville, Oceania. They're
huge and just getting on and off base during the peak periods. It's it's
quasi traumatizing because there's just so many people there that we packed in because we
have this you know, mid nineteen hundreds industrial concept of what it means to
employ people. And there's and I'm going to give everybody a little preview of
what my post is going to be tomorrow. Except but because I have to,
it's back on. You can't stuff Betre in this. On Valentine's Day,
the Commanding Officer, Naval Based San Diego sent out a letter which I'm
sure it's record message traffic too, but I just had the letter for an
immediate change to policy on nav Base San Diego instruction ten thousand words in letters
about illegal parking and there to see what here's a couple of quotes from it
as I can, as I could he here the commanding Officer, Naval Base
San Diego raging through the closed oralness. On average, they Naval Base San
Diego responds to twenty calls for service a day for illegally parked vehicles, over
one hundred tot a month. And what they're going to do. It's gotten
so bad. And most of this I've been told is just people parking where
it looks like a parking spot. Because when I checked into a few folks,
I said, hey, your average standard issues sailor having problems getting a
decent parking spot, how much how much a day is just chewing up at
their time having to get from their parked car to get to their command.
It's like, well, you know, obviously depends up on where you are,
but they said, yeah, this is probably an hour to two hours
for some people just to be able to get to work from where they have
to park their car. So people are looking at Okay, there's not a
line here, but there's this like a parking spot, and it's considered illegal.
But they're implementing a point system now in San Diego where people who are
illegally parked, even in this stuff that says don't park here, will be
issued a federal magistrate citation with two points against and their vehicle maybe toad probably
have the limitations of the number of tow trucks available, but they will have
their installation driving privileges suspended for thirty days. They get a parking sticket,
which means that sailor that was maybe he was lucky and it only cost him
forty five minutes a day. Now it's going to cost him closer to two
hours because he gonna have the park off base or find somebody to pick him
up to take him in and you get to two points reach illegal one and
if you get six months, six points in a twelve months, nine points
in the twenty four or twelve points in a thirty six month period, you
will lose your driving privileges for a full year. I was having flashbacks and
night twitches from some difficult experiences for not so much Median, but for a
lot of the sailors I remember from the nineteen nineties and off. You know,
these policies are being made by people who have assigned parking spots where they
can you know, their their transit to their primary mode. It can be
measured in seconds and sometimes before they cross a quarter deck. San Diego,
actually, I think it's the best place in the world if you've got to
walk thirty minutes forty five minutes one way to get to your command from you
know, because it's San Diego, it's a beautiful weather, it's raining.
But picture the people in the picture that people in grotten. Picture the people
in Jacksonville, Florida during the worst part of the year, whether it's winter
and black eyes. If you're up in Groton, our Newport, which I
don't think is at bags are small basis, but summertime in Virginia and Florida,
it's hell, it's raining, it's just it's it's one of those things
that this has been known for decades. We spend an incredible amount of money
on incredibly stupid things. And we've all talked to sailors to have the list
of why I want to come in, why I want to come out and
get out of the Navy, why we'll re enlist, why I won't recommend
anybody joined the Navy. Some things you can't can't do anything about. Some
things you can. In the civilian sector, if major companies treated their employees
for something as basic as where they will park their primary transportation in order for
them to be able to work for you the way the Navy did, those
companies would be bankrupt or their board directors would fire their senior leadership and replace
it, because you cannot keep your best employees when you treat them like trash.
And I fully understand the frustration that the commander of Naval based San Diego
has, other based commanders have, regional commanders have it. They don't control
most of them what is built or not built on their property. It really
goes to DC, it goes to Congress to be able to fund those things,
and probably the EBA in a couple of places. But it just it
was a reminder to me, because I left active duty at thirteen and change
years ago, that those things that date back decades, we just we tell
our sailors suck it up on a good parking spot green for command, be
a command master chief or when wanted to raffle. Besides that, you need
to be at work by six o'clock in the morning so you can start your
walk from your car at five to fifteen. It just it just triggered me.
Maybe I'm overacting a bit, maybe I'm too sensitive, but it just
remembered a lot of conversations I had with other officers and also some sailors about
their experiences on these large bases. And it's reached a point in San Diego
at least if the commander has got to do something quite draconian because sailors want
to show up to work on time and they're getting in trouble for it.
