Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander, an Eagle one from Eagle
Speak at sear Shure your home for a discussion of national security issues and all
things maritime and the technology. Lso gave us a wave off, so we
went back around and I think we might maybe get a two wire maybe a
three wire today. Hey, welcome aboard everybody to mid Rats. We appreciate
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This is actually our second start. We started before, and you're not
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live and if you are with us live the different interface and blog talk radio,
but you do have the ability to join the chat. And we've got
Paul there laughing from the from the tower, laughing at us as we attempt
to make this happen. But we'll get there. So welcome to mid Rats.
Eagle one. I've already said good afternoon once, but it's always better
the second time anyway. Yeah, well, it's nice to hear the music,
as Paul says, and good to talk with you again. Let's it's
all those buttons. Sure that this is new, you know. So it's
like shifting from a Cessna whatever the piper cub to a seven forty seven.
I think as far as controls going from analog to digital, I'm slow,
but trainable, as I like to say. But and the and the pre
show, I talked over a variety of topics. I guess if we wanted
to start depressing and work our way up or down one of the two.
What was near the top of both of our lists today was what was for
the past week of the big news, and it broke out because of its
high profile nature. It broke out of the background noise in the national security
arena. And that was the complete and I think it's an appropriate analogy here
the Dog's Breakfast. That was the gaza here that our good friends in the
US Army saluted smartly and tried to do the best they can. I've had
no fritiques for them, but boy, oh boy, if you look at
something that and not too much time went from not just a tactical but to
a operational and strategic embarrassment, humiliation failure, you know, pick whatever combination.
I think the Gaza peer situation it has a lot of lessons for folks,
but not outside the military. I don't think. Yeah, it's a
it was set up as a public relations thing. Anyway. You know,
we're gonna we're not gonna go through Israel. We're gonna ship this stuff directly
to the gays, the people in Gaza. We're gonna have a peer so
they won't have to pass through Israeli hands. You know, And as with
so many things, somebody didn't tell the people in charge. You know,
if the sea state gets above a couple of feet, this thing is going
to fall apart on us, and you know, you've you've got or maybe
they did say that and that just got blown off by the power, as
would be. But you know, if you're going to do PR, then
it's it's good to do smart PR and no know what you're getting into.
And they could have announced ahead of time. Oh, by the way,
if the sea state gets too high, this thing make fall apart, But
they didn't do that. Well, yeah, embarrassing And many people have said
sort of typical of what when you rush into something announce you're going to do
it during a speech rather than talk it over ahead of time with people.
And as you say, no fault to the army. They've did everything they
could with their slow boats to to Gaza and and they you know, setting
the thing up. And some cargo did pass through there which was immediately seized
by Hamas and used for their own purposes. As much as I love a
good inner service rivalry, I continue to use as analogy. I think it's
one that folks they don't come from the military arena, but they are paying
attention to this because it is a high profile issue. Is the charge of
the Light Brigade. You can't blame the individual troopers on that. They just
look to their leaders and they say, off we go, and they went
did what they were supposed to do. You have to go up the chain
to look for failures. But there are certain fundamentals on these things. That's
always been true. I've seen it written and Paul mentioned it in the chat
room. Jay Loots was designed for use. It was used in Haiti,
which we actually did a mid Rat's about a decade ago the Haiti operation.
It was designed to use in existing ports or something that had a break water.
Most of the listeners here have either been underway or flown over the Mediterraneans.
It's not a small body of water, but even if you're from the
Great Lakes, you have an appreciation that when you have that long of a
reach, waves will build up with even a large thunder storm rather quickly.
And I believe we discussed it a little bit on a mid Rats after this
was announced, that you know, pray for good weather because it's not something
that is ready to be out there in front of what Mother Nature has to
throw at her. And that's what happened. What I really hope that happens.
And we have enough people in Congress that know it. It's part of
their oversight function. They have to find some way to get hold of the
decision brief for this, because I think there is a very important story here
about how commander's intent, higher direction and guidance coming from the pole mill level
response results in different courses of action and somebody selects that course of action and
the assumptions that came with it. The critical capabilities vulnerabilities analysis that went into
that decision and who did what not. Unlike what happened in Kabul, the
classification levels are such in Kabul that I don't know when that's going to happen.
Maybe in twenty years. But this is your standard issue humanitarian assistant disaster
response operation. There's not a lot classified here. So Congress has to do
it behind closed door. That's fine, but there's something very instructive here.
