Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander and the Eagle One from Eagle
Speak at Sea or shore your home for a discussion of national security issues in
all things maritime. And good day everybody, and I'm glad you've taken time
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a subscription. That way you won't missed up like we've got today. And
you know here we are at the beginning of August, and we saw a
back in mid July. For those that were paid attention, a rather normal
letter came from the White House activating three thousand reservists that the timing was a
little rough. So it got some unusual interest in that regard, and that
made me think that it was time to come on and bring on this mid
Rats designated reservists to come on and chat. It's been about a year and
so you know, coming back for an additional visit. Today, we're going
to talk about the US Naval Reserve, what it's done in Ukraine, what
a lot of the reserves are doing in Europe and other places even in a
time of relative non deployment peace that we have going on right now, and
in a larger sense, what is going on in Europe based upon the experience
that our returning guests, Chris Rawleigh may have. Chris Rawleigh is now Captain
United States maybe Reserve retired, so we're gonna chat about that at the beginning
of the show. And now that he's through of his busy career in the
Naval Reserve, he'll have more time to invest in Harvest returns a platform for
bringing farmers and ranchers together with investors for he is the founder and CEO.
Chris welcome back to Midrights. So it's great and even on its great to
be back again. I think this is show number five. It's actually two
years ago that I was on, and I think show four you told me
that if I because I just recently re listened to it, you told me
that if I show on five times, I get a blue blazer. I
think that's what's depending. So I'll I don't know if I need another blazer,
but next time I'm in your aoar, maybe I can come collect a
point or something. Beer is always legal. Tenderer kick Ken dolls perfectly.
You don't have to dye your hair blonde or anything. But hey, now
that you're retired from the reserves, I do have to ask you a question.
Please tell me that we don't have any type of uh ponytail, working
handlebar, mustaches, mullet, a Viking esque beard that's growing. Do you
still have that that civilized, manly look about you? Or now that you
don't have to worry about being activated anytime soon, have you have you let
your hair go? I have not changed grooming standards, probably one iota south.
So I guess that's the boring answer, but that's I don't foresee that
changing anytime soon. Well, well, that's that's good because that way we
have to worry about you have a crisis of confidence, and you know,
because some people have a little bit of transition when they leave active duty.
But I guess you had a low boil because you were in the Naval reserves
for a long time and you did a lot there. Now there are you
know, we've got some listeners who are an active duty right now who don't
want to netmake the Navy a career, so they'll do their active duty commitment
and then they walk out the door and they might be interested in associating with
the reserves. And here you are, just like my co host, retired
from the Naval Reserve as a captain, just as a you know, a
quick type of outline. If you're going to do an elevator conversation with the
junior officer who was looking about affiliating with reserves, what are some of the
things that Lieutenant Raleigh would have seen in the progression and before you retired as
a captain. It's well, first of all, I would it's say it's
a good career to a good second career. I still recommend it. Um.
I enjoyed the good and the bad, and the ugly and the wonderful
about you know, I guess it was about twenty three years that's been as
a reservist, and you know, a big chunk of that was on and
on, on and off active duty after doing seven years. Uh, you
know that initial training and c tour and a short tour. But you know
the reasons that I would recommend it, they're several. So, first off,
it continues. You continue your career um that you started. You put
a lot of energy and efforts into as a as an active duty guy,
especially if you're yourl and you went through those training pipelines to get your initial
qualification as in you know, Aviator, Slow, sub person, feel Intel,
whatever whatever you did, and you can continue to do that on a
part time basis. And the nice thing is you've got a lot more career
flexibility. The career moves with you as you move verse the you having to
move to accommodate the career. For the most part, you do the lift
gets heavier as you get more senior, and you're going to spend more time
and energy. But you know, some people decide they want to peek out
as a as a first thought petty user an O four and that's awesome.
And some people decide they, you know, if they want to put in
the long haul to get to six and beyond, and that's fine too.
So there's still great travel opportunities, camaraderie opportunities. The benefits are good.
You get that reserve retirement. It doesn't kick in as soon as an active
duty, but medical insurance, all those sorts of things. And it's also
a good backstop. And myself and numerous other folks I know have used the
reserve as a backstop when they were transitioning civilian jobs, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.
And you know, people we can talk about when we when we start
talking about the mobilization piece, but I think that's a fear of a lot
of people, and it's when you look at the actual numbers, it's there
were some periods, and especially if you're in some specialties, you know,
the mid two thousands or early two thousands, where there was a lot of
reserve heavy lifting. But that for the most part, that's that's done.
But you know, that's your job. If you sign up for it,
you've got to be prepared to go down range and do what your country calls.
Mark you there, Yes, but my on off button didn't punch itself.
M forty five thousand plus active cell res selective reservists and about forty eight
thousand, almost forty nine thousand IRR. And one of the questions is when
when we look at the message it came out from the Pentagon recently, was
it they were looking at at activating IRRP and and I started looking at the
goal. Who are they talking about? The biggest group of IRR people that
I know of in the Naval Reserve are the strategic Sea lift officers got about
twenty five hundred plus of those. Do you have any idea when that when
they're when the militarious or the DoD is looking at these IRR folks, I
mean, who are they looking for? What? What do you what?
