Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander and the Eagle One from Eagles
Speak at see your Shore, your Home for a discussion of national security issues
in all things maritime, and welcome aboard everybody. Is great to be here
again with you. And for those that are with us live, we already
see Paul is there, but I'd like to do my normal altar call.
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question. Because today we have the ever popular mid Rats free for all where
it's just my illustrious co host and I here today talking about the interest interesting
items. It may have come up, or may not have come up,
but popped into our minds nonetheless. So, hey Eagle, one, good
afternoon. It's great to be sitting here with you again. Hey, Soil
could to talk to you. Well, what's on your mind this week?
Well, as usual, we cheated a little bit in the pre show and
I think we pretty much completed. So we already did the show and now
we're done, but we ACTI had to at least get our kickstart going.
And one of the things that has a lot of people interesting, and I
think it's a topic that should be interesting to everybody, depend upon what tribe
you belong to. Those that like military fiction are the defense entrepreneur crowd,
who are looking for ways that we can harness either new existing or new emerging
technologies or developments or platforms or capabilities to be aful for us to be able
to create effects on the battlefield, whether you're at sea or shore, in
the air and lower or whatever that can give us a comparative advantage over potential
adversaries. And usually it is technology, because we have been blessed for most
of our living memory of not only being the largest, but being the most
technologically adapt and that has given us the ability, especially during the Cold War,
to try to get an advantage over maths and centralized control. That was
the Soviet Union, and we had a little bit of a break from history,
distracted by some international terrorists for a few decades. And now we are
facing a nation who if they had three hundred and forty billion people, which
is a few billion correction, three hundred and forty million people of their population
disappear, which is a few million more than what the US has, they
would still have a billion people there. They are about to eclip us in
the economy, and if you're just counting holes in the water, they already
have a larger navy. And so the Deputy Secretary of Defense Hicks, whose
reputation and good work before speak for herself, she has come out and last
couple of weeks she teased it and then she gave a presentation on it.
And I actually wrote on it, and I'll put a link to it if
I can in the chat room. I think it was my Thursday post.
If people wanted to go over to my subject, they can read it that
when I was looking it over and I just I read the text. However,
my illustrious co host actually watched it, which I think is always an
advantage because you get tone and inflection and emphasis and spoken word that you don't
get just by reading text. I thought it was eighty percent not quite what
we want. That kind of scratched my early zero zero's age of transformationalism,
a little bit of salesmanship, a little bit of off set seeking. But
the other twenty percent, I thought the last part of it was really good,
had some solid stuff, And I've if she ever asked my advice,
which of course she didn't, I would say take this eighty percent and rewrite
it in tune with the latter twenty percent, because I think the replicator is
doing what we've talked about here a little bit is it's looking at the lessons
learned the last two and three quarters of years of the Russia and listened to
her. What was kind of some of your takeaways from it? Well,
I've kind of take the opposite I say opposite, completely opposite to you,
but I have I have a more optimistic view of this. First thing is
that for years we've recognized the Chinese relpability US on capital ships, that that
they've got a really good anti access area of denial system in place that poses
problems. And we've discussed with people about using various kinds of unmanned vessels,
surface and subsurface and aerial equipment to kind of get into that system to stop
up the gaps we have to worry about. I think this is kind of
a step above that, which is earning great lessons from the Ukrainian approach and
from an old book, uh, Tom Classy's Red Storm Rising, which is
uh and if you if you remember the carriers are out there and they're fighting
the Russians, and that there's a wave of missiles that come in bound,
and that the carrier fights it up. But by the time they fight off
this initial wave, I think I've got this story right, they have gone.
They're out of out of bullets to fight the next wave of things that
are coming in. So, uh, you know what what you're talking about.
I don't know if you've seen it yet, but I wanted to point
it out while we're on the topic. On YouTube, there's a guy or
a group of folks who took that scene from Red Storm Rising, which it
was the old TU sixteen with I think it was the celt with their out
David anti ship cruise missile that they had spooping backfire bombers and they've actually gone
into one of those video games simulate and simulated the scene. It actually have
the words for the book. It's really good. If you go over and
you know Red Storm Rising on YouTube, this whole series of places where that
they theo that. But yeah, that's that's a real good comparison. Yeah.
So I'm looking at this thinking, Okay, if if we have problems
with numbers and their defenses, what is the best way to attack uh defenses
like that? And uh, like an old football coach, I'm thinking,
well, i want to run all my wide receivers and tight ends down there
near the end zone. We're just going to flood the zone. Somebody will
be open because they can't cover everybody. And that's you know, that's what
I see this. This is if you're going to flood the zone, you
take you build cheap assets, expendable assets for not much money. And here
we are talking to Ukrainians making cardboard drones to attack. You know, they
can't their their their radar difficult to find, and they don't cost that much.
But they're doing the job. And you know, we need to look
at that approach. We need and I'm I am happy that they're there's a
desire there to innovate and and to talk about the innovation to come in,
not mentioning specifics, which I think is you know, what she said was,
we're building on existing programs. This is not a new program, and
we're gonna use the existing programs as guests, as frames or models for what
we're going to be doing. Plus the I'm sure they're going to incorporate a
lot of stuff from from the uh we're learning from from the Russians and the
Ukrainians, I mean, and the Iranians for that matter. I mean,
the Russians are now, as I understand it, constructing Iranian drones for their
use. So this is getting really interesting in the in the Ukrainis. So
you know, if you we just want to build enough stuff to flood the
zone, we want to do it in the air. We want to do
it in the surface. We want to do it subservice. We want to
make all the racket we can. What's the best way to hide your units?
Make so much noise, make so much clutter that you're difficult to pick
out what's real and what isn't real. And uh so I'm I'm hopeful for
that, and you know it it is I hope she says, this is
not a long term project. This is this is this is for five years.