It's just it's just it's a it's an unforced error. I think, Yeah,
it's I don't you know, there was a time when when I always
wonder about whether our parking situation, whyatt hasn't gotten any better dated back when
sailors E three and below maybe and have cars at all. I mean,
it's kind of like when you're in when you're in college and the freshman uh
weren't allowed to have cars back in the day because it just created enormous problems
for parking. I mean it's so if if you're if your largest number of
people on on board ships E three and below, uh, then and they
and they can't have cars, that that does simplify parking prods. But we
that rule went away, so uh you know, then that's it is the
obligation I think of the employer to provide parking for the sufficient number of people
to uh get to work. That's that's part of the that's part of the
mission of the employer and the employer. This case is not COO Naval Base
San Diego. It's as you said, it's properly up in the upper levels
of d D in Congress to fund adequate um parking areas for the for the
sailors or many of them are forced to live by costs to farrow farther away
from the from their offices. Then then you know, it makes it even
harder for them if they have to live in you know, twenty or thirty
miles away or forty miles away just to get to get in and then to
find out there's no place to park. That creates a nightmare situation. And
I'm reminded of Robert Towns and the guy who started Avis rent a Car.
Years ago. He wrote a book called Up the Organization, and one of
the things he said about reserve parking spots for his executives and stuff was he
did away with him. He said, if you if, if you,
if you're so important and you need to be there, get there early.
You'll you'll find a parking right where you wanted. And if otherwise, you'll
find that you meet a lot of really nice people in the parking lots,
and you know, you get to know your workers. You get to know
your workers. So I'm kind of at the Towns in school. You know,
unless there's um uh true necessity for for somebody have a reserve parking spot.
And you know, I go back to the to the days in front
of the Navy Exchange when they when the uh, you know, they'll be
reserve parking for flags and then captains and and you know, but it was
usually the captain's wife or somebody who would be parking in this spot. You
know it, how big a deal is it? We're if we're physically fit
enough to to be as as we all know we are because we passed the
pr tts UM, then it shouldn't hurt you to walk the extra fifty sixty
one hundred feet or hundred yards to get where you're going. And if you
really need to be there at a certain time to be in charge, to
get there early enough, and you know, maybe that maybe if we're saying,
well, it's hard enough being a seal of a ship without having to
to to walk two hundred and fifty yards or get up at you know,
an extra hour early to be there. But to me, uh, the
average sailor needs to to be treated with respect. We would treat any employee
of of of you know, let's let's let's look at the GS situation in
the Pentagon, you know, or how many people there can't find parking?
And I think the answer is few, because that's a huge parking lot.
And that's the way it ought to be. On the on the naval basis.
Yeah, it's it's again. It's it's one of those simple and straightforward
things that and I like the fact that you mentioned that you know, used
to be you know a lot of people lived on base. Can't do that
anymore, um, And you know you can't tell you try hard to recruit.
You know, you look at the average struggle we have to recruit.
I'll just use an example of somebody who's worth their weight in gold, a
nuclear machinist. Mate. You know a lot of those guys already have college
degrees. They're smarter than I am. They're really good guys, gals,
um, and we need them. You don't want um a lower quartile person
in your nuclear plant. And we're going to tell them, Hey, you
know you need to show up. You need to show up at the park
lot at five to fifteen so you can drive forty five minutes through through driving
rain to work twelve hours and then you can walk forty five minutes back.
And then because you you have two kids, you live forty five minutes away
to an hour away, then you can drive back. So you're gonna work
twelve hours a day. You're gonna have ninety two one hundred and twenty minutes
commute and you're gonna have another ninety minutes of walking in the outside in all
weather. Uh, please sign your realistment paperwork. It don't work that way,
not in this not in this economy, not in the fight for quality.
And you look at all these A lot of our listeners do live in
parts of the country that are doing all right. You look at all the
new construction that's going on, especially multi family housing. What are they putting
in? They're they're putting in multi layer parking garages. You go on a
lot of our naval bases, what do you have acres and acres of one
layer parking because somebody has decided that's there's value in saving money from building a
parking garage. Then there is in creating quality of work and quality of life
for people who've decided to serve. And it's not a big thing, and
it's pretty having good, effective, timely ability to park your car to come
into work. It's a fairly egalitarian activity. It whether you have a signed
parking spots right next to the ship or not. It's going to help your
E three, it's going to help your E eight, it's going to help
your O one, your oh three, everybody on up by having that,
if not directly by having better parking, but by having sailors who don't show
up in the morning already pissed off and bitter because for the second day of
the road they showed up soaking wet, if not from sweat, from rain,
and they're working off of their day five of four hours of sleep,
and it's it's something that's actionable, but we've just like I said, it
triggered me a bit because it's just it's just really frustrating. It would be
as if we still had a drug problem in the Navy because people decided it
would be too hard to try to fight it, and here we are in
twenty twenty three having the same drug problem we had in nineteen seventy eight.