Did you read the tea leaves? Now, I you know, I'm not
I don't know who's on that list or what that list entailed, but you
can you can make some catches. Three. First of all, it's an
authorization, it's not an actual mobilization, right, So it's we can mobilize
up to three hundred or up to three thousand reservists and four hundred and fifty
UH people in the ir That's that's a joint requirement. That's not a Navy
requirement. Um, I'm guessing it's not a heavy lift on the Navy.
There there may be some onesies and two zi's out there. I don't see,
you know, unless something gets really bad, God forbid, with the
Russian situation, I don't see a wholesale mobilization. You know. You can
look at that probably the same status of the Navy reserve that I'm looking at
Mark, and there's ninety two reservists mobilized in yucom as a last month,
and there's probably quite a few that are on ads W and ADT and the
other various flavors of orders. But for the most part, the mobilization piece
is not significant for that change. Maybe, but there's always Europe, at
least the twenty something years that I was in was never a heavy lift on
reserves until about February of last year. January February last year, and I
was kind of saw the beginning of that as I was working my way out
last year yeah, things have quieted down a bit, and I kind of
nodded in my head, I think knowledge, and we talked about a good
backstop when we still we're waiting to confirm whether the surge worked in Iraq in
late two thousand and seven, early two thousand and eight, and we were
starting to uplift of forces in Afghanistan in two thousand and eight, there were
a lot of reservist and of course I was on active duty at the time
and I was fairly isolated from the domestic economy. But a lot of the
folks that I was in Kabul with an O eight and oh nine, which
is a horrible time stateside for the economy. You know, one of the
guys, he had been there a year and he just re uped to do
another one. And I asked him. I hadn't worked with him. I
just saw him occasionally over cigars, and he said, yeah, well,
my company went bankrupt and my wife divorced me, and I don't want to
go home, so I want to go ahead and stay here for another year.
So yeah, it was an interesting to see how many, regardless of
where you go, you saw a lot of reservist naval reservists filling jobs that
maybe you wouldn't expect for a naval reservists to do. And that's where when
things get a little busy, there are some interesting opportunities that open up,
not just in Europe or other garden spots, you know. I found it
interesting that that number twenty nine activated reservists. Even though we have a huge
military and our allies aggregate do as well, even at a time of relative
peace, there are some specialties people have in the reserves that you'll you'll get
a call and an opportunity to go back on active duty for a bit.
Yeah, there's always opportunities, and it's very unique. Like I said,
there's that flexibility factor, and you will find maybe reservists doing things you will
in places you wouldn't even imagine, and you know, been a part of
those. I was in Afghanistan in eight to nine with the Soft Task Force,
and then again and in someplace different with a Soft Task Force and twenty
twenty ten and then in East Africa as a deputy commander for the soft Ford
uh soft pass worse. So I got kind of found myself in that little
world for about a decade post nine eleven and even today you find some people,
um, you know, from junior people all all the way to our
flags that are that are in doing very interesting roles. That can kind of
name some of those as well. If you're a reservist and you're think things
keep changing from when when I was in the reserves. But uh, are
there units specifically for YUCOM that that report to nav your or somebody. How
are these things structure these days? Yeah? I mean we talk about the
European kind of the Navy reserve footprint in the European theater um and yeah,
I start up at the top at Yukon, there's a there's a Yukom unit.
Some of those folks back last early last year got to spun up and
went over and stood things like battle watch captains. I know I had at
least one friend who was over there um in Yucam and Stootguards standing battle Watch
captain. My last job was the Reserve Chief of Staff or Naval Forces Europe
and Africa and sixth Fleet. And in that job we have or in that
unit or it's it's actually a series of units. It's around a dozen units,
give or take. There's about five hundred plus reservists they're ranging from the
vice commander who's as a reserve one star down to petty officers in um.
During the kind of spin up last January February for the Russian incursion, large
scale incursion into into eastern Ukraine Krane, we spent up quite a few reservists.
And you know you've ever been around the staff, and I know you
guys have, and plenty of your listeners have. You know that there's sort
of a steady state battle Hythm, and then there's a third battle Withythm.
And one of the things that these reservists that are in these numbered fleet units
as we call them. Every there's a reserve unit or reserve enterprise assigned to
second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh fleet, And
in sixth Fleet when that happened, we spun up people that were doing a
whole wide variety of jobs. Battle Watch Captain is one of those that you
can never have enough of trained folks. When a crisis happens on a big
staff, you stand up numerous operational planning teams and crisis teams and all those
sorts of things. So we had staff officers on the five in the in
five we stood up a reserve only unique capability in kags enable control of shipping
and guidance. That's one that was really unique. Um, when I was
out there, I ended up going out. You always spent up a bunch
of liaison officers. So I went out, got got tired of being in
Naples, and went out to Northwood, England or UK, where I was
the liaison to NATO Mariton Command, which which was very interesting. Um to
make sure that the Native forces were all online with what sixth Fleet was doing
on the spin up to the war, and and as that kicked off,
and then we have um, let's see we have you know, we have
guys that are in unique positions. So one of my contemporaries, UH,
Admiral Tom Wallas is now the commander of Native Submarine Command. Pretty pretty cool
job. This is an active duty job. He replaced Steve mac who was
out there when I was out there. And that's that's a heavy left job.
