Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander, an Eagle one from Eagle
Speak at seer Shure your home for a discussion of national security issues and all
things maritime. And good day everybody. We appreciate you joining us for a
pre record of mid Rats. So you won't hear my usual alter call inviting
people to come down to the chat room or to call in even but that's
okay because we've got more than enough to fill up the next hour and I
would like to do this. Obviously you're getting the podcast, maybe you just
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go ahead and subscribe. You can't beat the price. It's zero, as
you get what you're pay for. But that way the mid Grats podcast to
be ready for you when it works better for your schedule. And for today,
we're going to look at something that we share as Americans, a common
heritage with the Royal Navy that goes back before our Family Disagreement, otherwise known
as the American Revolution, and a lot of what we see not just on
how we operate, but how are politicians look at their military and how our
military industrial complexes support the Navy and support the national fens have a lot in
common. There's a lot of cross polonization book through both official and unofficial exchanges,
and in some ways, a lot of the challenges that the Royal Navy
and the British government finds in trying to explain and support and to deploy and
to sustain their military is in some ways a smaller microcosm of what there is
on the American side. And just like a lot of the challenges you see
on the American side can be big ugly warnings or perhaps big inspirations to the
British as well, and you can see that happen in real time. And
as we we've had our own before, we've got a great guest to look
at some of that interactions and also some of the challenges that we're looking at
here going into the third year of the largest land war Europe. Scene has
a little bit of a nautical flavor, but these things are influencing industry and
any new spending that's going to become online, whether it's in the UK on
the continent with our allies there are here in North America, and our guest
is going to be now Doctor Emma Salisbury. Emma recently completed her PhD at
Burbick College, University of London with a research focusing on the history of US
Military Industrial Complex, Associate Fellow at the Council on Geostrategy and an Associate Fellow
at the UK Ministry of Defenses Development Concepts and Doctrine Center, and in her
spare time, she's an associate our assistant editor over at War on the Rocks.
Emma, welcome back to mid Raps. Thanks so much for having me
back Soil. It's pleasure and we appreciate your unflappability during our a little bit
of a technical issue. We've got a pretty quick turnaround that, so we
would expect nothing less. And to kick off the show, I know we've
got listeners quite who already have their PhDs, some that are thinking about getting
it, and some that are in the process of it. And here you
are, just a couple of months after finishing up your PhD. So I
just wanted to a say congratulations. We're really glad to to see not just
you've been able to complete that, but the doors that's going to open for
you to be part of the conversation and the decisions that a lot of people
are going to be making down the road into helping to add to the intellectual
capital. But besides all that apple waxing, how's it feel to be a
newly minted PhD. It's really bizarre. Actually, it's because I was doing
it part time, so it took me five and a bit years to finish,
so it sort of felt like I was never going to finish, like
it was an endless Sissyphian task that I would just con seem myself in for
a decade. So to actually finish it and be told that it was fine
and I'd passed was unbelievable. And so it took me a couple of weeks
to kind of get used to it almost and then to see the title doctor
in front of my name, like, I'm still just really excited about it
when appreciate. So, yeah, it's a really bizarre feeling. And it
was really odd getting to the point where I didn't have to constantly think about
my thesis every time. If I wasn't doing something on it, I felt
very guilty, so it's really nice to be kind of freed from that.
I do have some corrections to do before I can submit it and publish it,
but the end is in sight and I have the title, so it
feels pretty good. How did you manage to choose this topic that you for
your PhD? And how does that lead it into what we need to talk
to you about today with the problems with the shipbuilding and other assets. Originally
was interested in the meeting point of the military and technology, especially kind of
emerging technologies, and how those technologies would translate into military usage, how that
process worked. So looking at that, I came across, obviously the idea
of the military industrial complex, because that's how this works. And I realized
that nobody had written an actual academic piece on what the military industrial complex is
and how it works and how it's changed over time. I just kind of
assumed that had been written somewhere, and it actually hadn't, so I thought,
oh, okay, I guess i'll write that then. So I did,
and I wanted to make it quite joint, because obviously the complex works
similarly but differently through each of the services. So I had a case study
from the Air Force, from the Army some more joint stuff, and from
the Navy, which was the literal combat ship. And I decided to publish
that case study in War and the Rocks, and I think you especially sell
It grew with me on how much I dumped on the lcs during that piece,
and that kind of led into the more naval side of things. I
really sort of started diving down into shipbuilding in the defense industrial base and just
found it all utterly fascinating. So that's kind of how I got through the
thread of all of this to come out the other side of nable list.
And I think, what's so, I guess, lack of a better phrase,
refreshing to the topic is a lot of times in the defense arena because
it's let's be honest here, I think we're all afflicted by it in one
way or another. It's high technology, it's flashy, it's it's sexy,
it's good looking. People like to talk about strategy and tactics and find some
way, for some reason to weave in a mahan or a cloth of its
into any discussion. However, when you actually look at, you know,
behind the parades and what you see peer side. There is a very complicated
and in many ways fragile network of artisans i e. Labor. If anybody
has looked at some what's required to weld on nuclear reactors, which is I
know is a big part in both the US Navy and the Royal Navy.