I do not know. And John Conrad and Salamar Cogliano. I haven't seen
anybody nationally or internationally who's covered this better than those two individuals from them on
down and sideways when this was announced. I do not know anybody who has
even done one deployment who looked at that and went that's sustainable. Regardless of
what happened with the with the gear once it got the gear, the supplies,
once it got on the trucks and disappeared into goss, that's a different
topic for somebody at the State Department to deal with. But from a military
point of view, UH, it was not good. Yeah, And I
think I think that there's a CB version the UH, the Elevated Causeway System
or Elkaz, which actually drive piles in place, and it's a little more
robust than this. But my understanding of it is that when the last time
that was used, but they do they do practice with it. I know
they did in twenty sixteen, play with it, and then I think it's
out. I don't know, maybe it's in storage somewhere. Maybe they thought
this was going to be a more rapid way to get some get this this
peer in there. I wanted to move quickly to make sure that the voters
in Michigan or where they're trying to impress with this what acknowledge that the aid
was not being diverted through through Israel, which has Seal Macargulana was pointed out.
They're perfectly good ports in Israel that could have can and could be used
to access the beach and get the goods that have been sent to Gaza down
to where there the intention was to have it go. Yeah, I think
the restraints in the constraints about this would be interesting to see. This is
all written, it's all in paperwork. It better be at least that's the
way it's supposed to be done. But I could I could see very well
where they had a couple of things they had to work around. One no
boots on the ground, and what the CBS could have constructed, you're going
to have to get boots on the ground. Now the beach there is under
the control of Israel and bringing things through the port of Israel. This has
State Department written all over it, where we don't want to be seen as
part working with the Israeli military, so we want to be separate from it,
blah blah blah. And I can see that argument being made and unfortunately
winning the day. The ironic thing is what I've been able to gather maybe
you've seen more details, is they've collected the various floaty bits from the pier
and are moving it over to the port. I think it's ascalon are the
one upcoast from it to be repaired and fixed up. So, whether we
wanted to or not, we're working pretty closely with the Israeli ports just to
get that. I don't know they're going to repair it to try to reinstall
it. Are they just repairing it so they can take it back home.
That would be interesting to watch, but I think we would go from we
would double our paid if we got it repaired, brought it over there,
installed it and the next door and blew it around again. Yeah, this
is a really good lesson to be learned about preparation for war and using There's
a nice article in the current issue, the June issue of Proceedings by I
named Ron Weinberger talking about he's talking about tabletop exercises for wartime acquisition. Because
I'm going to quote from this a little bit. It says, too often
peacetime exercise planners do not completely anticipate the urgency and geographic constraints of wartime scenarios.
US naval commands have not encountered an actual contested logistics environment since nineteen forties.
Because tabletop exercise planners participants lack first hand knowledge in such an environment,
or decision making is based on what they experience in their day to day jobs,
they assume there will be ready means to expedite contracts for additional supply support.
This assumption rests in the belief the Department of Defense could continue to maintain
a mostly underrupted supply line as it does during peace time. And as he
points out, that that's a matter of great concern because that's not necessarily true
that that that's going to work that way. So it's a it's a timely
reminder that we don't train the way we're going to fight, and we can.
It's too easy to assume. I had a marine gunnery started to explain
to me about that. It's too easy to assume that things are going to
go the way you want them to because they've always gone the way one since
you're in your experience, which, as he said, is not we've never
been challenged on this since the nineteen forties. Yeah, it's it's not on
the scale of military operations. This is not not at one of the more
complex levels. But we have failed here too. It's it's disheartening to see
what something like this can not just do to our reputation A lot of being
a superpower, hyperpower, however you want to describe what we are at present.
It has to do with reputation in people's assumptions of your competence, and
we haven't been doing a really great job of that. I think that's one
of the secondary impacts of this. It may not be very well appreciated,
especially by the People's Republic of China. We have their own issues that we'll
talk about later on. I think But another thing that kept in mind to
the top of my mind while watching this is God bless the US Marines.
They've done most of the at least world facing public discussions about what they would
like to do in the Pacific to make it more challenging for an expansive China.
That involves a lot of island, a lot of unimproved airfields, and
as the Russians have taught everybody of your airfield and your seaport is within range
of somebody's rockets, you you might not have use of it for very long.
So this jaylots capability, the capability of seabes already have. It does
beg the question how many of these do we have and where are they useful?
And I think the answer is kind of scary, because there's we don't
have that many, and you've got to do a beach survey in our harbor
survey to know where they might be useful. But we all saw how long
it took our one jay loots to get to the eastern eastern med you know,
leaving the East coast and getting somewhere near Tenian Island. Oh, that
would take a while. Hopefully the Pacific will be nice and peaceful as the
as the name goes. But that that's not a very good assumption. So
how will this inform h I'm not sure. I think there's there's some other
options involving some ships that we haven't bought that might be a better solution than
what we saw. Well, and then I see the army is talking about
getting rid of it's prepositioning stuff ships and you know you've got to go.