And UM, down to other units, we've got soccier, those guys
hanging out in Stuttgart with the soft guys. UM, there's some other smaller
units, logistics units and those sorts of things. But you name it Intel,
big, big job for Intel spin up both doing some support from the
rear, Intel production support from the rear in Georgia and also Forward in Naples.
And oh, one important capability that it's another pretty much all the capability
exist in a reserve is the navel and amphibious liaison elements for the nails as
they're called. And that that has been a reserve capability for quite some time.
So when um A JPAC a Joint Forces Er Component Command stands up,
the most sort of utilized of one of these is the one out now uded.
That's that was now uded. It's been there for a long time.
UM we send aviators that essentially create the air tasking order, the Navy piece
of the air tasking order and the coordinating with the deployed carrier strike groups and
all the Air Force guys. And that's a reserved mission UM and as I
said, it's been recently more formalized and set up into its own sort of
specially career path and reserved for naval aviators. And you know there's some other
pieces of that like like t LAMB and some other and Intel where you've got
other UM support requirements for those nails. But but that was a huge one.
So uh it really runs the gamut um. And of course, if
if we ever gotten any kind of um sort of grant ground fight or or
naval fight in uh the europe are we we'd have things like CBS and you
name it with deployed, just like we we deployed repeatedly to a sitcom over
the early part of the century speaking of unique capabilities. And I would be
rom this to a couple of friends of mine if I if I didn't bring
it up. But back when I was it's a little jo. The Naval
Reserve had an air wing lots of ex shop the nineteen nineties. Most of
those we've had rivering squadrons. I think the last one was in California that
decobbed in the late nineties. We decommissioned that capability, and one of the
last remaining ones Farly was decommissioned on the thirtieth of June of this year after
fifty three years, HFC eighty five, which really was even though resident in
the reserves, she had a sister squad until a two years ago, a
really unique capability and importing special operations. And as this process was going through
the last few years, I kept trying to find a reason we would want
to decommission that capability given what we've seen the last twenty five years, what's
still going on? I couldn't find up find a valid reason. The only
that kept coming up in me is do we have a problem like we see
in certain other communities. The VQ community is one of them. It's a
lack of advocacy. Not that the mission isn't important, it's just that there's
a lack of advocacy. Does a naval reserve have or could have better advocacy
for some of its units and some of the policies that learned over the last
twenty five years since nine to eleven, that really really changed the post Cold
War experience. That's a great question. Um. Yeah, as you said,
you know, even twenty years ago, our Naval Air Force Reserve Command
snapper as they call it, was much more robust. And yeah, we
lost some important capabilities the HSC folks HM fourteen and fifteen. We're largely reserved,
and so the airborne mind countermeasures decreased. I mean, what we still
have is is a lot of them lift the enter theater lift like the c
forties. Um, and I think we've still got some C one thirties running
around that probably need to be replaced. But um and then some of the
some of the CBW type assets as well as aggressor squadrons and instructors. So
all in all, the airside is really important is the search capability. I
think you know, at one point we could employ and we did deploy an
entire reserve centric air wing onto the an active carrier, but we haven't done
that and I don't think we can do that. Well, let's let's talk
a little bit about the the benefits of having people regularly assigned to it.
Like YUKM is it doesn't help. But if a reservist has been in that
in that unit for five years and he's joined a team that probably rotates out
every three years or two years, does that make a big difference to the
command you think? I think it does. I mean for the staff jobs.
You know, let's say, YUKM, you do have a lot of
institutional knowledge, you have a lot of qualified folks. And for example,
I said, the Battle Watch captain in Europe, in Africa and the six
fleet units, we had these partnership program units. That was in command job
I commanded the one in West Africa and we did I think I talked about
that previously on here, but we did a lot of partnering and we had
folks that have gone to these same exercises, so for instance, in Ukraine
it with Sea Breeze, but in West africa's Obanami Express for years and years
and years, and they had actually built relationships with some of the partner nation
folks that didn't exist on the active side, and so those those are really
valuable capabilities we've got a little bit less. There's always some friction on the
reserve career path on people wanting to homestead because they don't want to travel,
especially as they become senior officers, and that's perfectly understandable to UM people need
to move around and do upwardly mobile and it's more of the kind of active
duty mentality. So but we still have people that want to drill in the
same place they don't want to they don't want to travel to drill, and
because of that that it come they stay in these units for a long long
time and they do UM at that institutional knowledge. So I think that's a
that's actually an advantage, not a disadvantage. One of the only active duties
side of the house. One of the big points of conversation in the last
year has been the challenge and we prooding specifically new people, but also retention
and missing the numbers. Is that seeing an echo effect from your point of
view in at least the Naval Reserve. Yeah, I don't know. I
never saw the numbers, especially my last kind of job was more operational.
