Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander and the Eagle One from Eagle
Speak at Sea or shore your home for a discussion of national security issues in
all things maritime, and welcome board everybody. We're glad to have you with
us, and if you are with us live, I'd like to go ahead
and extend the usual altar call. You can scroll down to the bottom of
the show page. That's where you will find the chat room. While we're
alive, We've already got Lee in there. He's already got his got his
feathers all ruffled. So that is a great place during the course of the
next hour where if you have some topics you would like for us to discuss.
We're always looking for great ideas to talk about. We already have bounced
a few things around in the pre show for the stay's Melee format, which
is also exciting. If you're with us live, you can look up at
the top for the show page. That's where you will see the studio line.
If you wanted to call into the switchboard and give us what for are
basically asking us a topic you would like for us to chat about, where
we are more than likely to want to do that. So welcome to the
summer doldrums. Kickback, relax and try not to sweat too much. As
I said under the air conditioning eagle, one happy Sunday to you, oh,
thank you, sill and back to you, well, thank you very
much. I guess one of the things we can kind of kick off because
you are an illustrious US Naval Reserve captain retired and there was a fair bit
of a right after the NATO's summit. The White House just isn'tly put an
auto transmit. I think a little announcement recalling are getting the authorization if so
desired to recall three thousand reservists, and I think we got everybody is excited.
Is they use the formula out of US Code and said, of which
only I believe it's four hundred and fifty could be individual ready reserve for service
basically. And I think I called Atlantic Resolve, which is supporting the build
up and distribution of not forces, but funds and equipment to the Ukrainians,
and doc got everybody a little bit excited. But I think what we probably
have here is somebody in the PR and the paperworkshop. From what I've been
able to gather from chatting with a few people. This isn't something anybody should
really quote worry about, or it's an indicator or something larger. It was
just a bureaucracy pushing something out it needed to push out without thinking about the
larger context and timing and how that messaging would go. It was some awkward
timing, but it might be a good You are a resident expert at least
on how the naval Reserve operates for the listeners, it might not be as
familiar with it. Now, what is that difference as far as recalling goes
between a cell REZ and an ir R, and how at least on the
Navy side of the house, you might get pulled into do things that aren't
quite navy like. Yeah, independent, the IRR is the individual ready reserve.
There are people who probably have completed their mandatory or obligated service, both
active and reserve. I think many of us had to spend at least four
years unactive and X number of years for so years in reserves before we were
completely free of a reserve obligation if we went that route. So you can
end up with weird situations where these these they're supposed to call them once or
twice every now and then once or twice or every now and then and inspect
them to make sure they're they have their full sea bag and all that stuff.
But there they are people who are who are not getting paid. They're
just they're just members of the naval Reserve that are kind of off on their
own, and every now and then something comes up with that. Some of
them will volunteer or get called up for something. Uh. The other this
select reserve are paid folks. So those are the folks that when they go
in for one week in a month and two weeks year, they get paid
for their time and they accrue retirement points, which is a different system than
the active they have, because you get if you if you drilled once a
month, you get four points for each drill weekend, and you get for
two weeks, you get fourteen points. Anyway, that figures out as all
those points add up for your retirement package. And at some point you have
enough where you can you can retire if you spend twenty years or whatever,
then and your whatever and whatever your rank is, and all you get.
Your number of points you have is divided by the number of possible days on
a year by the number of years you served or some magic formula and they
came up with a number that will be what percentage of active duty pay or
pay grade you will get, and that's how your retirement is calculated. The
ir doesn't get any money, so they unless they're called active duty, and
what they're called active duty, I guess they get points for every day they
spend on active duty. At least that's how the Navy Reserve works. I'm
much quite sure about what the other services have, but I think it's pretty
similar if I so almost need a spreadsheet with embedded if then statements and differential
equations to spend to figure out what you're doing. And I you know the
of course, the Army don't just have the Army Reserve. They also have
the National Guard. I know some lifelong friends of mine are are in the
Air Force Reserve and their system is very very Yes, some interesting career options
in the Air Force Reserve that there's really nothing comparable to it on the Navy
side of the house. It's it's hard hard to understand. It's not really
what we would call full time support are for you really gray backs the old
tars. It's different than that it's more than that, is more integrated than
that. But of course the Navy Reserve is its own little little world in
that regard. But I thought that was an interesting exercise just to see not
just people's reaction. I had a little fun with it, but also,
you know, here we are, we like to tell ourselves where the world's
most effective military. We're not the largest, but we are the most effective.
We have global reach, we have all these allied systems, systems of
allies, and a pretty big active duty force, especially relative to our neighbors.
But we feel the need that we need to tap a few thousand more
people on the shoulder. And my understanding, we've already activated quite a few
reserves in the course of the last year and a half. It just hasn't
broken about the background noise. He's like, this total message from the White
House did. But we have to do that in order to make relatively modest
logistics. Happened to another nation's war that we just happened to be supporting.
You know, it makes you kind of tilt the head, But you go
back to Desert Storm, you would go back to you know, this is
personal to you. The Balkan Wars and of course what we're doing in Afghan
Afghanistan and in Iraq, reserves were a big part of that. I know
at HQ is staff when I was there, not just Navy Reserve, but
Air Force Army reserves were in there, really thick, including all the oldest
Army major I've ever seen in my life. He retired on active duty back
in Vietnam, but because he was a civil affairs guy, they gave him
a call and his wife asked him, well, this mean you retirement?
If he will be more? He said, yes, you went back on
active duty to go working couple. But I guess and you you were a
junior officer when this whole argument took place is in the period immediately after Vietnam.
Part of our all volunteer Navy, and the way they structured the reserves
at that point was if we were ever going to get involved in a conflict
that was not a quote war unquote full mobilization, that it would hit broadly
in our nation, for people's family members and neighbors would be called up.