Some things are fixable. It just takes focus and work and telling people what
you're doing. Yeah, you know, And I'm not talking about forgiving people
who park in fire lanes or situations where they're actually endangering you know, the
lives and safety of other people. But we are just talking about how hard
it is if for the every sailor to find a decent place to park near
where his his work is and his work is on a ship. And you
know, if if the problem is we have too many ships in port at
a time, then again, your solution, I think is a good one
is let's move some of the ships to other ports. And you know,
I know, I know Jacksonville now is home to a lot more ships than
I than I was aware of originally. They've they've you've got all kinds of
good stuff working out of there now. So uh, I think that helps
ease the burden in uh In Norfolk, I would hope for the for the
naval operating base there, And you know, since we lost Charleston and some
of the other bases, and more and more people into these into these mega
mega bases, and uh, I think that just makes life difficult for a
vilion, you know. And and it's bad enough that you have to go
through the gate situation, and that's usually a traffic can nightmare too, So
it's it's complicated. It also goes into I will always and forever give great
credit to Admiral Harvey his last year on active duty, and this in the
first time you mentioned it, but he came out in public talking about strategic
homeboarding and the usual suspects pooh pooed him. But it all depends upon who
you are talking to. You know, are you if you take the short
term, peacetime economic view of things, then you're going to do what we
did. We just pack everybody in. And I'm looking for but I have
not found a better phrase than strategic homeboarding because I don't think it captures a
lot of the secondary effects. Like you has mentioned quality of live, quality
of work, but you also have a situation and we've reached and let's use
strategic. And when people will say strategic homeboarding, the concern was, well,
at the big nuke coming in, taking out your entire fleet at Christmas.
But there's we are in the age now of precision, global prompt strike,
and every half decade more people are going to have that ability to do
that. Whether it's a conventionally tipped ballistic missile, are it's a van load
of twenty three year olds with a bunch of drones dropping gradaides off of the
base, going after the ship and the fuel farms on base. If you
have your fleet better distributed, then you decrease your strategic risk of your fleet
being concentrated in a few places that are very vulnerable, and it well thing
about everything in San Diego. It also gives me to hebe geebs is that's
one of the most And we saw this a little bit up in Seattle and
they had to shut down maintenance because of worries about earthquakes. Is your one
natural disaster away which we know will happen. It may happen next week,
it might happen a thousand years, but at some point that everything in San
Diego that floats is going to find itself transported about two hundred two thousand yards
inland with about fifteen minutes. Notice, because that's what's happened a lot in
history. When you have your forces spread around both man made and natural disasters,
you you're not one bad day away from having half the fleet you had
the day before. Yeah, that's you know, we'll just the end of
history. Theory keeps coming back to bid us in the rear end. And
um, well, because you know, I remember remember Marshenko when he had
he was talking about red teams and all that stuff. You know, I'm
a big believer in red teeming things and having guys think about, you know,
what if I were a bad guy, what would I do? How
would I How would I screw things up royally? And you know a lot
of these end up in novels these days. Uh and and uh. You
know here's how you could screw royally if you did X and Y. But
you know, just just stall a few vehicles in front of the main gates
at at any of these naval bases and go okay, good luck, you
know, And then and then cause something that will require the fleet to sortie
and you you'd really have a you'd really mc quig murray. And it wouldn't
it take all that much, wouldn't take any super weapons. No, it's
just it's a challenge, and it's it's it's expensive, and we have,
you know, lots of challenges are trying to meet um threats that we let
creep up on us. Like there was a I had a double check in
triple check. He is still an active duty I just found it surprising that
such a position would be an active duty officer. My ignorance. I'm not
a DC hand, but um US Air Force Major General Cameron Holt. He
is the Deputy Assistant Secretary Defense for Acquisitions. He puts some nice figures out
of things that, you know, we've talked about before that we all know
intuitively it's just hard to really quantify him. But when we've all seen the
pictures Shoegart, a bunch of other others guys, I know, sal and
Macagliano again and John Cattery, they share all the pictures about these huge shipyards
in China, you know, building three or four carriers in parallel and five
cruiser sized DDGs in parallel. And part of the reasons they're able to do
that, not just because they have four times our population and almost the same
GDP as we do, is because of the nature of their economy, at
least from the assistant Deputy Secretary of Defense this level is there seeing that the
PRC gets weapons built about five to six times faster than we do. Again,
that's and we've talked about before that our acquisitions program put the Ottomans to
shame with its bureaucracy. So it's kind of sad that a communist country has
a quicker cycle than we do. But they also perhaps aren't building as sophisticated
items than we are, which is another argument altogether, but also said that
rough but roughly the same cape ability. This is what really got me.