That's that's art as much as it is a trade, unions, management,
shareholders, constituencies, and also some some national assets that you know, for
instance, in the UK it's it's some of your shipyards in Scotland, whether
here, it's in the US it's the infrastructure that we have in Novak and
San Diego that is almost irreplaceable. But it's it's a challenge sometimes to get
people to want to get into that type of nudge work when it comes to
the topic of your defense industrial race and shipbuilders and the supply change and everything
else. And of course again your PhD. I know you you had a
chance to talk to a lot of people inside this part of the defense arena,
so to speak. What were some of the whether positive surprises or disappointments
you found in talking to everybody, whether they're from politicians down to people who
work in the industry. While you were researching your dissertation, I think the
biggest thing that came across from me is that there are quite a lot of
people who see the military industrial complex as some kind of conspiracy. You know,
it's this kind of men in cigar smoke filled rooms passing big bags of
money to each other and you know, making sure wars last longer so we
can all buy more guns and all that sort of thing. And it's just
that it's absolutely not true. Everybody in the minute industrial complex has their own
incentives, whether that's a profit motive, getting re elected, keeping your job,
whatever that might be. But ultimately everybody does want to defend the nation
at the crux of it. And what I think is we need to understand
the military industrial complex better in order to improve some of the areas where those
incentives maybe cross pollinate in a way that is detrimental to national security. But
none of that is deliberate. Nobody is trying to undermine the security of America
or the UK or anywhere else deliberately just to make more money out of war.
Like that just doesn't exist. So it's it's a network of people acting
in their own interests, but also in the interest of the nation and this,
you know, this is the structure we've got. This is how we
defend our countries. We're not going to change it. We're not going to
build something else. We'll have to work with what we've got. So in
order to make it work better to get the outcomes that we want, to
get the capabilities that our militaries need, we need to understand how those incentives
all work together and then be able to improve things, tweak things, nowhere,
to push, nowhere to press, and just make everything work a bit
more smoothly. So it isn't some kind of terrible imperialist conspiracy, but it
does need a bit of fixing. Well. One of the things I think
you identified in some of your writings is that the problem with shipbuilding is that
you have to have I think you said it was a long term demand signal.
Talk a little bit about why that is important in national shipbuilding strategies and
what the problem is when you don't have that, and we certainly don't have
that very often our country. We seem to pop from one thing to another.
Yeah, we don't in the UK either, If that makes you feel
better. Yeah, So, if you're going to have ships built by private
companies, then they are going to respond to the demand signal of their client.
And in this market, you have one client and that client is your
navy. So what decisions the navy makes in terms of shipbuilding have a very
direct impact on those companies. So for the companies to be able to plan
long term, how many workers do you need, how much space do you
need, how many of each type of machine do you need, how many
raw materials do you need? All of this stuff, you cannot plan that
effectively without a long term demand signal. If you know that you're going to
be building two submarines a year every year for the next ten years, you
can plan for that, whereas if you're building one this year and then it
might be to next year, but we're not going to tell you for a
couple of months, and then you're going to have to spin it up really
quickly because we decided that we wanted to, and then the next year we're
not building any and it just throws off the entire planning signal. And I
can understand why industry gets really really annoyed with this kind of thing, because
just imagine having all of these different plans thrown at you and then it's even
not changing between administrations, it's within administration, so you don't even have four
years of calm. It can change year on year. And if Congress won't
fund something, that's a different matter. So there's just no ability for these
companies to be able to properly invest in their facilities, in their workforce.
They're doing the best, I think, but be able to have much more
long term plan I think would really help settle things down and enable those companies
to be able to invest in the right way to ensure that the Navy gets
what it needs over the longer term. You know, obviously I mentioned in
the intro. You know, we're in our third year of the Russia Ukrainian
War, and one of the positive outputs you unless you're a Ukrainian or Russian,
I guess, is the fact that it's woken up a lot of our
NATO allies. The UK had always been within reasonable history above that two percent
benchmark, and you wrote a little bit ago about the president concern. The
present Conservative Prime Minister in his government have looked at a proposal to go up
to two and a half percent of GDP over in the UK by twenty thirty.