Basically, we want to have this stuff ready to go in a year
or two and and we don't expect this program to last maybe five seven years,
and and then we'll follow it on with whatever comes next. So I
thought that was, you know, that was not one of these this will
be the answer once and for all, This will this will be the perfect
solution. It was. It was opposite that, it was, we know,
we've got a short term problem. We've got to come up with a
short term solution. And and away she was describing is it. This doesn't
require any new money. They're going to do this out of the Defense Innovation
Board or whatever group that is. And and apparently they're going to pool all
the innovation money from the services and they're going to self fund this without having
to go through Congress to get new approvals and all that. And you know,
it's I'm impressed with that. I'm this is the kind of thing that
I think many of us have been thinking should have been done done a while
ago. But you had to have the right people in the right place and
somebody recognize it. Oh my gosh, we're kind of behind the eight ball
now, so maybe that spurred this on. You know, one thing,
unfortunately I can't for whatever reason, I can't post in the chat room.
But if people go to my stub stack on Thursday, I have embedded in
there a great podcast I think I may have mentioned on the show before.
It's from twenty four July of this year. It's on geopolitics Decanted, and
it's on the experience that they've had using tactical drones various drones in Ukraine,
the advantages of disadvantages, the perception, the reality. Some of the issues
that I had with the first eighty percent of her speech was kind of derived
from what I listened to in that video. Is there are whether you're talking
about communications and range to supply chain, issues of building these in large scale.
And I think that in the short term be interested to see how we're
going to interface with Taiwan, because these aren't things that you're going to be
able to launch from Guam. If you want to produce something fast, it's
going to have to be what comes off this shelf. There are some agricultural
drones that there was a real neat video that came out this week for those
that are familiar with some of the agricultural drones where you would see air tractor
sprain and secticide and fungicide over fields. But they have as they have these
industrial size quad copters that when you open them up, they're about the size
of a small Hyundai. They're pretty big, but they will carry a few
hundred pounds of insecticide or fungicide, and they're just programmed to go do this
this field of soybeans, so to speak. Well, obviously if you have
something that big, they can carry a couple hundred pounds of liquid fungicide,
they can carry a couple hundred pounds of other things. And they're doing some
the equivalent of precision one hundred and fifty five millimeter around which are those ex
caliber I don't remember off the top of my head that those things like are
in the mid five to low six figures cost each. But they're using these
agricultural drones to take those big Mod sixty two anti take minds and the one
video I saw of it, it basically look like they duct tape the broom
handle and a two liter plastic bottle as a stabilizer on it, and they're
dumping those out with a circle area probability of single digit meters of the target.
So yeah, there are some interesting things out there. But I'm hoping
that this is an additive thing, and you're right. I think she verbalizes
the fact this is an additive thing. I'm just a little bit concerned that
people will overplay this again and use this as an excuse not to do other
things. I think a hard problem we're going to have to fix at sea
is, and you touched on it a little bit, is the aw anti
are warfare math is now very different when you have X number of vls bells.
You know, this makes Brian McGrath really itchy when you start talking about
vlsls that are going west. What percentage of those have land attack cruise missiles?
What percentage of those have you know, lightweight torpedoes, harpoons, et
cetera. Take those out. That's your remaining air to air missiles, whether
it's standard missiles or quad packed essms. If you have X number of anti
air missiles but you have four x targets coming in, you go Winchester really
fast. And that's an addition to the ability those intermediate medium range ballistic missiles
to try keep us closer to the mid Pacific. If we start getting close
to Pacific and our support ships go Winchester on anti air, we can't.
We can't any further. I think. I think that math and that problem
is something that you know, you look at what you can learn ashore to
take to see that's a start of tickling the back of my mind recently is
along the lines of what you said, you've flood the zone. Whether I'm
talking about the air here, but you're right subsurface as well. When you
have so few options in the magazine to pursue a subsurface target that after a
while your defense defensive weapons they're shot. How many days can you do that?
So I think that is a great concern. It would be great instead
of being on the defensive about it, if we could be on the offense
about it, which I think there there is some some potential to use there
to complicate the problem with the People's Republic of China, especially when you look
at some of the map that people have done with the maritime militia and the
coast Guard ships. What they could do to the zone on the surface,
how do you pick your targets? It's a tough problem. Yeah, I
think that the one of the great benefits about this as you've got China preparing
for exactly what we just talked what you just talked about, you know,
the carriers coming in, the the all that stuff. What how do we
change things so that they now have to worry about something completely different? I
mean, I mean that this is the way you announce a program like this,
and now the now the ball's back in their court. Well, you
know, yeah, we've we've we've got all this nice stuff to fight the
the US fleet. But what if they can what if they come up with
something completely weird that we haven't seen except why you you know, Ukraine and
Russian And if the Americans are as innovative as they tend to be. Uh,
and this is one of the things that that Secretary Hicks was talking about.
Wash gosh, let's let's uh, let's be innovative. Let's think about
the problem and get some really smart people in there from industry and everyplace else.
Sand Well, here's what we need to do and go from there.
I think I think there's a chance here for this to be a remarkable five
year period, seven year period. And we have a caller, so let's
uh see what the dice comes up here, Eric Co two oh four,
you're on midret Good afternoon, Sol. How are you doing today? It's
Mark Hey, Mark doing quite well. It's good to hear it from you.
I am, I am. I am up in with Cotson, enjoying
the r your podcast here on a Sunday afternoon before I go back to to
building ships tomorrow. So uh, and I'm glad that you and Eagle are
are talking about replicator and I caught I joined a little late. Had you
had a chance to talk in connection, because I think and I don't know
if they're expreadly linked, but I'm I'm I'm cautiously optimistic, although probably probably
with more caution than optimism, on the reporting that the Navy may establish what
they're calling a Disruptive Capabilities Office what in the Air Force and Space Force right
now is called a rapid Capabilities Office. I don't know if you an Eagle
talked about that at all. I haven't have you Have you heard of that?
