Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander, an Eagle one from Eagle
Speak at Seer Shore your home for a discussion of national security issues and all
things maritime. And welcome Lord everybody. We're glad you've taken time to join
us for another edition of mid Rats. We have our world famous, ever
popular melee format today, no guests, just me you and we've got Paul
in the chat room. And if you're with us live, I'd like to
extend the invitation for you as always, scroll down to the bottom of the
show page. That's where you will find a chat room. And you have
some observations you want to share, our question, our issue you would like
for to grab hold of over the course of the next hour. That is
the perfect place to do that, and we look forward to seeing you there.
Eagle one. Good afternoon, Heyzell. Well, it's better than I
deserve. We've got a glorious day here in the Free State of Florida.
I got no complaints. I'm hanging out my T shirts and shorts is my
natural state. And they are cargo shorts, so the haters can continue to
hate. But they're very handy. I get the store things in them.
Well, I mean, you and I kind of solved all the world's problems
in the pre show. I don't know if we need to talk about anything
else, but I guess we could could share our brilliant ideas of everybody else.
Well, we got Chris and Paul. You know they're going to listen
to us, So I guess we can start with some hot topic. Hey,
yeah, Chris, Chris Raleigh, it's great to see you again.
And just a reminder to everybody. Uh, Elon Musk contracted some special forces
people and extracted Chris Raleigh from that that deep hole that you had been hiding
in over on x or slash Twitter. Uh So if you if you don't
already, go find Chris over there. He's always a good person to keep
track of, and he's glad to have him back on board today. Uh
yeah, I think because it's been it's been the item above the fold all
week, I guess we really should start off with which really was amazing video.
Uh, the the dropping of the Francis Scott Key Bridge out of Baltimore,
making everybody in the belt waves commute just that much more interesting. Yeah,
it's I mean, it shouldn't happen, does happen? You know,
I love I love the conspiracy theories. It's uh space aliens, it's uh
some kind of computer hacking job. You know, it's never you know,
it's never as simple. Don't nobody ever applies as razors. Oh see,
we had a breakdown. We couldn't are engine quit running and that powered everything
else, and so we ran into a bridge. Yeah. It kind of
goes in that category that some people need to stop reading science fiction and military
fiction and maybe pick up a history book or read current affairs or stuff.
You know, some of those things were straight out of some of the books
that you can read if you want to. But when you have especially all
ships have been this way from the dawn at time, but especially modern merchant
ships and military ships, they're very complicated. They're real tightly designed ships that
work great, work very efficiently, but when they have a breakdown, as
all mechanical things made by humans will eventually break down, you just hope that
they're breaking down in a place where you have some margin of error. I
think I think was in New York we had a large merchant ship have a
similar problem. In the general wedge of problems that the ship in Baltimore did,
but she had time to drop anchor and hang out in a safe place.
But even if you're only going I think they're going eight knots, that's
pretty fast in a tight channel going through a bridge like that. It's just
one of those cases that you have to if you're in one of these places
where there's no margin of error, how good are your contingency plans? And
this was one of those situations that I'm sure people talked about, maybe even
planned. We'll find out when the final record is written this, but it
was just force equals mass times acceleration, and it happened. It's a warning,
I think to all of our major ports is to look at your procedures
and your requirements. When are tugs optional, when are they required? How
many should a ship have? What's your contact looked? You know for US
Navy guys, when was the last time you updated your op ref binder?
That type of thing. So again, it's another warning for everybody that don't
assume that the access you have is the access you'll always have. An active
nature or an active man, either by accident or by intention, can change
things. Luckily, we're a big nation. If you're worried about trade.
I know there's localized economic issues Baltimore, that poor city. Last thing they
made was this. There are plenty of sports either side of the Port of
Baltimore. She's not really even a major porting more. I read somewhere she's
like fourteenth. I could be wrong, but she's somewhere in the teams,
so it won't be that big of an impact large for our navy, I
mean our nation, but it's it's interesting to watch this procedure going down and
I feel like they should they should be paying us a couple of shekels a
show. But again, uh, there's a lot of things in their wheelhouse
have been coming up, and I think, uh, Salimar Cogliano and John
Conrad have and I know John actually went there in person with a couple of
folks. We also know it's. Uh, those are always good people to
to keep track of if you want a little bit of professional expertise, because
that's definitely in their wheelhouse. I think Murphy's Law is gonna rear ugly.
Head. You know, you never mean the whole point about Murphy's Law,
as you don't know exactly when, but it'll be at the worst possible moment.
So you know, it's not too surprising that if you have a casualty,
you're just getting underway. Your ship's had a kind of a shaky history
on some things that it's going to happen fairly early, and it's gonna,
you know, just when when things do happen. And you've got that much
as you already said, you got that much mass moving at a speed,
it's really hard to stopping. And I think a lot of the people who
were looking at this, you know, they didn't understand why the ship couldn't
anchor. If you anchor going to that speed, you're just going to rip
things loose, if you're going to go try and back all full. You
know, you're not talking about something you can stop on a diamond. It's
not just a twin screw destroyer with two hundred and fifty thousand chaft horsepower.