The people who felt like the China for a dollar gets roughly the same capability
that we get for twenty and you know, quality versus quantity to the side.
If you have a country that even has just half the GDP that you
have, those numbers are interesting to plan against, which begs the question.
You know a lot of things we're talking about before is you don't go over
the most efficient things is if this conversation keeps going forward and those numbers are
even within you know, eighty percent accurate of what the actual numbers are,
we're going to see an either their greater argument of trying to get the most
out of every book that we have. That math is really hard if you
run it forward for another another decade of what we've already seen in the last
decade. I don't I don't have any answer to that. Um it's uh,
that's some pretty tough numbers to ponder. Yeah, once again, I
mean we keep talking like like quality solves all the all the problems. I
mean the Chinese, among other things, they haven't. They don't spend a
lot of money in R and D because they just steal it from from from
the Western countries or they buy it from Western countries, you know, so
they don't have the same costs built into their system that we have because they
don't have to invent the the spy type radar because they've got they've got that
from stuff they've stolen or been given. You know, it's their their approach
to things. Uh, they don't have to they you know, they don't
have to create new stuff. They just have to get the old stuff.
They can make changes to it, but they can implement it a lot cheaper
because I spend a long time in development. So uh, part of the
question then is, well, they have a whole bunch of stuff that's and
it maybe I don't know, seventy five percent sixty percent as good as our
stuff, but they got more of it. So as we were talking to
the pre show, you know, you can you can build jets like the
Germans did with them two sixty twos, and and you know they still can't
get shot down by uh P fifty ones. It's you know, because there
weren't there were a lot more P fifty ones and there were uh m e
two sixty twos, and you know, so there's a case where a slightly
lesser quality uh uh managed to beat uh UM and a higher quality. Well,
the Germans done much with the six two sixty two was the end all
and be all, but it was it was an impressive aircraft for the time.
And you know, we see the same thing with the Sherman tag against
the tire tank or the Sherman tank. Again it's the whatever the other Grum
and big tanks were. So you know, the numbers make make a lot
of difference. And that was one of the ways the American way of war
was we would just outproduce the other side. And now we got a competitor
who am going to outproduce us? And you know something that's got to be
a real wake up call. I would think that that we got to quit
spending money on I was looking at the fraud wasted abuse numbers. I get
really excited about fraud waste abuse. But when they started talking about tens of
billions or hundreds of billions of fraud and some of these COVID nineteen giveaway programs
we had, I get really excited because you know, when you're talking fifty
billion or one hundred billion dollars, you've got aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers,
submarines at the yin Yang and under that scenario, So you know,
are we ever going to reclaim that money? Probably not because a lot of
them went to corrupt the gangs and probably shifts of overseas and all kinds of
stuff. But you know that that sort of fraud, waste abuse really irks
me. And when then they look at the midlitary and going, well,
you know, you guys, your house isn't cleaned or our house is a
lot cleaner than that. Yeah, that's I could do a lot with even
twenty five billion, But you're right, I don't think we'll ever call that
back. So much of it has been absorbed into the underground economy. Uh,
it's it's really disgraceful. I don't think a lot of DC really wants
to pull the thread on that because they won't like where a lot of those
threads lead. But one thing about the challenge from China and a lot of
this, you know the barn, the horse has already left the barn,
but we can close the gate so that more horses don't get out of the
barn. What I've liked so far that I've seen, Unfortunately, two of
the really big advocates in the House of Representatives for the Navy. We're on
the dimmer crat side of the House, Elaine Lauria who was defeated in the
general and Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin on the Republican side of the House. Who
you know, he's still in Congress, but he is really good in a
lot of areas. So leadership has repurposed him in another area. They had
his Select Committee on China. I think he's look, he's heading in some
directions. I like, for instance, he's made he pulled some really low
hanging fruit in a vineyard that I think is very very productive. And that's
the non obvious national security threats that China has inside our own lifelines. He
had a real interesting bipartisan press conference maybe a week and a half ago in
New York City where they started to close down some of the Chinese police stations
that they have in the US, kind of a more direct version of what
they're slowly being shut down over the country. There's still a few the Confucius
institutes where the Communist Party of China has the ability to threaten and intimidate Chinese
nationals that happened to be in the US. That does lead you down to
a point that makes some people uncomfortable, but it's just a plain reality.