Mark? I have so, and I think, I mean, these
are all kind of different avenues, whether it's replicator or you know what's going
on. I'm you have covered in some of your blog posts and I've seen
it elsewhere. The Army Rapid Capability Office has done a great job, in
my mind, of doing what an r CEO should do, and you've seen
that they're they're using existing systems in many cases navies, existing systems like SM
six and Tomahawk, and using that in new and creative ways to take,
you know, something from the maritime domain and give the Army an advantage in
the land domain. And that's great. My only worry about that you talked
about that. I am worried about how many SM six is, Tomahawks is
the different variants, and then the laz and the long range standoff missile.
But that's a naval version of a land attack missiles that the Air Force uses,
and I worry about what is the maximum number of those that aren't producible
with our current supply chain, because whatever that number is, we should be
producing at the maximum of those three systems across all the services that are going
to use it. But I don't know what that maximum is, and not
from my advantage point, I'm not exactly sure. And I hope someone is
working what and you do to make that maximum number a bigger number, but
that you know, the worry in a future fight of of running out of
vital ammunition too early in a fight is absolutely priority one for everyone who's who's
thinking about a potential conflict in the in the end of pay comp But yeah,
you know, the the thing what I hope for if the Navy establishes
what they're calling a disruptive Capabilities Office, that I think makes the other services
that have established it useful. And it's a thought, and I always worry.
I know you are a I think it'll be putting it mild South to
say that you are a long time critic of the latoral combat your program.
Would that be a fair comment. I've had some things to say, right
and and there are plenty of things about that program that the Navy shouldn't do
again. But I always worried that in learning lessons we end up at we
we ended up, we run the risk of learning the wrong lesson. So
and what I'll say is the Air Force and the Space Force, and in
my mind of all the services, actually I think the Space Force they inherited
this from the Air Force. When they were separated. I think makes the
best use of its Rapid Capabilities Office. I saw on the thirtieth of August
they put out an announcement quote the United States of considering considering the establishment of
a disruptive Capabilities Office focused on rapid fielding of existing technologies to address operational problems.
According to Sports as well as a draft document obtained by Breaking Defense,
the final details of this new office are still in flux, and plans could
change penning approval from maybe Secretary Carlos del Toro and Acting Chief Naval Operations and
release a Franchetti. The draft charter, dated for June of twenty three and
circulated the Summer Industry Event, stated that DCO would be a quote unique office
capable of quote rapidly solving emergent operational problems with a broad aperture, unconstrained by
legacy processes unquote, which I think you're right, that would run in parallel
with what the Deputy Defense Secretary was talking about. I think it also kind
of points out again one of one of my little hobby horses, that we
keep creating these systems that go around our processes, but nobody's ever really looking
at fixing the process everybody's trying to work around. But that, yeah,
let me tell you that's encouraged. Let me give you a group on that,
right. And that's the thing that I worry about is, you know,
it's like, we hate our process, so we want to go around
our process, but sometimes we need our process part of the And I'll just
assume let's say we're unhappy with LCS. I know that's not a universally health
position LCF as its defenders, but let's say take as an example LCS.
We did the requirements process for that very quickly, some would say way too
quickly, under the theory that we didn't need it. We knew what we
wanted and we were going to make an end around from our requirements process.
And in the end we got a set of requirements documents for a ship that
at least right now, the Navy says they don't really need or don't meet
as many as they thought they needed. And now, in part of that,
you could say the world changed. But I would say, if you
say the world changed, then you were being kind of shortsighted, because even
in the early two thousands, the possibility of a rising China becoming a peer
competitor and needing to do you know, a a you be able to perform
against high end threat was certainly there, even though we were focused on more
low end and latoral threats. So what I would say is you're when you
and and and I've made this comment about other ship building programs too. If
you're going to buy a ship, like a Ford class aircraft carrier that's going
to be around for fifty years, then taking a couple of extra years to
get the requirements right and make sure you have a technical design that you're really
really sure of that you you know you've got it all the eyes and done
all the testing, and and and and cross all those teas, even if
that takes longer than you wanted. For a platform that's going to be a
fifty year platform, that's probably good. And the acquisition process we have for
an aircraft that's going to be in service for thirty years, you know,
an aircraft or a ship that's going to be in service, a class of
ship that might be in service from the commissioning of the first to the decommissioning
of the last fifty years. If you're process puts an extra couple of years
on it, an extra three years on it to be in order to have
some additional rigor. That's probably time well spent. The problem is is when
that rigger is then required for something that you want six months from now and
that you're probably only going to use for the next four or five years.
And in that case, the process is you know, we've got wow.
You know, then that extra three years means you've gone and basically your process
keeps you from doing anything useful. I think the Air Force and Space Force
so far with their RCO have been good. They treat their RCO like a
separate systems command, so think of it as an equivalent organization of what would
be like a NASC or a navair in and the Air Force has equivalent organizations,
they call them systems centers instead of systems commands. And what you do
is you get you bypass the contracting and technical processes that are meant to build
rigor in those big demands for big programs and say for this, I'm going
to go rapidly and I'm going to use non traditional contracting, I'm going to
be very light hand on technical authority, and I'm going to just get something
out there, but the organization still has the authority to buy and field.