You know, all the lessons you could learn from the things that are going
on in the world, why would you do that, especially the capability that
prepositioning stocks used. You can have prepositioning ships in Europe, or you can
have them in the Western Pacific. But we haven't been very good at knowing
when the next medium to larger war is going to break out. So yeah,
I've heard people say, well, we don't need them in your arm
you know, we don't need them here. That's okay. There. They
can get underway and go to West Africa, they can go to Madagascar,
they can find their way to Uruguay. Pick someplace nobody thinks is going to
be a problem that might be a problem at some point that we need to
get some stuff located, especially if we rightfully reposition our global posture, that
we take advantage of our natural comparative advantage, which is at a maritime and
aerospace power and our ground power is kept at a lower state of readiness and
at home, and if we need to go someplace, we can go there
and meet the equipment. It's much better to have that situation than to put
another thirty forty thousand people on Okinawa or something. To do that you have
to It begs the question, Okay, where are the stocks? How long
are they going to have to get in theater? And the maritime prepositioning ships
have always been a nice solution to that problem. Yes they're vulnerable, Yes
the equipments is there for a while, but they had a good exercise back
when I was a little kids as a junior officer during Desert Storm. We've
used them on other occasions too, but it's they're a fraction of what they
were even thirty years ago. To totally get rid of them. How are
they going to meet that capability? I haven't seen that explanation outlined anywhere.
Yeah, I know that the Congress has actually jumped all over this and wants
on charmy to explain how they plan to do this stuff, particularly those Congress
people who were familiar with how difficult it is to move things across the specific
going to hurry. So yeah, I'm sure we'll learn a lot more about
it, but it is kind of one of those things that you know,
what, what were they thinking? Approach? And this sounds cynical, but
it's not. It's just informed by experience. There's also counter indicator analysis,
for instance, and we talked about it more than once over the last decade
and a half. One area of the Army, both institutionally and with its
funding and planning, has starved to death is air defense for a very very
very long time. That's why after Solomoney, when the Iranians threw a bunch
of their ballistic missiles at that base we had in northern Iraq, there were
problems because we didn't have enough air defenise high low density, high demand asset.
That was an attention. So when you look at what the Army is
trying to divest itself of and get rid of, should leave people to go
hold on for a second, let's talk about this, and again it's one
of the things that I don't know what games are being played inside. But
a lot of it has to do with sponsorship, advocacy and the people who
are making decision, how much control and influence they have over the existing bureaucracy,
or the other way around that may not have an informed view of what
resources are needed. Where I fully understand that you can't have everything. We
have limited budgets. I also understand the problem with salami slicing to save money,
but divesting yourself of entire capabilities. I use the US Navy before two
thousand and three in our riverine forces, and we're going back to it.
The minute you leave that gaping capability gap. You need to ask yourself,
well, what are we as a nation going to be tasked to do?
And if anybody jumps up and tells anybody I know exactly what we're going to
do and exactly what's going to meet that need, that person probably shouldn't be
invited to the next meeting because they're either delusional or aligned to you. We
just nobody can see the future. That's why you need flexibility, multi mission
capability. Why has the C one thirty been used for so many different things
over the course of how old is that bird sixty some years old of design.
It's been improved because it's relatively affordable, relatively flexible, and as a
functionable and scalable cargo area you can plug stuff into. As opposed to something
that's very very bespoke and meets a specific narrow requirement, it usually don't work
out roble. Yeah, and it also points out I think back in April
Mackenzy Ecklin had had an article called you go to war with the industrial base
you have? You know it's time to revisit that again, and you know
it's it's why so many people are pushing us as a as a nation to
to gear up again, to get ready to if we have to, not
that we want to, but if we have to to go to war with
with whoever. So it's good to see people who were in the know or
have occupied and will occupy again important positions in the government raising these issues.
Yeah, speaking of predicting the future, it's one of the little snarky comments
that brought up right before the show tease folks that listened to it was a
little phrase that I was trying to get the idea around how I could explain
this wish passing Tomorrowland. One thing that's been a great frustration for me and
you and really everybody has been what has been divulged is happening to the Constellation
class frigate over the course of the last few weeks, where the timeline has
shifted hard to the right. For I've heard three years, eighteen months,
we'll call it between eighteen months to three years. I've been upon what you
read, what you remember, but people, I think I have forgot The
reason why we even have a Constellation class frigate is a response to the utter
and complete failure of the LCS program and to find something that we could build
that was a proven design that would minimize program and design risk. And so
they had a competition. The Italians in the French have been building from for
quite a while and more than one variation and the original concept. In my
world, we would have had higher than eighty five percent commonality because it always
I always saw it as a gap filler. It's like, we need to
get these boats in the water, acknowledge the fact they're not what we would
do if we designed it. But you know what, we haven't, so
build what we have. Accept some of the design limitations at least in flight
one to get holes in the water, and the same we decided to bring
in a new ship, but we didn't bring in a new bureaucracy. So
the same people that gave us LCS zoom Walt CGX also got their hands around
the Constellation class frigate and it is producing the results one would expect, and
one an individual I have great confidence and gave me a little hint at one
of the conversations he had with the folks up in DC who were involved in
the However many miles it is from DC to where they're building the Constellation frigate
up in Fincantara Yards on the Great Lakes. I think harrymy Miles screwdriver that
is was quote the design is not ready for tomorrow's fight unquote. We heard
that when they decided they were in decommission the sprew cans early over a quarter
century ago. That argument still has purchased. It's very disheartening to see what
they've done to what should have been a fairly straightforward operation to put a general
purpose frigate in the water with an American as opposed to an Italian or French
flag on. Yeah, I think the description was that the I remember exactly
how it was phrase that they're trying to design this thing on the fly,
so there is no there is no set plan, and there's here's a GA
quote for it. The Navy's decision to approve the construction with incomplete elements of
the ship design, including information gaps related to structural piping, ventilation, and
other systems, and the underestimation of adapting a foreign design to meet Navy requirements
have driven this weight growth. Resolving this weight growth as another dimension to shipbuilders
ongoing design activities, further diminishing the predictability of these already schedule challenged efforts.