It may have a lot of worse power, but it's it's also got a
lot of weight to try and stop the momentum, and you know it's just
not going to work. Turn on a dime, you know. And the
other thing is that people have been I think misapprehending how complicated it is to
try and start to recovery in this. You know, you've got water visibility
that's terrible. There's a really good three dimensional uh picture that I I'll put
a link up to in a minute that shows what the mess is on the
on the on the floor underneath this bridge. So you know, they had
to send divers down, they had to get pictures of the imagery. They
had to get the cranes in place, they had to get you know,
structural engineers in there to talk about the weight of the stuff that's sitting both
on the ship. They didn't want to do anything would cause further pollution.
The ship was damaged. It's got some pretty good chunks taken out of it.
Uh. It's got a big chunk of metal, bunch of metals sitting
on top of the of the containers. And we got all those containers on
there. And and then to further complicate things, there's a gas petrol gas
pipeline I think underneath the ship right now. So it's the ship is grounded,
it's got some issues. They're beginning to move the containers off, but
that's a really slow job. It's going to be one container at a time.
I don't remember exactly how many containers run this thing. But that's going
to be a painful exercise to try and get enough containers off so they can
get this thing the ship floated. They have to get the metal off the
bow, you know, and they've got to then go down and try and
retree the stuff that's on the bottom. All that being said, the corp
of Engineers has done a pretty good job saying, you know, here's our
timeline. By the end of April, we want to have a thirty five
foot depth channel two hundred and eighty feet wide to allow some passage of shipping
in and out of the Port of Baltimore. And by the end of May
we would like to have our fifty foot channel seven hundred feet wide restored to
allow pretty much all traffic. Now that's you know, contingent on a lot
of weather and other factors. But somebody has and you know, they've developed
a plan. They have uh a group. This is the way it works
under the National Incident Management System, that they have a group you know,
that is working together to sort all this out so that you don't have a
bunch of loan wolves out running off, running around in all different directions You've
got a team being assembled between the coast Guard and the Navy, and the
and the port authorities and the you know, all the other people of interest
in the area. They have a plan to get this thing thing restored,
and it's gonna you know, it's not a job unlike some people's expectations that
you know, well, you have the bridge shop and we'll have it clear
tomorrow that that's just not going to work. It's different than the ones where
we've lost part of a bridge, a highway bridge, and they were able
to slap something in place pretty quickly because you've got water involved here, and
that is a and it's not it's not crystal clear water, so you've got
all kinds of complicating factors as a result of that. But I think they're
doing a pretty good job on it. Uh you know, nothing, there
is nothing to be said that it can't be done better, but there's also
a lot to be said it could it could be done much worse than what
they've got. They've got, they've assembling the things they need to get it
done, and I think that's really kind of the key issue at this point.
And I think it's also you know, obviously this doesn't apply for the
for the individuals and their families who were dyed, the folks that were filling
up some of the potholes on the river when when it collapsed. But we've
been really lucky in a lot of regards. You know that we've all been
going over bridges at rush hour with with a big ship underneath. And I
don't know about you, but I have to tell myself quit look at it
the ship and drive, you know, because it's really neat to see that.
But it was in the middle of the night, so it wasn't full
of commuters or anybody like that. And the weather, hopefully it will hold.
This isn't the time of the year where you're expecting one of those hurricanes
to come screaming up the East coast. We've got, you know, a
few months til we need to worry about that. Hopefully all that will be
resolved. And you know, all the things you outline, they're actually underneath
the ship. We're also lucky that none of that was ruptured. It could
have been a lot worse. And it is an opportunity to because you have
these incident plans that you have on the shelf, and you exercise them on
a regular basis, and you talk about the whole a government approach, you
have to have the department, Department of Transportation, Department of Defense, depend
upon where you are, Department of Labor and Environmental Protection all got to work
together to try to expedite and get things fixed and moving in the right direction
in a safe way. And it is going to take time. But for
those that have worked in emergency management incident response, I know that they're paying
close attention to it because this is one of those opportunities that you have the
theory and you have similar things that have happened in the past that you try
to adjust your plans with. But there are smart people in hard jobs,
important positions that are going to look at this in order to take some really
good lessons away from this. So the next time we have something similar,
not exactly like it, but similar that I have a similar set of challenges,
their response will be be better. I guess that the key is I've
got confidence that they'll put together a good lessons I'm confident that those people I
ports I know you know some of those jobs and those individuals perhaps even that
they're going to look at adjust their plans. I think that the tough follow
through And I don't know how you hold this accountable is will it be Will
the lessons learned be properly resourced from Congress and maybe even at the state level
to make sure, Hey, they were able to do X in Baltimore because
they had ready access to Y and Z. We don't have ready access to
Y and Z or there were nobody thought that we needed W. We should
really make sure and get W. But to take those lessons learned and to
apply them, many of them, is going to require proper funding and resourcing
from those that control the purse strings, and also the approval or disapproval of
the plans. Yeah, and it run into people, you know, run
around circles. Done. We don't have the somebody let us down. We
don't have the giant greens we used to have. They well, what happened
to all that stuff? And I'll say what happened is stuff aged. A
lot of that equipment. Equipment got old, and it requires maintenance, and
you, you know, user decide at some point, well, it also
required humans to maintain it required humans to operate it. At some point you
make a decision and maybe it's a good decision or a bad decision, but
you make a decision that it's cheaper for the country as a whole to you
know, let the salvage companies, the big salvage companies, bring in the
stuff that they've got and let them deal with issues like this. Now,
you know, there's a lot of concern that we have some uh see transport
ships I think stuck behind where this thing is. You know, that's not
it's not fatal. It is an issue, but I'm not sure that if
we had a huge train, one of the big ones we used to have
sitting down in Charleston, that would have been that much faster to get it
up and get it organized and set up in placed and made things, you
know, that much quicker to get this resolved. You still have the issues
that's surveying what what work needs to be done. You've got to put get
experienced divers down to take a good look, and they can't see anything.
