Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander and the Eagle One from Eagle
Speak at see Your Shore, Your Home for a discussion of national security issues
in all things maritime, and welcome on board everybody. Thank you for joining
us for another edition of mid Rat and today very exciting. As always,
it's a free for all, So if you are with us Live, I
would like to extend an opportunity for you to scroll down to the bottom of
the show page and that's where you'll find the chat room. Will be my
entering in that during the course of the show, and if you have some
observations or for comment, or even a question you wanted to our topic you
wanted us to address over the course of the next hour, that's a great
place to do it. We also have open studio lines, so if you
are listening to us Live, you are on the show page and you'll see
in the upper right hand corner of the studio line if you wanted to call
it, it's three four seven, three zero eight eight three nine seven.
Besides that, we're just going to roll right in Eagle one. Good afternoon,
Hey sol, how are you doing today? Do it all right?
I've got no complaints. You know. One of the fun things about doing
a free for all is, you know, you put out a little announcements
ahead of time, and people will say, hey, why don't y'all talk
about this, which I guess is a a early adopter, early bird spel
for the joint of the chap room or give us a call. And we
had a couple of folks reach out to us and want to talk about the
speech the Secretary of the Navy, Carlos Del Toro did at the kid the
School of Government. Was I think it was last week or a week before
last interesting commentary. So I thought maybe to kick things off, let me
do a little bit of a pull quote here from it, and then we
can kind of pick off from there. Anybody can look it up. Just
look seconda Carlos Del Toro delivers remark at the Harvard Kennedy School and you get
the article right up there. But it's what's kind of nice about it,
especially for regulars of mid rats. I don't know, I don't want to
throw my shoulder out by Patton pat patten us on the back, but he
talks about a lot of the things that we've been talking about here last a
decade things at Salama. Cogliano has brought up John Conrad, Jerry Hendricks,
Brian McGrath, other people that we've had on guests, these recurring things that
never seem to get traction, and he brings up a term that I don't
know if it's helpful, but if it gets more people attention, that's great.
So I'll go ahead and start with a little bit of extended quote here
for the listeners who are driving or don't have an opportunity to get the article
up. So the next is second nav del Toro. Extended quote follows quote.
This afternoon, I stand before you to call for a new maritime state
craft to prevail in this era of intense strategic competition. Maritime statecraft and a
broad sense encompasses not only naval diplomacy, but a national, whole of government
effort to build comprehensive US and Allied maritime power, both commercial and naval.
Our new maritime state craft should be bold, founded on a strong Navy Marine
Corps to fill our national security interest. It should also be equally strong on
engagement in areas of economic development, trade, and climate diplomacy to enable US
to compete more successfully on a global scale. It should leverage the tremendous advantages
we uniquely enjoy in innovation and technology, particularly in the maritime domain. Further
on in the speech, towards the last third of it, quote continues,
as you're already aware, the People's Republic of China is building up its naval
fleet at a rapid pace. In a twenty years since I left activity,
the PLA Navy has tripled in size and is on pace to have over four
hundred naval warships by twenty thirty. I must also underscore to you, because
it is far less widely understood, that the growth of the PRC's commercial maritime
power is a development more concerning than even its naval expansion. Our nation's most
prominent naval strategist, Alfred Thairmahan, argue that a enaval power get maritime commercial
power, and control over maritime commercial power begets greater naval power. Today's PRC
readership has read and study Mahan's theory, and their actions show it. The
PRC is today the world's largest builder of commercial ocean going ships, although the
forty percent of the global market being built in Chinese shipyards. More concerning still
Beijing leverages its dominant commercial ship building capacity and modern commercial shipyards and infrastructure to
more efficiently produce its naval combatants. Chinese shipping firms have come to dominate the
worldwide commercial shipping industry. They have established an ownership stake in ninety five ports
across fifty three countries worldwide, including many of our own ports and those of
our allies. Welcome to the party. But that's great to hear from the
sac NAV. It'd be interesting to see what follow a warm conversations that have.
Yeah, I had a lot of fun this afternoon because I started looking
at this and I went, you know, I think I've heard this before,
and so I started digging. I started digging back into some history and
there's there's like a oddly enough, the US Naval Institute has has it's celebrating
a one hundred and fiftieth year, and they put up some things that were
high but they thought were big moments and stuff they published, and one of
them was in nineteen sixty five General Essay Prize Contests the sine Qua Non of
USC Power the Merchant Ship by retired Admiral John D. Hayes, and he
gets right into this, I mean, it is you know, he thinks
that and goes through the litany of stuff. I mean, this isn't this
is in nineteen sixty five. At that time he said, you know,
like I can't remember what the exact number was, but five per cent or
four percent or two percent of US trades being carried on US ships. And
you know, his suggestion was that the only way to get attention to this
matter was to to uh go into a get a maritime department. And we
need to go back to Jimmy Drenning being on the show, I think episode
six hundred and eight, because he keep proposing the same thing. But you've
got to figar that. You know, nineteen sixty five was quite a while
and I'm not sure Drenning was alive back then. But you know, so
none of this is new, and it is what do you have to do
to get people's attention? And in that article about Admiral Hayes points he goes
even further. There's a there was a nineteen fifty nine UH report called the
role of US Merchant Marine and National Security. It was under a Project Walrus
Report. I'll have to dig out the reference to that, but it goes
through the same litany of stuff and you know, the the we've got,
I mean, the starting paragraph of that US merchant marine is dechiating, most
of the ships are nearly over age and long outmoded, blah blah blah.