That's seventy five pounds over six years, And when reading through it,
it looked as if there's what we like to call the in the States,
which I think is really important for what you just mentioned before about letting an
industry be able to predict things. And I've had a couple of offline interesting
conversations with people that seapower should not be a partisan issue. It should be
a bipartisan issue, because your supply chain doesn't care what color the flower on
your lapel is. And it looked as if there might be in the UK
a congealing around what we would call a bipartisan consensus between the conservative and labor
parties, especially if there is, as happens in democratic systems, there's a
change of parties. Is that assumptional mind right, that there's slowly a congealing
consensus about that increase and if they are going to see that increase up to
twenty thirty, is the land centric experience of the Russio Ukrainian War going to
distract from some of the maritime requirements that a lot of people had been worried
about for a while. I definitely think you're right that there is a convergence
between the Conservative and Labor parties on defense very much because of Ukraine. And
I mean if you look at the Labor Party, for example, the current
leader, Kirs Starmer has always been very strong in defense. The previous leader,
Jeremy Corbyn, that was more of a problem because he didn't want us
to have outnekly deterrent. You know, he was very much further on the
left. So all of the kind of Corbin era time of the Labor government
of Labor opposition has rather tainted the Labor brand when it comes to defense.
But I think Starmer has pulled it back and he's him and his defense team
is saying some very sensible things, which gives me some hope as we're likely
to have a Labor government after the general election. That gives me slightly fewer
sleepless nights. So Starmer hasn't yet committed to the two point five percent on
a timeline. He's just said, you know, when resources permit, we'll
do that, which is a bit more vague than I would like. But
any kind of increase I think is very important in terms of the land maritime
question. I think despite the fact that the Ukraine Russia conflict is a land
war. Britain has always been a maritime power, and you know, the
Royal Navy is our senior service, and I think there is recognition that a
lot of the missions that we expect from our armed forces are going to be
predominantly naval. So, whether that's present humanitarian missions and so when in peacetime
or from a more conflict perspective, the Royal Navy is always going to be
at the heart of our armed forces. So I think any extra investment in
our armed forces will be very strongly for the Royal Navy, I balanced with
the Air Force and with the Army. So I don't think that Ukraine has
made us shift further away from maritime towards lamb power. I think it's actually
made it very clear to us that our strength is in the maritime arena and
that's where we should be focusing our resources. Did your did your research point
to in the in the direction at all of what the effect of unmanned uh
surface vessels and and and under water under sea vessels and unmanned aircraft, the
effect that that's going to have on the development of our navies. I mean,
I saw the offses just came up with this ghost shirk huge uv.
You know, we're it's just going to detract from building more ship ships or
is this a way to get more bang for the buck by having these these
types of things be friendly wingmen so to speak. For the current navies,
I think it's definitely going to be a yes and kind of situation. The
technology for uncrewed vehicles. I don't think it's going to advance to the level
where we can have no crewed vessels whatsoever for a good while yet, So
I think we're going to have quite a substantial period of the loyal wingman type
relationship between the crewed vessels and the young Creed. Or you'll have a Creed
vessel that as part of its capability, can launch unmanned surface vessels around the
sea or something from itself, or you might have some kind of mothership situation,
but that will all be woven into kind of the wider fleet operations of
the more traditional crewed vessels. So I don't think we're going to see the
end of destroyers of frigates or aircraft carriers anytime seen. And I don't think
we're going to see a lot of those capabilities being autonomized or made uncrewed for
a while. I think we're going to see that coming in where it's most
useful, so that will be surveillance, reconnaissance, mind, countermeasures, you
know, all of those tasks where the uncrewed option makes sense, and that
will give us all a chance to really kind of get those technologies right and
have a test bed for how they weave into maritime operations and then we can
kind of build from there. So I think in the next fifty years or
so you're not going to see too much of a change in terms of the
surface vessels themselves. I think there will just be additional fleet members who will
be uncrewed vessels. There's a little better range experience, our experiments you can
do than actual rural world when people are taking shots at you. And as
everybody's come to expect, when there's there's trouble around, the UK is usually
there in the mix doing some good stuff what relatively caveat free so to speak.
And like the US Navy, the Royal Navy has had some recent experience
with defending themselves and others in the Red Sea over the course of the last
few months against the at the low end, we've got the slow drones,
the flying lawnmowers as I call them, and then you have your standard issue
anti ship cruise missiles and the new kid in town, the anti ship ballistic
missile. And when you fold that, which is first person experience with secondhand
experience with what we've seen a little bit in the Black Sea recently, how
is this starting to shape the conversation in the UK like we've kind of seen
here and some of the self reflection on some of the assumptions and decisions that
have been made in the recent past that either were the right decisions or were
perhaps not quite seeing the future as clearly as they had hoped. I think
the Red Sea experience has, on the one hand, been good for the
Royal Navy in terms of the fact that our ships that have been there have
shot down everything that the Houthis have thrown at them, as the US Navy
have, as the French have, as the Germans have. So I think
that shows that what we have works, which is really actually quite reassuring,
because you never know, as you say, until somebody's throwing things at you,
whether your defenses actually work. I think it's also highlighted the importance of
having a real good mix of capabilities because you can't anticipate who you're going to
be fighting next, and I'm not sure anybody in the Royal Navy would have
anticipated the heath he's doing this two years ago, three years ago, five
years ago. So to be able to have the capabilities that can respond to
something like this is very important and I think reinforces the need for us to
plan this going forward, so we keep this great mix of capabilities so we
can do anything from a near peer conflict all the way down to piracy mission
anti piracy missions of the Horn of Africa. And there has to be that
mix of capabilities all the way along that spectrum to be able to respond to
something like this, and the Royal Navy was able to respond very quickly because
of our quick ability to deploy, So again that reinforces the importance of having
everything in the right place to be able to go when we need to.