They're being directed by people up above who have you know, uh uh side
cans, side scan sonar or something that they're looking at to tell tell them
where to go. And then you've got to figure out how to you know,
how we're gonna how how big a chunk you can cut up of this
bridge that's lying on the on the sea floor to get it up out of
the way and not extrain the the crane you do have. So I think
that you know, again that it's uh, it's easy to second guess that
the the elimination of something equipment we had, and I certainly think we ought
to have more, uh you know, at least more salvage capability internally in
the Navy. But we you know, we have these we have we do
have mudsou units and mobile diving and salvage units. You know, their work
is not always as heavy as this. We do have an MSc some salvage
tugs again, you know, but it's it's not like it used to be.
But if you look at what happened after Pearl Harbor, the amount of
effort that was put into getting those battleships uh turned around out of the out
of the muck and mere there, and you see the equipment they used to
do that. It was a massive undertaking probably something I don't think I've ever
seen it quite like it when you really look at the pictures of what they
were doing. So it's worth going back in the history taking a look at
what it would really take, you know. And then we have examples recently.
We had the with the sky Lane bridge down in Florida that got whacked.
We have this car carrier that rolled over in off Savannah, I think,
you know, and that the cruise ship off Italy. You know,
these are big ships, they're big problems, and there is no fast solution
to getting getting them back the way you want. But you know, as
fast as you can clear this channel, which that's and then they're staying within
a month or two, or give them the benefit of the doubt, say
three months from now, they're going to have a channel. Floyints do there.
And then then the second issue is rebuilding a bridge. Yeah, you've
brought up a good point about you know, the a lot of the equipment
aged out. It doesn't last forever. It's not you can't when when things
get over depend upon what it is. You know, over thirty years and
especially over fifty years old, it's just you. You you don't want it
to get underway or you don't want to use it because you know something's going
to break real fast and it could be more of a problem than it's there
to fix. But I think part of it and we've seen this, and
we've talked about a little bit from the Vonhomer Schard when it burned over in
San Diego, and you can even look at you know, what we have
at the Francis Scott Key Bridge is we have been we being the maritime sector
in the US. We've been at peace for a long long time for decades.
If you do in the sector of peace where people are shooting at you
and blowing stuff up. You know, we had the USS coal that was
hit, We had the Samuel B. Roberts that got hit. You know,
we have onesies and twosies here and there that you can handle with.
You know, hey, we need a heavy lift ship because we have this
frigate with a big hole in it that needs to go back from Bahrain in
to the East coast to get fixed up. You can do that because that's
a peacetime thing. But for the first time, I keep calling it the
edge of living memory, but it's really becoming outside of living memory. When
you're talking about World War Two, it's not just the equipment that ages out,
it's the institutional memory that ages out. Your quote Graybeard's unquote that you
see around here. They're no offense. They're from Vietnam and the Navy,
and Vietnam got shot at a little bit, but had nothing like their predecessors
had their gray beers with the World War II experience. So you can have
a group of people making decisions, none of them have that institutional memory of
living through it. So we don't have enough fire boats, enough salvage,
we don't have enough heavy lift cranes. If we are really facing what we
think we are facing for the next couple of decades west of the International date
Line, where if we get in a real fighting naval war, we're going
to have lots of ships sunk, lots of ships significantly damaged that need to
be repaired, hopefully an expeditionary manner. And yes, we have a challenging
budget situation, but I'd always thought that a lot of these assets, and
we've talked about this before, we have a little bit of jealousy towards the
Air Force and the Army, and to a lesser extent, the Marine Corps.
For this one reason is they do a better job of recapturing the experience
of their people who leave active duty and decide not to make the actiduty career
in the reserves, the National Guard, the Air Guard, et cetera.
So forth, the Navy not so much. I mean, we had the
Naval reserve, but I think there's a lot of these things we could have
in the reserves if we could capitalize it a little better, that would be
there for when we need them. If we are serious about contesting the waters
against what is now the world's largest navy west of the International date Line,
I think we need to look harder at that, because we have a different
situation here in the twenty twenties than we've had pretty much in my lifetime.
Yeah, it's interesting that the experience of loading the ships onto those heavy lift
things was done under, if not totally, but under the guidance of an
offstring Captain Greg Gant. And Greg Gant uh is a is a reserve officer.