I didn't. I didn't always see them big, big Navy Reserve retention numbers.
So I couldn't speak to that. I can tell you anecdotes of Jo's
that didn't didn't want to stay in for various reasons. But that's you know,
that's that's after the senior officers to kind of make a culture where we
embrace the versatility that you need in a reserve career. And so I was
always pushing for those efforts where to keep our career paths versatile. And you
can be you can be a hardcore reservist or you can be a not as
hardcore reservist and kind of do the minimum, and they're both. We need
both types, we need all in every place in between. And there was
always, you know, what I saw was was friction between those types and
that's okay. Um, but we need people that want to do that,
just want to have that secondary career and continue serving. Not everybody's going to
continue up the ranks, and that's that's okay. Yeah. You mentioned the
as you as you go up in the reserves and pay grade, you tend
to suddenly need to uh. And I'm not sure many people understand this.
You don't get a billet in wherever you live. You may get a billet,
and you may live in Spokane, Washington, but you'll get a billet
in d c Or or San Francisco or someplace. Uh. Doctor, did
you did you have a lot of billet travel in order to keep a pay
billet in the reserves. I traveled because I got the jobs I want almost
every time, and most of the jobs were not always where I was living
I was. I had very few times where I was actually drilling and living
in the same place. Those are Those are great because you don't you don't
have to blow your Friday's traveling or come home late late Sunday night, But
a lot of folks do. And as you do get to be an oh
five, that becomes pretty much mandatory. We're unless you get really lucky,
or you live in a fleet concentration, or you're probably going to travel.
But there's there's some good things because recently, you know, they've got things
called idt are, which just means people get paid to travel. People in
key leadership positions and in certain especialties get paid to travel. That seems very
obvious if you're an outsider looking in, Well, don't you pay people to
travel for their job? Not? Not really, um so, especially some
of the senior officers, like you said, they're they're paying for their own
plane tickets and real cars and things like that. But as a gunior off
that doesn't hit you as much. Eye opener, has a lot of wonderful
self paid trips from where I lived to San Francisco into d C and Corpus
Christi. So it's it's it's carrying the naval reserves. It is. It
is a lot of free travel four at taxpayers that come out of a lot
of these reservest pockets. So that should be at least respected as a minimum.
I suppose you know. One thing that was an eye opener for me
living on the continent is how many ex pat Americans who live and work in
Europe. Germany, Italy, the UK, Norway, Spain are also affiliated
with the naval reserve. And our friend Blake Herzinger, he lives in Singapore
and he I don't know if he's still doing it, but he just went
over a bit ago to Hawaii to do his reserve duty. And that's another
opportunity that you talk about added value to the nation's defense. You have serving
reservists who have been living in you know, Germany or Italy or Croatia or
wherever for three or four years, living differently and thinking differently in the connections
you have is really valuable. And I was I was really surprised how many
naval reservists and I'm sure the Army and the Air Force were the same,
are xpats, Yeah for sure. In my last, you know, last
assignment, there was all those European reservists. For the most part, they
drill in Naples, and we had there was a guy that owned a distillery
in a gin distillery in Barcelona, and another person she worked, you know,
who worked for the State department in one of the empassies and all kinds
of interesting careers. Um. And you're right that that network brings a lot
to the Navy, and the Navy should should appreciate that that these not just
the skills these people bring, but their backgrounds and their their networks is important.
Mark you there, I have that button issue. Um, talk a
little bit about les talk about the Ukraine situation based on I mean last time
YOU'REND we talked about a little bit because it was kind of the start of
this uh mess. But what do you see now that it was going on
we ought to be talking about and what people ought to be thinking about.
Yeah, um, well, Ukraine is interesting and I did listen to that
episode which the last episode which took place I think it was July or August
of twenty one, so it was before the Russians attack just and obviously a
lot of change the conflict went kinetic. And from the naval perspective, that
is very interesting because we're seeing some things that in naval warfare that we've seen
many times in the past, like like minds, very effective use of minds,
and some other things like UAVs and these US fees that have been used
pretty effectively in the past couple of a couple of weeks that we haven't seen
before. And that's something we should keep our eye on, as in the
A V. I think I've been kind of studying that and looking at that,
and it might be writing a piece on it for someplace or another to
understand, you know, how is how is this warfare changing, especially in
the lictorals where we've got an underdog force fighting a much more significant force.
And it's been interesting to watch the Russians ever since the Moscow was sunk.
They haven't used their navy a lot other than to lop some missiles from the
seed, but they haven't devin done some of the typical navy missions. They
were sort of thwarted from the amphibious landing in Odessa, which is a very
good thing that that war would have changed had Ukraine not put those those minds
in very early on and had the foresight to do that and deter that amphibious
invasion, you know. And I don't have any insight whether the rest is
going to we're going to do that or not, but it was interesting.