One of them problems, I see that the way we do things is in
our procurement systems, and I gather that the Royal Navy's procurement system is not
a whole heck a lot better than the US Navy system. How much of
a challenge is that for getting things done. You know, do we suffer
from paralysis by analysis? Is it just too fragmented and we really need to
have better systems in both countries. I think it's it's partially this long term
ism problem, because it's very easy for one administration to you know, even
if they had the best shipbuilding plan you've ever seen in your life, another
administration could come in and say, nope, we're ripping that up, We're
starting again. And I think there's very much a political incentive to do things
differently for the sake being different from your predecessor, which is why I think
you're right that this kind of stuff should not be partisan. And if we
can have a lot more agreement, both on both sides of the island the
US and on both sides in the UK, to be able to work together
on some kind of long term plan, I think that will remove a lot
of the issues that we have with not procuring the right things because we are
not having that long term view in terms of procurement as well. I think
the biggest difference I've seen between the UK military industrial complex and the American version
is the sheer level of political involvement that you guys have in your defense budget.
So in the UK, defense spending is as part of the overall budget
and there is one vote. It is an up or down vote, and
that vote is a vote of confidence in the government. So the government can
whip every single one of their mpiece to vote with it, and that is
the only vote we have on defense spending. There's no amendments, there's no
discussions of specific programs. It is all just done and that's it. Whereas
in the US you have the ability. You know, Congress every year debates
the defense authorizations and appropriations and any member can load any amendment they want onto
it. They can ask for two hundred and fifty million dollars for this one
specific program that happens to have a factory in their district, and they can
vote for things that they want in order to big up their donors. And
you know, there's all of these very low level political incentives for port barrel
spending and lobbying that we just don't have in the UK. And I think
that happens. That political incentive that you guys have really does distort things a
lot more than we do it we have over here. I've absolutely no idea
how you fixed that, but it is a problem that I've noticed has been
really present in a the case studies that I did during my dissertation, you
know, and things I've read about elsewhere as well. Yeah, it's funny
oftentimes and things you can find bugs in your features and features in your bug
and as our friend Brian McGrath always points out about earmarks and stuff like that,
that things have gotten worse since it's main we've made it harder to do
that. And recently an individual put out and I wish I could find it.
They put out just a real short list of really valuable assets in the
US military that only exist because somebody earmarked it. Included that with predator drones
and tea lambs that were saved at the end of the Carter administration, if
memory shows me right. So, yeah, there's features and bugs, But
I do think it's really interesting the amount of control that the party and power
in the UK has of in a unique position in that you know the British
system pretty well, and you got your PhD studying the American system, so
you've kind of seen both both of them from from in the middle, so
to speak. I guess that would put you on Bermuda. Take vacation Bermuda.
It's pretty nice there. But if you had if you had somebody who
mostly understood the British system and was looking at the American system, and if
you had somebody in DC very familiar with the American system but really didn't know
anything about the British system, what would you think or the top things that
they would not expect to see or would assume was there that's not looking from
one side to the other. That was a great question. So for the
American side, So I can for the American side, I can say the
things that surprised me because that's the position I was in when I started studying
this. So it would be the amount of money in your political system is
wildly different from the UK. So we have very very small limits on the
amount of electoral spending, campaign spending, donations, lobbying like all of that
is really really really tightly restricted. So I mean, I've worked in electoral
politics in the UK for about fifteen years and we run an entire election campaign
for an MP's constituency on ten thousand pounds that's all we're allowed to spend.
So the amount of money that's slashing around in the US is phenomenal when you
look at it from over here, and the amount of money that companies can
give to candidates or packs or super PACs or whatever, it's just it's something
that completely boggles our minds. It's something that we would ever allow here.
And I think that although having that much money helps you to communicate better with
your constituents, if that money is coming from defense companies or other companies who
are trying to affect your votes on defense issues, that can very much give
the impression of distortion in how you're voting. And even though that may not
be the case for every representative or senator, having that perception is something that
we just don't have in the UK. So that was something that really surprised
me. I think I in one of my chapters, I did a graph
of campaign contributions from the top ten prime defense companies in the US, and
the figures were staggering to me. I might just be being naive, brit
Better. Yeah, it was something that really shocked me. So that was
the first thing. The second thing would be the fact that it's very difficult
to do multi year programs in the US and so our because you have to
vote in your budget every year in such a very granular way. It just
seems to me like it's much more difficult to do big, multi year procurement
than it is in the UK. I suppose there's arguments either way as to
which is the better way in terms of accountability or scrutiny, but it seems
to me that the UK method might be a bit more efficient in terms of
spending over a multi year period. In terms of the other way around,
I guess the UK system must seem very odd because MPs don't get involved.