A lot of the advances that Chinese have an industry that competes with US and
it transfers into the national security arena can be things direct, such as Laurel
Aerospace teaching them how to MERV missiles by quote using sending different more than one
satellite up on a rocket that's called a MIRV, something that directed at or
indirected. The fact that for decades I know because I knew a couple of
them when I was in undergrad back in the eighties. The people who are
Republic of China since some of their best students to the United States to study,
and they're not studying underwater basket weaving. They're not majoring in compared to
French literature, they're not majoring in interpretive dance. They're majoring in mathematics,
physics, chemistry, engineering, all the hard majors, especially in our major
resource institutions at the graduate level. People who've been to college graduations recently,
they've seen it. So we are in these billets are finite. Anybody has
people like me and their family who are applying for graduate level positions, there's
a finite number. They're highly competitive, and we are having people from the
People's Republic of China studying in these dual use technology areas that have family and
connections back home that the Communist Party uses against them, and they take that
knowledge base home that and they have some great universities over there as well.
They send a lot of people to universities and the UK, Germany, Italy,
Spain and Australia to do similar things. And if we are serious about
the competition, we need to look at more than who has this number of
ships and aircraft. We need to look at the intellectual infrastructure. And just
like you wouldn't want American shipyards building submarines for the People's Republican China, why
would we want Harvard Stanford, John Hopkins, UCLA, University of Texas at
Austin MIT educating the people that are going to be developed being quantum computers,
as is engineering, chemical engineering, bioengineering, genetic engineering, and then having
them take that education home as opposed to hear That's the next direction I would
really like to see that committee take because it looks like they're going to open
the aperture a bit to look at a variety of things that do control internally
that can stop us from adding to what alway already is a significant China Communist
Party challenge. Yeah, I think it's when we had Dan chang on talking
about his book Cyber Dragon, I think it is, you know, he
he just scratched the surface of the way the Chinese approach cyber warfare and getting
into a hacking. I mean, the Russians doing the same thing, and
so a lot of other countries do too. But the China's got I mean,
they can their solution to every problems to throw a lot of people at
it, and they you know, they don't just have a team of one
hundred or five hundred folks trying to crack every system they can find an US
They've got, They've got thousands of people doing that. And uh, you
know, we we continue to do business. A lot of people continue to
do business with China, and a lot of people that are doing business with
China are people in our in our computer cyber world. And you know that.
I hope Gallagher and and at all are looking into that too, because
we've got to stop pretending that, uh, if we are nice to China
that they're somehow going to change their minds about about how the world works,
and they're going to adopt the They're gonna they're really going to come true believers
in the existing world order rather than trying to impose the world order they want
to see, which puts China in the middle, in the middle Kingdom as
they used to be a zillion years ago. Yeah, I think that those
people have lost the argument, though they're they're still making it. Still see
them out there the South China and the unfortunate thing is, and we've talked
about it a little bit over here during the years. One of my hobby
horses civil service reform at the Department of State. There's still a lot of
people the Department State who don't know what time it is specifically related to China.
And these are career people. You can't ask them to go pursue excellence
in a different career field. They're stuck there. But they are a weight.