He's an jed oh. But he's the guy who supervised both the the
stam Will B. Roberts and the and the the ship that got hidden in
Yemen and getting him on the heavy lift ships. Now here's a guy who's
my age, maybe maybe a little younger, but not much. And he's
the guy who had that that internal knowledge. Now, is there another person
who has acquired heavy lift in the United States Navy Reserve or in the unactive
duty has acquired that same kind of death of ex answer, We're gonna have
to bring Greg out of retirement and put him to work again if we have
another one of these incidents. You know, I don't know the answer to
that, And it's an interesting it's an interesting dilemmaphores. I also question whether
sometimes what we look at is these ships now are so much more complex than
the ships in World War Two that if you get a major hit and let's
say on a on a DDG, you know, is it is it possible
to salvage it the way we used to salvage ships during World War Two?
Can you take it into some island and have a large floating drydock there and
say, okay, we can fix this right up. But because I'm not
sure that, you know, I'm questioning whether or not somebody has made the
decision these things are so complex and so tough we can't we can't do what
we used to do. We'd have to bring it back and and reassemble it
in some major shipyard in the US, or maybe if we're lucky of Korea
is around or or Japan is around at the time, we could take them
there. But I I really I'm interested in how much it costs when we
when we had those two d d gs, Uh, the McCain and the
what was the other one, the you know they got they got they hit
Gerald merchant ships or what yeah, Fitzgerald. You know, I don't know
how much it costs to restore those things. But it was not one of
those things where it was a you know, we can rush this thing back
to the yard and have it back out and the uh guns of blazing in
six weeks because we could do the work uh you know off bomb in a
in a or in the ulify or the truck of toll or something. I
mean, it's it's just, uh, I just think it's thinks. I'm
wondering if somebody has has map, has gained that out and said, you
know, yeah, we're just you know, these things are are very very
important. We've done everything we can to protect them as well as we can,
but once they're hit, they're pretty much toasts out of combat for that
months. It's not that would be a great a great topic for a per
congressional hearing. I mean, engineering duty officers aren't known for their theatrical presence,
but that would be a really good congressional oversight exercise is to get that
out in the open to discuss it, because that's really interesting. We do
have a data point from the Fitzgerald, the McCain, and the Coal about
our early burks that were robustly built, and you might have a good point
about you know a lot of those. If your ship's designed to take multiple
eight inch armor piercing shelves, they're probably pretty sturdy to repair, whereas our
modern warships, even the early burks are historical standards of last one hundred and
twenty five years, are pretty thin skinned. Maybe there is a warping that
makes it much more difficult to repair. Also, all the electrical issues when
it's one thing when your electrical system is all copper wire, but our modern
electrical systems and the integrated computers, when those things get fried. Yeah,
you're that's a real interesting exercise. It's not like you can just de water
a space, do a little bit of painting and spot welding and turn on
the light and you're up and running again. It doesn't work the same way,
but that would be a very very interesting exercise. Of course, the
follow up question there, it's okay, so what is our favorite triggering topic
here? What is our shipyard repair capacity to be able to address that?
Whether you forget forward, because we don't have the equipment to do forward,
but if we're fighting west of the International Dateline, then we got to haul
those things back to at least Hawaii or the West coast. You're right,
it would be wonderful if we could have access to South Korea or Japanese yards,
but they're so close to the game. I hope that we're planning that
because of either enemy action are political action, that we will not have access
to those and I don't think there's much capacity in Australia to cover that,
which because it's a relatively small nation of twenty two million souls, I think
it is with not that huge of a of a shipyard repair capacity. Yeah,
I'm also looking at I mean, we just the Navy just came out
with this or somebody revealed this chart of how where our construction stuff stands.
A lot of it is not the Navy's fault, you know, Well,
some of it is a lot of his Congress's fault because of this stupid continuing
resolution stuff that goes on, and the inability apparently to say, okay,
we're going to do a five year program of building Constellation class frigates and here's
the money to do that, and we're not going to interrupt that for anything.
So but you get a ship like the Constellation. Here we are buying
this concept of the of the the ready design. All we had to do
was put US flag on it, and we're going to have great little ships.
And then what is it now? Eighty five percent of it or eighty
percent of those ships now is his new navy design because and this is where
I committed the question again about durability, because of the Navy, US Navy's
higher standard of components that would ensure its survivability. And you know, does
that mean again that the Italians and the French and the other folks involved in
those things are just saying, well, yeah, they're they're mostly expendable,
but you know, we want them to go do X and X and X,
and if we lose them then we're you know, we're not happy with
it, but we can't do anything about that. Here's here's where I have
to find my find my center and do a little bit of meditation to control
my rage. That you're right, they have completely flipped. It was originally
supposed to be eighty five percent commonality. Now it's fifteen percent commonality. They
complete you know, these selected the frem and I I mean one one reader
got a little bit snippy in my comments, thinking I worked, I work
think Cary or something. Again, I do not work for government. I
do not work in the military industrial complex at all, full stop. Anyway.
It was what I liked about the fram program and something that I started
writing about literally in twenty ten, was we need a smaller combatant. LCS
is not going to do it. We don't have time to do a new
build. So what we needed to do was to contract build a successful existing
class that for and I think back then I said, a run of twenty
four to thirty six ships while we design our own ship to get it in
the water, because that's the requirement. Everything is a compromise, everything is
a trade off, and we already lost a generation with LCS and no reason
to rehack that. However entertaining it might be to drag it out of the
gip box and beat it a bit, but we don't have time to fiddle
around forgetting what is the supported and the supporting operation here. We need to
get ships in the water if we need to convert the firm class to what
the US Navy says or requirements. If I was ever, I would have
said, that's a great thing to do for flight two. But we don't
have that luxury right now. We've got to get holes in the water.