So most members of Parliament, if you are, unless they have a specific
kind of nerdy interest in defense they're on the Defense Committee, they probably will
have absolutely no idea about defense procurement at all. So if you asked,
just like a random MP their thoughts on the F thirty five, you probably
get a sentence out of Then maybe I think there's a lot more knowledge in
the United States on these kind of military issues than there is over here,
because here MPs are not required to vote in such a granular way, so
they don't need to have that kind of granular knowledge of the programs. So
that's probably one of the biggest differences, and I think maybe it's just that
we don't really know how to explain it, but it the vibe is just
very different, and I think that might just be because there is a lot
less money over here in the UK and we don't have the ability to kind
of bung three hundred million dollars into a program just to see if it works.
And there's a lot of times that we've done problem programs that haven't worked,
wasted a lot of money, but we don't really because we don't have
that bigger defense budget. I think there's a lot of conservatism in how we
spend money, and we don't do things because they might work. We do
them if we've all talked about them for ten years and then decided we probably
should have done it already, and then we might do it but on the
cheap, and it just the vibe is just a lot more kind of constrained.
So, yeah, those are the big differences. That's very unacademic language,
but there we are. How much do you think the holiday from history
after the end of the Cold War has affected both the UK and the US
approach to ship building and all the rest of it. We seem to have
just kind of let it all drift away. I'm not quite sure that the
UK has done the same, but that I have that vibe, I definitely
think it's similar. It's part of me that wants to get in a time
machine and go back thirty years to every defense secretary in nineteen ninety two and
shake them by the lapels and say, do not stop spending. This is
going to really backfire on you in the future. And it is the same
in the UK. I mean, so, we had a defense review,
a big one in nineteen ninety eight after the Blair labor government took over,
and they had all sorts of bright ideas about military spending, including really upping
the number of holes in the Royal Navy, and those plans sort of got
cut and then got cut and we didn't think we really needed to do them,
and we could just kind of shave off a couple of frigates here.
And then the big thing that really messed with our navy is this concept called
so essentially, you build this ship and it can have an armament added to
it, but we're not going to put the armament on it because that's really
expensive and we probably don't need it right now. So it's called by but
not with. So we have ships that have space for missile cells but don't
have missile cells, and I think that's the kind of way they decided to
kind of shave off some money from the Navy budget, and it's left us
with ostensibly a certain number of holes, but actually the capability is a lot
less than one would expect because it has the empty space where a missile cell
should be. So that's kind of the danger point for the role. Now
in terms of the peace divident, is that kind of well, we'll build
a destroyer, but it won't be a very good destroyer because we don't really
need it to be able to fight. We just need to have a destroyer.
So that's kind of how we dealt with it. I think in the
US, the kind of impression I've got is that you just stop building stuff
quite a lot. And so although we have kind of shadow destroyers, you
have no destroyers. So I'm not sure which is which is better to have
a destroyer that isn't very good or just fewer destroyers. But yeah, like
that period of time I think has really undermined naval capability here in the States
and in a lot of European navies as well, because we all had the
same sort of view in the nineties about the possibility of a future great power
conflict, and everybody turned out to be wrong. So here we are the
four but not with I kind of went a little over a month ago.
I went down a rabbit hole in that interesting phrase that specifically got my attention,
because I'm kind of a multipurpose gun nut. Whether it's a four and
a half inch like you see on some of your ships, are the ubiquitous,
you know, five inch are the the all praise the auto malaria seventy
six millimeters, they're quite useful, and in the Red Sea they've actually as
opposed to lobbying two million dollar plus missiles at flying lawnmowers, they've been able
to make pretty good work with their the main gun, the seventy six millimeters
and the five inches against some of those targets. More economical and as you
mentioned earlier in the show, you know, having a diversity of options when
it comes to your weapons suite, and it mentioned the the British destroyers with
the four and a half inch gun that to save money, even though that
actually is supposed to have an anti air capability. They took that out of
the gun system simply to save money, and then it went into well,
this the ncee gym you have here is supposed to actually have mark forty one
vls sells. So it's an interesting version of what I'm sure you've read about
here, the salami slicing that we do. Okay, instead of instead of
buying four destroyers, we're going to buy three or three and a half.