I wonder if we've reached the point though that since nineteen ninety one, if
it's become so regular that it nobody notices anymore. It's just kind of the
way we do things. Yeah, I think, I mean most people don't
know. I mean, if you're if you're a cell res theoretically you're in
a unit or drilling with a unit that if it, if it serves some
function that they need, then you'll get called up. So if you're a
if you're a Navy diver in a in a mobile diving and salvage reserve unit,
then and they need divers, that's a good chance you get called to
active duty. But you're already you know, that's that's part of what you're
getting that monthly pay for and gaining those retirement points as they can call on
you anytime. It is. It is different when you start digging down into
the r R or even into the volunteer training it which is or essentially acceptute
drill um. You know, you're not getting paid. You're you're attending the
drills just to get points and maybe to acquire some job that will looks good
so that when a paid billet comes available, maybe you'll select for that.
So you know, so when I was when I was called up for a
desert storm, my reserve unit was an insurre undersea warfare unit. We got
called up as a unit and we went to Saudi Arabia and other places and
then we came home as a unit. So that was that was a unit
activation of selected reserves. I also had in that unit, I had a
few active duty people that kept our equipment and the message traffic and stuff,
um um, while all the rest of us were doing our normal civilian jobs.
So that was that's another kind of union. It was a commissioned unit
um and and that that was different kind of call it. Now, if
you have some special skill, like there was a friend of mine who was
the is a salvage officer, marine engineer, and he gets every time we
blow up, we get a ship blown up like the the or has a
collision. He's the guy who the Navy was calling on to go out and
get those ships loaded on those heavy lift ships because that was a particular area
of expertise he had. So you know that he got called up for that
and said he would either go as a civilian contract or get paid buck big
bucks, or they call him up as a Navy commander camp and then he
would go get paid lesser bucks. But they could actively for that kind of
work for I was in and once you get on a lot of these things,
you could call to active duty. I got called active duty for the
Kosovolt thing, but I was I was supposed to do one mission, and
of course there's a bait and switch thing you get there. Well, the
mission we called you up for it doesn't exist anymore. But hey, you've
got this skill set, so why don't you do this for a while.
And you know, so they've already got you. You're already being paid.
I don't think there it's coming out of their pocket necessarily the money that you
are getting. So you know, they're happy to keep you as long as
you're willing to stay and there's something for you to do that's meaningful, so
you know. And that is also a lot of cell rez and maybe some
of our our guys I don't know, got called up or volume cared to
go to Afghanistan and other places during that Afghan Iraqi war and they got a
signed kind of like some of you active duty folks got assigned to be replaced
take the job that should have been held by army or air force personnel at
either commands or or headquarters units for the most part, unless you know,
of course there's some reserve seal and that that would profit get you into a
different kind of and a different kind of unit if you got shipped overseas.
So we know you, but I both know that people who got sent on
some of those jobs, and you know, depending on your level of expertise
and what they wanted you for, you could you could end up being And
here I think we're talking about a army guy alldost Army or where he was
that they'd ever seen. You know, if they want you and you're sixty
four or sixty five years old, they'll they'll take you. I mean,
we had a doctor who would in one of our medical units who was at
least sixty seven, and uh, you know, he just kept going and
he was like energizer bunny. They just kept calling him up because he had
a special level of expertise. Yeah, it's one of those things that if
if you're in good physical shape and you're willing to serve. I know one
story that I remember from early on in the Iraq War, I think I
wrote something about it was seven or o eight. It was a guy who
was a numerous surgeon, right who was an orthopedic surgeon and his son.
I believe it was killed in Iraq and he volunteered to go over there to
be a doctor. Yeah, and he was. He was in his sixties,
and you know, he went to knife and fork school and he was
over there because because of the damn the injuries you're taking place, you couldn't
get enough orthopedic guys. You couldn't get too many of them. And that
was kind of how he worked through his own grief. So it's it's always
interesting when the balloon goes up. I remember joking to very very patient,
understanding spouse about this. She got of raised an eyebrow. I was like,
oh no, if I'm still a kid, I'm still in my keep
wanting to say mid fifties, but I think i'm when I border to late
fifties, but I'm still a kid. I was like, oh no,
no, no. If for pulled me up, we have larger problems and
me being activated, I think I'm pretty safe. I'm retired. I just
talked to a friend of mine had just retired from the Naval Reserve as well,
and he's like, they're not getting me. If they had, if
they come grab me, we're in big trouble, So yeah, I don't.
It's one of those things that when they do activate the reserves. I
send a note to somebody who was look excited about it. I was like,
no, if you're pulling cell rez and IRR people, these are not
people's teenage kids, are college age kids. These are people in their thirties,
forties, and fifties that are getting tapped on the shoulder. It's you
know, the military, it's the geriatric Brigade going forward, so the phil
billets, they're not much of twenty year olds being pulled up. Yeah,
I mean that's right. And uh but you know, if you've got some
like I knew a guy was a forensic dentist. You know, he got
called up a lot because every times there was a plane crash and they needed
to somebody who identify people through their teeth because that was all that was left.
Um, they call him up. So I've never heard it. Sounds
like a joke, but it's true. Um. I always tell people be
very careful what is in your record about your subspecialty codes. I quit.
The last conversations I had before my detailer before I left active duty is one
of my subspecialty codes was financial management because of my academic background. And uh,
basically he was trying to sell me on the fact that I could go
into an eight job, the finance part um, some job where they're have
somehow which is I'm like, if you're trying to encourage me to continue with
retire here, you're doing pretty well here, but I could you know,
in the reserves, because you are not just reserves in the military in general.
You are a number. And if there's a demand for you know,
seventy two forty five, they'll do their little get into their Unix machine over
in Millington that's been around since the Korean War, and it'll spit out everybody
who has those four numbers. And uh, if you're on that list,
you're going to get a call. So be careful what sub especially codes you
have in there, because it can especially if you leave active duty and go
into the reserves, you can you can return to active city faster than you
think. Yeah, when I was over in Italy for the Coastal thing,
they suggested it because I was a lawyer, that maybe I would want to
help the JAG people, and respectfully declined. So, yeah, we're gonna
We're gonna do a night insertion via Helo to Sarajevo. That's one of those
things where you you walk off and you go, excuse me, I'm in
the navy. There's no water here. I go back to the boat.