So eighty five percent is the floor, not the ceiling. Put flight one
in the water, then you can do your adjustments for flight two. But
we didn't do that for reasons that are best explained by other people who are
paid a lot more money than I am. I think it's absolutely disgraceful,
but I found really interesting because it ties into some macro issues about some institutional
trouble with the truth is I think it was back in January the Navy reported
that the Constellation would be a year late. Sixty days later they go,
eh, no, let's see, I'm actually looking at the chart. Constellation
lead class approximately thirty six months, three years for you and me. So
all of a sudden it solid to the right twenty four months because of something
that happened the last sixty days. That is the story for those in the
military press who want to dig into it. Why who and why did we
go from twelve months to thirty six months inside of sixty days. That's just
I don't know, it's disgraat I'm disgraceful is probably a kind word. Yeah,
I think we're still you know, we've talked about so many things that
involve shipbuilding that you know, we don't have. We don't have the shipyards,
we don't have the skill technicians. I'm really happy to see during these
NCAA basketball games that you know, there's Bills submarine group wherever they are is
out it's probably a submarine companies and manufacturing outfits. But you know they're out
there looking for welders. They're out there saying this is the career, this
is these are good jobs and your help in the country. Uh. I
mean, I don't, I don't and I just don't understand Congress, I
mean I don't understand the cancelation. I don't know. I guess you know,
the the group that McGrath was supposed to be on, we talked about
that. You know, why do they negate that who's whose fingers on the
on the scale, who's you know, who's who's making things happen, making
these things happen the way they do. And then then not to have the
nerve after you cancel, I mean, after you send out this sheet saying
here's the new delay. Summary's delayed, Frigate's delayed, and so on.
Then there's a big expo put on by the Navy League, I guess,
and they were supposed to discuss ship building, and two days before that was
supposed to happen, the Navy says, no, we're not going to do
that for whoever. I mean, they're not going to participate. Well,
you know that doesn't look good if he's going to do if you're gonna do
anything, stand up, go we we screwed up. Or you know,
here's our problem. Our problem is with with Congress. And it's it's their
fault, you know, I mean, it's it's uh a huge lost opportunity.
Oh yeah. And and and the other thing is that you know,
when we're we're on accent, we're going naval na naval lists, you know,
worships la dah la la, uh, the army guys and the air
Force guys are all all over us saying, oh no, you know,
you guys have really screwed the pooch with your programs. I'm looking at the
Army Crusader programs, all those other lost causes, going yeah, yeah,
tell me about it. Why are you guys still getting the third of the
money. I mean, we should be getting more money for for the one
ass that everybody needs to have. And you know, but we're locked into
this uh jointness and and uh stuff that you know, the way we do
things, it makes no sense. Somebody is gonna have to go in there
and clean how And one of the things that I thought of, speaking of
cleaning house, is when you look at rickover rickover ran the Navy's nuclear power
program and pretty much nuclear power program for the country in many ways. So
how long was he in that office? He was in that office forever.
If you look at the Russian admirals who got their first the fleet first build
up, or he was in office. Yeah, whirscuff was there forever.
Why don't we have a tzar of shipbuilding who was there forever? Let him
build a damn empire. But if he's good at his job, you know
we would if he was in private technology, had some guy who knew what
he was doing, he wouldn't. You wouldn't run him out after two or
three years, say oh, now it's your chance to become you know,
Southcomb or something. Where where are our where's our TZAR for this? We
should the Navy should have a TSAR for shipbuilding. And here's there for a
long time. And here's why that is so important accountability. And hello everybody,
Sorry about that. We had a little problem with our blog talk radio
server. Not here something over a blog talk radio. So we chatted for
a couple of minutes, and we're kind of picking this up just a few
minutes later. So I'm not sure where we actually finished our before the server
died, or if I'll even be able to recover the first forty five minutes
of the show, but we think we have an idea when the server died,
so I guess because I was prattling away and so Mark caught it.
But we kind of covered that part of the grid. And one thing that's
interesting about the delay grid that has manifested itself in another way is the submarine
program delay and the last few years, one of the top issues related to
the American submarine industry. Besides, same thing with the surface industry is finding
enough properly trained craftsmen to build them. Has been AUCUST treaty, which when
you back away from you know, we need to have so many new nuclear
submarines commissioned each year of the United States Navy. When you look at the
broader strategic implications and just playing good allyship with our British and Australian friends,
I've always been concerned that some way we can screw this up. And there
have been a lot of people who are very focused on just the US Navy
numbers on a spreadsheet that are giving the Australians and those that are enthusiastic about
the AUCUST program concern that we're not going to be able to follow through.
And besides keeping our words and our obligations and what it can do to our
allied relationships, I remain of the opinion that should we run into some problems
that in a broader context, looking at the broader picture, that it would
be better for the United States and its position in the world if to meet
our obligations under Aucus, if that means that we have to take a submarine
coming off the line and instead of being USS something, it's HMAS something else.
