Welcome to mid Rats with found from Commander Salamander, an Eagle one from Eagle
Speak at seer Shure your home for a discussion of national security issues and all
things maritime. And thank you very much everybody for joining us for another edition
of mid Rats. And because we are alive today, i'd like to extend
an invitation for those that are coming in on time. If you scroll down
to the bottom of the show page, that is where you will find the
chat room. We've already got Paul another half dozen guys in there already.
If you have some observations you'd like to share during the course of the show,
or if you there's a question you would like to direct to either one
of us, that would be a great place to do because we will monitor
it during the course of the show. And this is our melee format,
so we have our ideas what we want to talk about and what we'll kick
off with. But as always we're interested to hear your questions as well.
And if you don't have stage fright and you are so inclined, right there
on the show page you have the studio line. We have open phones too.
You're always welcome to call in, but we already did most of the
show, and on the Free Show, I was just joking with my co
host is like, hey, we got to remember all these great points.
So I guess we got to go back to zero point one, egle one
and kick up the conversation happy after Thanksgiving to you. Oh great, thank
you very much, And yeah, we need to we need to get this
going. There's a lot going on in the world, all by the access
of Evil, which the new Act of evils Iran, China and Russia.
So we've got all their proxy forces in operations. What more could you ask
for for a show that deals with national defense issues? And I guess if
we're looking at what is on the above the fold, you know, let's
go ahead and go down to the bottom of the reds to the Red Sea.
The USS Carney, for those that have been paying attention, evidently has
had from the as I like to say, you can't buy training like this.
They had, you know, back for those that remember, back on
the nineteenth of October, the USS Carney, which for those that don't know,
it's a Mayport based Arley Burke Flight one destroyer, a CRISP twenty seven
years old. But they had a good extended shoot down on the nineteenth of
October, and evidently the last day, I've seen a couple of reports saying
that she had an extended five hour engagement down there right off of the mouth
of the Red Sea, and it went on for about five hours, going
after both evidently not just reconnaissance drones coming from the Houthi rebels and Yemen,
but there was a British owned a British flagship who has a distant connection of
one of its co owners of that company is in Israeli that evidently was hit
by by one of them. So it's been a great Navy day for the
surface warfare community, who's getting some good training. Yeah, it's uh,
it's undoubtedly good training. I always worrying that we're also training the Chinese ships
which were sitting off there not participating in this action, although they're sure not
to be capable of it, but they're certainly going to be learning some good
lessons from from us, which may they'll put into their their knowledge ben and
call on it later if they if they feel the need. And I think
it's important as people hear things that are you see Houthi up there, you
see what's happening in the Red Sea. You're wondering why we're we're firing missiles
and whatever else we're shooting at them to shoot them down. Why part of
it is, that's what we do. It's part of enforcing the international world
order. But everybody needs to keep in the back of their head the Houthis
aren't doing this for their own good. Yeah, they've taken pot shots at
us. A few years ago, the USS Mason took down some stuff that
was actually fired at them. We think some of these missiles that was shot
down were actually headed for Israel's towns. Some of them are heading for the
ships. We've had some ships hit, We've had the Houthis see some ships.
We've broken it out, but it is all happening because they're sponsorship by
Iran. And I think that's the real challenge for decision makers is to make
sure that we understand why the Houthis are doing this so and maybe what they
want is what they deserve and maybe they should get. But it's a big
challenge to try to figure out how we should respond to this. And another
thing that just off the top of my head that we mentioned in the pre
show and made a one to bring up. I want to pull out one
of my my dusty old hobby horses. Is we've heard for the last really
since Mike Mullen was cingo the idea of the thousand ship Navy. And yeah,
we don't have frigates, but our allies do. We don't have enough
surface ships. But that's okay because our allies could come with us and we
you know, you look at CTF one, P. Fifty one, where
one of the Japanese ships supposedly helped during that hijacking. But when you look
at who is doing the shooting down of the Houthi missiles, it's either headed
for Israel or headed for international shipping in the Red Sea. It is the
United States Navy. And if you're somebody who, regardless of your nationality,
are political stamps, if you are interested in maintaining the international order that's existed
since the end of World War Two, you have to realize that that begins
and ends on the high seas, and there is nobody who is going to
be able to help enforce that. That's not the United States Navy or led
by the United States Navy. And it's just another one of those data points
when you're trying to make discussions with people, and I'd be very interested to
see what the insurance rates are for various companies trying to go through the Red
Sea, because I think it's clear that the huthis via the Iranians have a
pretty good intel network of what ships are there and which ones have in Israeli
are an American connection that they can go make a point whatever that point is.
Yeah, it's uh, you know, in addition to everything else,
it's not I don't think it's that hard to find out that information in open
source materials. I mean, it's not. It hasn't been a great big
secret who owns these things? They're But you know, in the convoluted world
of merchant shipping is that it's it's so remote. You know, you may
own a ship, but the ships are belong to you lease them or whatever
to an organization that puts their name on them, and you, your ownership
is is not really involved with the except basically collect a rent on those on
those ships, while the operating company is the one that has to worry about
profits and losses. But you know that just is another like it's like Flags
Conveniences, another one of those twists and turns in this in the in the
merchant shipping business the for For those are interested, there was a really good
article uh or piece written in the for the by the Center Strategic and International
Studies back in twenty nineteen on the Iran's proxy war and it's it's a little
dated because it's twenty nineteen, but if you want to know who the Houthis
are and all that stuff, then it's it's a it's a good piece.