Please. Oh no, you're a lawyer. We have ways of making your
work. You know that. It's funny because, yeah, lawyers are kind
of like doctors in this regard. You know, if you have if you're
having heart problems, you don't go to your dermatologist if you have you know,
if you're have any problems with your estate, you don't need to probate
work done you. You don't go to somebody who's a public defender or a
slip fall lawyer. Um. You know, people have their different specialties.
But yeah, it's like, oh, you're a lawyer, come here and
help us with the war crimes. I'm a business guy. Do you have
a contract I can look at? It's a little different. Well yeah,
And that's basically what I told him was, I don't think the skill set
that I acquire as a lawyer for big oil companies is particularly useful on what
they were doing. So oh man, hey, another thing that we could
probably go for reserves all day. Maybe I tried to get a guest of
our to come on just to talk about but I think he's doing like everybody
else is doing this summer and going on vacation. But um, there's something
I think that we could do three episodes one. But something that you mentioned
in the pre show that I also wanted to dive into is uh, you
learned from the h you learned something new every day. I never heard though,
I should have Laconia Shoals outline for listening or what the Laconia Shoals are
and why they should go to Wikipeda and start reading up. Yeah, the
Laconia Shoals are kind of a lower end of the Spratley Islands, which the
Spratley Islands if you're looking for him on a map, are near Palawan,
part of Philippines, kind of north of Brunei, north of the part of
Malaysia that that Brunei sits in the middle of on that and there, and
they're south east of Vietnam. So there's a Spratley's there's a whole bunch of
islands in that area, and then there's this Laconia Shoals and uh, it
happens to lie within the nine dash line of the Chinese. So the Chinese
have been really active for years and sending ships to this area and making all
kinds of planes because it's in their nine dash line. Well, if you're
the Malaysians, you've got an exclusive economic zone which covers all or part of
these of the islands are shoals, and you know you're politely telling the Chinese,
no, we really don't nature help. Well, the Chinese have been
persisting, and recently there was a a there's a new entity from Stanford University.
Uh, it's called you can find it. It's called the Sea Light
Dot Live and it's it talks about the maritime Gray Zone. I'll put a
link up here to this copy that. Uh So, anyway, they talk
about UM the Gray Area activities of the Chinese. And today on Twitter,
the head of this organization put out a UM Twitter tweet that UM mentioned that
the Chinese had had set a scientific theoretically a scientific exiporation ship down there to
check out the the those shoals and had been accompanied by a Chinese Coastguard ship.
So uh, and this is the and this is the second time recently
within the last five weeks that this ship has gone down there. So um,
it is another one of those cases where you watch the Chinese pushing the
envelope in many different ways, and this is this is one of those one
of those ways. I did the thing I always like to do. I
needly went to Google Earth and I did a little search. You know,
where where is Laconia relative to the nearest Chinese real lands and us for those
that have your globe handy feel breed Hainan Island where we, for a variety
of reasons, decide we wanted to land one of our most classified aircraft on
Quarter Sanrigo. If you go from Heinen Island one six four true at eight
hundred and twenty nautical miles, you hit the rough area of Laconia shoals where
that is relative. If you are sitting in Miami and you wanted to know
what eight hundred and twenty nautical miles away, it's roughly the distance from Miami
to San Juan, or you know the northwest coast of Puerto Rico, which
is also the same distance to a lot of the west coast of Nicaragua,
Honduras, El Salvador so it's it's kind of sometimes that I think about the
Chinese mindset towards the South China. See, I think about the Gulf of
Mexico and the Caribbean and the American mind and that those ranges are similar if
you go all the way down to Laconia, because a twenty if you go,
you know, directly to south, you tickle the Colombian border and where
Aruba, curs Alan Baner are except the fact that besides, there's some little
islands in the west central Caribbean that both US and Colombia claimed, but we
we just shrug our shouldiers and we don't fight with it. Or was at
the US and Nicaragua, I don't know us and some of the one country
down there we will have claims to it, though we have never done anything
and is kind of really theirs, but we haven't really stated that this is
all ours outside of the little spot that we have and get Mo and of
course Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, but nobody questions our ownership. We
bought or conquered those very square or traded for but they interesting thing about the
Lacodia shoals is a lot of what Chinese like to claim as these things are
always historically ours. And one thing that I do like about Wikipedia, you
gotta be careful quoting it. But ye to go two layers deep in Wikipedia,
and you have to look at the footnotes, and they under the Wikipedia
Laconia Shoals. There's a nice footnote from a twenty nineteen study with this guy
who he went through and he looked at the Chinese claims is South China Sea
and what they derived and they actually talked about the Laconia shoals. And I'm
able going to try to pronounce it, because I still can't pronounce Chairman.
She's named correctly, everybody tells me. But basically it's a sinusized which is
the equivalent of Anglicized version of Laconia from the nineteen thirties. And so they
really don't have a claim to it, but that won't stop them from making
a claim. And it sits in the southeast corner athwart those shipping lanes coming
out of the Singapore Straits, and if you go northwest of them, they're
into the Gulf of Thailand off the Cambodian border. There's also the Cambodian Naval
base there that the Chinese. It's interesting some of the passive aggressive stuff on
it. Last decade, we gave some money to Cambodia to put some buildings
on rem naval base. Well, the Chinese have gone into re naval base.
They've torn those down and they're basically building a dual use facility naval base.
Now it's up there in the Gulf of Thailand. Between those two locations.