And now we're seeing supply lines disrupted from some of these deep strikes with the
USDs, and I think the long arrangem missiles where we've got, you know,
the cursed bridge is a threat, which is a major line of support
for the operations in Crimea, and that has been threatened. And we saw
this oil tanker, which I guess is kind of equivalent to like one of
our mart tinkers struck last week. So that these weapons are making a very
interesting impression, and that to me, the most interesting thing is that it's
been very There's been a lot of iterations. So there's four or five different
iterations of these USBs that have occurred in the past year. On the UAV
side, the Ukrainians started out with these TB two drones that they acquired from
Turkey, which were kind of more conventional military and now they've gone hardcore into
these quad copters that they're building in little labs all over the battlefield and throwing
a throwing a grenade on them or an RPG round and doing a hell of
a lot of damage to Russian troops and trenches and armor and things like that.
So it's been fascinating to kind of watch this whole thing develop. I
think, you know, one thing and I'd encouraged people the videos are all
over the place, is when you go back to twenty fourteen, the Ukrainian
army was a different army and twenty fourteen was not that long ago. When
the Russians took in, took Crimea, took a large chunk of Luhansk and
the Donbass. They were kind of the scrubby step brother of a post Soviet
army and a lot of what they've been able to do. An existential threat
will focus the mind, but the mind in their thoughts and approaches changed a
lot from twenty fourteen to twenty twenty two. They weren't, you know,
a full you know, NATO's spec military, but they were definitely getting closer
to do that. And a lot of that was the training that the US,
the UK, Canada, I think France did some as well. All
the NATO nations helped out a little bit, but a lot of the US
training with them since twenty fourteen help change how they think about what they do
and help them be ready for whatever happened in twenty two and two. We'll
see how this works out. And a for reserves in other services as well.
Before the invasion, what were some of the areas that our reserves were
over in Ukraine helping them develop? Yeah, a lot of it was so
the primary actually as we did with Sea Breeze, and that went on,
I think for I want to think nineteen twenty iterations until twenty twenty two.
They didn't have it obviously last year and then they restarted it twenty twenty three
and that was actually took place in Scotland this year with UM some of the
mind countermeasure ships that are being transferred to Ukraine from the United Kingdom and also
assets from standing Naval Mind counter Measure Group one, which are kind of the
elite piece of mind countermeasures if you look at it, they're they're very solid
force full of ships mind counter measure vessels and in units from all over the
NATO forces. So on the reserve side, a lot of it was facilitating
these exercises. So in those during those exercises, you had all kinds of
different skills that were built up. There was a lot of C two so
when I was there, I was doing a lot of some of the mentoring
on the C two side and what we would call the Maritime Operations Center or
the command center where a lot of those tape those operations are are C two
from and in Ukraine specifically, and there was there was just a bunch of
pieces. So most people don't realize this. Almost every single maritime exercise out
there there, there's reservists are out there. Um So, whether you're talking
about Korea Rimpack, any of the specific exercises, any Europe exercises and sitcom
extras, all those same staffs I talked about, those number of fleet staffs
are out there running those exercises, doing exercise control group, helping stand watches,
doing logistics. Whether it's in Africa we used to deliver and same thing
in Ukraine they deliver a lot of fuel to help out both ground and naval
forces and air forces where a lot of US contractive fuel. You got to
keep accountability for it. Uh, these exercises wouldn't go off without that fuel.
So it's one of those some of those unsung heroes are out there standing
in line, um, you know, junior federalsters watching fuel transferred and filling
out the accountability paperwork to make sure that US tax payers money is being well
spent and not not ending up in in Uh. Some senior officers car for
an officer's car, things like that, and that's that's actually stories I've heard
and that's happened. Um in certain countries. So it's it's uh, you
know, it runs the gamut these exercises. On the soft side, they
do a lot of training, um, you know, basic skills and building
capacity with the partner nations soft. So it's a little of everything. Out
of the out of the time you spent doing this, uh this stuffer you
come and and any other billas. What what great lessons do you would you
like to pass on to the next generation of reservis. Yeah, well,
first thing is go out there and do it. Um, you're gonna you're
gonna have some really interesting experiences and go to some places that you wouldn't otherwise
be able to visit, uh as a civilian even And so I recommend it
from just the adventure standpoint. It really is not just a job. There's
some adventure to it. You know. I had a chance to fly around
a few times and m I eight's and those guys don't really do ntops.
They were flying you know by my slow perspective looking over the water, maybe
eight feet above the water. Just stuff like that would never happen on the
US side. So you get some really and I've done some other crazy things.