I'll put a link up in the in the chat room. And but you
know, it's pretty clear that Tehran is if they they've got the the Houthis
they've got and they're fighting with Saudi Arabia in a proxy war. They've got
the uh the Hisbollah in Lebanon, and they've got a whole bunch of other
folks, and they really want that that the land routes, some land routes
to get to the Mediterranean. And it's it's an interesting, an interesting time
to be alive. Yeah, I know there is. In the president administration,
there was some people who had a theory that if we're nice to the
Houthis and we try to re engage with the Iranians, that things will get
better. Are the real cynical people said that they want the Iran deal because
they want to have their Iran deal because they want to have the Iran deal
back from the Obama administration. But either way, it just plain it didn't
work out at all. And Hey, one great thing about our melees and
free for all formatches. We get nice surprises. And we've got a caller
in here that I know is going to be a favorite for those on mid
rats then coming here for years, and it's always great to have them on
board. Mark Vandraff, Hey, good afternoon, Thanks for calling in after
sounding after an eagle. How are you guys doing tonight? Well, we're
having I think a well at least where I am. It's nice and hot
and humid, as it always is. But you know how this part of
a year is after Thanksgiving, it can be cold, or it could be
April for the rest of the year. But Dad, we're we're doing well.
So are you Are you up up north with your charges? Are you
you back home in the Mid Atlantic? Back in the in the Middle Atlantic
just for the UH the weekend. I'm back on a plane to UH to
points further north tomorrow. Morning for for a few weeks, you know.
So the uh uh the travel of shipbuildings that never stops beating, so uh
uh gotta gotta get back up to work and uh and uh and make more
progress. I'm glad that you guys are talking about the goings on in the
Red Sea and down there at the southern end, and I'm gonna do something
that for once. I'm glad I can keep some prey that I would direct
you and any of your listeners to the US Extral Commands additional Twitter X or
whatever we're calling it now feed. The actually put out today an excellent,
as they say in we speak, TikTok that they put out an hour by
hour timeline of what the carning was involved in. And uh it's it's actually
a little more than five hours, it is. I clocked the TikTok.
There was almost eight hours of the can be described as combat shuttling between two
different ships, providing eight two different ships that have been attacked and and and
we're in very it looks like one was damaged the other was undamaged. Uh.
And I just said, and during all of that, having to periodically
shoot down missiles or drones that were headed in the Carneing's general direction, and
you know there was you know, it was about eight straight hours of maritime
combat that the Carning was involved in, and Sitcom laid it all out pretty
welfare general in their Twitter feed. So I commend them for the transparency,
and I commend that a command for putting that out there. It's also been
repeated by Fifth Fleet. So either those two Twitter feeds, people could go
to and take a look and see what Karnie did. You made me feel
very old, and he said carne was a twenty seven year old destroyer because
I think we remember being a keep ship bath while it was being built.
So it's still seems mean to me, although that was almost thirty years ago
that that was going on. So yeah, that was that I felt the
old. I guess carnial world, I'm feeling old. But yeah, I
am glad to have the chance to talk a little bit about the huts.
That was a subject that I touched upon during my year at the National Security
Council. Well, talk a little bit about it. Put up a link
to that Sentcom report at Twitter or x. But talk a little about the
hoothies because I don't think many people quite understand who the heck these folks are
and what's going on with what they're trying to do in the Red Sea area.
So Yemen, like a lot of countries that has government issues, much
like in Lebanon. In Lebanon you have an official government of Lebanon that doesn't
control very much of the country, and then you have Hesbola, which is
a terrorist organization that controls the good chunks of the country. The Yemeni in
and actually recognized government of Yemen doesn't have a lot of control over the territory
of Yemen man control over part of it. And then there's a couple of
other groups that part of the who cans now have control over the largest part
of the populated part of the country. They are absolutely a quiet organization of
the Iranians. Like the Iranians, they are share not city. There are
ethnically Arabs that there is a friction point there between the Houthis and their person
pay masters, but not much. But I mean, I would say that
the Hoo thieves are a take study and should be studied from now on by
people who are really interested in being interested in being serious about national security.
But if you let problems faster. They don't get better on their owns.
The houthis controlled less territory, they have less capability. They were less of
a problem five six, seven years ago, and the government of the UAE
and Saudi Arabia were fairly effectively fighting a kind of insurgency against them on the
side of the recognize them womany government and the entire international community, and we're
not. We were part of that. We the United States and American part
of that kept putting more and more pressure on the Sadies in the unit to
ease up, because the Hepings, not unlike them up, were very good
at putting civilians in between themselves and the military forces and viewing in and the
Saudis and the minion athorities were frankly not as good as the Ausailis at attacking
military forces without causing civilians damage and civilian death. So the humanitarian crisis was
quite severe and the lessing. What the international community did was put pressure not
on someone to edit quickly so that they could get to a better place for
the many people, but to simply stop a Saudis and the Amoratis stop fighting
uh In. In fact, the the Emoradis were very sensitive about that.