You know, I think you've talked about the twenties when we had we would
build a cruiser, then we would play with it for a while, and
then we would make changes in the in the next iteration of that same class,
you know, and we just that's if you have the luxury of time.
We don't have the luxury of time. We've we've you know, either
go with what the design was and if you don't like it when you get
it, and then you can modify it later on. But you know,
we need ships now, not not the ships you know five years from now
that maybe will be better than what is currently available. It drives me nuts
in anybody in this situation with the Constellation senior leadership, whether civilian or uniform,
they had somebody on the table throw out the you know, wish casting
Tomorrowland like they knew exactly what the fight tomorrow was and their vision was worth
risking an entire program that is trying to meet a different requirement that it should
have been invited to leave and not brought back, because that is exactly the
bureaucratic goo that's being put on the floor that has stopped us from compily building
a ship since we restarted the Arly Burke line, and we had to restart
it because everybody bought off on those that thought they could wish cast Tomorrowland into
being. And here we are at in twenty twenty four and well, all
we have our burks, and Burks are doing great. But that's not the
way it's supposed to work. It would be as if we were still building
Ford Stack destroyers that we started building in twenty seventeen and went to World War
Two, and the way that works, well, even the Chinese, the
first ships the Chinese have built are now twenty years old, fifteen years old.
Yeah, I mean they're not. They're not tomorrow's fleet either, but
they're not. We're not having to fight tomorrow's fleet today. We're having to
fight a fleet that already exists, and all your edderships are capable of dealing
with them, and you know to who Otherwise you're going to build a bunch
of these the what the original intent of the lcs was, We're gonna have
all these empty spaces we will fill with the weapons of tomorrow. Well that's
great, but unless you're going to build a ship the size of an LPD
with a bunch of empty spaces in it, you're really barking up the wrong
treet because you cannot predict what we're going to need. So, you know,
arm arm with what you got, Go with what you got, build
as many as you can and do iterations. I mean, the the Fletcher
I think I put this down somewhere. The Fletcher class destroyers became the the
I can remember the next class, then the next ones became the after that
became the Gearing class. Well, those ships, the Gearings lasted into well
the late the late the late seventies, for the US, and then a
lot of them got sold to the places like Taiwan and they've lasted there for
another ten or fifteen years. So and the Fig sevens, which you know
a lot of people found to be undesirable for a lot of reasons. Yeah,
they're not class destroyed, but they were capable of escorts that could have
been upgraded with with the proper weapons systems had they needed to be. I
mean a big dropback with them was that they were single screw and a lot
of people didn't like that. But so it goes so and they work,
you know, quite fine. And this is it's not an industry problem.
Is this is a navy problem, whether uniformed or civilian. And the bureaucracy
and the processes we have to build ships, and you know, the whole
idea that we needed all these extra spaces and we need two different engine rooms
acknowledged. Fine. Again going back to my regional prayer, it's like,
okay, great, do that in flight too. Just like with the Fig
seven we had the short version and we had the long version. As you
know, the good idea fairy wanted to do some corrections and put some things
in there. But the first thing is got to be get the good in
the water and then bring in your good ideas for improvements in flight two,
just like the flight one Arley Burks didn't have in Barkilos. But we fix
that with other flights trying to well, we don't have to explain what's happening.
Just look at the Constellation class program today. That's what happens when you
have a bureaucracy that feels that the Navy should serve it as opposed to it
serving the Navy. But at the end of the day, if the problems
of the Constellation for it, this is the present and the prior CNO's failure,
they should have driven this horse a little bit more. You can throw
the second now on it as well. But these were two folks, more
than anybody else, should have had the surface picture in hand, and they
can't even literally can't even build a frigate that somebody else has. Well,
you know you I'm not sure the CNO other other than maybe setting the general
policy line, because I've never you know, the CNO is not directly in
charge of anything as far as I can tell it involving the actual Navy.