US flag shipping is carrying a steadily decreasing portion of US foreign trade at twelve
percent in nineteen fifty eight. You know, it is not like this is
snuck up on people. And and uh, you know, we always one
of the concerns some of these articles is we always look and I think I
think the the the Admirald Hayes points out that we always look toward navy and
weapons systems. We should have been as as a component of sea power.
And this is where Secretary of Delto gets it absolutely right. We need to
look at the sea power component of our commercial shipping fleet. And he points
out that the maritime strength or sea power, not nuclear weapon is the central
factor of the world in the nineteen sixties, and I would say in the
two thousand and twenties, and uh it is he goes into what the Brits
were saying back in those days, but he says, our failure to conceive
of sea power in its integral whole may be due to our preceptor Alfred T.
Mayhan, who analyzed brilliantly it's naval side, but treating its mercantile aspects
only in broad generalizations. I think that, you know, that is exactly
what we've done. We keep we you know, I know, as a
young naval officer, however, really was concerned about about merchant ships. I
just thought they were kind of a pain to have around because we're always trying
to take In this article sixty in nineteen sixty five, he says, go
on board these ships, go see what a container ship looks like, you
know. And I'm beginning to see that as some of the new training comes
online, some of which is being done at merchant standards, maybe we're getting
young officers to get to pay some attention to what merchant shifts are like and
what they can do, and maybe that will help spread the word. But
we also another part of del Toro's speech is, you know, investment in
ship yards. And I'm trying to think, okay, we're going to get
our allies, are you know, like who Japan major ship builder, Korea,
South Korea major ship builder. Theyre going to invest in US shipping to
compete against themselves, and I'm having trouble with that concept. We you know,
if we're going to have it's nice to have allies, and we either
need to buy some stuff from those allies or we need to to really work
hard to develop our own commercial shipping, construction, ports, and shipyards.
So I liked his speech. I think it covered a lot of interesting stuff,
but I'm not quite sure what the what his answers are because he's not
really a position as Secretary of Navy to do a lot of stuff. But
if if the Navy Department got moved into a maritime department boyalty, that would
be a whole different bolowax, especially if we could get it as a as
a cabinet position. But we don't live on who live on my planet?
Real? I don't, And I'm still thinking about the whole maritime statecraft because
statecraft means something else, but one thing. Because when we've talked about this
on a regular basis over a decade, we've always looked at it naturally as
predominantly a national security view, and we've also covered it a little bit at
an economic view. We've done both sides of the equation. You know,
we had our friend from Cato over to tell us why the Jones Act is
bad, and then we had a couple of our friends get the torches and
pitchforks and come back and give it the opposite side of the equation. But
last year I've been trying to think more how do we make this argument,
how do we educate and which is probably a good thing for a representative republic.
Not everybody really thinks our cares about national security issues. Are understands how
wet our globe is. They're more focused on domestic issues. Well, some
people are making the argument, and maybe more people need to make the argument.
Weaving in the national security aspect. But when you look at having a
merchant fleet, whether it's building it, maintaining it, putting your personnel on
it's it brings in education. I e. To like we've we've talked with
our friend Mark van Droff and a few other people in the industry. If
we gave you so many million dollars, what would you do? They would
say that I'd buy a hundred new elders. These are good paying jobs.
These are union jobs, so not in all club places, but in many
of the places, and there are people who when they think of unions,
they think of like the Service Employees International Union. That's one type of union,
but we're talking about different types of unions. There are good unions out
there that are closer to the European model that are interested in good jobs with
good pay and good forection, and then they get their labor dues out of
those good jobs with good protections. But if we increase our maritime industry to
what it should be, it's it would put a demand signal into our education
system because we are producing a lot of people who can't get jobs with what
they've spent their time and money in college. And while we have other jobs
are unfulfilled, these are good paying jobs. These are lifetime skill jobs,
and it can help a lot of our other parts of the country too.
Which when you look at growing the fleet, you know we're in kind of
trouble right now because industry, we can't build the submarines we want, much
less maintain them. We're kind of tapped out in our other other major warfare
shipyards. But you know, are there other shipyards that can build other types
of ships if we want to grow our navy. But you have to have
the people who can build them. And I think Jerry Hendricks has made some
good done some good writing that there are parts of our country, whether you're
looking at the Great Lakes, the Mississippi and its tributaries in the center of
the country that has done shipbuilding in the past, but there's no demand signal
here. And I've developed a new appreciation for the Jones Act, and it's
imperfect in all but it is like sec now Del Toro mentioned a whole of
government. It is going to be an a whole all of government because whether
you're looking at the environmental impact statements to expand or build new yards, whether
you're talking about incentives at the high school, junior college, and college level
to focus in certain trades or educational areas, it will need it to sustain
that industry. I guess part of the following question is second has stood up
and has said his peace. Who in the government's going to stand up next
to him? Who should those players be if this is going to be anything
more than just another speech that slowly fades in the breeze. Yeah, that's
a great question. And you know you're talking about demand signal. One of
the here we are the perfect time for us. You know, we're now
going to go on another quasi continuing resolution to go until we get a budget.