And then it's a question of you need a really good way of making the
decision up front when you want to go fill a need. Do I feel
this via the traditional need because this is something that's going to be around for
a while, or is this something that I want to go fast? Because
if you get that wrong, then you're going to commit that. You know,
you're gonna have a problem up front. If you want to build a
rapid aircraft carrier right here, that's not going to go well. But to
adapt some commercial uad for a military use, to take a missile that does
one thing and make it do something else related and then not go through the
traditional acquisition process that has the ability or the field real caper ability much faster
by going in a different path. And I just my hope as as secretary
and as the uh, you know, Secretary Deldoro and an Admiral Franchetti or
Frank Ketty I believe I'm always pronounced their name wrong. Admiral Frank Ketty.
You know they're making these decisions going forward. My one hope for them is
that they have a really good decision process put in place for what are they
going to try and do rapidly and then what are they going to do traditionally.
Yeah, I think yeah. Let me interrupt you there for a minute,
because I think one of the things you're hitting is what Secretary Assistant Deputy
Whatevery Deputy Secretary Hicks has said is she knows the four or five year project.
She and they're they're doing this with money they already have, and I
think it's since it's all expendable and she's going to use knowledge that already exists
and try and change it. I mean, we already know drone swarms.
We've seen them. Everybody's seen him. You can send will you marry me
messages with him. I mean, none of this, I think is inventing
a whole bunch of new stuff. And I think you're right that given that,
I don't think they're intent is to go through that that and what you
described is that three year process which gets you things wonderful things like the LCS.
So I think you're exactly right. And by the way, for those
of you who are listening, who we're talking to is Mark Vandroff, Who's
who's uh, the former NAVC guy and now works for the company that that
makes uh is making the frigates for the US Navy. And I'm sure that
what he's saying or his opinions the opinions of company, that they're only mine
there right there, and they are not the opinions of thin Cantieri. Uh.
But you know, UH, they are my opinions, and I but
I will expressed these opinions both privately and publicly, so I have no problem
sharing them with with you and and the listeners of the podcast. But it's
just you know, you guys interviewed me when I when I was done with
the National Security Council, uh job that I had in twenty twenty, and
one of the advantages I had from that job was I got to see how
each of the different services did the same thing. So you know, I
was I got to see each of the services. Having just worried, you
know, my whole career about how Navy does acquisition. I was exposed to
as the Army do acquisition, had as the Air Force do acquisition. And
then since we were standing up Space Force at that time, how was Space
Force going to do acquisition as a derivative of what they were inheriting from the
Air Force. And you know, as the Navy goes forward and they established
this Disruptive Capability Office, I just we should make sure institutionally that we don't
have a non invented here mentality. Each of the services, the other services
that have done this have learned some good lessons. They've done some really good
thing and they've made mistakes and would be great at the Navy modeled the good
thing and learned from the mistakes so we don't have to make the same mistake
that the Air Force or the Army made two or three years ago. And
you know, and there's now an ed hurdor and that the things they've done,
like you said, especially in the Space Force, which has fielded some
really really good capability uh really quickly uh for our in space assets that we
learned from them, and then say, okay, we see, we see
what kind of structures and governance they did. That that was good. Let's
let's go take a look at that as an example going forward. Let me
let me ask you about that, because that's something and you know, the
past was always perfect unless you lived in it, then it was horrible.
But you know, you can look back at other times where they're almost as
seemed to be a culture of competition, where you were aggressively trying to steal
the other guys good ideas and on it your own, you know, you
know how they want to call it one whatever. But we have different offices
with similar mandates. We have different people and different cultures. If you keep
an eye on it, or ideally you have a healthy interchange between the two,
you can get to a culture of benchmarking is a nice way of saying,
stealing other people's ideas, But where do you think the needle is trending
there towards? If it wasn't my idea, then I'm not going to do
it on one side of the range. The other side of the range is
hey, Air Force guy, let's go, let's go play eighteen holes and
let's talk about what you're doing so I can steal some of your ideas.
Where do you see that needle moving? So that's why another area where I'm
cautiously optimistic, because I think enough people are staring the threats of you know,
everybody not deeply does not want to be in a conflict with the People's
Republic of China. It would be horrific the United States and the People's Republic
of China got into an armed conflict. I think enough people are now realizing
that the best way to prevent that armed conflict is to have a reasonable and
credible deterrence, and to have that deterrence be something that the PRC recognizes,
And so that's creating a sense of urgency, and senses of urgency always helped
focus the mind. I can't remember whether it was Chesterton or Churchill who said,
or was it Johnson who said, nothing focuses the mind quite so much
as knowing that you're to be hung in a fortnight. You know, that's
the I can't remember who said that, but that's a that's a quote,
and that's you know. So so I think that part is healthy. I
remember as long ago as when I went through the da US program manager course,
the the Navair guys and the Right Patterson guys. So the Air Systems
Center, which is the Air Force's equivalent out of Right Fat Patterson Air Force
Base in Ohio, which is their version of nav Air. It's their tech
authority and contracting authority for fighters and bombers and all their kind of major attack
aircraft and you know, their their tactical aircraft. You got the pms from
there and the PMS from nav Air. And by the beginning of the school
they were all like, oh, yeah, we're completely different than you guys.
You guys, you know, they're separate camps. And by the end
of the twelve weeks you realize that basically what they did was way more similar
than different because they were trying to solve the same sets of problems. Right
in the end. They each had their own unique requirements and each had some
of their own culture, but trying to get an aircraft that'll fly in in
a combat environment as a set of problems that both were trying to to solve
and had the same money problems, and they had the same physics problems.
So yeah, a little bit of you know, most of the not invented
here, you know, my way or the highway kind of thinking. In
some cases it's good because when it's grounded in someone who's got you know,
a unique set of requirements or unique you know, uh set of needs.