But navc somebody in NAVC decided that you know, yeah, this is this
is fine, but it doesn't meet NAVS US Navy standards for and you can
say X, Y and z and so we've got to do this and that
and the other and and that's pretty much how you you've turned a horse into
a camel. I mean, it's just uh, you know, it's the
way it goes. Mark, you're looking at the wait expectation. It's a
horse into a hippopotamus. I saw something the other day about how fast hippopotamus
is. Hippopotami are I don't I don't think those things are quick. I
don't think I want to want to be chased by one that there's much risk
of that. Yeah, they're like an NFL linebacker. They're big and heavy,
but man they're fast. Yeah. I got you know, you mentioned
talk about talk about some Let's talk about some more fun things. Let's talk
about how whipped out of shape the Chinese are about the Asian NATO. I
was about to say, we need to tear things up here before he goes
all worked up. I have absolutely and I got a former mid Rats guest,
and if you don't follow him on X, make sure zach Odah,
he put me onto the This little quote here about the the Shangri La dialogue
in Singapore is where this all came out of. Is the deputy Chief of
the Joint Staff Department of China Central Military Committee. Only a communist come up
with the title that long Uh and my Mandarin speakers will laugh at my pronunciation.
But Lieutenant General Jing Xieng Feng maybe, and there's also Admiral Dong Jong
was there. He's their Minister of National Defense. Evidently, the good Lieutenant
General Jeg Fang had quite an issue with Asian NATO, and the Zach made
a great point about it. Just as this unquoting Zach here quote, just
as PLA is clearly communicating its threats to the world, it's also communicating its
insecurities. So with this type of public breathing problems because of Asian NATO,
I think that's something we need to run with. Given second guessing, yeah,
they can have Cambodia, but look all around, we don't have to
have an official organization. But just like in Ukraine you have NAFO. It's
not a real organization, but it's kind of fun to play with because it
irritates people you want to irritate the North Atlantic Fellows Organization. For those in
ourn't aware, this whole Asian NATO is a great opportunity for change to maybe
get under the skin of the People's Republic of China's uh PR apparatus, as
opposed to then usually get in under ours. Yeah, it's you know,
I don't think that. I mean, the Chinese are mad about everything.
They're mad that the Philippines has finally staked out a serious claim to stuff in
its own uh and it's exclusive economic zone. So they're you know, they're
engaging in the typical thuggery. You know, we're going to prevent you from
from doing anything in this space that belongs to you. And how dare you
know you're the ones causing all the problems. If you didn't complain about our
overreach, we wouldn't have a problem at all. I mean, they are
so good at blaming the victim. And and you know, they're they're Ministry
of nonsense. Whoever puts out some of this junk they put out because they're
astonishing, they're they're you know, the global time and all that stuff.
It is. It is if you if you have a good sense of humor.
It's pretty funny. But you can see that. You know, as
long as they repeat these lies and these misstatements, and the more they repeat
it and nobody stands up every single time and says, no, it's just
not true. You know, then they're going to get away with it.
You know. It's it's a salami slice and overwhelm you with nonsense approach to
things. Yeah, but I'm having a thorough enjoyment of it. And the
Shangra Law dialogue. Also, we just name an aircraft carrier Shanger Log and
it's such a great name for an aircraft carrier. But again maybe in a
perfect world that doesn't exist, we could we could do that, but that
there was a lot of news to come out of the Shangra La dialogue that
I want to chew one. And the timing I think is auspicious. I
got a higher profile than other Shanger Law dialogues. I think Admiral Paro I
getting that right. He there's a real interesting panel discussion that he was on
that I want to try to get hold of that has him laughing at one
of the questions from a PRC Brigadier. That's the right approach. We should
be the happy, confident warrior out there, and I'll give him a BZ
for his performance on that panel. He looked calm, He looked confident.
He responded, well, which is what you want in that theater. So
if folks haven't taken some time, you can go on YouTube or x or
wherever. There's some video clips out there from the Shankrala dialogue. One that's
kind of funny about looking for a man in uniform that was actually put out
by a single instortment. That's okay, good sense humor. The public affairs
folks in charge of the shankra La dialogue, they should they should give a
little seminar on how to get the word out out. I just noticed it
more than I had in the previous years. Yeah, they've done a really
good job. And I'm sitting there looking at this Global Times tweet. I
guess it is where we're going now an X. You know, Chinese Defense
Minister Dong Jun like in the South China Sea to a well managed city,
He questioned actions of a certain countries trespassing into a house in the city and
not allowing the order to react. Isn't this building? What kind of freedom
of navigation is this, he asked. You know it's well managed because we
run it. But the minute the Filipinos decided that they want to get some
of their turf back as was granted to them in the twenty sixteen award,
you know, yes, confirming that China overreached. The Chinese don't want to
hear that no, and that arbitration ward doesn't count. It's like a squad
or all of a sudden claiming war, wonderful house and yard they have,
and is upset at the person who actually owns the house, who's trying to
do something with it. It's just audacious, I think, is the word.