When they stopped, they wanted it to be known that they were all the
way out of Yemen because they just didn't like the international seat anymore. If
you're the the Emaradis who depend on both the rich tuty, but now they
depend a lot on the international business and the willingness of other people to do
international business. They dubay An Abu Dhabi that helped generate the considerable wealth of
that country. So they didn't want to let a file the Europeans, they
didn't want to let a file do Americans, and basically they let the problem
fester. And now you have a first class problem in the Red Sea because
the Babo Zeb is one of the world's primary take place of very significant chunks
of the world's wealth, closed through that narrow passage on its way to or
from the Suez Canal. And now you have a very irrespons blacker who is
going to tank action on a timeline the bay and their iranium pay masters set
fi to affect the flow of trade that straight and now it's going to take
much more significant military action now than it would have taken god, six seven
years ago if we just not to saw these Maamaradis continue their canter insurgency.
You didn't have that problem right now. So for people in the nationalist d
professionals need to understand that as pain frol something might be in a short term,
it is always it's not always, at least nothing's always in the the
nationalist purty, but it's usually better to take some short term pain rather for
a long term stability. Things will be better in the long term and they
will ultimately be less than suffering, even if it seems like there's level of
in it something that you might find intolerable in the short term. To win
in a region, to enjoy the bad actor, you will ultimately minimize the
long term amount of human suffering, because right now there's about to be a
lot of human suffering in them. And if the Hohopis continue to do what
they're doing, I don't know how the United States, the United Kingdom,
other powers that are interested in the world don't start a significant military campaign to
keep that straight open. Its economically it's not viable. So that is that,
and that is where we are headed. If something doesn't change. Yeah,
that's that's one of the the two things. There's a third thing I
wanted to bounce off you Mark. You know. The first thing is history
is replete with people making one hundred and eighty degree turns, you know,
the only Nixon can go to China type of thing. But a lot of
the senior point in the National security arena for this administration, they have an
agenda that they are trying to pursue with Iran. That it's just a series
of rakes to keep stepping on it. You know, eventually maybe it'll be
too much. But you know, you brought up the fact that the international
community, regardless of what they may think of Iran and what's going on in
Gaza, these economies they need that straight open in economic manner. You know,
what is the pain threshold here? Because we do have a few thousand
years of records of how to deal with pirate nests if you want to look
at it like that, the way they're behaving. But there's a larger issue
that we were talking about in the pre show that regardless of where this is
and who the players are, and we've had it go too long, you
know what, what is the impact of the precedents we're saying, we're setting
that Okay, if you take pot shots at US Navy warships in international waters,
as long as we shoot the missile down, you know, no harm,
no foul, Maybe you'll have better luck next time. Is you establish
habits, you establish norms and what's expected, And how much longer can we
expect to just allow people to lob missiles at our ships and not having a
significant retaliation to make a point not just to them, but to the next
bad actor six months down the road, because eventually something will get through.
And we have a ship that carries over two hundred Americans and we know how
these things can work if you take a bad hit. Look what happened to
the Russian cruiser in the Black Sea. That's a lot of families that are
going to be asking why that's questure. It'll be true. And and you
need to look no further than current modern Israel for your example. There.
Somehow the Israelis got used to having markets come at them every so often.
I mean, I don't know if you would feel okay where we're gonna live
our lives and we have a pretty good sences theeramistic defense, but you know,
every few weeks, Silen's gonna go off. We're all go run too
a strong room in our basement. Uh and we're going to consider that normal
for several years, and eventually we'll just deal with it because to end it
seems too hard to be too much international outcry. We're gonna have to cause
a lot of suffering that rightly we don't want to cause, because we'd rather
not uh enflipt the kind of response that would fix the problem, because of
the collateral damage. It's tran likely, you know, you know, we
don't want to We don't want to do that yet, and I'm sure these
Alis don't want to do that in Gaza. And if you keep with me,
I'll hope that the problem gets better. Are all around to live with
it. The problem never gets better. The problem problems need to be fixed
or they get worse. That is a a repeated less nothing of history everyone
likes these days. And I don't know what's the great analogy, but people
talk about the thirties and Nazi Germany, and that was the lesson was the
problem didn't get better, it got bad, and then fixing it was the
World War that almost destroyed moderate civilization. In the end, it's completely up
end of the world to where it tooks decades to a cover from World War
Two. If you want to the world economy and and you know, to
just change the world someday prasts to the better fit with the United States.
We've benefited from the post World War two world warter. That was a tremendous
price to pay for not taking the threat seriously early because it just seemed too
hard to have to go deal with it in a serious way. And that's
where we're at now, right we have stopped. We have not dealt with
this in a serious way. The counterpoint to that, I was in a
conversation with some folks over Thanksgiving dinner table and they asked, they challenged me
to try and make the Obama Biden foreign policy case for them. It's like,
you understand, I'm a critic of that. I'm not an advocate.