But you always want to be on the guard because in some case it is
either simple hubrists or people kind of guarding rice bowls, uh, And that's
never healthy. Uh, And I don't know that that ever goes away,
because that's part of the failed nature of human beings. You just gotta guard
against it real carefully. Yeah, I think for a while, I don't
know have a great feelings for where it's going. But you know, as
a circuit twenty twenty, when I was seeing at at least at the senior
levels of the services, they look to be more willing to cooperate on stuff
like that. And frankly, you know, operationally we've been as joint as
we want to be for the last half generation. I mean, the US
armed forces fight combined arms. We don't fight at single services anymore. We
we fight at combined arms. The question is can we develop in a combined
manner. I think one of the ways they're looking at fixing that issue is
that, according to the Deputy's Secretary, that replicator will be under the charge
of the Deputy's Innovation Steering Group, chaired by Hicks, the Deputy Secretary,
and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Sounds to me like
that the the the big cheeses in this are not the service chiefs, but
the the people who are going to control the funding and where and the decision
making about who gets what where when, uh and and at the at the
dood itself rather than in the service branches. And my concern about that is
who is closest to the knee. I mean, I'm sure the lall have
that that room will have the services will all have a voice. They usually
do in rooms like that, you know. And again, frankly, you're
not going to get detailed decisions in a deputy in something that's chaired by the
deputy, right, just because that's not you have not created a room there.
And this is not a slam against any of those people. I don't
know doctor Hicks well at all, but the people I know who know are
a hold are in very high regard. But I do know admal Grading,
the vice chief, you know, from his time as a service worker officer,
and I have enormous respect for him. But just the nature of being
the vice chairman, you're no longer in the details. So the best they
can hope for is to come up with a like I said, a good
government system to give the right problem to the right people who can go out
execute it right and then and then know where where do I have a group
that can go execute the the you know, the solution to the problem that's
been raised and identified, you know, and that's if if, if the
Deputies Group, Innovation Group can do that, then I think they will have
you know, you know, gone a long way to fulfilling that mission.
Now you saw this up close the last time they came around. But of
the variety of eight hundred pound guerrillas in the room. One thing that's coming
up as we're approaching the last last few weeks of the fiscal year is twenty
twenty four is an election year. And I've already heard a couple of people
talk about the possibility of another sequester coming down the road. And last time
we had a sequester, it wasn't a high inflation environment, but it was
enough of a challenge as it is. Uh projects that that in many ways
you can say, are bipartist in their attractions much as but the but he's
very defendive trying to do and rapid capabilities of reptive capability, stuff like that.
Can those be lost in the distraction of the election year, whether it's
something from sequester or they want to pursue as we've seen in a few venues
other issues, because our senior leaders do only have a twenty four hour day
in which they can invest their time. Yeah, what I'll say about that
is you have a great admirer in Congressman Gallagher, Uh you know who represents
uh the sec of the Woods in Wisconsin. I know he listened to your
podcast because the last time I was with him, he and I talked about
your one of your podcasts. So one you talked to his common folks,
you should try and to invite him on for an hour if he has time
on one Sunday afternoon, presumably the Packers aren't playing. I know he loves
but he might take some time out from a Packers game to talk to you.
But when I talk to him, and I actually got to talk to
him and his ranking member a couple of weeks ago at an events from the
China Committee. And now I'm mind blanking on the ranking members name. He's
a gentleman from Illinois, so I'm not remembering his name, which is a
shame because they have they have been very bipartisan, and one of the things
that they've tried to do with the China Committee and the Congressman Gallagher said publicly
is their report is only going to recommend things that has significant support on both
sides of the island. I think they will be able to recommend things that
has significant support on both sides of the aisle. And the Republicans and Democrats
on that committee have seem to be working together well, even when they disagree,
it's in a healthy and responsible way, and everyone is focused that China
is a calling a challenge, a threat, and different folks would use different
words, and it's something that across not just defense, but diplomacy and industrial
base and trade and all the different levers of government that that Congress needs to
take some action on. So in that sense, I think there's hope that
even though there will be, as natural in an election year, a fair
amount of partisanship, that our China policy could rise above that. But I
would not make any predictions that I would say, if you want something someone
who's an expert on politics, talk to a politician and not a ship builder.
So I'd say, you know, to the bi Congress and galagronics to
your show, and he can tell you about the politics. He's an elected
official, he is a politician, you know. I just I hope based
on the success of the China Committee, or at least what they've been doing
so far, that that whatever are China issues are can be dealt with responsibly
in a bipartisan way in the in the year ahead. And I think that's
the exact right hope going along. You know, your statement of a few
minutes ago that uh, you know, lie to Candle that everybody is imbued
with the knowledge that this is something that needs to focus the mind, and
that we can if we can't establish a firewall, we can at least try
to have some good installation between what's going to be happened in twenty twenty four
and what every all people of goodwill for our national security knows that needs a
regular focus and push over the course of the next few years. And I
think there is hope for optimism because a lot of the people you see involved
these are are serious people who take their their jobs with the appropriate level of
seriousness, right. I mean, like I said, I wish I would
I would wish that every committee in Congress and really all of the federal government
would have the have what what Chairman Gallagher's UH China Committee is doing. They're
they're focused on real things and they're not they're not looking for, you know,
clicks on social media. They're you know, they're working very hard to
try and do good policy, and in some cases that's limiting. I mean,
I don't want to say I don't want to get too specifics. I
want to say anything that you know, you could ask Congressman Gallagher this if
he goes on your show. I know there are things that he would like
to do that will probably not be a committee recommendation because they are things that
only Republicans would support and for various reasons, uh, you know, Democrats
wouldn't. And I'm sure the ranking member has similar things that you know,
he would like to see that that would not get Republican support, and so
be it. That's why we have elections and that's why we have political parties
and the democracy. I think it's helpful that they're identifying things that do have
bipartisan supports that kind of everyone can agree that, well this something like this
makes sense. It's like, okay, then for those things, let's let's
put down the let's put aside from the other issues that are divisive or that
where there's not agreement and where there's something useful where there is agreement, let's
go ahead agree and to do and do that. And I'm hopeful that that
on the issue of China and things related to China, that that is going
to take hold. I think you still have some ability to see what happens
this year with that. Then if some actual legislation gets done. But you
know, I remain you know, cautiously optimistic, with a fair amount of
caution thrown into that opposite. Yeah, well, I'm admiring the Marine Corps
innovation for US as Marine Corps special ops people, special Ops Command, whatever
they call themselves, seem to be the cutting the edge of some of these
innovasive things. They are always able to get funding that that does not go
through the red tape. But there's a great story about how the Marines have
got these uh uh. They've taken a lesson from the drug smugglers. Those
small low visibility boats. They can strap a couple of of some naval strike
missiles to them, and they create a supply a system that can supply wherever
their units are without being detected. And if they do get detected, they're
pretty much expendable because they're pretty cheap. That's the kind of innovation. I
think that's good these days. The other thing that the Marine Corps found it's
interesting is you know it'll be it'll be years before we have a landing ship
medium. I mean, I believe they just held their industry their public industry
Day a couple of weeks ago, which means, you know, you'll usually
that's your last step before going out for a contract. So if they you
know, if they release a repressing proposal for a contract sometime in the next
few months, you know, that means six to nine months later you'll have
actually an award of a contract and then you have to actually do the details,
divide it, build the ship. So you know, your years away
from having a ship. That hasn't stopped the Marines from either leasing or otherwise
getting their hands on, you know, widely used ships in the available commercially
that they're used in like the oil and gas industry or in the ferry business
or whatever, and saying, well, let me at least experiment with these.