Then that's what we need to do. It's going to be a long
time to fix the problems that we have with our SSBN recapitalization and the new
builds and the new SSN, all these things coming on. But our relationship
with Australia and our British allies, I think is a lot more important than
one or two ssn's line under the American flag. That's my initial blush at
it as we try to figure out how we're actually going to get these things
built. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. We have now some
Australian some ringers who have gone through the nuclear power program, and there's no
reason we can't and since it's in hockest thing, there's no reason we can't
have like some kind of combined crew. I mean, we've got Brits,
we've got Australians. The Brits are certainly familiar with operations of nuclear power and
you know, if they wanted, and they used to do this, you
know, the Royal Navy would take members of the Australian force and put them
on their Royal Navy ships and put the command Royal Navy ships for that matter,
and they would go operate together. Now, you know things, the
world's a little different than it was back in the World War Two, but
there's no reason we can't have combined crews for a while. Let them get
the experience while we're sorting through the funding issues and the manpower issues we need
to develop our shipyard is the way they should be developed. But yeah,
I think it's I think it's a good idea, and I don't think it's
not. It's not a net loss in submarines for US. It is.
It is just trading, you know, it's just moving a submarine to a
to a different locale with a different command structure. But it is it is
still an Allied asset and that is not a net loss to US or to
our alliance. In the last twenty four hours has been a bunch of news
articles out as well that inside Aucus that there's talks to expanding Aucust with Japan
as a likely candidate. You know me, I'm I'm a huge fan of
all things Japanese, and not just their cute cartoons, their military. But
why don't we concentrate on getting the Australian thing online. First, I don't
know the Japanese are really interested in nuclear powered submarines. They build some of
the world's best conventional submarines. I'd rather have them continue to do that real
well, and we can build our relationship with the Japanese more if need be.
I think the I think they were part of it. But you know,
there are relationships that can build a lot now and in the near future.
For instance, I believe it's not just the US the Philippines in Australia,
but is Japan involved in those exercises off of the Philippines. I don't
know if you've read something about that recently, but that's also a good thing
to see. The more multilateral exercises that we can do, especially with people
like the Phillopines that need some robust friends in their in their territorial waters is
good. Yeah, that's uh. I think Japan is involved in that.
And it's you know, it's a sign that that the Chinese bluggery is not
going to work. These you know, people are going to resist this.
You know, we this is the way it is. We say. It
is mentality that the Chinese have now, you know, and usually a bully
is is deeply insecure, you know, if you go to the school yard
wisdom. But I think it's the it's the nature of their omnipotent government that
they assume everybody's just going to fall in love because they say they're they're going
to and by golly, we have pictures of you doing bad things. So
you know, I don't I don't really care about all that. I just
would like us to be a good ally. I think the I think you're
right about the Japanese submarines. I'm not sure why they need an extended capability.
You know, they don't have the Pacific Ocean to cross, or the
distance between Australia and and off the coast of China. You know, these
are these are issues for of time and distance. I don't think Japanese faces
that Japan faces that. But yeah, they've got some terrific subs, and
I would suggest that if they want to play with with the ocice idea,
that you know, they may want to take a couple of their conventional subs
and let the Australians play with those two. Yeah, I just uh,
just checked the AP and AP report a couple of days ago. Japan has
included so that's that's really good to see. It's something that you know,
a couple of decades ago, or even less than that, a decade ago,
that you you really wouldn't see the Japanese doing that, especially with some
of the nations uh that they had a spot of bother with at the same
time as we did. But again, that's that's fading out of living memory
for a lot of people. And I think the more that Japan can be
seen as a defense partner with the Philippines, Taiwan and even Vietnam, I
think that's better for for everybody. It's better for the for the Japanese that
we can we can get past the late unpleasantness and address the challenges that we're
seeing here uh in the approaching the center of the of the twenty first century.
Leave the center of the twentieth century to the history books. Yeah,
you know, we all hope that's the case, but you know, people
have we learned from the Balkans and the Middle East. People have long memories.
And you know there Mike and and and thirteen eighty seven, you're you're
great great great great great uncle Fred and insulted my great great great great great
uncle, uh, uncle George and we're never going to forget that insult.
So uh it is. You know, somebody was talking about the tribal nature
of the Middle East. You know that that we we tend to think that
that if you're Assyria and you're Assyrian, but you know that is definitely not
the case. And if you're an Iraqi, you're in Iraqi. But Iraq
is made up of a jumble of tribes and and they're there. It's a
mess as a result. I mean, it's one of the nice things that
used to happen in this country before we decided we would have all these groups
that everybody should be proud of being whatever. And now I have problem with
you know, if you're Irish or Botswanian and you want to you want to
claim that that's great, but somebody, as somebody notes, you know first,
you're being American first, and that's the way we used to to think
about it, so it didn't matter if you were. We had a lot
of prejudices going into World War Two, and a lot of them got resolved
because people began to work together. So if you were an Italian or Irish
or whatever, at least that was the time of some of the Great melting
Pot really was World War Two, and we need to keep that in mind.