You know, it is if I'm a ship the building company and I'm
looking down the road, you know, I would like to have contracts that
are are stable. I'm you know, I'm if it's the Constellation class frigates,
and that's that's fine. You know, maybe maybe we're funding those things
and there the works going to continue. But if I'm looking down the road
and say, okay, well do I want to bid on one and I
want to build new uh fast attack surface ships of some kind, you know,
how how secure is that contract going to be? Every every year we
have to go through this budget ritual and and uh and I don't know if
I'm gonna ever get paid or when I'll get paid. It's really hard to
run a business that way. I think. Sadly, we're also going into
an election year and it's going to be hard to get anything to happen with
the people who own the purse strings. And as they start to focus on
their election, you know, how do you get that national focus. There
can be executive leadership from the executive branch, which I think, you know,
give credit where critic is due. Second, mab del Toro and his
team has has put the conversation forward. I think he will have to keep
saying what he has said at the Kennedy School over and over to the point
he's sick of saying it before he's able to get some traction. I know
who the Secretary of Transportation is. If he had a gun to my head.
I couldn't tell you who the Secretary of Education is. I really can't.
I don't know who else in the executive branch might be able to join
with this there. I think there are people in Congress who understand this really
well, but are they a critical mass enough to move the needle. I'm
not sure, But I think everybody there is focused on the continuing Resolution and
the twenty twenty four election from here, so maybe this is a twenty twenty
five issue. We'll have to see. Yeah. I you know, all
politics is local, and the only way the only way people are going to
get this to work is if if you know what we've done in the past,
we're gonna We're gonna build a little bit of our spaceships are in in
Indiana. We're going to build pieces of it in in uh, New Mexico.
We're going to you know, that is the only way to make some
of this stuff work because of the way the the people get elected. But
yeah, I mean the choice is for everybody who's interested in this, and
everybody in the country ought to be interested, is to go to your politicians
and say, what are you going to do about the navy? You know,
we need a big navy, you know. And and to to that
point, Admirald Hayes in his article that I will put a link up to
on the on the chat room says, people don't know. People who live
in in Nebraska or in Iowa, they don't They don't know about how important
shipping is. Or maybe they do and we just don't. We don't emphasize
that enough so that they will appreciate that when their grain gets loaded on a
barge and on the Mississippi River and gets floated down to New Orleans or down
to Houston, that that is just the beginning of why we need a strong
merchant to fleet and a strong navy to keep to control the seas. And
it's not there's a you know, the big debate about about command of the
seas and control of the seas it continues to go on, and command of
the seas is something that we ought to, we ought to aspire to and
continue to aspire to, rather than trying to do, you know, some
kind of regional thing, which cuts back to our arguments against the way the
Cocombs manage the naval assets they have and what they and the demand signal they
send out. And yeah, there are ways too as opposed to you know,
bemoaning the fact we're coming up in an election year, which actually is
a wonderful thing to actually have elections. We can leverage that too. You
know, listeners of mid rats are other people in the maritime arena. Whether
it's for Congress or the president or Senate. We're gonna have candidates that are
gonna be doing town halls. They're going to be doing meet and greets,
and they are not always but a lot of them ask you know, do
you have questions from the audience are as they're doing the doing the handshake line.
Uh. Sometimes people will will take that as an opportunity to throw five
words at the candidate. That's something that people who are are passionate with and
knowledgeable of this issue use it as an opportunity both parties. This is a
bipartisan effort, and that might be an interesting thing if you can have a
candidate who goes hey. In the last seven uh, grip and grins,
I've gone to I've had four people ask me about building our navy. Who
are you know? Where's my where's my military department? Let's go talk some
and people listen. You'd be surprised, you know, whether whether you're you're.
I don't want to use this example because it's kind of negative. I
think people should be positive enough beat about it. But uh, it's an
opportunity to raise the issue, kind of a Norman Rockwell way. But I
know that there's been some candidates in my area and I just haven't gone to
it. Life is busy, but there's a critical mass out there. It's
better than asking other silly issues are just being quiet. Yeah. I think
that that if since we are recognize that, we do recognize we've got a
crisis, that some of the some of these uh people in Congress ought to
be suggesting, you know, to get us over the hump. We need
to help our allies like the South Koreans or the Japanese help let them help
us help ourselves by by by letting them, uh you know, easing off
on some of the restrictions of the Jones Act. Some of those restrictions,
you know, being that that every ship has to be US made. Now,
I don't us manning I can. I appreciate, and I think we
can get the body to do that, but you know, they until we
build up these these national shipyards. Again, I wouldn't hurt to have to
be able to use some of the vessels made by foreign manufacturers and in our
in our international trade. I think one of the the interesting things we talked
about this a little bit in the pre show. I guess this is kind
of a segue to move into it. Now there's we don't do it with
warship construction, but for instness. The Australian large deck amphib was mostly built
in Spain and then was finished up in the UK. I know some European
nations have had Romania and maybe Bulgaria could be wrong, do a lot of
the fitting out there and then they bring it back and finish it up.
It's not unheard of to do that. I don't think politically could do that
here in the US but there's other ways. I think AUCUS is an interesting
construct is we're trying to help Australia, a nation with just a population of
a couple million more than the state of Florida, have a nuclear submarine capability.
US and the UK are going to work together with them to do that.