What if I put something on this ship or ramp up you know,
so like that, and how many marines can I pack aboard that and do
some exercises just to establish doctrines and tactics, techniques and procedures for the day
when they actually get their actual military ships to do the the expeditionary based operations.
And I think that will that will help a measurably to speed the time
from when they actually get new equipment to when that new equipment is actually used
for the field. While I have your cornered here, this is this is
not a scary question, but it's something that it's bounced around my head.
While a little announcement came out about how for the first time since I think
in twenty years, we now have more trade with Mexico than we have with
China, and there's been a big push since twenty nineteen in trying to diversify
and get a little more security and supply chains. And you know, building
a ship, you have to worry about everything from different grades of steel all
the way up to micro chips. And I'm just curious in the ship building
into stream, like you can't get supplies and equipment from companies that you're at
war with. Changes, our refocuses, our efforts have been made in that
industry to look at some of the vulnerabilities and their supply chain and to try
to mitigate some of that. Yeah, so that's an interesting question. Let
me get you two things on that. The first, I won't I'll use
a something that isn't theoretical, but that is that is real that has has
happened, not so much here but over in Europe. So by law,
the steel for US Navy ships have to be milled in ship in steel mills
in the United States. So the steel for the future frigate is coming from
steel mills in Indiana and Alabama, presumably a couple of different and then there's
there's a couple of other smaller suppliers. Those are my two biggest suppliers you
know, of where the steel is coming from. And I think it's Alabama.
I know it's down to the South, I mean. And then the
bigger one that's here in the Midwest is the company that we use is from.
It is a company in the end, so that's you know, that's
that's where the steel are. Steal is coming from most of the ships in
Europe to get built, and not just worship, but I've talked to cruise
ships and ferries and everything else. Up until twenty twenty two, that steal
was mostly coming from Ukraine. Right. Ukraine was the biggest producer of steel
of roth steel in Europe right up until the war started. So a lot
of places in Europe have been scrambling for steel, and you know they've all
adjusted for better or for worse. But I will tell you the price of
steel over in Europe went up, and uh, you know, a lot
of economic price adjustment clauses and contracts ended up getting invoked when customers started paying
more for ships because the steel that goes in those ships suddenly went up across
the European ship building industry. So there's your example right where a war causes
a disruption in a supply chain. So you know, we don't get steel
for our ships in the United States from overseas. That's good, and that's
one area where we're so reasonably. I would like us to actually be that
self sufficiould be great if we had a there's a whole another topic would be
great if we had a large commercial ship building industry, which would require us
to have either import steel or have more domestic steal. But right now,
the domestic steel industry is capable of supporting our warship building. There is a
lot of other stuff. He talked about micro tips. There are other raw
materials. I'm more worried about the law material to make the microchips uh,
and what happens where those get disrupted? And even if you have if you're
not getting them from an enemy actor, right, if they're the question is
how hard are they to get to where you need them? You know,
there's a lot of rare minerals in Australia if those were to be mined as
a source, you know, to get so you're not sourcing from China,
you still have to get those across the Pacific. UH. And that's that's
a vulnerability in a in a conflict. UH. You know, I don't
know that we've fully internalized that. In a potentially worldwide conflict, it becomes
hard to move everything around, right because anything that's moved around that's a military
value is potentially targetable. And you know that's the the the uh. And
that's the very true in the Indo Pacific, where the distances are large and
you're generally having to move things across a whole lot of water. So you
know, that's the that is absolutely a question. The other thing I'll say
about supply chain is and this is an area that I've become very familiar with
working to think can't carry because the Defense Security and counter Intelligence Agency Defense counter
Intelligence and Security Agency dc SA, they're in charge of mitigating what is called
folk I foreign ownership control and influence. So if you have a foreign owned
company doing business with DoD, the DoD has to approve a mitigation plan to
make sure that the foreign ownership doesn't adversely affect US interests. Now, when
you're talking like for my company with an ally and another NATO country like Italy,
the mitigation plans fairly simple and straightforward and good understands. You know who
who owns the company, They understand who the officers and directors are, and
they have some joint approval of that along with the Italian owners, and it's
it's quite easy. If the country was less firmly a friend, then the
mitigation gets more tricky. That's for ownership. The law changed last year in
the NBAA section eight forty seven change the definition of influence. So if now
a foreign nation has influence over your supply chain, not just influence over the
people running the company, but if they can affect your supply chain, that's
considered foreign influence and a country has a company has to show how they're mitigating
that to DCSA. And that's well and good and noble. But my concern
there is that is a huge job, and it basically means everybody now has
foreign influence because that doesn't apply to a company like Mane. That's everybody,
right, everybody has far an influence over their supply chain. And I don't
know that either the companies or DoD has the requisite bandwidth to have intelligent mitigation
across that broad a problem. But that is now law in the most recent
NDAA that you know, you're supposed to at least have considered and taken steps
to mitigate or at least have a mitigation plan if there is far an influence
in your supply chain and your a company doing business with DoD above a certain
threshold value. And that's going to get very interesting and potentially very hard,
very fast, just because that problem is so vast. Yeah, we spent
we spent three decades globalizing the marketplace for everything, and it's it's something that's
not going to be unwound in thirty six months, right, right, It's
it's one thing to identify it and understand it, which I think is step
one. Under ye, the first first step of solving a problem is admitting
you have a problem, and then the second step is is identifying the problem.