But we're dealing with some of these other countries. Their memories go way
back. Yeah, you're right, we could learn We can learn a lot
of lessons here with our little experiment we've got running that those nations and cultures
who are constantly picking at wounds that they never heal, and it just creates
creates more violence and things. When you have well meaning people who are willing
to go forward, you know, not the past, but not let the
past the past warp the present, you know, things, things can move
pretty fast. Like one of the big frustrations over on the on the NATO
side of the house, Well, first of all, nothing, nothing will
get your more than an angry bear. But the Norwegians have perpetually because they're
kind of kind of spoiled with all of their hydrocardiom wealth. But they had
their military is very good, but very small. They had always since the
end of the Cold War, spent well below two percent. But even the
Norwegians announced that they're going to by the end of this year bump it up
hard to two percent, and they're going to be at two point seven percent
of GDP by twenty thirty. That float folds in with the Polish announcement over
the course of last year, which again the Bear has got their attention.
They want to have NATO talk about, well, the two percent should no
longer be the floor. I think I think they're trending towards four percent and
they're saying maybe three percent needs to be where it is. So things when
situations change and you have the right leaders and people who are making the right
arguments with their with their elected representatives, you can see some some turning there,
and that's been refreshing to see on the NATO side of the House that
things that two or three years ago people say, Oh, you'll never get
Norway to be at two percent. That's ridiculous. They're just not going to
do it two point seven percent. Nah, they'd never do that. Well,
things change and people respond to that. Change Norway if they will not
If they will they maintain the same quality, Uh, that will be an
oppressive bit of kit that they'll be able to purchase. Even though they are
a small nation of I think somewhere between five and five and a half million
souls, they're they're like in a lot of the Scandinavian countries. Though they
have a lot of quality with the kit that they buy. It's not just
not just a number of situation with them. So that was nice to see.
Yeah, I was I always interested in looking at one of the other
Scandavian countries. Denmark seems to have had a tough go here the last couple
of weeks and ended up firing their defense chief. They've got a destroyer that
radar doesn't seem to work the way it should, so they sent it back
to out of the Red Sea to go home. And then they decided that
while they were testing a harpoon they would go ahead and light off the booster
and close down airspace and see space around Denmark for a while. It's funny,
they're not funny, but the iv R I can't pronounce the last second
part of the name Hergersfurt to her to her to, I don't know some
Scandinavian vowel. They're always twist my tongue up. But that's a good example.
That's not a new ship, that's not a new system, and it's
funny. One of the radar is actually German, and the German contractor came
out with very thoughts was not the problem without radar. Evidently it has to
do at the interface. But I thought this was actually a good example because
nobody got killed. But one thing that navies do in peacetime, and the
US Navy's guilty of this too, So you know, I know, I'm
in a glasshouse throwing rocks. Though we're better than we were before World War
Two, you can't skimp on range day. You have to expend the weapons
that you're going to ask your sailors to take to war at the range against
realistic targets and a realistic number. You can't go through the magazine and cherry
pick which weapons going to be fired and which isn't and then pamper that thing
there is on this net. I won't discuss what weapon system it is or
which service it is, but there's one weapon system in one service that is
notorious for saying we had a great you know, great test here. Yeah,
that was not a war shot you used, and everybody knows it's not
a war shot you used, so your data set is worthless. You've got
to do that, because I think the problems they had on the IVR can't
pronounce the second word is it was a software issue, but they also had
a hardware issue where they're NATO's favorite seventy six millimeters the auto Malera. Their
fuses were old but were given the thumbs up, and a high percentage of
them exploded right when it came out of the end of the cannon, which
is something that I'm sure wakes you up on the bridge. That's why they
were wearing their flashcar. I guess they were still able to engage with the
drones and take them out, but they were very and again it goes back
I gain as we get near the end of the show. I guess this
is a great way to close the circle. Is what did the Danes show
us? I know it was originally a leak of an email from the skipper
of the ship, who was rightfully raging against the fact that he, his
sailors, and his ship were in harm's way and they were given improper censors
to fight in the real world, and they were given outdated fuses in their
gun to go to war with and the Prime Minister didn't take too kindly to
not being properly informed of these issues, so they fired very high ranking people
over an incident that didn't even cost any lives. It didn't cost loss of
the ship. It costs a little bit of losing to face, but there
was immediate and public accountability a senior personnel, you know the old hang one
person to beate a thousand situations. So thumbs down to whoever in Denmark is
responsible for Range Day, but thumbs up to the Danish government and their swift
and public accountability of a personnel to set an example. I think that's something
that we could all learn from. Yeah, and as long as we're going
to give out a positive things, let's talk about the CEO of the of
the US S. Eisenhower, who has his cookie sailor sailor cookie moments,
And I think it's just brilliant. He gets these you know all it's all
over X and he gets young people who are doing a good job and gets
them up on the bridge and the families get to see them get a cookie,
and and it's a reward, and it's you know, it's it's it's
putting a people we are doing good work in the spotlight. And it is
really easy in the service. Sadly to eighty percent of your people are done
a good job. But you tend to spend twenty percent of your time on
that on that or one hundred and eighty percent of your time in the twenty
percent. That is not working right. And it's nice to see a CEO
take the time to pay attention to the good people. And Chauda has done
what you and I have talked about have been frustrated with for a long time,
is our navy has a great story. Our sailors are doing incredible things,
but I don't know what our hundreds of pos are doing out there.
But he has managed with his and he does more and just cookie pictures.