And they said, yes, but everyone has a point. Can you can
you put on a debating hat and articulate the other side? And I said,
if I was trying hard, I would come up with a with a
point that I think there's a legitimate point. The Iranian people are not the
Iranian government, and we should It seems like the United States should be able
to have a reliably productive relationship with Iran because we actually do have a lot
of common interests and their population is generally favorable towards America. And if you
credit the Iranian government, meaning the MOLAS and the RGC, if you credit
them with more rationality than I believe they actually have, you might be able
to talk yourself into well, if we address the legitimate security concerns, they'll
be addressed, and that's you know, then they will change their behavior.
I just I don't know how my critique of that ing to be. I
just think that the history of the last well basically said, the Iranian Revolution
is seventy nine, but certainly the last time of fifteen years shows that you
can't credit the Iranian leadership and especially they are, as you see, with
a Western level of rationality. They are motivated by what motivates them. But
that's you know, that is not evenly reconcilable with what we would consider legitimates
and consecurity concerns. They are an expansion of power. They are they they
want to dominate the Middle East. They are viciously endearantly anti Zionists and anti
Semitic, so they would be happy to wipe Israel off the map until as
many Jews as possible, and that is their sittingtient goal. That's that's what
victory looks like to Iran. So the idea that we can address that,
it's not like, well, you know, make sure that they're in a
position where the city Muslim states can't violate their territorial integrity and those are good.
Now I'm happy, and it's not that that's not where they're at.
Uh And I think anyone who takes that they can be accommodated and has an
any correct understanding, I'm I think you'd be impressed that former Obama Secretary of
Defense and uh CIA director did say the other day that the US should respond
to the increasing number of attacks by Iron's proxy groups, and he would say,
he said, I would be much more aggressive. I want to go
after those or firing missiles in our troops. Make sure they understand when they
fire a missile, they're going to die. And this is he was referring
to the troops in Iraq. And yeah, I love Secretaryanata's remarks. I
even retweeted them with great approval. I believe Secretary of Kanada is seeing the
world clearly what he said. Yeah, I think you know there there is
out there. Everybody always likes to talk about the bipartisan can Since this,
I think, especially the events of October seventh, it's it's been clarifying in
a lot of ways, and it's making people perhaps throw away a few assumptions
if they're on the fence, push them one side or the other. But
what you can realistically accomplish with Iran versus what the Iranians are willing to accomplish,
there's a big delta there, and after a while, people will continue
to signal to you what they want to do. And if you look what
the situation that we've been discussing in the Red Sea, and you look at
the medieval activity that Hamas kicked off on the seventh of October, both of
those are inside of the Iranian leaderships plan, whatever that ultimate plan is.
None of that seems aligned with a repro Schmall are trying to move to a
more settled situation, and just the opposite, you try to get in the
head of the Iranians using the hoo thies. I guess there's an outside chance
that the Houthis are just doing what hoo thies do, but there's a larger
chance that they would really like somehow to get the United States to get involved
to raise the temperature more, which is why you know, earlier on the
show I mentioned is there an overlap between what they want and really what they
deserve? And I know there is a lot in our toolkit and for decision
makers, they just got to rack and stack whatever the higher intentions and direction
and guidance are, what if any response we can do. But I think
one of the worst things that could happen to us as we wind up having
Americans killed or are captured in the process. But we have a lot of
tools in our toolbox that we can make make our point rather firmly risk not
much more than how we're operating today. Of course, the second order,
second third order effects from what we do and how we do it can be
interesting. But one thing about these missiles in these drones that they have,
even though last decade hesblon Lebanon did surprise an Israeli saw our corvette with a
old Chinese version of the Yeah Yeah satto too. But we have to know
where these things are are roughly located, that we could at least affect their
inventory for a change. Oh. Absolutely, That's that gets back into now
we have the Israel problem because all of the Houthi, their their drone storage
facilities, all in towns, populated towns with civilians, all of their launch
points for their surface SOFIA some surface to ship ballistic missiles. When they go
to set them up, they set them up next to schools and mosques,
uh, and and and medical facilities. They're not they're not out in an
open field there. So you want to hit them with tomahawks. You want
to hit them with with uh you know uh land attack missiles coming off of
an F fifteen. Uh. You want to fly in there with an F
thirty five coming out of you know, get tucking the Amadis you know,
have you know enough your favorite F thirty five coming out of Aldfra and putting
some ordinance on that target. You know, once they start with the missiles,
there's there's gonna be a civilian body cap And then the question is who
are we to criticize Israel and tell them, oh, we need you guys
to be very careful when when when it's our operations, we're footing civilians at
risk too. But if the who thies keep putting missiles into the Red Sea,
at what point do you does that price have to be paid? And
that's that's the dilemma that we're going to be facing. So and the potentially
we can be face the strain. There's no question that that the you know,
it's what the hooping capability is not easily conceals, right in that they
all of those myth sites, all of those all their their last points,
all their storage for their drones. Those those are not easy to conceal between
our airborne intelligence, that satellite intelligence. It's not that we can't target them.