It would be interesting to see some secondary effects of that in the nuclear
industry that really Australia should have. It doesn't considering all the uranium they have
there. But that's that's an interesting idea on what we can partner with other
nations that if not half a small percentage of But boy, politically, I
don't know how well that would work here. Well, I mean I thought
the Brits, you know, they're already saying we got we got a four
billion dollar contract to work on OCCUS. You know, that's how you sell
it. It's seeing we got we're offering jobs, we've got we're gonna get
money and we're gonna build these things. And it's important for a lot of
reasons. And uh, but also you know there it's going to create jobs
in the UK, it's going to create jobs in Australia, it's going to
create jobs in the US. We just we need to keep banging on on
that. And the jobs are are as you've already indicated, are well,
they're well paying jobs. They're you know, it's not it's no longer the
seventy five cents an hour kind of thing. It's it's some big bucks for
people who can who undergo the training to learn how to weld and weld the
kind of welding that needs to be done on somebody's high value platforms. Earlier
today, the British Ministry of Defense put out a nice little graphic talking about
how they've they've moved into the design phase of the submarine for Aucus and there's
a four billion pound contract which is what five billion dollars or so, and
the way they lead on it kind of folds in with our conversation. They
say it's a new five billion dollar contract. It's been awarded to progress the
program through the design and prototype phase, creating thousands of highly skilled engineering UK
jobs. Construction of UK's nuclear powered submarines to primarily take place and barrow in
furnace and advanced submarines combining world leading sensors, design and weaponry will be ready
by the late twenty thirties. Basically fifteen years from now. Shame we can't
move faster, but that's how they're selling. It's like a capability. But
it creates jobs, their skilled jobs, so it kind of folds in.
It's not just a national security issue. It's not just building ties with our
friends and allies. But it's creating jobs for people. And you know,
if you get early in on this contract, and you could spend an entire
working career almost just working on the uh the aucust submarines in the UK at
least. Yeah, and that, you know, that is that is the
pitch that the US Navy and I think the Department of Defense need to be
making too, which is, you know, the all we get. All
we hear about in defense news sometimes is bad news stuff that you know,
the barracks and some army base on many army bases are inadequate. The the
birthing barges the Navy used to have, I think we just got some new
ones were inadequate. The uh, you know, all the bad news stuff.
The good news stuff is that that. Yes, the all you know,
we build a lot of equipment, a lot of it requires highly skilled
people to manufacture it. Uh, you know, the and the skill sets
that you can that are are available are transferable from one. You know,
if you're if you're a guy working on assembling faight teams, you know that's
transferable to when we get the next generation aircraft and or you know, the
unmanned program. So so you know, there's a lot of things like that
that people need to understand how important this is for the future of the country
and the kind of the kind of benefit they get from the programs that we
that we have rather than than uh, you know, kind of the the
the bad side of the coin, which is, yeah, there are problems
with the way thing we do things and not cleaning the barracks, I don't
I mean, I'm not sure if that was supposed to be a contractor job
that failed or just one of those other types of things. Yeah, usually
those things at the sign of inattentive leadership more than anything else. Well,
you know, they showed up work today, but do you know where they're
living? Has anybody been there to watch it? We've we've all seen that's
what they're called helping Health and welfare inspections, Like, has anybody actually looked
at how they're living? Yeah, that's a that's a good question. I
mean, I know on board ship we had regular daily inspections of the burdening
areas. I mean, it's just part of the job. Is there was
an interesting figure. We're talking about nations sharing technology and build out is for
those that were tracking is an interesting discussion. Taiwan launched its first indigenous indigenous
submarine, the High Kun class, and a lot of people were arguing whether
that's the best investment or not of Taiwanese defense dollars. But an interesting little
nugget of that is of the technology going into the submarine is not Taiwanese.
It's mostly UK and US, so that's as a nice that's a benefit.
It's also an interesting submarine too. It's seventy meters long, displaces about twenty
five hundred tons, And for a reference mark, when you look at a
real small submarine, you have the the Swedish Gotland class submarine that's sixty point
five meters long, displaces about sixteen hundred tons. Everybody knows what the Russian
Kilo is. It's the same length is the new Taiwanese submarines. It's seventy
meters that displaces a little bit more at about three thousand tons, which seems
a pretty pretty nice sized submarine for a nation the size of Switzerland or Moldova
or stuff. It's if you look at the Taiwanese they've had, They've wanted
new submarines for a long time. They had old World War Two US submarines,
then they got the previous generation Dutch submarines. Nobody will build them for
them. They sure seemed to feel the need that they need a good coastal
submarine, so getting some US and UK technology to put in it. That
looks like they're going to be building. I've seen one figure big out planned
to build about eight So good for the Taiwanese. Yeah, you know that.
I never questioned. I hardly ever questioned the demands of people are actually
in the fight saying oh, you know, I could really use this,
or this is I think this is important. It's not one of those This
doesn't seem to me to be one of those dictator Uh, I really need
to have a battleship scenarios you see in some in the past, in some
countries. You know this, this this has practical application for the environment they
operate in. It's definitely not a vanity project. I hope not. It's
kind of like the I think. I think good people can argue the sides
of the equation, but it's kind of like your ongoing argument of trying to
get F sixteens into Ukraine. Oh six, you know, Ukraine doesn't need
F sixteens. They don't need the fighter planes the Ukraine into Quine. Excuse
me. I think we would like to have them. That would be awesome.