He highlights his sailors. He has really opened a lot of eyes to a
great story that is the day to day operations and the things that our navy
does. If we can just get out there and find a way to tell
that story, I think what has been really fun. I think a perfect
example one of the nuclear machinist mates. I think she couldn't be like twenty
two, twenty three years old. She was up there getting her cookie is
you know originally people who know we're kind of teaser. It's like that's enough
daylight for her and get her back down there. But it's also a great
way to You would see that in the response to that in other posts where
if you're a young man or a woman who wants to get some responsibility,
especially if you're really really smart, there are things and opportunities in the Navy
where you will be doing things at age nineteen, twenty, twenty one,
twenty two that none of your peers are anywhere are going to be close to
doing it. Doesn't mean you'd have to make it a career, but you
know, a two year, three year, four year enlistment if you're not
ready to go to college or college is for you, but you would like
to either serve your nation or you just want to go out and do something
there. He has managed to highlight that and some of the individuals at the
different jobs they have. He also had a great picture of aviation Bosn's mate
working on the catapults having a great time, none of whom look to be
older than twenty five. That's the Navy that you and I have talked about,
and you and I both know that never really gets highlighted well. And
if it is highlighted, it's overpackaged, it's overproduced, as opposed to which
career was it. It was over a decade ago where they had a documentary
where they just let the reporters loose on a carrier and the results were outstanding
as you would expect them to be with the quality of the sailors most of
us know. So, yeah, you're right he should be pointed out as
an example for others. Is there some danger in doing that? Yeah,
yeah, yeah, maybe possibly, but it's worth it. He has done
more I think, at least in that part of the information space then anything
that's come out of the po open communication paths that I can think of.
And what's really important about that The secondary impact is you can say what you
want to about social media or x, but the media gets a lot of
their ideas from that. You look at the major media sources who they follow,
what they see, and how they interact. So he is getting the
view from the carrier deck into the heads of a lot of people who that
will be in the back of their head is write about our navy and they
try to understand our navy as other stories come up. That's that good secondary
impact. So I'm glad. I'm glad you brought up that. That's one
of the nicer examples of the last a few months, even though I think
his ship got extended on deployment. Yeah that happens. Yeah, well that's
staking lobster night. Everybody got a full billy. I got the news.
Yeah, now stand by for the good news. Yeah. I think it's
uh yeah, we tend to forget. I mean when I was on visiting
carriers on you know, I never served in one, but I got to
be on a couple of them, you know, And you're watching the flight
deck work. It's a ballet. It's beautiful, and the people aren't,
as you say, eighteen ninety year old kids are dragging chains around. They're
you know, you know, parking airplane so close together you think, you
know, a quarter inch one way or the other. We're going to have
a big bill coming up. But they just do a mag of some job.
And I'm glad to see. And they're not the only ones. I
mean, all the all the snipes on the on the d d g s,
all the kids working on the on the PCs, if we still have
any of those, uh, you know, and the amphib guys. You
know, there are skill sets there that we most people don't even know about.
And and I'll even throw in some bonus words for the the MSc crews
who are doing the oilers and the and the replenishment ships. You know,
that is a one of the more challenging aspects of driving a ship is taking
a very large ship pulling within a couple of hundred feet of another one,
and and staying side by side doing twelve or fourteen knots uh while transferring ammunition,
fuel and and uh, you know, food and other items across that
that space between the ships and the in the helopilots, many of whom are
us N and some of whom are civilian who are doing on the vert reps.
I mean that is that is a tremendously challenge if some of the hardest
flying you can probably do in a in a helicopter, you know, And
it looks simple if you're if you're just watching it because it's a ballet and
it's it's it's fascinating to watch. But it is a tremendously difficult job.
And we do it so well we don't even think about it. There are
a couple of defense reporters who might think I don't like them if I if
I propose this to them that I would love for them to be on one
of those vert rep helicopters to see that evolution take place and to have their
cameraman with them, just to see that from on board the helo. It's
one thing to see it from the deck of a ship. It's another thing
to actually be in the aircraft as it's doing it. Yeah, that would
be a good show. I mean, we've come up a whole executive summary
we need to get and again, is there danger here? Sure, there's
danger here, but there's a lot more to be gained if you have confidence
in your sailor and your navy is We need to get more people underway in
more locations and to encourage and reward leaders like child to to get out in
the public information space and to help people see what we do. It's a
lot more valuable than any prepackaged advertisement that people may see on the TV or
the inner webs or something like that. But hey, we are extra fifteen
minutes. I think has gone twenty twenty five minutes. So all right,
I'm sure your wife will be pounding on the door any minute. So yes,
the back of my head is to the door, so I'm kind of
vulnerable here thrown objects. But hey, I'm apologies to everybody for the break
that we had. But sometimes on our software provider, their server will crash.
But we have like all good folks, we have a primary backup and
a ready spare, so our our backup was ready to go. And we'll
catch you next week. And we should have a guest next week yea.
And as always, everybody, thank you very much for joining us, and
we hope you have a great Navy day. Cheers, my lonely want to
marry me and Lisa friend codily for you being to blame me said folding your
theme. It's a long way to it's a long way. It's a long
way to enemy got in fair well listen, well, it's a long long
way to get away. But my life, my na