If you're targeting them will bring a significant risk of civilian claudor damage.
And then the question is is not a price that we're willing to time?
Well, that's there. During the Gulf War, we talked about the CNN
effect. Now we're talking about everybody in the world with a cell phone camera
showing whatever they see and putting it immediately on the Internet, which you know
is the CNN effect written large. It is a challenge to to demonstrate that
the problem that you've solved by a element in one of these sites that happened
to be next to his school, was was worth that that effort and that
we've made every effort not to not to target civilians. But you know that
that is that is an issue that I think is a lot of trouble for
us. The other issue I have is we spend a lot of money on
and this is somebody just put this up on our chat, a lot of
money on the weaponry used to shoot down these some slow flying drones and some
other systems that I just keep thinking, we must have some cheaper alternative that
we could we could put in the air to take out some of these things
without the expenditure of of you know, a few hundred thousand dollars missile or
something like that. But you got any thoughts along those lines, Yeah,
you should have Barn McGraph ad to that talk. I mean, I have
thoughts, but I think Brian's thoughts are it's not better than mine. He's
spent more time operating warships to seek I buy stuff and I build stuff,
But Brian spent more time operating. And he makes the point and has publicly
on his twitter feed and his blogs that at least at this point, your
risk calculation is not one where you want to not want to employ your full
defense and depth. Frankly, I think we're probably and I don't have I
have no inside knowledge, so I'm going on very sketchy public reporting because we
don't know all of what's been engaged. The Navy and the Pentagon has not
put out that level of detail. But assuming we use an SM two to
take out a lot of these targets, so we're doing that at range,
A lot of these drone targets would be very easily engageable by on a DBG
fifty one by a five and fifty four using the appropriate frag rounds to do
that, but now you're engaging them in a much shorter range. It gave
me get fewer shots off. And if you're a co out there right now,
if you're on Carney, if you're on Mason, if you're at Hodness,
you're probably not too worried about what the exchange rate looks like over a
long term and over the dollars and cents. What you're looking at is I
can't take a hit. So as soon as I see something that I'm determining
as a threat, I'm gonna take a shot with the longest range weapon that
I have currently in my inventory. I'm not gonna wait with the idea of
saying, this guy's not that much of a threat. I have a good
high confidence kill with a five inues frift before. So instead of using five
hundred or six hundred thousand dollars air missile, I'll use an eight thousand dollars
frag round out of a five inch or whatever five inch rounds cost these days
and take that out. But I'm gonna wait a long on time. I
don't think that at this point anyone's got that as part of their calculation.
I think once they've determined that something is a threat, then they're going to
go after that. As far as the short range blistic missile, that is
a completely different when it comes to weapon selection. You know, Dave Carnie
probably has a few of its surface pair missiles, some of the versions of
the s M two the s M three that it's carrying that are specifically designed
for the blistic missile threat, and that's what they're going to use against that
threat. But against cruise missiles and uav which frankly are the same kind of
threat. The only difference is is a little bit of speed and what do
you call them. But again it's the same kind of threat. I think
that they're going to use an s M two just because they don't want it
to get closer, And then I want to take the risk of something any
closer this point the geo strategic questions, I mean ufnaving destroyers taking a hit
right now would be very high. And so if I'm fifth leader, if
I'm said com I'm calling up every one of those ship captains and I'm in
a personal discussion with them and say, whatever you do, do not take
a hit. Yeah, I think that's clear. You know, you go
Winchester and then you just leave because the repercussions of taking a hit, and
you know, how long can we can we rope adope this with One thing
we talked about before everything kicked off here is the fact that we don't have
to convince you or most of the listeners here that we don't have the size
of the navy we have, and especially when you are four deployed like that,
and who knows what the mix is and those VLS cells, but you
can't do it for a long time. And the who the these they're not
they're not producing these themselves at least. I think they might do some local
productions, some really low end stuff, but this stuff is getting to them
from Iran and occasionally you were I mean, yeah, go back to the
press release, you know. I mean, for the last five years,
you can go with release of peaks. The US Navy and other Allied Navy
have intercepted weapons being smuggled into Yemen for the Hooties by the Iranians on a
pretty regular basis. And that's just the stuff that stopped. So you have
to assume that if you're stopping a fair amount of stuff, a fair amount
of stuff must be getting through. But I mean, just go back to
sexual commands press releases from the last three or four years, and you'll see
plenty of press releases of the just cruisers and just destroyers based Allied chips.