And we've seen this in the utter complete failure of our diplomats and the
island nations of the South and Southwest Pacific. Recently we started to push back
on it, but we're a decade late on pushing back against what China has
been doing. There, they're a little more realistic, but they're embedded in
our government's permanent, ruly nomencultura. There is still the nice China theory that
has more weight than it really should, and there's kind of even on with
the China Hawks. What I've been really frustrated with recently because I think it's
I understand the argument, and if you wanted to pay my consulting fee,
I could make it, But I don't think it survives the following question,
and that is a lot of people are making the argument, as we are
aiding aiding Ukraine in their battle against the Russians, that somehow that effort is
going to prevent us, our distract us from trying to match the rising challenge
from China. I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time,
which will trigger some of those people because they don't like that phrase.
But I think two things are true. One, what Ukraine needs to fight
the Russians is a different set of tools than we need to effectively address what
is an aerospace and maritime challenge in the Western Pacific. And two, I'm
old enough to remember not just before twenty fourteen, but afterwards, how everybody
was saying that, you know, the United States and her allies face two
major challenges. One was the People's Republic of China and one is Russia.
Well, we're at a relatively small cost to what could happen if they win.
We are keeping distracted and wearing down the war fighting capability of the Russians
in a war they started in a different country. That if we really wanted
to go back to twenty three February of twenty twenty two, when the war
started, and we could look at the damage that's been done to the Russian
military and more importantly, their ability to project power anywhere else but Ukraine for
the next decade at least, I could argue even longer because of their demographics,
then we should be doing both. And you can go into the moral
and philosophical reasons why. But if you just want to play a very cold
eyed view of things, that Russia and China were always going to be getting
in bed together anyway, I don't accept that argument that they would do it
any less if Russia was able to take the territorial games that they wanted in
Ukraine. I think that if you just want to take a cold look at
the situation, not only can we do both, we probably should do both,
if for no other reason that I think you have a better odd to
creating a more favorable strategic position for the United States having just to look at
as opposed to point seven five China, point two five Russia, if we
can do point nine China, point one Russia, that would be to our
game. Yeah, it's kind of hard to argue with that. I mean,
it's and you know, I'm I'm I'm interested that China is William apparently
to talk to the Russians about, you know, giving them some help,
because I think China needs that distraction too. I think China says, you
know, if if if we don't help out the Russians and they and they
actually lose this war they started, then the West can turn their attention to
us in a much stronger fashion. So the enemy of my enemy is my
friend temporarily. So I'll, you know, let's look at what we can
do to assist the Russians. Same thing with Iran. I mean, Iran
is obviously trying to provide and does provide stuff to the Russians because they view
the West as their enemy, and the Russians are fighting the West, which
you know, we all thought Russia may someday become a Western country, but
I clearly I'm that seems to be a fit out of the question these days.
Speak. Yeah, there were a few generations from that, I think.
Yeah. Speaking of which, though, you've talked about the Sea of
azof in in our pre show thing, and I'm sure you want to mention
that because that's kind of an important topic. Yeah, I um, this
is not this of things that triggered soul today. But we've all seen it
before and we've talked about before. But I would encourage everybody to look at
a chart slash map depending upon your confession of the Black Sea. Territorial sea
clanes are identified stuff. And before twenty fourteen, not only did Ukraine have
almost twice the seabed of the Black Sea that in Russia did, it also
had two thirds of the Sea of Asof Based upon now, if Russia was
able to maintain her territorial gains, you get one hundred percent of the Sea
of Asof And would people are where you drew the line as opposed to Ukraine
having twice the square squire footage of seabed in the Black Seed in Russia,
it would have maybe twenty percent of what Russia have, even less than what
Bulgaria has. And you know that has huge implications because everybody talks about aggressive
war to for taking land, and you know they're talking about dry land.
But I think, especially in our modern era, that we need to think
more about land is land, whether it's covered with grass or covered with one
hundred meters of water. And the fact that all that seabed there is are
hydro carbons, whether it's gas or oil. In a large parts of the
world, we're on just almost to the point of making economically viable mining the
seabed for rare minerals. If everybody wants an electric or a hybrid car,
we're gonna have to do that, because if you want to get those rare
metals, you're not going to get it where we have it right now.
You also are athwart trade routes. Whether you know nations like Japan, Asians
like the UK, they can't feed themselves. They have to have ships moving
food across water in order to be able to deliver food. And you also
have a Chinese tie in one of our leaders leaders. Jordian Slip, one
of my readers over on Twitter reminded me and I think it may actually have
been Salmar Cagliano with my earlier today that the eastern part of the Black Sea
is the terminus of China's rail links to Europe. So China does have an
interest and whoever owns that seabed, and you look at the South China Sea.