It seems like the build for but not with is well, we're going to
build four destroyers, but each destroyer is actually only going to have point seventy
five of its capabilities, but we have four destroyers. It's it seems to
be a similar to what the Danish frigate that had to go back home,
which was kind of fun to see, and maybe you have other stories along
those lines. Is even before the ship was coming home, the emails from
the skipper of the ship back home were leaked about the fact that his missiles
and his radars didn't communicate with each other. And before the ship he didn't
come home. You had the different defense contractors saying wasn't us our stuff is
fine, it's you. So you have that little conflict between defense contractors when
those compromises that we've all seen in peace. And this goes back to the
torpedo problem of World War Two, that when the shooting actually starts, or
you have a flying lawnmower, you would like to shoot with your four and
a half inch main gun, but you can't, Or you'd really like to
have your ship's contribute to a Tomahawks strike but can't because the weight room is
in the way. It really does manifest itself in these real world situations,
it absolutely does, and to be able to have and because we have the
ships, but they're just not as you say, like the're point se than
five of the ship, because that kind of armament stuff is quite nerdy.
I think people who aren't as knowledgeable about naval power assume that a destroyer is
a destroyer, and they don't realize that a destroyer with a gym is lesleth
or than a destroyer with a Mark forty one bs cell, and they don't
understand where those savings have been made because the ship's right there. It's a
destroyer. It's great. So it's sort of I wonder whether that kind of
disparity in perception is a little more dangerous because the role Navy has ships,
So maybe the perception is that they don't need extra investment because the ships are
there, but actually they do because the capabilities are not on board to be
able to make full use of that whole. And I've actually recently co authored
a paper on Royal Navy lethality which will be coming out in a couple of
weeks little teaser, which goes through the Royal Navy and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary
platform by platform and recommends how we fix the problems that have been created by
this for but not with mentality, and then what investments we need to go
into in the future to be able to up our mass. So it focuses
on firepower and a mass, and it you know, we all argue that
we need a bigger navy, but we're kind of putting our money where our
mouth is about what that should look like. So it's very very techy,
very specific, but we're hoping that that will help to shape the conversation because
it's all very well saying we need to give x billion pounds more to the
Navy, but we also need to make suggestions as to how they should spend
it. Because if there's no direction, then you don't know whether that money
is going to be spent effectively or efficiently. So that's kind of our contribution
to the conversation, and we hope it will be helpful because if the next
government does increase defense spending to two put five percent GDP, hopefully we'll have
a bit more money to play with and hopefully they can enact some of our
recommendations. Here's here's a curve ball for you, Emma. Have you have
you been watching The Three Body Problem? Yes? Love it, absolutely love
it. I don't know whether it's gonna be helpful to the conversation or not,
but the character world Aavy Commander Raj Varba what rude things he had to
say about the Type forty five. It was very, very it was fun
to watch. My wife was like, what is so funny about that.
I was like, I don't want to exploit it. But yeah, for
the list if you're not watching The Three Body probably if you're a naval list,
there's especially if you know anything about the Royal Navy or really any navy.
There's a nice comment that was made that is kind of the thing that
people will tell you in private when you're listening anyway, I thought that was
kind of entertaining over to you. Mark, Yeah, I was such a
near thinking about modularity, and I know you wrote a piece on this some
time ago, but you know, you end up like with the LCS,
We've got a ship that's supposed to be able to do three things I think
maybe four things, but it can only do them one at a time,
which means you have a ship that's always in the wrong configuration. I would
guess, you know, talk a little bit about modularity and the effect that
that's had on the readiness of some of these the ships that we're putting at
well. To hark back to your previous conversation, I think I believe that
the Danish warship that had to return home from the Red Sea was a moguinal
warship. So I feel like this proves my point that I don't like modularity.