A lot of the stuff that you've seen from Ukraine is and I don't
know how they're going to fill this gap, but something beats nothing. Maybe
the F sixteens can do it. I don't know, but they've used the
French scalf. I believe it is how you pronounce it. I think it's
the French version of the British storm Shadow. They've been launching from their SU
twenty four's that has really proven to be a great capability. I heard an
interesting commentary that the Germans have of what do they call it, the Taurus
bull whatever. Toro Taurus is a similar capability to that that looking at the
success they've had the Ukrainians have had with the storm Shallow and the scalp,
they've decided well, we're not going to give us to the Ukrainians because it's
too destabilizing, i e. Effective. I guess the Germans are a little
a little touchy about that for some reason. All of a sudden, Yeah,
I don't I don't understand what's happened to Germany, but you know,
that's just what they're They're willing to export arms all around the world that they
make, except apparently to one of their neighbors or nearby neighbors. So I
was like, we're gonna We're gonna build an export tanks and self repelled halwitcher's.
But wait, wait, don't use these at war, Like, well,
that's why people buy these things, at least, not against countries that
we're carrying favor with or are defended on for natural gas supplies or whatever.
Yeah, that's uh, it's bizarre. Yeah, it's good for South Korea
though, that's that's who Poland is. The other nations are starting to partner
with to build up their forces with their their K two tank. I saw
a real it was kind of a mini documentary about how all of a sudden,
South Korea became such a land combat power, and it described when they
were first getting into I think it was an upgrade to the M sixty the
in the US. They realized that the South Korean little lessons learned here the
South Korean engineers, we're doing more than just doing what they were told,
to the point they had to draw little lines down various places in the R
and D Department that the South Koreans could walk down and nowhere else because say
they're getting a little handsy with the information. But that gave them the ability
to figure a few things out that they could build what really are world class
self fulfilled Hallwitzer's I think they call it the Crab and the K two tank.
Now I think about my dad's generation. My dad didn't fight in the
Korean War, but a lot of his peers did. That You look at
what South Korea was in the immediate postwar aftermath, credibly poor agricultural place.
You look at what they've done over the course of the last sixty seventy years
or so. It really I think puts everybody on report. Going back to
what we talked about earlier, that if we're going to have this maritime state
craft, if it gets some leverage and we decide that we've all heard the
excuses. Well, here we are a continent sized nation, a three hundred
and thirty million souls. We can't build a shipyard here. We can't do
this, We can't do that. You look at what the South Koreans did
from literally nothing, very little intellectual capital, almost no industrial capacity. They're
capital nothing but piles of rubble. And they really were able to build it
because they had leadership, they had will, and they were able to to
have a consistent point cric you're covering from more. Our cities haven't been leveled
in living memory. It's a shame that we don't get more effective response than
we get excuses why we can't. I think it's more like we don't want
to for a variety of reasons. Well it it doesn't. You know,
it depends on the the needs of the party in power. And that's what
kind of surprised me about Secretary Dale Toro's speech, is it. Uh,
you know, he's he's indicating this is all supported by the by the current
administration. And if it is, that's great, but you know, the
the the focus of effort has to be on on either waving or having realistic
things like environmental goals. You're gonna start a shipyard, you want to make
sure that that you know, down the road, you know, what you
do today won't won't ten years from now be discovered to be a major violation
of some environmental thing which would cause you to be shut down. It's you
know, it is. It is a that's where the whole of government thing
comes in. You really have to have this stuff vetted before you before you
turn the first shovel. And the other side of the South Korean miracle is
that they, you know, the government, the government finances a substantial amount
of their shipyards and stuff, and and uh it is and the same thing
with Japan for that matter. I mean any of these countries that if there
are going these major projects, uh you know they're not. They're they're spending
tax money to help those industries develop. And if if we're asking American business
to to invest in shipyards, then we better be willing town up, pony
up either tremendous tax cuts advantages for them or to provide that that funding that
sometimes we offer and then never really come through it. It's kind of like
the inside joke shipyards are infrastructure. Well, it sounds like a smart athlete
comment but it's actually true in a few ways. You know, let's look
at let's discuss a little infrastructure, the interstate highway system, largely funded by
the government, and you know a few other taxes here and there. But
but why Yeah, there's Eisenhower like the fact of being able to move troops
real fast over the German Audubon. It's like, hey, that'd be great
to have here. But what you could you could make the line to say
that was a subsidy to the car industry because more people were going to buy
cars, To the oil industry, to the tire industry. Yeah, you
could say that, but it had multiple knock on effects, just like a
revitalized maritime infrastructure in the US. Would it benefit your big defense contractors and
other companies, Sure it would. I would have benefit unions, Yeah,
it would benefit unions, but it would also benefit a lot of people,
have benefit the nation. And I was recently had a chance to go through
what used to be and there's a remnant of it there the naval base in
North Charleston, which is a series of brownfield sites now and they've converted some
of the buildings there into museums, are craft breweries or stuff like that.
But much of that area is and you can if you've seen it from the
area, you can see it as well. It's just it's brownfields, it's
post industrial. You know, there are places that we can claw back some
of that square footage. I think, especially in North Charleston area, if
we don't do it in the next five to ten years, we'll never get
it back. Because for those who haven't been to Charleston in the last ten
or fifteen years, they're buildings are really nice housing moving up towards Charleston.