But that's what they want the world to do. They want the world
to listen to their lie. Know they're being lied to, but accept the
lie is if as if it's the truth, and to go with it.
That's what a bully does. That's what Imperial China did to their neighbors hundreds
of years ago, and then the centuries before that. So there's a tradition
here that I think, and I'm making a huge presumption here that to the
Asian ear is even more direct. I think that it isn't even to our
ears because especially the Vietnamese they have and the Japanese they have a long history
with with Chinese in various uh waxing and waning phases over the years. Yeah,
you know, they've got they've got to worry because it is the big
the big dog in the neighborhood, and they worry that all the that the
big dog US will not come to their assistance should the Chinese really exercise uh
the force that they could do. I mean, they're they're looking back to
days of the Japanese uh East Asia uh coper cooperative sphere what it's called,
that prosperity sphere. Yeah, that's the one, you know, and we
all know how that that started out. So uh, they're they're they're willing
to play as long as they know they've got support from the from the West
and especially from the US. And I'm afraid the US is not necessarily and
staking out the as firmly that the commitments that we that we will make to
the area and to the countries in the region. But you know, we're
making we're making some of the right steps. I think aucus is right step.
I think the reaffirmation the relationship with the Philippines is good the recent exercise
of the Philippines, the effort to help Taiwan arm itself, the things working
with Japan, working with Singapore. You know, all that, all that
is good stuff. So it's not like we've totally abandoned the area, but
we we really need to have a force capable of responding, and we're we
are short. So you know, we see the the aircraft carrier Eisenhower being
extended on its deployment again. Uh, you know, because we don't have
enough, we don't have enough carriers, we don't have the assets we need
to do all the things we're trying to do around the world. And yeah,
uh that is that just you know, you begin to see these domino's
fall. You know, you have to extend a carrier, and it's not
the first time we've extended a carrier out in that area. But I'm sure
the people and under on the Eyesenhower and the supporting ships are going, oh
man, not again. We can't have steak and lobster every every couple of
months. Yeah, it's not just that the carrier is obviously her embarked air
wing, but they've also extended her one cruiser, the Philippine Sea and two
arly burks, the the Gravelly and the Mason. And I'm sure there are
some auxiliary ships that are supporting them that either are just in the rotation.
I haven't seen anything about them being extended. Well, but you've got to
keep the beans and bullets moving. But again you said, right, there's
there's just again, there's not enough carriers out there. Uh. The it's
a greatest gushion and we're both taking part in it. You know, you're
sitting in a panel or salon or having a cigar with a bunch of folks
to talk about you know, the carrier is obsolete and the big ships are
too big and too expensive, and you can have these academic arguments, but
at the end of the day, when things actually happen in the real world,
where's the carrier, where's the amphibious the expeditionary strike groups? Where are
the aircraft? How do we get them there? How can we not leave?
And that's even against in the Red Sea is a reminder, this isn't
even a fourth rate naval power. This is a Yemen's in a civil war.
And the houthis are for the old Cold warriors. Roughly what used to
be North Yemen, and they've managed to impact everything from global trade to US
carrier strike groups. It's it's amazing. But you know, we just we
don't. We don't have a much until we get to the point that things
happen in the world and people go yes, in the carrier home, it's
not a big deal, then maybe the carrier is not that useful of an
argument. But it goes back to again that that Tomorrowland wish casting. You
know, yes to these theories and these possibilities of why carriers are are not
obsolete in this vignette and that vignette, But when you look at the fact
that nobody has the perfect visibility of the future of what the carrier does have,
which is why every nation that can is building them, trying to build
more or to keep the ones they already have. There's nothing else on the
planet that substitutes for and until there's a way to project national will in an
effective way on a global basis than you can with a carrier all of its
vulnerabilities and limitations aside the capabilities it brings to the table. I just do
not see a replacement for it that survives first contact with history. Yeah,
it's and given that it takes time to work up a carrier air wing to
you know, allow it to work effectively with the carrier itself. I mean,
you know that's that's not a not one of those things where you know,
you get a bunch of kids together and say, okay, we're going
to put on a play and we'll do it in the barn. You know,
it takes months. It takes time to get the air crews ready,
it takes time to get the equipment ready. It takes time to get them
all to work together smoothly. And it's not a process that is done overnight.
It has it's it isn't. And that's another reason to you know,
if you have more carriers, you can have more people going through that process
and have a readier force if you need it now. The other side of
this is that the presence of the carrier in the Red Sea area has not
done what we'd hoped it would do by itself. It is, it is
not stop the Hoothies from attagging ships. It has not. It may have
diminished their capacity a little bit, but the Hoothies are still doing it.