Uh, you know, some of the US Coast starships that are operating over
in the fifthe ao R all of this with you know, just the laid
out on their flight deck, rockets, rocket parts, glitch of the cops,
RPGs, SIP. The themisis the whole gamut laid out on a flight
deck being inventory because we found dows and other non traditional methods smuggling that,
and the source for all of that was Iran, and I don't know how
many more ships it would take. And if you could get any of our
allies who would be willing to do something tight like that, and we'd have
to get anybody, no good admiralty lawyer. But you'd also have to look,
you what can you do against Tahuthi, which is they're not a nation,
they're a rebel organization who's acting in a piratical manner. I would be
very interested to see what additional steps you could take without you know, you
can't preach the International Order if you're violating it all the time. But they're
there has to be some additional options we could take. But until people decide
that that's not going to interfere with larger things they want to do with Iran
treaty. Wise, I guess we just have to keep being pretty damn good
at knocking things out of the air. Yeah, I'll tell you if anyone,
if you you foul a letter of Mark right and you find yourself with
a vessel, give me a call. I'll slid up. I'll be one
of Salamander's private theres. Yeah, you know, I think under international law
of war, these huthis who are not a uniform service but are engaging activities
like dose, I think they're fair game. I don't think there's any any
restriction on what you can do to people were shooting it too. You've got
the you know, there is a law of self defense, and I think
that includes the right to take out the source of the things that are attacking
you. So i'd have to bote, I have to go back. I
can look at it, but I think I think they're fair game. I
think they're sort of like as you've said there, they're pirates. All their
their pirate like but they're on on shore and they remind me of some of
the other questions we've had dealt with insurgent forces. A lot of people are
getting, you know, the international law is and what it used to be.
Apparently, under international law, if you're a belligerent, you have a
responsibility to provide the other belligerent with power and utility left to be considered a
war crime to not provide the other belligerent. Uh, and that I was
trying to find that in any of the Geneva Conventions or the Hague Conventions.
I somehow couldn't admits it. But there were many people in my Twitter feeds
that were insisting that that somehow a belligerent has a responsibility to provide the the
obligements on the oppo opposite party with utilities left to be a war crime.
The ken were off. The head of Amnesty International is very insistent on that,
and he has to be an expert on international umanitarian law. I can't
just be that he's a Jew hating thumbbag and its applied that only to Israel.
I'm sure he's better than that, but I again, I don't understand.
So I would say in the international still we have a right to prevent
the who thies from taking the action that they are. But but who can
tell what international laws anymore? It's active the discussions we haven't had it on
Kidner, Yeah, there's a Again, it's been a wonderfully clarifying event or
a sadly clarifying event, depending on how you want to look at it.
With a lot of a lot of policymakers in the West, they don't have
as much pull in the rest of the world unless it is fully aligned with
him. A lot of these international organizations that have been around for a long
time, and you know, we're gentlemen of a certain age. We remember
they were. They weren't real supportive of the world during the Cold War.
They were very selected there. But you know, there are a few realities
that people are going to have to start pushing back on. For instance,
the army talks a lot about urban war, and you know we need to
and I think we've talked about it a few years ago here on the show
that the challenges of the urban landscape in the coastal environment is very very real.
It's also very very real if you have an enemy who is, as
you said, launching their missiles next to the schools, mosques, you know,
clinics, kindergartens. There is a certain point that we have to look
back at the history of warfare. A couple of things. When we we
had to take out ball bearing parent plants in Schweinfurt, we didn't mean to
take out the schools and the hospitals that are three blocks away. But you
know, that's just the way war is. And if you are fighting an
enemy who is killing you, killing your children, raping your wives, and
they are hiding inside of hospitals and shooting at you. That's a different set
of requirements that people are going to have to just learn this is what we're
going to do. You can take precision weapons and do the best you can
do so, but you're I'm comfortable saying you're under no moral obligation to allow
your enemy to use your virtue against you. And an existential battle that certain
people are going to be fighting. How you start that conversation, I don't
know, but a lot of it would be not responding to certain international organizations
who feel like they can put out a press release and have spokesmen go up
to the podium and try to talk around it are apologized. I'm waiting to
see that movement take place in higher echelons of areas. But there's a window
there if people want to speak correctly and speak realistically about what we're looking at.
And as the Gaza operation goes another truth that I've found very frustrating,
and a lot of the people wearing the white hats are doing it as well.
One thing that's been constant throughout all human written history in a war,
when there is an urban area under siege or in conflict, all supplies that
come in water, food, medical, It goes to the garrison first.
So all these trucks that are coming across the Egyptian border for quote humanitarian aid,
that's just not going to be noncombatants whatever that is in Gaza. It's
going to take care of the garrison first, and that's going to extend this
conflict longer. Which if you really wanted to be a dark, dark minded
person, that's why the hostages were taken. They played this out pretty well.
They're going to play our virtue against this hour being the non hamas sorting
part of the planet. They know that there's a lack of patience and there's
a lot of people who they can't be discussed with reasons and hard facts.