It is changing dramatically in some areas that eventually you just won't be able to
build anything. They are kind of like what has happened to much of what
used to be the Brooklyn Navy Yard. But I don't know where you'd be
able to put new places per se, but there are former places that could
be revitalized. But going back to what we've mentioned before, who is going
to stand up next to secnav del Toro and say, here's he said a
whole of government. Well here's another part of government, and here's how we
look at it. And you know which states are going to step up and
offer because there's some state issues if you're going to expand shipyard capacity in some
places. That's that's what we're waiting for. I hope that there's some master
plan in the president administration and in Congress, that they already have a rollout
plan in place. I don't think so mean believe this is just sec now
del Toro stepping forward and putting the flag in the ground and see if anybody
rallies to his banner. Uh. Perhaps that's a bit pessimistic, but I
don't I don't see any other indications. Well, I think would be helpful
if Secretary of Defense stood up and said, yeah, you know so,
uh this is really important and because we can't move troops overseas without shipping and
all that good stuff. And you know, we're gonna gonna uh what do
we what do we always say we're gonna cut to to invest, We're going
to take some money from the army and uh, yeah, it takes some
money from the army and and give it to the Coast Guard and the Navy
to develop some of this stuff. You know that that is that is the
kind of support that's needed and and you know it's not that we're gonna uh
you know if they could raise a defense budget half a billion dollars. You
know that. I don't want that. I don't Let's make sure it's not
split evenly among the services. Who needs the most money right now? How
to drive some of those issues? And that you know, Congress says a
say on that too. Well, this is this is where I roll out
one of my hobby horses. In a perfect world, dislike it. The
old phrase was only Nixon could go to China, only secdeff Austin could go
after the Army's pocketbook to fund the Air Force in the Navy. But I
don't see any indications that a former US Army Force star is going to go
against his service like that. Another case an example why retired general officers and
flag officers probably shouldn't be secretary Defense politicians who understand what's that what's that great
phrase from home from Red October? Well, I'm not kissing babies and stealing
money from their back pockets. You need a little bit of the politician in
that office, which which unfortunately we don't have right now. Yeah. Well,
you know, sometimes what's the old saying, If you when you're out
of money, sometimes you have to think, so you know, the Marines,
the Marines. The Marines are thinking, I mean, and I'm seeing
a lot of like the unmanned uh US ships that have gone to Japan.
You know, the Navy's thinking, we're gonna how do we use these unmanned
ships. They're a lot less expensive, we don't have the personnel expenses.
You know what? What what is the and I think you've pointed out,
you know what's going to stop some of these unmanned things from some five guys
on a crowbar? But uh, you know, how how are we going
to deal with that issue? How do we protect them? How do they
protect themselves anyway? You know, But we've got it, We've got to
be pushing these Let's assume you can't get money to build another uh whatever the
follow under the early Birch is going to be the d D DG X or
CGX or whatever we're gonna come with next. But you know what, what
are we going to do? How are we going to deal with that?
And I think those are the issues where we need some creative thinking and it
can be done in smaller shipyards than than uh than you know, the great
big ones like the ones that are building the carriers in Norfolk, and are
the merchand type halls in h in San Diego. You've got I think you
you brought up a good, good topic. We should all give a lot
of respect to the Marine Corps. They have a tradition of experimentation that that
one of my favorite examples. I remember as a young man, I was
reading a book about the US Marines in Nicaragua before World War Two, or
was it before World War One anyway, and then early nineteen hundreds, Uh,
yeah, it would have been after World War One because of the following.
They this is before helicopters, when they're still you know, he had
gyrocopters and they the Marines were experiment with some gyrocopters and they said, well,
hey, we have a brush war down in Nicaraga. Send the gyrocopters
down there and see what marines can do it. And that's really kind of
like what we talked about with with Jerry Hendricks almost a decade ago, when
we land land the unmanned aircraft and launched it off the end of the carrier
and then the Navy promptly hit him in warehouses next to the Ark of the
Covenant. And we never attemper to be seen again that give them to the
fleet, let him experiment. Maybe it'll be a quasi dead end like the
gyrocopters, but I think that's probably you know, let everybody understand when the
helicopter matured, how that could be useful. But you know you mentioned the
unmanned vehicles going off Japan. Just read a little bit from the article.
Four unmanned ships are now operating off Japan for the first time as part of
the US Navy's Integrated Battle Problem twenty three dot TO exercise aimed at folding these
unmanned vessels into routine fleet operation. These unmanned surface vessels aren't competing, aren't
operating under special protocols or extra safety measures. The US feed Division one commander
told reporters they are being used as fully operational tools, not experimental ones,
to help man ships conduct their missions in the Pacific as part of this exercise.