But fixing the problem is not something that happens overnight. It's just it's
you. You know. What you have to do is identify and then figure
out, Okay, what's the biggest problem that's solvable right now, and then
go solve that one and then continue to evaluate, understand, and solve the
problems one by one in a rational priority. But you know, the leg
that the global supply chain is just too global to suddenly say I can fix
everything, and I can fix it quickly, or I can assess it.
In some cases you can say I assess it and it's not far right.
So there's a lot of stuff vital to the frigates right now. I will
go into detail that we get from a foreign source, and the foreign sources
Canada. I'm not worried. I'm not worried the Canada is going to subdly
start trying to undermine our interests. They're not far away, especially from with
customs, right you know, they're just right there. You know there's a
border there great, but but you know, yeah, I left that that's
you know, far part of my supply chain. But I think we can
categorize that at low risk and put that aside and say that's probably okay,
and then look to, you know, where where is there a greater level
of risk and what do you do about? Yeah, we spend a lot
of time in this show, and John Conrad, who's listening in today,
we'll we'll verify this. We talk a lot about supply chains and the issues
confronting getting goods from one part of them. I mean, we're usually talking
about sending goods out to the area of interest, but getting goods from the
places and we normally get them safely here as a big part of that.
There used to be a federal agency whose java was and I think they still
do this for certain truly strategic materials to keep track of how how much of
each let's say, an obtainium we had and where where it could come from
if we ran out. And I don't know why we're not having that kind
of agency. Look at exactly the topic you're talking about it and it's great
to have a loss and you're gonna you're gotta do this, But who's gonna
who's gonna make the judgment calls on whether or not the unobtainium comes from East
Fondobamo and and as are as that country a threat because the Chinese Chinese just
build a port there. Right so, right now for defense companies, right
that is the law assigned DCSA, that responsibility the Defense Counterintelligence Security Agency is
the is the agency that's supposed to make those assessments. And you know,
and look at a company's mitigation and say, yep, that's a low I
agree, that's that's you know, a low risk or this is a higher
risk. You need to be doing we need ask some plan to do more
about this. But but again the mismatch is that there's not a lot of
people in that agency and they're not you know, they're not a big Hebaly
funded part of d D and you know, they've just been assigned to analyze
a pretty vast problem. And then that's not even considering the problem of how
do you get stuff from here to there? Because that's not always something that
the company gets solved. Right That's a that's a that's a much bigger national
priority of you know, in a pinch what are you going to really expend
resources about to try and make sure something gets where it's supposed to go.
Right, That's that's a you know, that's a that's a that's a that
is a big national problem. Hopefully it's something that the China Committee is thinking
about as well, because that's right, that's that's a you know, that's
that's not a a one small agency putting charge and solve it. That's a
that's a big national push, right yeah, And it's it's it's not the
first time we faced this. I mean rubber during World War Two. And
if you if you read these these books on on the supply chains in World
War two, I mean, none of this is new. It's just we've
forgotten about it, you know. Just we need we need people to go
read those books and go, oh, oh, that's how they did it
and what are we gonna do about it. I was still of the National
Scurity Councils. That would be that would be an excellent that would be an
excellent set of dcs and DCCs to hold across the whole of government and come
up with something. Well, I guess now they're callers can say an NSPM
but that was in the buy administration and NSM is there Acritive and Natural Sturity
memorandum that basically says, Okay, let's take a whole government approach. Here's
what I want all the different agencies you know, to do about it.
DG, you do this, stake, you do this, commerce, you
do this, transformation, you do this you know. Yeay verily, So
that's uh, that would that that actually would be key. I hope,
I hope some of the people who had my old job are actually thinking about
that right now. So hey, speaking tapp into your jobs. We talked
about supply chain and a few other things. And one of the things I
do during the show is I've got a couple of screens at from me because
I have people who listen to the show who will drop me a DM on
X or Twitter or whatever it's called now, or we'll send me a text
on my phone or on Skype or something like that. And while we are
here, Andy Berner sent me a note about there at the Seahawks game,
there was a very interesting ad and while you're talking, I was looking it
up. I don't know if you've heard of build Submarines dot com. Yeah,
but it's a real neat ad. If you look look it up on
YouTube or if you're on if you're on Twitter, you can you can see
see it in my t L. But if that actually a nice I didn't
listen to the audio because we're talking, but I was watching the visuals really
well produced. It's actually just visually. I don't know what they're saying,
but it seems fairly inspirational about working. And when you go on build Submarines
dot com, it's got this. This will probably get our friend John Cundra
at all excited. Maybe the fellot the other salam or Cogliatos around too,
but it's latest jobs and you've got a C and C machinist for while Scilla
never heard of them. Manufacturing engineer, Wartzilla makes sealed and they also make
which are the components they make for the Columbia. They make one they're best
known for shaft steal, but they also make it makes something. Wartzilla's a
I mean, you know, I want to it's it's a it's a European
company, but they have US subsidiaries and there I basically know them as pumps
and sealed. But I'm not being fair to them because they do other kind
of HM and E maritime equipment. I know that they've that they are working.