They're just very, very emotional and it's worked in the past and it's kind
of working in certain areas right now. Hopefully we'll have leaders that will have
this mind that you need at times like this. Yeah, it helps to
take along of you. Since where you're saying that, and since we're in
the Christmas season, I actually thought about the seventh chapter of the Book of
Isaiah, which I know that there's blinds in there that the people of the
Christian faith would view as being prophetic of the of the of the Birth of
Jesus, some seven hundred years after it was written. But if you read
the entire chapter, when Isaiah looks at the king and says, you know,
behold, this young woman will be with child uh and and uh and
that you know the people will call it, she will call it. Then
God is with us. The rest of that is the sign that says,
and you know before he knows who speak, you know, knows what is
different from good and evil. He will be eating clean and butter. The
historical context around that when you read that in context with the Book of Cross,
of the Book of King is Jerusalem was under seat, right, I
mean, and the people were starving and the king was losing faith, and
Isaiah was telling him, listen, this child will have food to eat when
it is born, because God will deliver us from this siege. That was
the point that Isaiah was making to the king in saying that, And you're
exactly right, the kid would have been the last one to get said in
whatever they had because they needed food for the soldiers to keep the speech,
because that would mean that the siege is over. And that was the sign
that Isaiah was promising the king from God? Is that is that the kid
would be able to eat rich food because that therefore the siege would be over
it because in their siege, you don't feed the kids, and we have
That's twenty seven hundred years ago and in many ways know less true today.
Yeah, I am. I look at some of this situation. I'm wondering
where European allies are. I mean, and specifically with the Red Sea.
Where's France, Where's Spain? Where's Italy? Where is the UK? Where
are the Germans? I mean, I know they did their anti piracy patrols,
but but there we're not the ones although we use a lot of Middle
East oil, we're not the ones who are totally depend on Middle East oil
like some of the countries I just rolled through. So uh, you know
that back in the days we had that concept of a thousand ship navy,
and we've got all these we've got all these allies, Where the heck are
they? And why are they not assisting in the in the thwarting of the
ill doings of the Huthis and and keeping the the Red Sea and the Suez
Canal open? Because I mean, last time this went through, this kind
of Shindig nineteen sixty seven that the Suez Canal was closed for eight years.
I don't think we want to go through that again. Well, I thot
the you know, a great idea for a show the two people to debate
what you know the Europeans are doing, should be doing, and how we
should be engaging with them. You should have a host of mid rats conversation
with Bridge Polby and Coy Shockey. Get the two of them together and have
a too serious thinkers with two very different views on on the on what the
role of of the US visa, the the European our European allies is and
should be. You have you'd have a great show that I would. I
would absolutely. I've listened to that over and over again. We'll write that
down. Take that good note. The one thing that kind of along the
the same lines of when we were talking earlier about you know, we always
had this conversation that trying to explain and you know this is a time where
you need more ships. We don't have enough navy. I mean, we've
talked about that over and over again, and I saw something that just it
kind of knocked me back, because before you can have that conversation. You've
got to have an audience that has some open years and kind of a change
of the topic here for a bit. But I don't know if you saw.
Ben Coleman was out at the Ronald Reagan by National Security and he took
a screenshot of the faith in various institutions and it was on the slide.
In addition to let's see what we have here, we've got the Presidency,
Supreme Court, everything else. You also have the US military. And if
you look at twenty eighteen, the US military had a seventy percent confidence then
and now we're down to forty six percent. It's been a larger drop than
any of those other all the institutions that people have the less faith in,
but the military has had the most drastic drop. When you know you're up
high, you can go down pretty far. As we go forward in the
next few years, as we try to use examples like what we have in
the Red Sea, not just talking to our allies to do more, but
talking to the American public and they're representatives about hey, this is why this
is serious. How do you like to buy these imports? How would you
like to pay two times for them? The whole economic tie in and the
fact that these things don't magically happen, and a world full of bad faith
actors, you have to have good faith actors with forces willing to stand up
to them. Are you just like we've lost most of the South China Sea
because a bad faith actor went in there and said, this is mine,
do something about it. Eventually we go back to a eighteenth and seventeenth century
world were some parts of the ocean you just don't go in. Is what
are your thoughts one about why that has fallen so fast? And is that
something that will be part of the headwinds We have to try to explain why
our naval why our navy needs to be stronger, and why naval naval power
needs to be a more important part of our national security investments. Yeah,
I saw that flied from the from the Reagan Defense Forum. One. I
think it's we're caught up in institutions losing their credibility. Part of that is
we need better institutions. Part of that is we have a and I hate
so there's so much bad information out there, and so the impulse of many
is we have to regulate the information flow, and that will only make the
problem worse. You know, Yes, there's a lot of garbage on social
media that a lot of people will take a look at it, it'll and
make it seem truthful, and then it's like, well, we have to
regulate to make sure that there's not different disinformation out there. I think that
within the United States. I mean, I'm a big believer in banning TikTok
because that's a foreign influence operation. But for American social media companies, I
think that more information, clearer information is the best antidotes to that. And
frankly, institutions need to learn how to communicate their own effectiveness and work.