End of quote. That's the way to do it. Give it to
the fleet, say comment on, go forward and let us know what great
things you do, or tell us why it's ugly. That's that's that's nice
to see. That's that's the way to do it. Either to validate some
some ideas with thought would work, or to have us go back to the
drawing board and a few others. It'll be very very interesting to see the
unclassified postex to that if they put anything out. I'm sure that the stuff
behind the skiff will be really interesting. But that's the way to do it,
and we needed that that type of iterative process where you just like we
saw during the twenties and the thirties where they had the dirigibles and then they
had the seaplanes and then they had our initial aircraft carriers. It's like,
hey, let's just go out there and see how these things work. That's
how you really find out if they're going to be if they're going to wind
up having a gyrocopter or you're gonna wind up having a dive bomber, because
you just have to go out there and experiment. Yeah, we were some
of us have been laughing. There. There's a heavy lift drone that's been
launching anti submarine torpedoes. Have you seen that stuff? And yeah, and
I just I go back to wait a minute, you know, fifty fifty
years ago we had that system on board ship. I mean, it wasn't
perfect, but we had DASH. We had the Drone anti submary helicopter and
it was it job to go out and drop weapons on submarines. And and
then it also got creative. People would do things like put a television camera
on it and use it to spot targets for off Vietnam. They were there
for gunfire spotting, you know. And that program got trashed and instead of
having unmanned aircraft doing some of these missions, we started we started building destroyers
and we put the little uh C sprites helicopters on there that which required a
couple of pilots and a group of people that maintain them. But the DASH
was theoretically indigenous to the destroyers. It was on and they had special people
work on it. But it wouldn't It wasn't you know, a gaggle of
pilots who no offense to pilots. I happen to know a couple intimately.
But they grew crew rest was not an issue for the for the DASH people.
I think, long after we quit playing within, the Japanese actually did
a better job with than we did and use them for a long time.
I remember reading about the development of DASH. You know, that's for you
kiddies out there back in the day. Uh, pretty much everybody carried a
nuke invention in addition to conventionals. Uh, you know, P three's carried
carried nukes. Surface ships carried nukes. Everybody nukes for all my friends,
whether AAW or as you had the old as Rock. And when they're working
with DASH, there's like, hey, we could put a nuclear death bomb
on this, or we could drop somebody with excuse me, you're going to
put a nuclear weapon on something that could just go off of the horizon and
never come back if you can't recall it. No, we're not putting nukes
on DASH. So they would just going to do the conventional. But yeah,
what is old is new again? And I think you hit on something
there as well. Is the flexibilit of you know, DASH two electric boogaloo
whatever they're calling it. I don't know. But it can carry a lightweight
torpedo, It can carry a reconnaissance package. Can it carry a few hundred
pounds of whatever you want it to carry? It? Sure? Can?
It has some inherent flexibility like a I don't know whether we talk about offline
or the last time we had Matt Hippolo on here because yeah, he served
on an Independence Class LCS. I've always said, of the two, if
you forced me to have one, I'd always take the LCS two simply because
it's got a lot of square footage. With square footage and spare capacity gets
flexibility because the one thing we all know is you can think you know what
future conflicts and requirements will need, but that's not what they're going to be.
So how flexible are you, both materially and intellectual to adjust new techniques,
new material, new procedures, new requirements as they reveal themselves in the
course of conflict. And that big old quad cop I think I think it
was a quad copter, and I can see all sorts of stuff including I
don't know if it's related to but similar to Claude Bearabay's latest book Philippine Pact,
where the they were using unmanned quad copters for to remove wounded people.
Basically, you've set of waiting for a helicopter, you take somebody, you've
put an IVY in their arms, slap under a quad copter and program it
and off to the hospital they go. So there's a lot if you can
carry a lightweight torpedo, you can carry a lot of other things, and
that's a real interesting capability. Again, give it to the fleet, give
them a little leeway, give them a little money, says and Commadian officers.
They can they can tell you the utility better than the theoretical guys.
And at at point Magoo are over at great neck. Yeah. You know,
if somebody asked me when I was a young officer on board a destroyer,
what would I want out of a out of an unmanned aircraft, I
would say I wanted to be able to go over with the horizon and tell
me what's over there so I can go m con And I wanted to be
able to talk to me securely somehow, like laser or something, so that
it'll be it'll be high enough that it can it can transmit back to me,
but it can show me things that I can't see unless I radiate and
all that good stuff. And I want to be able to to uh to
uh control that and know what's on the other, you know, around the
corner, so to speak. You know, it's what marines are doing on
the ground now. They you know, they'll carry a little tiny drones and
use them to see what's around the corner when they're in a in an op
Uh, that's terrific. That's that's the same thing. How to be doing
with these what's for shipboard you slam? You know, and I assume we're
doing some of that. I don't always know what's going on on a daily
basis, but man, I could think all kinds of fun things to do
with if I had an asset like that out at sea. And I think
one of the things we saw that with the whole fire Scout program is one
of the things that they were trying to hide so much is the loss rate
because on manned systems, for a variety of reasons. For instance, you
can't troubleshoot things like you can in a manned aircraft as their things mechanically go
sideways like they do, our weather appears that you didn't expect, you know,
dot dot dot. They would really trying to hide the loss rate.
I think what we've seen in the Russia Ukrainian War that directly translates into all
your unmanned systems if you go into it knowing, hey, this is not
as real, bust are as capable as a man platform. But you know
what it's less expensive, I can buy more. I don't expect these to
last for years, really months if I'm using them. They don't require regular
certifications and qualifications. They can be designed to be taken off the shelf with
a minimal amount of PMS and be ready for showtime. That and that's okay.