A reservist go to Somalia and I rack in Afghanistan, all kinds of
places, But so go out and do it and experience the adventure. It
does definitely teaches you patients. And you see that when the active duty guys
come in, they have very very high expectations for some of these partner forces,
and I think after you've done it a few times and seeing where they
really are as reservists, you you you kind of resets expectations and you know
that you don't you want them, the partner nations, to do well,
but you don't. You also have some realistic viewpoints in You're you're not going
to get frustrated when they you know, everything's not perfect. So that's that's
one difference I solve. You know, when we see active duty folks coming
in to do exercises and capacity building that they just they just don't appreciate necessarily
where these these partner nations are are coming from and what their capabilities are or
aren't. And in some places very basic things like they don't have internet,
they don't have electricity. You've got to bring in generators, which means you've
got to bring in fuel to run a command center. Those sorts of things
that we take for granted in Uncle Sam's navy, that that you don't always
see in partner navies. And you know, i'd say, the other thing
I learned spending time UH interfacing with embassy teams is that are at the musk
guys for the most part do UM pretty well. But in other cases they
they have absolutely no clue as to what they're doing when they buy equipment,
when they buy Western kit for some of these militaries. One small example,
spent time in Kenya with one of the partners forces there and the have you
ever been Afka? Everybody's got Yamaha outboards, but we decided to buy UM
these very expensive Evan Rude outboards UM for their patrol boats and and it was
it was a maintenance and nightmare. So they were all just sitting up on
racks and I you know, counting, I don't know, at one point
it was maybe like twelve probably ten ten grand of pop outboards that had maybe
been used once or twice and then they just couldn't do basic maintenance on because
we bought kits. So for the guys that are working in embassies, theos
UM spent some time out talking to folks who actually interface with these partners and
get out of the embassy. That's that's my lesson to the theos. Yeah,
everybody should read Te Lawrence what he what he had to say in World
War One, working with the forces does apply to pretty much everybody I think
of. I believe it was the Bulgarians when they got off the plane and
couple they didn't have anything We had to supply them. So a lot of
the nations, we can complain all we want to about our supplies and our
equipments, but compared to some of our counterparts, we live a gilded life
in the US military, that's for sure. One thing I wanted to touch,
and you started to talk on it a little bit about what the Ukrainians
have been able to do in getting the Russians to brush off. It's pretty
impressive when you when you just look at it, whether you're talking about consifting
the Russians, that a small isolated island that is within range of their rocket
artillery is probably not a good idea. So they they knocked the Russians off
of Snake Island. They sunk the Moscow, which when I was a kid
was an incredibly scary ship, and they got it with one of their own
indigenously produced missiles. And of course you mentioned the classic use of minds to
deny a sea lions to somebody else. When you consider that must of the
Ukrainian navy has not been able to venture out at all because it was sunk,
They've still been able to take what was a world class navy and have
kept it on its back foot ever since. Then. What are some of
those lessons that are kind of breaking out in bold face from you when it
comes to a weaker force by defending their coast against a larger force. Yeah,
this is actually the thing, the piece that I'm working on riding kind
of oriented towards distributed maritime operations. Lessons learn from from Ukraine naval war.
And you know, the first of those I'd probably say is is quantity.
You know, the old Russian Soviet maximum quantity has quality all of it its
own. Um. Ukraine's flagship was a Crovac three. They had that.
You know, you look at that from our naval kind of surface perspective,
and we're gonna say, oh, that's you know, they need more of
those. Well, if they had more of those, they'd probably be sunk
in port right now, like the Crovak three. So um that that's not
what these what smaller militaries need. And more and more the more I kind
of look at it, I do think it has poor implications for our navy
as well. So uh, not just quantity um, but but price and
the ability to iterate and adapt in war. And if you look at war
throughout history, you know, history of US naval warfare, that was a
thing. Um World War two. How many classes of destroyer O sport destroyers
did we go through? I don't know, somebody smart in history, but
it was more than just one that we had, you know that lasted thirty
years, it was it's quite a few. We adapted, and we can't
do that now because of the military industrial defends. In industrial sector we don't
have. It's not robust enough to replenish platforms and weapons and the timeline that
that matters. We worry a lot about mill speck and survivability in our naval
platforms, and that's important if you've got sailors out at sea, but um,
if you have un crude vessels, that becomes significantly less important. And
so as I said, in in this war, you've got on the Russian
side that they're using these I renamed built Shaheed drones, which appear to be
built with a lot of Western kind of dual dual used parts. I know
they've they've recovered ZOM and I saw something on the news there was like Irish
engine parts and things like that. So people are people are kind of up
in arms. But you know the bottom line of that is there are only
ten thousand dollars a piece. So essentially you have a an anti you have
a loitery munition long range, it's only ten thousand dollars apiece. Uh.
These quad copter UAVs that Ukrainian marines in army and and I'm maybe the Navy's
seas and I just haven't seen anything about it, they're only about five hundred
dollars. And you know, you can take out a piece of armor that
costs a few millions of dollars and um, so that's that trade off that
we're seeing. Uh. And in there's minds and the ability to fight those
kind of cheap drones in mass um. You know, there's there's ways to
do it, and there's there's a lot of counter drone weapons, but that's
that's more going to be more and more relevant. I think as we see
warfare of paulup here in the next naval warfare evolve in the next few years.