You can see with what they're doing in the South China Sea and reaching
further south of there, because that's that main sea line of communication that doesn't
just go to the People's Republic of China, but that's also where Japan,
Taiwan, the Philippines, all those people, that's their major artery that I
guess that's the equivalent of North America, the coast right off Newfoundland, all
that that great circle route, all those major convoy routes are all going to
go through there. And you don't have to be somebody who played risk every
other weekend in their great school years to see the importance of geography. They're
all kind of makes sense. But you know what is the scatterings of Borneo,
the Philippines, Indonesia and a little to west Malaysia, and you can
throw in Singapore and Vietnam. You can kind of see where they're trying to
have united front. But China look to be in a pretty big, pretty
nice position where what are these little scattered countries going to do about it?
And so far, nobody's really though. I think Indonesia has blown up a
few Chinese fishing boats, but nobody really has called them on it, or
even really has the capability to call them on it. I think I think
people are calling them on it, but you know that that doesn't stop the
Chinese. So unless you are willing to engage in physical instruction of somebody that's
in your exclusive economic zone. And you know, if the their their claim
is that they're exploring I can't remember exactly what unclass says about the ability to
explore anybody else's exclusive economic zone, but you know they're gonna they're they're playing
this game. It's it's salami slicing. We're just going to keep nudging,
nudging, nudging. I just put a link up to a map that the
uh c C SIS had. It shows where Laconia Shoals is pretty clearly right
off the coast of Brunei and Malaysia, so you know, and that was
back in twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen. So this is this is not a
new effort on the Chinese. Chinese to just work their way slowly, methodically.
Time is on their side. Nobody's going to do anything. And you
know, they ignore the the international arbitration thing that told them was quit doing
stuff to the Philippines and UM where the Philippines both territorial waters and UM Exclusive
Economic Zone meets other countries in the South China Sea. So you know,
they're just they're scoff laws. I want to back up a bit because you
mentioned it and you put a link in the chat room UM. But this
is a great example for the listeners that I don't care how long you've been
soaking in this is you will always find out about new resources. It is
a pretty new resource. But you mentioned UM sea light from the what is
the Sanford I wrote it down somewhere. Yeah, here we go the Stanford
University, Gordian not Center for National Security. I like that name. Uh
you know, where's Alexander with the sword when you need them? But I
would encourage the listeners to to go into the chat room if you're with us
live and kind of look at what's going on there, what they've done recently.
And for those who are up on the podcast, I'll put a link
on the show page. You can just go down and find it. But
you look over the month of July, China greets Philippine Coastguard with Armada at
the second time is soul China's Gray Zone Tactics, playbook Tactics playbook Swarming.
Then they just talk about a couple of things. They talk about rafting,
they talk about unsafe maneuvers. So it's really it not only talks about this
series of things that China's been doing for a while, but it has it
in little nice, little bite size, bite size pieces, so to speak,
and be interesting to see if they keep this pace up of topics.
But it looks like an interesting resource. I've only done a little skim of
it in the last hour or so, but you gave me a good homework
assignment this week to look at it because Stanford University, it's no slack,
so you got a pretty good minds thinking about it. Yeah, it's a
it's a good resource, and you know they're there are a lot of people
and csis has this UH kind what is the name of that thing? They've
got their own UH island tracking thing of what's happening in the UH in the
South China. See, so they're they're, they've they're they've jumped on this
to quite c S. I s am T. I think it is.
Um. It's a project that they've got going. So the good stance,
the let's see what it is. I just knocked myself off the air.
I've forgot you, Okay, Asia Asian Maritime Transparent Parency Initiative, And I'll
put that on the soon as I get back on the show site. Well
the audio is still good regards to what you. Yeah, I do that.
I try to change from one window to another and I just delete it
as like I got too many windows open is what mounts to So I apologize
to everybody. All right, I'll be back at her in a second.
Yeah, sure, no problem. Well I'll continue prattling on. But there's
regardless of how much you talk about things and you cover topics, it's sometimes
you feel like you're nobody's listening, or maybe you're the only one that really
cares. But the more you read, the more you realize are other people
working in parallel paths that aren't covering similar issues. And you know, when
you look at one of the things that maybe smile this week is and I
know we've talked about it here for over a decade, I pried along about
it on a regular basis of writing, but it's always kind of bothered me,
and in particular for the topic, but it also bothered me that really
important people weren't prioritizing the problem them. And one of them of those issues
is the fact that, you know, maybe it's just the way I was
raised, but real friends, when you have a common project, they help
out that the best that they can. Some people are stronger, some people
are weaker. Some people have more financial capabilities than others. But everybody makes
a fair share. You know, if if one family can bring a main
dish, maybe another family can you know, bring some mixed fruit or or
some flanked up and everybody tries. And it's never good any type of relationship
to have a free rider. Somebody that uh, you know, expects everybody
else to bring the beer to the party, never brings a side dish,
just shows up and eats and drinks everybody else's stuff. That just creates resentment
and makes it makes it hard to keep a friendship group intact, and alliances
are kind of like that. And on meat, I think it was meat
depressed this weekend. It was kind of nice to see with the whole our
NATO friends need to do their fair share. A Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska,
he came on and kind of called Canada out as an example, and
I like what he stated that of the thirty one nations, yes, we
now have thirty one that are in NATO, there are only seven that are
spending that floor of two percent. Everybody else is not in Canada just spends
one point to nine percent, which is even less than what Germany spends.
And when you see a senator in an environment like that that we'll bring that
topic up. It's encouraging because we could talk about all day long and we're
not going to move the needle much. But when US senators start bringing that
up again. He kind of disappeared when we changed administrations. But I think
the larger body politic is still getting leverage on that, which is good because
I also read this week that specifically Germany, that there is a regression to
the mean of buying Russian energy and the Russian sanctions and already starting to talk
about one to back them up while the war is still going on. So
having senators and other senior people keeping up some of the healthy criticism that hopefully
will have some effect on a larger alliance, because if it keeps building resentment,
you still have free riders. Not only does it I think weaken the
alliance and real terms and we've seen that in our limited stockpilis we can share,
but it also weakens the alliance and that it makes those players who are
doing their fair share go into greater conflict with their fellow Alliance members who don't
appear to be getting off the couch and pushing. Yeah, you hit me
with a number. I was somebody hit me with a number that Canada is
one of the one of the chief scate countries. They were like one point
two eight percent or something. It was a really low number of what they
were Yeah, so that's not impressive. They're fairly even though they're not a
large country populationalized, they're a fairly wealthy country. They should be chipping in
their fair share. Yeah, they've got a population. If I think it's
roughly ten percent, maybe between ten and twelve percent of the US population.