So you know, our lightweight torpedo carrying quad coptors, if we build
them to be quote expendable unquote, we could probably get more cost less per
unit, because if you build it thinking it's going to last five years,
when everybody knows it'll last two, you're wasting a lot of money over engineering
something. I think that expendable nature is more of a benefit than anything else.
The fact that you can send them places and if if it doesn't come
back, that's okay because as opposed for the money I could have spent to
have one fire scout, Charlie, I've got eight of these other quad copters.
I'll just call my call my aw two down in the hangar deck and
tell them to prep dash two and off it goes. So I think that's
that you're seeing more of that too, that understanding that these things can be
expendable. Yeah, you know the reason they got off on this you were
talking about the the gyrocopters, you know, the because they don't their rotor
doesn't really it's not powered. It's I mean, the forward motion of the
aircraft powers the is what powers it, and the rotor is just a wing.
And and one of the problems with with Dash and a lot of the
other helicopter things is that helicopters are really complex pieces of machinery. I mean,
they're kind of like the bumblebee. I'm not sure they're really supposed to
fly, but they do somehow so and that you know, you want simplicity
more than anything else. You want simplicity. And I can see a market
for gyrocopter drones. Uh. You know that you don't have to have the
rotors going up. You just need to have enough power to go forward and
had to get the lift you need from your from the rotor you do have,
and that, you know, I think that's that would be a system.
By the way, these the torpedo dropping drones that they say is the
size of a small car and which is about the size of Dash actually and
uh carry up to four hundred, four hundred and forty pounds of course,
the I think we've talked about it here before. I know I talked to
Claude about it because Claudes are are residents sci fi geek. But we were
talking about the drone that we were developing that we talked about earlier with Jerry,
that we're you know now hidden with the Ark of the Covenant, and
I said, the ultimate what my vision would be is we have something that
we can stack up like in Battlestar Galactica the second run of the show,
how to stack up like so many potato chips, you know, just one,
two, three, four, five, and you just pull them off
the shelf and you send it off and going. That would be a great
way to do it. But you've got this institutional take. You look at
some of the quad copters, even some of the larger agricultural ones, which
I think this is probably derived from. I don't know. Have you've seen
what the Ukraines have done these agricultural Back on my hunting property last week,
the crop sprayers were flying around on the cotton crop, which was which was
fun to watch. Free air show. These agricultural copters do about the same
thing. They carry a few hundred pounds of insecticide underneath, and we'll automatically
do your eighty acres just like a crop duster would. They've they've used those
as a little miniature precision bombers, taking those anti take mines and turn them
into drop bombs instead. But they fold in the four arms that hold each
of the rotors. Uh, kind of like a transformer for for those who
bought those for your kids. Where they fold in, it becomes a very
small compact package. Yeah. That how that scales up. I guess as
an engineering problem. It probably costs more to design it that way. But
if you assume they're expendable and you want a large number, uh, that
that's part of the acceleration. I think it will see out of the experience
of the Russia Ukrainian War. That will directly translate into the maritime sphere because
on board ship space is a premium h how many they thinks are electric too,
right, so that the the the the rotors on them are direct drive
there. You don't need all the gizmos on a like you do on a
on a on a regular helicopter. Well, I don't know if it's if
it's a Moore's law curve, or not. But the battery technology advances,
you know, where is that going to be in five or ten years?
What what range did that give you with it with a payload. It's a
very very interesting concept. I know big navy ships are going towards as electric
drive. So I guess you're you're charging station for your drones would be in
the hangar bay somewhere. Yeah, undoubtedly, or just make theever bye.
By the way, this is another hour. I just realized we've already used
up our hour. But I don't know if you've heard it as well,
but man, I gotta a lot of people who are talking about we need
to have nuclear powered warships. Again, that was part of the problem that
CGX blew up and somebody said, we're gonna make this nuclear powered. That
that's a lot of money, I think. I think on the Navy side,
I appreciate it. I have affection for nuclear power. It would be
great to have some escorts that could that could follow our nuclear carriers. But
unless you are willing to make the money argument on the hill, I don't
know if that's an effective investment of our time and effort, because it'll blow
up in our face. Yeah, I don't know a lot of these.
You know, now we're looking at smaller reactors, a lot of these uh
you know, they're they're even suggesting neighborhood size reactors now for electricity generation.
And you know, there's I think I think there's an argument be made that
some of the technology that is available as advanced beyond on the uh, the
the And I'm you know, I'm not I'm not a new obviously, so
I'm probably just talking through my hat. But but you know, when you're
just boiling water, I can't imagine that. You can't you can't do that
with some simple, simple, uh pocket sized nuclear reactor. Very true,
But hey, I guess we're done for the hour. It did. Did
we have anything we had to talk about? Or should we keep it in
strategic reserve for our next free for all? I think, uh, I
think I've already over extended my knowledge base, so it's time to whip Well.
We will, we will do so, we'll give everybody back the rest
of their day. But as always, everybody, we really appreciate you time
taking time to join us for midrat and until next time, I hope you
have a great Navy day. Cheers, wrote tell me to me waring Patty,
all change like my lonely wants to marry me, and all leave the
plan that be. Can't believe all you'll be to blame my love, my
family to want me silly folding your the name. It's a long way to
Dipperlany. It's a long way. It's a long way to differently, to
the greenest I know go by because heal and well, lest atwell. It's
a long long way to dipper Ram. But my heart b