For reasons best explained by people at the State Department and people who've been
our Secretary of State for the last twenty years, we have allowed China to
do a huge land grab in the South China Sea. We that's just I
encourage people. Look at the globe, look at the map, look at
what we have given them effective control over with minimal interference. And people have
all I know, regular listeners of mid Rats have heard this for decades.
But everybody says that the international system we have today is all based upon the
post World War Two era of the United States Navy guaranteeing access to the open
seas for everybody. That's not true anymore. That's not true by what's happened
in the South China Sea. That's also going to be true should Russia when
whatever definition to win that is in Ukraine and is able to seize so much
square footage of the territorial waters in the Black Seat, and that should give
everybody pause. They need to stop looking just at land. You need to
look at the sea. Technology and trade is such that allowing hostile nations to
grab territory at sea is should be seen just as important and critical in the
international world as somebody rolling tank rolling tanks across eastern Ukraine to see those resources
there. And you know, you can say, well, what about the
UN what about international law? Yeah, what about it? It makes no
impact when the international when nobody respects international law and the United Nations has become
the self parending organization, you have to go back to other forms of enforcing
international norms. That involves large gray ships and leaders and nations that are willing
to not step back anymore. That has its own problems, But that was
one of the things I would like for people to look at more, is
look at these nations where you have these conflicts. What's happening with the area
of sea, whether that's continental shelf, exclusive economic zones. You know,
what's there under the water, whether it's hydrocard carbons, whether it's metals and
nodules on the seabed, whether it's fish, or whether it's big natural gas.
Internet protocol are other type of pipelines and cables that are going across.
It's just as important as what's happening in shore. It's just hard to visualize.
Yeah, I know we're getting we've already gone over. But there's a
really good report put up by the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security
Study's on illegal, unreported, unregulated fishing trends UM and China. I don't
I remember exactly if they get mentioned there by name, but you know,
all you need to do is follow the Chinese fishing fleet and realize how aggressive
they are at claiming chunks of the of the world's food and other assets for
themselves. And they don't do it in the in the uh, let's save
enough seed corn for next year's crop. I mean, they're absolutely devastating fish
stocks in the South China Sea and they're going because they've done that, they're
they're in they're far the far world. You know, they're in the Pacific,
off the Galapagos, in waters that probably are Ecuadorian or very close to
Equadorian waters. Uh it is, you know, a tragedy that they're allowed
to do this. And as you say, international law is only as good
as the enforcement mechanism, and the enforcement mechanism unless the US does it.
I don't know of anybody who's going out there and or the US supports people
who who who will go out there and say, Okay, enough is enough.
You've got to you've got to knock this off. You're you're ruining the
world for the rest of us. And China is they get away with a
lot of stuff they're you know, they're they're viewed as a developing country for
the forgiveness of a lot of their environmental damage that they do. And uh
it, and you know they get they get away with the slave labor stuff
that they've got going on. Uh you know, it's all you know,
it's you're you're accusing us falsely. They get you know, they they're just
outrageous in the way they lie about what they're actually up to. And it
is I keep saying this a Chinese their bullies and and they you know,
they lie in their own interest. There's nothing unusual about that in countries,
but China is they need to be challenged on every front, and you know
that includes, as we said earlier, cutting off some of the trade and
other deals that they've been allowed to get away thinking that we were going to
somehow co opt them into the existing world order. And that's my speech for
the day. And well we both scientificated, which is pretty good for our
free for all formats, and I guess we can wrap it up there.
I just let everybody know we have a couple of guests line up, but
they just need to refine what week best works for their schedule. So our
next show, because we could go another hour, we may do another free
for all, but I think next week we have chances of one of our
guests will be able to make it, if not brought to slide to the
right some So I think we've run out of our leave. So Rats is
going to be back for a while. Uh and UM, it's always great
to talk talk to Uh, talk to you Mark and Uh. It's great
to see the folks in the chat room and I appreciate everybody join us for
another edition of mid Rats. And until next time, I hope everybody has
a great Navy Day. Cheers YEA thanks for being here today. Everyone to
having Mike Maloney want to marry me, and all your being to blame,
love me, silly folding, all of the same. It's a long way,
It's a long way. It's a long way to Differany be greening I
know, don't by piccondillywell left talk to where it's a long long way to
differ. It's but my life b