If they spent at least the two percent of their GDP on defense, that's
huge. They're half the size of the UK in France roughly, you know,
plus a NINEUS ten percent. They're not insignificant, but they are insignificant
players. And it goes back a fair bit if you look at forced generation
during the First World War, Canada pretty much they had no office at all.
They just were blended into Commonwealth nations. They fought in the Korean War,
they didn't play it in the Vietnam War. They were a rounding error
during Desert Storm. They I don't think they did anything and I wrack of
mentioned though they did and from a training team point of view. And in
the first few years in Afghanistan they had you know, they called Kandahar Province
Canadahar because the Canadians put in maneuver forces. They even had to borrow some
tanks because they just got murdered their tanks and decided they need it, so
they got some Leopard and one back. But they moved their maneuver forces out
in two thousand and seven, which I really don't blame them. They they
came in there pretty firm for half a decade and expected other Alliance members kind
of like the Dutch who left the LS last left Oregon Province more or less
at the same year, but other Alliance members didn't came in. So I
don't fall to too much for that. But they they used to be quite
the powerhouse, but they between the UK and the US, they figured they
just didn't need to invest as much in the Alliance member, which is a
shame because if you've worked with Canadians, you know that pound for pound they're
if good as good, if not better than the US military, and especially
in some specialized areas. All right, you know they have they are active
when when you know, when they do send their people, their military people
to places where the military people are needed, and including the NATO efforts at
in Europe and stuff. But they're just they're they're tiny, and they spend
their money. They have a lot of you know, given the size of
their coastline and what's theoretically going to happen at the Arctic Arctic ice melts,
they have a huge uh seacoast and they're going to need more more assets.
So they're they're they're they're they're gonna have to pony up. And you know,
I don't know what they count toward NATO because I'm you know, and
I've never quite understood this is the amount of money that they're attributing them.
Is that their total defense budget or is that just the money that that NATO
gives them credit for, because you know, they do have a lot of
stuff going on with with the radar systems and stuff that we still maintain across
the northern part of Canada. Well, yeah, this this could kind of
flow into a topic I know you wanted to talk about, because if if
the Canadians had a change in government and wanted to go from two point nine
to two point seven five by twenty twenty seven and then by uh twenty thirty
two point zero and up, I could think of one one great place for
them to invest some money. And they need to replace their submarines, Yeah,
especially with their Arctic commitments. If the Canadians wanted to join in the
Aucus program with their fellow Commonwealth members Australia, with the mother country in the
UK, that's kind of a I know there's in some discussions that they all
get more conventional submarines because the Dutch and the Norwegians and the Polls I think
are working together on undue conventional design, but that's really optimized for the Baltic
and the North Sea. Canada has huge maritime requirements and they do have a
good submarine tradition. They're not like the Danes who got rid of theirs.
Boy, that would be great if the Canadians wanted to take advantage of this
interesting windows opening up and they could, they could get capability. Now that
would have cost him a lot more money should aucus have never existed. It
would be interesting to see the business case on that. Yeah, and maybe
they'll jump into it, you know, because they can't remember. They have
kind of a checker history with the submarines they did him. I think kind
of like the Australians that they had these was it Colins class or something that
turned out to be not all the all the best possible things. But yeah,
they bought the last of the British conventional submarines from the end of the
Cold War. Who had in certain or anybody who's owned British cars in the
seventies a dayies will appreciate that had a lot of electrical issues. They've had
they've had problems with it. They just they don't haven't had quality. And
before that they had Oberon class boats which were good. But we're just old
as dirt. Yeah, as the owner of two mgs from the sixties and
seventies, Yes, the electrical problems may may have occasionally occurred anyway, Uh
yeah, you know. I think that the good news is that Aucus looks
like as moving forward with the with the Congress allowing the the technology transfer.
And also three three Australian officers have completed the Nuclear Power School and are going
to be assigned to assume pack fleet submarines to learn the trade, uh nuclear
power trade the way. So that is great. I think it's great news
for the Australian's great news for the US and it shows that we're making a
serious commitment to to make this accus thing work. It really is a natural
fit. In Australia is even smaller than Canada, but unlike Canada, they
don't have a big neighbor is friendly too. I mean their largest neighbor is
going is Indonesia, who have they have an ippy history with, and New
Zealand to the southeast is even smaller. I think they're six millions. I
should know how many New Zealanders are. But they're a very small country.
They're like comparable to Norway or Denmark, so they and they live in a
tough neighborhood there besides the US. Their closest possible ally is Japan, way
north of there. But you know that's not not a natural pairing either.
So it makes sense that with a China that is intent on expanding and some
of the for those that have read the Australian press, they had some pretty
and they're still working through it though from what I've seen, they've made success
mostly mitigating it. But before they got religion on China's as a few years
ago, the People's Reublic of China had made a very big impact and influenced
operation in their academia and in their business. Because the Australian economy is similar
to Russia in the way it's an extraction economy. They have lots of they
have more natural resources than they can do a value added stuff too locally,
so they export a lot of coal, understand, a lot of iron ore,
a lot of other type of raw materials to the Chinese. So there's
this huge connection economically to China, not unlike what Germany was continuing to develop
with Russia. When you have those kind of economic ties, where would you
look at New Zealand Again, I've looked up a couple of weeks ago they
Shore they signed a free trade agreement with the People's Republic of China in eight
Since then their exports have increased eightfold, to the point that even if New
Zealand wanted to mitigate the amount of economic play and reliance they had on the
People's Republic of China, their economy would implode. It would take a long
time to if they can to bleed them off of that reliance on the People's
Republic of China, kind of like the direction Germany was going before the February
twenty twenty one invasion. The economic play in the geography again comes into play,
and hopefully the Australians won't balk at the significant cost that nuclear submarines do
have. But when you look at the requirements of distance and the fact that
the UK and the US are some of the best partners they can have in
this regard, it really does make sense. A lot of people are working
hard to make the AUCUS program work well, and so far so good,
but we'll see when things started getting displaced. I would assume that those officers
going through the US nuke training are probably folks that just got through with their
first seat tours that are probably qualified submarine ers just going through nuke school.