Uh, you know, they've got some work on the Columbia. They
make huge They make huge diesel engines that power a lot of the merit the
merchant marine ships and usually have people from from your your part of the woods
during universal over in depair Wisconsin. Fun pronouncing that correctly, you got try
Marine just south of right just stuf the Green Bay Schneider Electric. So anyway,
because I know we had talked in the past about h correct me if
I'm wrong here, but I think I asked you once, you know,
what's the one thing you could do if you had a pile of money.
It's like I'd like to hire a hundred welders. But people are so important,
and people you can you can desire and fund to grow the biggest navy
that you can. But if you don't have people that can go out there
and put steel together and run cables. Are an engineer to run knows knows
what a moment are, You're not going to be able to do anything.
So, you know, do you have a comment or an update on how
the economy and getting these technicians trained and in the industry. How that's going
still hard. I'm very familiar with we built submarines dot com. Uh that's
you know, the uh that's a combined decort. The sub folks over at
NAVCY working with the entire summer, you know, starting with general dynamic electric
boats and the entires their supply chain, working to do training and uh uh
you know, and and and recruiting for just what you saw there. And
they're doing that nationwide, and we've been talking to them. I think the
surface community, uh will you know, try and leverage some of that.
We continue to work with the states with contin in Michigan very successfully. We've
had some some good traction there. The Navy's given us some help on with
things to do for recruiting. So, you know, I just I just
hired I think I said one hundred. I think between welders and ship fitters,
I've hired like thirty new ones in the last month, which is good,
and I still need more. So, uh, you know, getting
people trained for industrial work and having people willing to do industrial work is you
know, is still going to be a challenge going forward, and it's one
that's taken up a lot of bandwidth on both the government and industry side trying
to make that happen. And I will say if anyone in Wisconsin, if
there's a young person in Wisconsin you know who's you know, who doesn't love
being in college or getting ready graduate fromhigh school or whatever, I will say,
if you're living in Marinette County, you make more welding for me than
you would as an assistant district attorney in the District Attorney's office here in Marinette
County. And I don't need you to go to law school and get three
years of law school debts or four years of college debt will pay for all
of your welding certifications and training for you. And then you know what,
you're fully certified. You'll make more than a lawyer does here. So not
more than a lawyer does in New York City, but more than a lawyer
does. And Marinette was uh, you know, uh, Marinette, Wisconsin.
So you get and you get to stay in the great state of Wisconsin
with all that great duck hunting and walleye fishing, deer hunting, hunting,
deer hunting, and the backers and cheese, lots of you can and you
can actually afford to. It's a place of the country you can actually afford
to live in. The public schools are good from what I've heard, so
you know, yeah right yeah, so right, yeah, you know,
so right right, I'll do I will do a plug that you're inviting me
to do, that, right, you know, Uh think can't Kerry Marine
Group dot com thin Kntierry Marine Group dot com and click on careers. Uh.
And if you're interested in being part of a shipbuilding team either here in
Marinett's or at our commercial yard over across the bay and Surgeon Bay, Uh,
that is the website to go to. So think can Kerry Marine Group
dot com and click on careers. Yeah. Yeah. There are some people
who said, well, you know, I always wanted to serve my country,
but I didn't want to go into military. You don't have to do
a uniform like that. You know, one can easily make the argument that
the the the artisans and craftsmen and professional that builds the ship are just as
important as the sailors that are in it. So, you know, I
hear that from some from my folks, both blue collar and white collar a
lot, especially like uh, I got a lot of folks who are you
know, like buyers or their earned value analysts, and you know, and
and they they tell me it's like, you know, for some reason they
either couldn't or didn't or you know, you know, but they feel like
this is you know, like they're contributing to the country, which they are,
you know, by by helping build navy ships, you know, in
a way that you know, you know, for some reason, if they
couldn't serve this is another way to serve their country. So uh, and
it absolutely is. Well I hate we we just you jumped on board and
we wouldn't let go of you. So I appreciate you staying with us until
the top of the hour mark, and definitely appreciate you having an opportunity to
give give a plug. And we thank everybody who's in the chat room.
We brought in some some good ideas as well. And yeah, I'll drop
drop a line to Representative GALLAGHERY. Maybe he's got a couple of minutes we
could have him come on here. But as always, if you've got something
bouncing the red round in your head you want to target about Mark, you
know, drop us, drop us a line. You're always a great conversation,
Lens, and it's good to have you on board. Thanks, Thanks
Diego, thank you for letting me. Thank you for a while. I
I heard you were doing a free for all. I had a little time
on a Sunday and and uh and the topic you were talking about certainly struck
a nerve with me. So glad to contribute to the conversation. It's always
a pleasure. Thank you, Mark, Thanks Diego, and thank you everybody
for joining us for another edition of mid Rets. And until next time,
we hope you have a great Navy day. Cheers, Molly, don't tell
me to reply to warming Pandy all king like my lonely wants to marry me
and to all believe the plan that be. Can't believe all you'll be to
blame for love my family, to old me, silly faulting your the same.
It's a long way to different It's a long way. It's a long
way to differently, plyn I love, don't bye because Felwell left a swell.
It's a long long way to tippery and it was my life right there.
Love, Love,