And uh, you know, here's just another shout out to the reserve
side. So I know we as as you know, we've transferred a lot
of stuff, obviously a lot of US kit and weapons to the Ukrainians,
and and uh there was a number of these thirty four foot patrol boats that
that uh, we used to use. And there's a whole generation of reservists
the past twenty years that that used them for force protection in and in across
the Persian Gulf and in the US. And we transferred quite a few of
those I can't remember how many um to the Ukrainian Navy, and they're using
them for riverine patrol on a the Nebro River. And it appears they're also
using them to shoot down or at least to try to target, um,
some of these Shahi drones as they fly in over the river. So that's
interesting. It's uh, you know, it's a reuse of relatively small,
affordable platforms that to do something that is an important mission in the war.
Yeah, I think you've really hit on an argument we've heard from a number
of people who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and other areas where we've gone in
and we've in the past we've tried to make the local forces look just like
our forces instead of letting the local forces go to their strengths and helping them
multiply their capacity. And I think that's what you're kind of talking about here
with the the the ingenuity of the Ukrainians ought to be encouraged, and we
don't need to keep dumping or trying to dump multimillion dollar weapons systems on them.
They just need to They need to keep working with the stuff they have,
and we can we can help them a little bit with things, you
know, tons of artillery, I guess munitions. But I mean that is
that kind of your view that sometimes we go win and we go in too
big and and cause more problems than we do than we could help with.
Yeah, per um. You know, on their navy side, they went
from having a largely Soviet the Stigil navy in the nineties and that's slowly kind
of evolved and then we we kind of tried to build them into a NATO
oriented navy and on a US side, we transferred some WPVS coastcard wpps,
and you know, we're really focusing on in our operability. And now I'd
say they're they're evolving on their own and sort of a post NATO Navy where
they've got, um these weapons that they're adapting for warfare and and doing it
because they're effective and because they can apport it. And you know, I
there's been I can't speak to this because I'm not a ground guy other than
I've spent way too much time with ground guys. Um, there's a lot
of open source stuff about all the armor, the Western armor that we sent
and um, yeah, Abrams tanks and Leopard tanks and things like that that
haven't done very well for for the Ukrainians. And part of that because the
Russians planted so many minds and and they don't they don't have nobody in this
battlefield has air superiority. So because of that, they've they switched to these
smaller units ran around in toyotas or whatever kind of pickups, uh, with
UAVs and Lady munitions and things like that, where um, they can take
out that Soviet or that Russian armor and do it very cheaply and effectively,
and according to Ukrainian estimates, they killed a quarter of a million Russians and
a year and a half and that's just that's kind of a hard number to
fathom, but it's, uh, yeah, it's it's pretty impressive. It's
also interesting some of the fundamentals that don't get people very excited in times of
peace really have come to the front, some of the ones that you out
line there, but you also have some of the newer things coming into prominence
and really making an effect. And he mentioned to them a little bit.
Most people who listen here have seen the videos of the latest version of the
uncrewed surface vessels, which there was a podcast I listened to where they were
talking about some of the communications links that it's out there. But because further
my past life, I don't like talking about stuff like that. The really
gives almost a first person player video experience. We've seen that on the on
the land side, but also at sea, which is why we see the
unmanned surface vessel going into the Ropushka. And I had an interesting back and
forth with a few people who were talking about how how radical I knew this
was. It's like, well, no, not really, it's just with
modern technology, a modern iteration of the old fire ship's concept that even the
US Naty and in its infancy used, where you have fleets that are import
and are static, which they're vulnerable, but you don't have your own fleet
to go get them. There are ways that a lesser power, using a
little bit of ingenuity and technology, may not be able to sink them,
but can make them combat and effective. And in that same water space,
we do have two NATO nations, Bulgaria and Romania, who also have naval
forces on the Black Sea. What would you see as they look at that
very similar environment, And they also have some frigates and things like that where
they might want to shape, being that they're not presently at war, shape
the future of their naval forces response to the lessons that they're seeing just up
the coast off of Odessa. Yeah, I mean, first thing I do
is invest in minds if they don't already have them, like a lot um.