So those are probably the guys that maybe won't be young enough to be the
first CEO of Australian boats Pinball when they show up, but maybe the commodores.
So it's nice to see them starting to build that cadre that could make
it turnkey. Have you seen an update recently in the last few months about
what the plan is, whether we're going to transfer Virginia Class already under construction
to them. Are they just going to have to get in line production schedule
on our end? I don't think that's in finalist. Yeah, I haven't
seen that. I know we're supposed to start sending subs down there, um.
And to give you an indication of who they sent, they sent two
lieutenant commanders and a lieutenant to New Power School, So it's not exactly the
most junior folks, um. But I think they're all Yeah, they're all
looks like they're all wearing some kind of dolphins that helps, Yeah, that
helps them build the leadership cadre that understands nuke and right, yeah, I
mean but sub so that those are the your future program managers and the folks
helping with shipyard and peer design, and we'll build those ships on the left
side of the house befting to see where the UK comes in, So that
that makes that sounds right, sounds smart. Well, I'm just again we've
I've bashed the current administration on some things, but uh, the Soccus thing
and the way they're making a move is I'm very impressed with that. So
I don't know how that that funding will eventually play out or what the brit
the brit contribution is. I remember one of the thoughts I had early on,
It's like, oh, are they going to build a stute class submarines?
And we've talked here a little bit about the very limited flex that we
have are nuclear power and nuclear submarine infrastructure to build and evidently the British challenge
which we do, which should be understandable because of the much smaller size of
their force, it's even more tight. So the I guess the the UK
will will help where they can, but I haven't maybe I need to read
more British press to see what they've been doing so far. But I don't
know how much of that partnership though the Brits will actually work work around maybe
some of the weapon systems that our nuclear submarine community doesn't want to share with
the Brits. With the Australians are the Brits that they'll they'll put that in.
I don't know how you're going to hide that stuff if we're going to
have some of the Aussies ride in our boats. But they'll figure it out.
I've got it. They're still going. I think our next step is
to go to the pro Nuclear Prototype School of course whatever it is in Idaho,
and then they're going to go to the Basic Submarine Officer course. So,
I mean, I'm not quite there. We've got a couple of years
I think before before they hit the fleet. So but the next step after
they do all that stuff, we'll be to put them on a boat somewhere.
Yeah, I think them they station on the west coast of Australia.
That's that's pretty easy access to the huge Indian Ocean there. I think that's
where they have their submarines right now. It could be wrong. What is
that Perth? Do I have that right? Yeah? Person is on the
west coast. I think that's right there. There was a historically the US
had a submarine facility. I think it was north of Perth, but on
the on the west coast. Uh what I what I read about it,
and this is based on something I read years ago, was it it was
kind of a kind of a primitive location. It wasn't exactly like it's like,
uh, but you know, we're fighting a war, so maybe that
was good enough. Yeah, I know the you know, the Marines rotating
out of Darwin. Darwin's kind of uh a ranch town to a certain extent.
But Perth, that's that's a different matter. I don't think they're gonna
have any much trouble in Millington fighting people volunteering to go to whatever facility wind
up having in Perth would be a pretty nice set of orders. I'd go.
Recall me, recall me. And also the with that growing partnership that
we've had in the Indian Ocean with the Indians, who obviously are have similar
concerns with a growing China, that we all do another one of those things
that I saw in passing once but it had never really clicked in. But
is we do exercises with the Japanese all the time, We do exercise with
the Indians. We actually had you know, multinational exercises. But since twenty
twelve, the Japanese and the Indians have been doing bilateral naval exercises and they
call it gen X j I N E X. That is really an interesting
idea. I would love to see some more detailed riots and already seen on
how those two naties are interacting. I would assume the having worked with the
Japanese, they worked very similar to we do. That that isn't being a
combination of a four is that. I don't know how much of the future
it has, but it is a way to kind of let China know that
we have friends outside of just America, and we are making lots of friends.
It was nice to see two one really friendly nation and one that's aggressively
neutral working together like that because they do have mutual overlapping interests. Yeah,
and I think it sounds a nice Asians Asians working for Asian in Asian cooperation
for Asian defense. Oh yeah, I hope, I hope it blossoms and
you know, India is another one of those countries that has the potential to
really go gangbusters if they would turn themselves loose. And to answer least question,
I don't know if the Indians are ever going to give up dealing with
their Russian equipment. I don't you know that. Maybe that's just part of
their effort to be neutral where they need a number of of MiGs and sukois
and and they are they give the Russians their hypersonic missile system, the Promos
missile system. I don't know, but they have the decades relationship with the
Russians in that regard. They get they do get a good deal because I
believe the Indians are paying hard cash and the Indians are one of the few
people that's buying Russian fuel in bulk in volume right now. So again,
India aggressive neutral, but they don't have to be our friends as long as
they're not our enemies. Uh, they'll they'll have the habit they have.
I can't blame them because there are a lot of those real nasty wards that
India fought against Pakistan. You know, we were we were back in the
Pakistanis and giving them lots of weapons. So there are a lot of Indians
who are dead on American weapons, and during the Cold War they were one
of the leaders of the non aligned movement trying to triangulate, And of course
they're part of the bricks. But I think the reality of an aggressive China
is what's drawing them to be, if nothing else, just a little more
friendly and opening to us, which is advantageous for us because we are they
are now. I think they've finally surpassed the Chinese and population, their economy
is steadily grown. They have challenges, but they are the world's largest democracy.