And I think the problem with modularity is that when you get those capabilities
in those modules, you don't get the best version of that capability. You
get the best modular version of that capability. And if that capability can't be
effectively modularized, and if you're going to make it into a module because that's
all you have, then you're going to have worst capabilities. And it may
well be that modularity works for a few things, but if modularity becomes fashionable,
if that becomes the structure of your navy, if that's how you procure
things as new modules, then you're limiting yourself to that and you're not having
those wider conversations about fleet structure, about whether a traditionally fitted ship would do
that thing better than a module would. And I just think it's very unnecessarily
constraining for navies to be put into a kind of fashionable modulu approach. I
know that would make me unpopular with the Royal Navy as well as we although
we are a bit different, so we call it podular, so we have
pods instead of modules, but it's basically the same thing, and I have
my concerns about that as well. So I think it can be done well
as long as you limit it to what it does well. But if you
start trying to make all of your frigates modulo, or all of your destroyers
modula, or all of your off your patrol vessels modular, just because that's
what we do now, then I really think it would be a very very
bad thing to do for the naval power. And one thing I definitely wanted
to touch on is I'd like to get somebody who has a good view on
the British side of the equation because on mid ratch here we've covered the American
and the Australian pretty well on it. But that's that's aucus which on paper,
it's a great opportunity and I always remind people in Australia may be the
size of a continent, pretty much the size of continental US, but I
believe the population is one third of the UK. Uh not a lot of
people there, But in August there's a great opportunity here that if we get
another country that you know, wants to get in on the nuclear submarine game
and they want to do that in conjunction with the UK and the US that
are that gives us additional funds to help our already rather thin industrial based submarine
wise. And there's there's been some on the U s side of the equation,
some people who I am being charitable here, I don't think they get
the big picture. I've always been that at the end of the day that
if we have to in twenty twenty eight, twenty thirty. Whenever that data
is if we have to take one of our Virginia class and say okay,
it's not going to be uss X, it's going to be hmas Y,
then we need to do that. But on the British side of the equation,
what are the technology or support to your defense infrastructure are you hoping to
gain from AUCUS and is there a feeling that it's on track or it needs
to be aggressively nudged in the direction really everybody wants it to go at the
end. Well, in the UK we are hugely supporting with AUCUS, so
August will be our next class of attack submarine, so we have that very
strong built in incentive to do a good job and they will be built in
the UK, which means that our submarine industrial base has will have a suite
of orders for an couple of decades, which again is a really good sign
in terms of making that happen. You know, until we have the specific
numbers of those submarines that are going to be ordered, until the design is
you know, cleared with everybody, until those kind of bits are nailed down,
I think there will still be a little bit of jitteriness because while we
are very excited about August, we are a little worried about you guys.
And the reason for that is that it would because for the UCUS is essentially
or Pillar two at least is essentially a technology transfer deal. You know,
the US maybe is not getting any submarines out of this. So if there
are any problems with that tech transfer process, then there could be some very
significant delays to Pillar two a aucus, which means delays to our next attack
submarine, which means delays for the Australian as well. And I'm worried that
there might be a gap between the retirement of our current subweins, the Stute
class, and the coming into surface of the August class if there are any
delays. So I think we should build a couple more astutes to kind of
bridge a potential gap, because I am worried that if that gap is there
and persists, then that could have a problem for our workforce and for our
facilities, much like I've written about with the US case with the Sea Wolf,
And we did have a bit of that problem ourselves between the Vanguard and
the Ischuet for the same reason for having too much of a gap, and
so I think aucast will happen, and I think the submarine that we get
out of it will be really good. I am just worried that it's not
going to be on time. And this may be some deep seated trauma from
all of the other labor programs I've studied that we'reever on time. But I
just think we should have some kind of insurance policy in the form of at
least one more sheet too. Yeah, I was going to I was going
to ask a question about that. Whether the the differences in the procurement systems
between the UK and Australia and the US and whoever else now is playing in
AUCUE is going to be one of the major issues because as you note,
you know we do we do our funding. We're not good on long term
funding. So which would allow a lot of the issues with technology and stuff
to be resolved. Is do you do you foresee that as a as a
potential hang up in the in the Auchice deal. I do, yes,
I mean, until you know, once we've kind of got over those hurdles,
the designs agree, the texts been transferred, and you know the first
component has been laid down for the first ss N August, I will still
be a little bit worried, and that might just be my own anxiety.
But until that happens and we can build those submarines ourselves without the need for
further input from the US, that will make me feel better. I'm also
a little worried in terms of what a future Trump administration could due to WUCUS.
It may well be that a Trump Difference Secretary would be fully gung ho
for it, and that would be great, but it's that uncertainty. I
think that is the problem. Given how mercurial he is on many policy areas,
I think we're all just a little bit tense about that. And the
you know, essentially, before the Virginias are transferred to Australia, any point,
the US Navy or Congress or the President can say, actually we still
need this Virginia, sorry you're not getting it, or actually we're not comfortable
about transferring that technology to you, or we can't get this vote through Congress
to permit this technology transfer. And there's just all these little hurdles that are
making us sort a little bit worried. So I think once we've cleared all
of those, Ugust will be fantastic and we'll get some really good submarines out
of it. But until that happens, I'm just not going to sleep quite
as well as I could. I think that's probably one of the more sensible
mindsets to have towards a stool. We should all light a candle and buy
a havy I meanxprectation. It's probably part of a mental health month and self
care not to you head your bets. There are a lot more cards to
come out of what on paper just looks like it's like, can we make
this happen? This is really good? Can we not screw this up?
But yeah, applied pestimism might be be an order here. Before we got
about ten minutes or so left, I think. But I wanted to get
your take on this because you've got a view a little bit broader than either
nation, and I know that you've played around with some of the industries on
the continent as well. But here on the US we have had our shipyards
get bought by or partnered with to help build ships. We got the Italians
come in with Concentiary, We've had the Australians come in with austele and in
the last couple of weeks, one of the bits of news that had popped
above the background noise is second av del Toro has brought into the discussion of
perhaps partnerships with the superb South Korean ship building business. And independent of all
that, what keeps popping in my mind isn't so much the fact that we
need the Italians, the Australians and the South Koreans to help our shipbuilding business.