They're still hitting ships with with these missiles and stuff, and in the same.
At the same time, the Somali pirates seemed to be acting up again.
You know, it is it is a sign that the the Western military
either we are too shy about about going in and doing you know, I
hate to put troops in the ground, but sometimes a punityveck tradition to take
out some of these hooty things might be just with the doctor ordered. How
do you do that? Well, unless you're going to go with the airborne
core and and have a way to get them back out once you get them
in, I'm not I'm not quite sure what you do, which is probably
why we haven't done that. But you know, I think other people are
looking at the profits being made by the commercial carriers that are going around Africa
now and they're going, well, you know, whose interest are we acting
and is it working? And that is always a question for military ops,
is what we're doing stopping what we came to stop? Yeah, if you
define as your purpose is you don't want to normalize threatening global seilings, which
is what the World Navy used to do, and then we took over that
responsibility from them. Primarily though other people will help, as I've mentioned on
other venues and here I mean, we have a few thousand years record of
what it takes to get rid of hiracy, and they're not stealing goods.
Well, they did take a ship, but this is in I think a
broad definition of hiracy. You do, like you said, you've got to
go to shore now. I think it's a poison pill argument that I've had
thrown at me more than once saying well, you know, you're gonna have
to deploy one hundred thousand troops and we're gonna have to occupy for six years.
Like, no, you don't. I don't think the present leadership would
ever propose this. But a punitive expedition where you know where this is operating,
You go in there and you in summary break things and kill people and
say, okay, so you're not going to be firing rockets from this area
anymore. We're leaving now. If you keep doing this, we will go
to your next location and do the same thing. Would that be effective maybe,
But what we're doing right now is not effective unless our hope is,
because they are an Iranian proxy, that we have a plan to somehow starve
them so they have inventory X and eventually they'll run out of it. And
they can't replace it, then the problem kind of solves itself, more or
less. But I think that assumes a little bit un causal analysis, where
they have more than one way to get equipment and capabilities, and right now
it is quite useful to the Iranians. Maybe the decision has been made that
we are comfortable with the existing situation in the Red Sea that it's not worth
doing a punitive exhibition or doing anything more than we already have. If so,
we have another situation kind of like we have in the Balkans, where
you're going to have forces permanently stationed there because nobody ever solved the underlying problem
because they're content with a slow, bubbling threat that requires external military forces to
be there. That's not optimal, but at least for now, that seems
to be the way that we're heading. Yeah, and has a course of
the will never go away. It's just, you know, these people didn't
like each other in thirteen eighty nine, and they don't like each other now,
so it's it's a mess. I like it. Well, go ahead,
no, no, you're fine. Well, you know the the the
question is, at what point does the US say, okay, we're you
know, Egypt at your Suez Canal, you know you've got to do something.
You're you're the one losing millions of dollars by not having shipping go through.
Uh, you know, you've got to act. All the other countries
that are on the Suez Canal that make any money out of it need to
need to do something. You know, the Saudis have been fighting the these
for a long time, but you know that as long as we're doing the
work, they don't have any real reason to step forward. But you know,
it's got to be in their economic and societal interests to take on these
these rogue organizations, these non state actors and and do something about it.
And you know if they're afraid to do it, because well that would be
giving aid to the to the Israelis and and the you know, we you
know that has has usually not been a problem in the long run, where
Jordan's and Egypt have actually been cooperative in a lot of ways with the Israelis.
And we've seen some from the the accords that were signed during the Trump
administration, we've seen some other Arab states going, you know, we can
live with Israel. But there is the other the the regional power the Iran
who is not happy with any of this stuff. So you know that's you've
hit it on the end. How do we stop or ran from continuous either
Huthis and the Hamas and Hezbollah and the things that they're doing in Syria?
You know, so because you know, you know what they want. They
want to port in the med and they see if they can get that through
Lebanon or someplace, they'll be, they'll be, they'll be interested in keeping
it. I don't think the it's a novel theory of international relations and power
politics that you can somehow take this regime and make them be a good faith
actor on the national scene, on the international scene. They have no history
of wanting to do that, They have no motivation or incentive to do that.
But there are enough people who have bought into this that have levers of
power right now that they Iran's in a pretty good spot really with this,
with this group of folks that aren't interested in countering them, but turning them.
But I don't think the Iranian government is interested in being turned. No.