They are more of a natural friends than they are a natural alive.
We really don't have any competing interests. They've that opposed us, a lot
of historical baggage to work through in habits to a certain extent, but it's
good to have friends like that. And I'll put a link on the show
page later and when I take a break off, I can't put it in
the chat room. But last week mckinseley Eglan had an article out multiple guests
on mckin dieguin. I've had the pleasure of meeting a person. She's so
smart, she's so good, but she really knows the budget real well,
and what she looked at is really the operative thing. Everybody who's been looking
at refinancing or get on mortgage, now they know that we're inflation of heck,
as you go to go to the grocery store or you try to go
to Chick fil A, no inflation is an issue. And she looked at
the buying power of our budgets, military budgets, and even though on paper
it looks like it's increasing, but the numbers that she's worked and she's over
at AI now is over the next physical year, the US military is ninety
billion in the hole on buying power because of inflation. So physical year twenty
twenty four from a buying power point of view, the budgets roughly the same
as it is twenty twenty. So our budgets, our flat line if not
falling back again because they're not keeping pace of inflation, and it's probably how
going to increase anytime soon. So this network of alliances that we're building,
I'm not about to go full Mike Mullin thousand shift Navy concept or anything,
but when you look at the larger trends, are we making more friends than
enemies? And are our friends brings up to the table, if not in
wartime, at least keeping our potential opponent, their competitors looking not just over
their shoulder at us, looking over at their other shoulder at somebody else.
And I think that relationship with India is going to pay dividends in that regard,
because if a nation really does have a bone to pick and a border
dispute with China, they could do some damage to the India. Yeah,
I think people tend to forget that China does have fairly substantial order with China
and they haven't gotten along in China's killed Indian soldiers and you know, it's
an ugly, ugly relationship up there on those northern borders. You know.
I'm sure that's what Indians they would like us to, if not at least
on their side, at least not get in their way if they decided to
do something. And they've got the systems and technology to do whatever they want.
So it's a it's a it's a rising power, and rising power are
always interesting. But yeah, I'll talk about Egglan's article. I thought,
I mean, she just hammered the you know, this this budget, it's
almost a Potentican village. Let's see it says the twenty twenty two National Defense
Strategy may reiterate familiar points, but the administration's budget request is only masquerading is
robust. In reality, the military will continue to shrink an age under this
program, and the promise that vaunted future, if it ever rise, will
not be until after this team leaves off. Wow. Yeah, she did
not mince worse with that. That's good. We need, you know,
direct communications, so to speak. Is the budgetary environment, It's always going
to be a challenge this decade for a variety of reasons. But I don't
think what a lot of people took into consideration is the impact of inflation,
because we really haven't had to deal with a inflationary environment from a budgetary point
of view in a decade. There's a lot of people who've lost not just
the you know, on both a personal and a national level, they've lost
the ability to conceptualize that. It's like, I'm I'm getting one hundred dollars
for Christmas this year. Next year, I'm going to get one hundred and
five dollars. But that hundred and five dollars is only going to buy what
last year ninety dollars would have bought you, So you're not getting five dollars,
you're actually getting ten dollars less that understanding that concept and being able to
translate that into your planning what you think you're able to buy. That's why
I saw I always giggle with the thirty years ship building plan. There's like,
we just call it a three years shipbuilding plan because I will trust anything
passed, so I will look at FY twenty four, twenty five, twenty
six, twenty seven, you go two palm cycles and change. That might
give you a view of what's actually going to happen, but anything beyond that
in the quote out years unquote, you really can't. You can't plan.
You can aspire to it. But I think a while ago I posted something
on Twitter. It was the two thousand and seven thirty years Shipbuilding Plan.
It's a it's a parallel universe Today's twenty twenty three compared to what they thought
twenty twenty three would actually look like. And I think people need to take
consideration of that when they go, well, you know, things are going
to be kind of tough here for a few years, but it's gonna be
a much better in thirty thirty seven and twenty thirty. It don't work that
way. And when you look at I think I think one of the things
she points out in the article is that the amount of free money, i
mean money that is not already obligated in the defense budget is unbelievably small.
Everybody thinks that we have this this huge defense budget, but when you look
at the actual numbers, someone us already committed and some of an areas where
we probably shouldn't be spending money. I mean, she has a piece in
there about from somebody else quoting, you know, why are we bothering with
medical research and stuff that really belongs in it under the hundred different government entity.
And but you know, there is this it's just a wee bit of
money available to have fun with, and it gets that gets eaten by the
fact that we have this spiraling inflation which is killing us right now. And
that's right, there's some stuff in the defense budget that does belong there,
but that's the quarters in the couch cushion type of thing fights the money you
have in this safe and it's kind of nice. I'm not going to go
full blake Herzinger on us here, but I also like where she put the
numbers out there. You know, the Navy does actually get the largest flights
of the pie marginally two hundred and three billion. The Army gets one hundred
and eighty six billion, the Air Force get one hundred and eighty five billion.
And if you want a larger navy or you want to lauge your air
force and you're going to have steady to slightly declining purchasing power budgets over the
rest of the decade or whatever, that money is going to have to come
from somewhere, which means you have to really do an almost baseline restruction of
our national strategy East of Suez type stuff to a certain extent. You know
what, what can we do? I know they're you know, Brian McGrath
and stuff like that. He doesn't like how that conversation where you have your
strategy meet your budget, You tell people what your strategy is and you get
the budget to go get it. I appreciate that and I wish it happened
that way. But that may work in war, but in peace, when
you have divided government like we do, it's not the lot to be making
demands on the hill where one party has a margin of twelve seats and one
House and two seats and the other. It's really hard to push things that
change things radically. So what do you do with that? Yeah? How
many more billions could you get from the from the army inside of our present
structure? Probably not much. That's going to require a one hundred pound head
type of routine. And it's on speaking of Brian as a lot of listeners
know, he was nominated along with mckinseley, Egland and a few other people
to this future of the Navy Commission that was supposed to be fully rounded out
in May. And this is just an observational point of view. This is
not a partisan comment. I'm not trying to make this partisan anyway. The
Republicans have put their nomins forward, the Democrats have not, So half of
the committee hasn't in the named yet and we're already six weeks behind the deadline
to get it started. I'll let other people decide for themselves why that's taking
place. Unfortunately, I think what that has done, and it was kind
of excited when we had that opportunity to have the future in the Navy Commission.