That's part of the mission test good in the military is not good at that
anymore. We used to be better at it. I mean, we're not
good at it anymore, and we are they I still may be occasionally think
of myself as part of an organization I've retired from. They need to learn
to adapt and overcome and be able to communicate effectively with the people whose support
that they need, and they're not doing that. And if you can't describe
to people why what you're doing is relevant to their life, then don't expect
them to care about it because people got lots of things to care about,
and that's that's just the way, you know, that's that's the way the
cookie crumbles. There's less people in the general population with military experience, and
frankly, more and more people view what goes on overseas as not connected to
them, and they wish that there was just that they could deal with less
of it. And I fully understand that impulse. But what responsible people need
to be able to communicate is that what happens overseas will ultimately affect the lives
of the American people. So the degree something's going on overseas that isn't going
to affect the lives of the American people, then I think we need to
be less engaged in that. There's a lot of do gooderism that has made
up US policy over certainly the twentieth into the twenty first century, ebbs and
flows at various times, and if it's not going to directly affect the way
the American people live their lives, then you know, maybe the right answer
is we're just going to be less interested in that. We're going to commit
not so many resources to that. That's part of the argument with going on
now with support the Ukraine. I think that what happens in you saying will
matter to the average Americans sooner or later, and therefore I'm comfortable that we
need to continue to commit resources to avoid Ukraine from falling to Russian aggression.
But that's got to get explained and if the how and the why need to
get tied together, which is something that I understand isn't getting done real well.
So I understand people who are skeptical about making that connection again. You
know, you know, a guy like Bridge Colby has written eloquently about the
Indo pay com and why we need to care because it will affect the way
Americans be their life if that goes in a south direction. But if we
don't make the case of why things overseas affect how people live their lives in
the United States, then they're going to be right not to care. Yeah,
I think we need some good insurance salesman talk about how the US Navy
Hexcess has an insurance policy for the country, and we need some clever advertising
to get that out to the public. I don't think we do a very
good job. But one of the other questions I have for you is if
given the the number of ships we have, apparently we have two DDGs on
pretty much in or near the Red Sea right now, and you know they're
both firing off their weaponry. Uh, where are we going to? Are
we? Do we have enough dds to keep cycling a couple of these things
in and out if their other job is to is to provide escort duties for
the carriers who've got in the region, good question. I'm not. I
don't do global force management anymore. So oh darn you should know anywhere the
uh uh you know. That was one of the nice things about my year
on the National Security Council staff was that every morning all the service chiefs,
that's a brief. It's got a PowerPoint slide of where all of their forces
are all over the world. So the Navy has one, the Air Force
has one, Marine Corps. It was just getting stood up for Space Force
as I was there. And then there's kind of an overall phynopsis that the
chairman gets and those intel breachs that are geared towards each service and then what's
going on and then what the lay down is and the blue and the red
I had because of what the job by an NFC. I was on everyone's
distribution for that. So the first thing I would do when I would turn
on my computer and boot up Jawiz is I would see where all of our
deployed forces were across every service across all over the world, and that kind
of gave me something to frame my day with. I haven't had that since
December of twenty twenty, so I'm three years and changed out of date on
that. So I don't know. I just know what the US. I
followed the DoD and it's co COM's press releases on my Twitter feed. That's
why I was so happy that Central Command put out a good, solid information
timeline for what's going on with Carne. There have been reports the Hudner,
which is one of the newer DDGs, and the Mason, which is one
of the early Flight two a's eighty seven have had reports of them in the
area of the Red Sea and engaged in different activities visa the hoopies since October
seventh. So I've read about those three shifts, but I don't know where
we might have additional missile staged for reload. I don't know where we might
have additional DDGs either in the fifth fleet or sixth feet aor they could come
in and out and slop through them. I don't do global force management it
anymore. So I hope you've got the resources to keep the president of station
for as long as if you need to to keep that choke point open.
But you have to ask someone else through the details are at well. You
just you just made me feel bad because now I miss Jaywicks too. But
it's been fourteen years for me, So you're right that that's a great way
to start your morning. You just kind of you peek behind the curtains and
see what the world's greatest navy is doing. Mark, it's the top of
the hour. We really appreciate you coming in and joining us here. I
know you've got a legit really good paying gig coming up. Just just for
the listeners, what are some of the great things you can you can tell
them to look forward to with your baby as we look forward to her commissioning.
So we've got next year at I think Canta Manette Marine we're going to
deliver the last three of the lcs's. I know that that's a program that
you have many opinions on. I'll just say, well, we've got to
accepted trials on on Nantucket next week. That's some things. I'm going back
to it. And then early as soon as the ice belts on the Great
Links, we should be doing trials on Beloit and Cleveland, and then we
will be done with Elsies and what they do. Oh, for some reason
we just lost Mark. Well, Mark, we got a bit and we
thank you very much for join us. You go on, you have anything
for our listeners before we close it down. No, I want to thank
Mark for coming on, and I thank the people who would listen to us
today. Thanks for all the great comments in the chat room. It's been
very educational. You guys are always teaching us new stuff. Yeah. Absolutely,
I appreciate everybody that does come in the chat room. It's good to
see Ms Boston Maggie there as well. And I thanks everybody for join us
for another edition of mid Rats. And I hope everybody has a safe,
enjoyous holiday season and going through to the New Year's and so next time,
I hope you'll have a great Navy day. Likely want to marry me and
release a friend of becondily for you being to blame my love fairly love me
silly, falling your the tame. It's a long way to dip y.
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