I've got you know, they've got what's the old Bob Dylan song,
They've got God on their side, because you know, they represent one UH
group of the Islamic faith and they you know, anybody who doesn't see things
the way they do is a is it is it just is it much of
an infidel as a Christian or a Jew? And you know that, you
know the Quran says you should be able to take those people out or enslave
them. So it is a It is a challenge because we're not just talking
society and modern government. We're talking UH, a religion that forms the basis
for a lifestyle and controls their polities. I don't think we'd be doing our
doing our guests service here, not because we don't want to be. We
don't want to be the naval enquirer, so to speak. But there is
one issue you and I talked about in the pre show that I don't I
want to give us enough time to talk about because it's kind of a spoiler
alert, not spoil alert. But you know, next week we're having Craig
Whitlock onn to discuss our unending crisis known as fat Leonard and along those same
veins, I'm still trying to get my head around it. And again,
all caveats apply about he hasn't been been found guilty yet. However, the
immediate past Vice Chief of Naval Operations was arrested last week. Or looks like
just good old fashioned corruption and bribery, which I don't think that the Chinese
threw at us at the Shangri Law dialogue card, probably because they have their
own challenges working on. But as this story develops, it's what caught me.
For those that don't know, you can find out online. Go look
at what. I don't know how many years he was on active duty thirty
five years. Thirty five year active duty, retired four star admiral makes and
retirement pay. Evidently that's not enough for some people that while he was an
active duty he was already working his retirement gig in the Department of Justice.
I'd be interesting who was the whistleblower on it. But it's bad to see.
But it's also good to see because that will have a lot of other
people who might find themselves in similar situations looking at their post retirement gig,
who they're talking to, and what they're taking while they're on active duty.
It's going to be an educational thing to watch. You have more of a
legal mind than I do. What kind of caught your attention on the announcement
that well that he got charged and it's a it is a bribery. I
think one of the allegations is bribery. And as you say, we don't
know, you know it is. It is alleged, and he's been arrested,
and that doesn't mean much more than that it's alleged and he's been arrested.
But we've you know, we've seen a from Fat Leonard and before.
We've seen a number of cases in which active duty people have sold secrets to
the bad guys, done us major harm. I mean, it's and just
recently a chief petty officer got eighteen years for attempting to sell secrets to a
foreign government. I mean it is I guess there's some amount of money that
will corrupt some people. But yeah, you know, we know these It
is frightening to see, especially if you were around when some of the things
happened back in the the day, when our our technology, at our crypto
stuff was compromised. I mean, those those are bad times. Yeah,
that that was, and for a very long time after that we had to
still we still used a lot of the cryptocryptment that the Russians had the design
for simply because we didn't have any replacements for it, and we just hope
that the new code of the day. But you look it back was that
the K Y seven was one of them. Punch Card technology is not that
hard to crack once you have the design of the machine in place, if
you're willing to replicate it. But it does it does serve as a good
reminder that whether it's petty corruption where people are taking stock options and one hundred
thousand dollars payments from civilian companies that they have a way of steering business to
or it's some by selling stuff they squirrel out of the skiff for money to
buy vacations with, or something that there's a reason why we do have some
of our rather irritating regulations and security procedures. But at the end of the
day, it's what's between somebody's ear that's going to determine whether for ideology,
sociopathy, or the desire to have more money is going to lead somebody you
work with to do something. And I think especially with the case it went
to doj about the former Vice Cno and again this will come out in court.
I'm sure it is how they found out about it. But people,
if you're suspicious that somebody around you is involved in something like that or might
be a security risks, I'm in a place to look the other way.
But at the end of the day, if you do look the other way,
or if you don't mention it to somebody, like we saw with Walker
and that aspiring that you mentioned from a few decades ago, in case of
war comes, that's going to cost lives and even could risk not just operations,
but the course of an entire conflict, and especially when it comes to
some of the penetrations to people Republic of China have already made both directly and
indirectly with our armed forces. And it wasn't involving us, but it did
involve some people I indirectly knew in the Estonian military. There was a great
article in The Atlantic out about how one of their artillery officers basically was a
victim of a hunt trup and that is one of the oldest plays in the
book. And Fat Leonard, you know, that was part of the equation
too, is once you've done some things that wouldn't like the Aviator say how
would this read? And the Mishap Report, how would this read on the
cover of Navy Times. Once you do something I got don't read too well,
people have a way to push you in a variety of directions. I
think we still have pretty good training on it. But human beings are human
beings, and these things will happen on a regular basis. Yeah, all
you can do is try and you know, do the the old day,
we have the Personal Reliability Program and stuff, were a lot of things that
you know, if you were living beyond your means and stuff, people would
come and ask you questions. But here we go. We've we've finished our
first hour on Riverside. I hope people have been listening and enjoying what I
think has improved audio quality. I guess we'll find out we get some feedback.
Yep, and it's it's been a great hour. And again join us
next week everybody where we will be talking to mister Whitlock about his book on
fat Leonard. It's the gift that keeps on giving. So until then,
I hope everybody has a great Navy Day. Cheers Mike, my lonely want
to marry me and a friend of be codili for you being to blame on
me folding you. It's a long way. It's a long way. It's
a long way. It's I know, dor pick on it. Farewell,
listen, not well. It's a long long way to sip away. It's
but my, my,