But what does that say about the state of American industry, American industrial
leadership, vision, research, and industrial capability that the previous generation's arsenal democracy
is having to bring in outside capital and expertise to try to get our shipbuilding
on the level. Is that a little too cynical view of this type of
interplay or is there something going on that these are just indications of I think
we're pretty struggling about those stories. Is whever I read anything about that,
especially what Sexuary Deltura has been talking about with Hamwa. I always see people
bleeting that shipbuilding should be domestic, it should be made in America, everything
should be done by American companies with American national security, and why can't we
keep our shipbuilding American? And I just think to myself, but you've done
not a great job of that. And this is not just down to American
industry or Congress or presidential administrations or the Navy leadership. It's everybody. Over
the last thirty years, you haven't done enough for your shipbuilding industry and you
need to build ships. So if you're going to fix that problem, you
need partners to come in. And that's just the situation you're in. And
I would much rather see ships being built in U s shipyards with a partnership
from ostolop and Canti Area or Hammoir than no ship's being built. And that
really is the choice right now. Without billions and billions and billions of dollars
in investment, it's just not going to happen. So I think you're in
this situation you're in. People who are worried about that will need to blame
sources closer to home. And also, I don't think that having non US
partners and shipbuilding as a problem. I've often said that we as an alliance,
as a network of allies and partners, should be doing a lot more
to augment each other's defense industries. I think there's a lot of economies of
scale. I think there's a lot of partnerships that could be really fruitful in
terms of new technologies, new ways of building things, new automation, all
of these things. We should be sharing those between ourselves as friends. We
should be friendshoring defense production, because if we stick with our kind of autaric
blinked view that every single piece of equipment that a military uses must be produced
in that country, it just doesn't work. And although shit building is a
very obvious production line and it's something that's very totemic in terms of defense production,
I don't think that should be blanked off from having this kind of input
from overseas. And I think it will actually be really really healthy for the
US defence industry to have someone come in from the outside and just injects a
little bit of life back into it. You know. Yeah, But we
go back to the investment the need for short term gain that we place on
our industries internally. I mean, you know, it's hard to run a
company with your shareholders of demand and you pay dividends and all that, and
they want they want their investments right away, and our way of funding defense
isn't necessarily conducive to that. And also, you know, when we get
the other thing is we get something like the Constellation class free it, which
you know, we're buying a known design, and then we then we take
it and rearrange it. Now we're going to have none of these things for
a while because we've managed to screw up another, yet another existing designs.
I mean, does that kind of thing bother you as a as a person
looking at the industrial system the way defense industry in the US. So when
I was first looking at the Constellation, I thought, this is a really
really good idea to use the FREM design, and I thought, I wonder
how they are going to mess this up? And you did, even with
a I mean, that's like a home run right there, and you still
manage to not do it well. And it just speaks to some really systemic
issues that even with a spectacular design like the frame for the Constellation, I
mean, it's still it's still not working. And you know, part of
me kind of wants to throw my hands up and just kind of curse loudly
and stop thinking about US shipbuilding. But that's really not in the interests of
my nation to not be supported by a strong and vibrant US Navy. So
I will keep hacking away at it, but it is very frustrating. Well,
that's usually there's a nationalistic defense one comes to. But that's that's fair.
We did. I was like you, and it's the written record,
is there eve before they selected from I was like, take the Frams proven
to design. The French and the Italians have given you a couple of different
ideas. Let's just print that sucker on metric and let's get some holes in
the water. And no, I guess, I guess nobody wants the easy
button around here. Well, Emma, we've kept you for an hour and
out, just what a great time. It's great to talk with you.
I know a lot of our listeners are wondering the same thing that we are.
Obviously, we know how to keep track of you. But if people
are new to the good doctor Emma Salisbury, where's the best place for him
to keep track of you? And what are some of the projects you're working
on right now that people can look forward to as the best place to connect
with me is on x or Twitter. I'm at saulsbot S A L S
b O T. And there's a link to my website and my bio with
lots of more publications. I'm currently so I just finished the paper I mentioned
on the Royal Navy lethality issue. I'm now writing another one on the Chinese.
Maybe. I've got some other projects, smaller projects coming up that would
be published soon. But yeah, the big ones are the Royal Navy and
the Chinese Maybe perfect. Really look forward to it. And thanks again for
joining us today. I appreciate it. It was awesome. Thank you.
Yeah, I mean it's been it's been awesome. Thank you very much,
and thank you very much everybody for joining us for another edition of mid Rats.
And until next time, we hope you have a great Navy day.
Cheers Mike one, don't marry me and live for you being to blame for
long all me said faulting your the tame. It's a long way to dimperary.
It's a long way to go. It's a long way to dipper,
really, to between gorb becond a farewell, listen, well, it's a
long long way to disperate. But my wi, my d