Commissions have a limited utility historically, but They're nice to have because they're
conversation starters. There's been an opportunity for some really smart people. And the
other two people who are nominated, who names are I can't pull off the
top of my head. They're of equal quality of mackenzie and Brian, and
I'm sure the Democrats would nominate. I've seen a couple of names floated around
because you don't know until they're nominated are going to be of equal quality folks.
That would have been a great conversation starter to talk about what our navy
could be and how we could possibly find funding to do that. And having
mckinsley there, who is one of the best minds on the defense budget of
any stripe around, on that committee, I think would have that touch of
budgetary realism to it. Hopefully we'll have those nominations and we'll see this commission
come out some time but wain end of the decade. But again, it's
another lost opportunity to have an intellectual discussion of what direction we need to go
to. And if for any of our Democrat friends out there on the hill
who may be listening, if y'all could help move that along, that'd be
great. Y'll have some smart people on your side of the aisle that I
know could really help us get a nice talking point coming out of that commission.
And once again, you know, we waste so much money in our
government, and if you see the recent numbers that come out on the amount
of money that seems to be missing as a result of the COVID giveaways and
things, you know that it's just astonishing that we are nicolondam in our defense
at a time when we have more threats than ever. I mean, the
North Korean's just launched an ICBM that has the potential to reach the US West
coast, you know, and there their leadership is not exactly the most rational
around. So unless they're looking for some kind of bribery scheme where we pay
them not to blow us up, I don't. I don't. I wouldn't
trust them too much at this point. But you know, we have these
other issues. You've got to do something, So Yeah, the Hermit Kingdom
was kind of cute and fund who make interesting comments about from a distance,
but insular societies like that that are it really is degenerated to almost a medieval
absolute monarchy from the Kim family that you're right if they have that ability,
who knows what paranoid thought might come into some very imperfect human being, Like
we're all imperfect, and there's nobody in their structure that is going to say
no to the Supreme leader. Is one Tuesday afternoon, you've got four or
five missiles for reasons, who knows, heading out on the Great Circle route
on Europe, and you really hope those facilities we have an Alaska work you
know, what do you what do you do with that? A modern you
know, the bombs that we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Who those are
tactical nukes almost compared to what even the North Koreans can build today. And
that's one of those nightmare scenarios you don't like to think about. But I'm
glad you brought it up, because it's no longer a theoretical capability, even
if they only have four or five. You know, you can say what
you want to about the Russians or the Chinese, or the Indians, or
the Pakistanians, or the Israelis or the French or the British, but they
have pretty good command to control and checks and balances on their systems. I
don't think the North Koreans. They have, they have developed over the course
of decades, a civil society that nobody has really seen since the at best,
the late Middle Ages. It's it's not a pleasant thought. I don't
know how you control those things are, whether you even have much indications and
warnings. Besides, I believe they're all liquid fueled, and you would get
some indications that they might be getting ready for a launch, But you know,
what's what's our UDA loop to stop them from launching. I don't think
it's that tight or war gained out enough that we'd be they would launch and
then we would know, Well, those you just sm six ships better better
be on alert all the time now in that area. So yeah, well,
I guess I guess we've used up our houring chains with a very positive,
strange loving point. At least they don't have a doomsday with or Tuesday.
Oh well, we're on the East coast, you know, you know
San Andreas fault line gets hit by a hundred megatons. I'm not sure what
that'll do do it. I think there's been that nothing Class one. They're
James Bond movie about that. I can't remember. Yeah, well, hey,
yeah again my illustrious wife made the fun comment I've heard other people make
as well. It's like, how do we find ourselves in the third decade,
the twenty first century, and these comical Bond villains actually exist? We
get all these workers. It's like, you know, you have a good
point that we do have some people out there who kind of like a Bond
villain that we used to laugh about teen seventy eight, but we don't.
We don't have any orbiting space stations yet. But are I thought that Chinese
had putting one up of there are getting ready to put up their own orbiting
space station. You know it? Just I don't I think we should ban
fiction writers some coming with these great ideas to give the bad guys. We're
talking about you Claude exactly. I don't know understanding, but Claude listens to
a lot of our our mid rats, and maybe I think he might be
with us live um staying out of the heat in Annapolis. But it's like
the writing boat joke. We ever Claude writes a novel that, okay,
then that's a part of the world be to look at. Because he started
with Yemen, right with all that kicked off and then we had the issues
with Sri Lanka and with his latest novel as well. If people haven't haven't
read it yet, you can find a click from last week weeks episode.
We have a link to all of Claude's novels and just a reminder if you
if you didn't check it, go to last week's show and all the books
that we mentioned. You can go to the show page on don't don't go
to blog talk, go to spreaker or iTunes or anything to get to the
podcast feed and it has all linked to all the books that we recommend it
for you to absorb your summer and you'll find Claude's books there as well.
I guess we're saying goodbye then I think so, well, Hey, everybody,
we appreciate y'all coming in. We had a good show and in the
chat room today we had about eight people there. We appreciate y'all coming along
today, and we will have a show next week, but then we're taking
the thirtyf off and then before you know it, it'll be August. So
thank you very much everybody for join us. And until next week. I
hope y'all have a great navy here Molly wrote, I need to reply to
haring Maddy all king like my lonely want to marry me and love. Leave
the brand that PCT believe for your being to blame my love, I fly
to WoT me silly faulting your the dame. It's a long way to differ.
It's a long way to go. It's a long way to differ.
The greenest I know. Don't by piccaling fawell listen to It's a long long
way to get my way, But my mind, my bo