Yeah, that's assuming Russia is going to be able to ever wage aggression
again in a Black Sea, which I think is a maybe not a good
assumption, but um yeah, minds is sr UAVs for is sr that the
kind of the nature of this ubiquitous UAV environment is if you can see it,
or if you're seeing, you're gonna die. You're gonna get killed,
at least a mission kill. And that goes for you know, larger vessels
as well. And I've I've been kind of a staunch advocate that we're we're
barking up the wrong tree with with with H platforms like Zoomwalt, where you
know it's supposedly stealthy, but it's but it's not because it's got a big
unique visual since uh signature and the other piece of this, you know,
people are going to throw out some things counter with oh, we can just
take care of that with electronic warfare. True, until these weapons start to
be armed with the terminal seekers that have automatic target recognition, which is a
very high end capability and always has. Then until you think about it,
and everybody's got one in their pocket, a cell phone that can take a
picture of a plant and identify exactly what kind of planet is through an app,
and that that level of processing is not high tech anymore. It's it's
it's out there. So um, you could jam a link between one of
these first person operated uscs. But if they have a way to home in
on a on a specific signature visual or infrared or audio, then you're not
going to stop it unless you shoot it, which is sort of the defensive
piece of this is we probably need to start putting more guns on our surface
platforms, um of all sizes. Again. And it's interesting because if you
do look at like even even today, the Russian ships, they have more
guns than hours and uh that's probably you know, that's probably why some of
these ships have survived these US beat attacks because they just lay down a lot
of a lot of rounds into the water. So those are just you know,
that's my my swag. It's yeah, I think that's a pretty good
swag. I mean, you've hit a couple of things that I worry about
for our navy, which is mine warfare and our defenses against shore based anti
ship missiles. Uh. You know, if you're going to operate in these
close to land areas, you're you're susceptible to a whole lot of stuff that
don't require battle battle cruisers or or every electronic thing in the world. You
you need to be a lot more stealthy and a lot I mean in terms
of small profile stealthy, not necessarily zoom wall stealthy. And they also need
to you know, I don't understand every exercise I've ever been in. After
the when we were over in uh I was over in in Saudi Arabia and
we had the Princeton and somebody else hit minds. You know, how long
does it take to learn the lessons we did. The simplest weapon in the
world has been these World War One minds, and they seem to continue to
work. Yeah, we saw him in Iraq when I was in Iraq early
in that war. Um. Interesting, here's here's one of my Navy reserved
hero stories. So me and this other guy trained the Kiwaiti boarding teams to
go up. This is prior to one kicking up. We were in Kuwait
and we trained the boarding teams um Kawiti boarding teams to have professional VBSS teams
to go on board ships coming out of Iranian couple of Iranian rivers, the
Essay and the Ka and throughout that training period, our main our main challenge
was to keep these guys from just going off and just beating people as they
were boarding and using too much for us well, it turns out they they
the cadre that we trained, they went out and trade their own a boarding
teams and that didn't that didn't pass. And then one of the DALs that
was coming out waterway early in the war before the war kicked off, one
of the boarding members got really feisty and shot one of the guys in the
head. He was just a fisherman, and apparently that scared a lot of
the folks that were supposed to be laying minds. And it's not my story,
this is actually related to me by at the time where the CSG commanders
when he came up and visited in Iraq, that they shot and it was
there was a couple of news articles. It was called the shot that started
the war where these Kuwaitis shot an Iraqi fisherman, and that apparently deterred a
lot of the mind laying although there were still plenty of minds in our mind
our mind countermeasures guys did an awesome job of taking care of those. I
notice that we just got a few minutes left. I wanted to tap in
for a second into what is now your full time job. Now you have
to worry about the reservist anymore is Ukraine before war, even though a very
poor nation in the global sense, was and can be and still is,
an agricultural powerhouse. She's been blessed since antiquity. In antiquity with great soil,
not the best location in the world to get things to market. But
eighteen months of war a lot of the agricultural land is going to take.
As the Belgian and the French will tell you, it takes decades to get
some land back into use after extended periods of combat like this due to unexploded
ordinance and mine fields that aren't properly mapped, and it will kill people for
years afterwards. But unlike nations like France and Belgium after the First World War,
it's not a very rich and it's going to be a nation. It's
not going to have a bunch of money it can tap into, and it's
Russia isn't going to go anywhere, so she will have to spend a lot
of money on national offense. She's not going to have a peace dividend if
they're smart, so what looking at their agricultural section sector that which Cargill won't
finance out of their back pocket. But for your standard issue farmer or people
in the agricultural sector in Ukraine, whichever way this war winds up winding out,
assuming they still have autonomy, what are some of those challenges you think
are going to be bold faced to help the Ukrainians get their agricultural sector back
up and producing an income. Wow, maybe a little bit out of my
area of expertise, but I mean you're definitely right. It is gonna there's
gonna be a massive demining effort for decades. Uh in these this there's going
to be um a significant rebuilding of grain infrastructure, you know, from the
whole supply chain to the to the ports. And unfortunately Russia kind of just
started striking that. They seem to have avoid those targets until this past month
or so, when now they're they're taking out grain export facilities both in Odessa
and down on the Danube, which was kind of the secondary a couple of
ports where where grain left the country. So that's all um that that infrastructure
probably pretty easily replaceable to mine. Is is a more challenging program um problem.
And then you know there's are there are there still going to be people
that want to farm. Now that's a that's a. The number of farmers
in the world continues to decrease, and part of that is because we have
more efficient food production methods, but another part is because people don't like to
work hard and it's a it's a hard job, and we see that all
the time in my business, that there's just fewer people that want to be
farmers. And so these people that we're trying to farm and had their whole
livelihoods destroyed by the war, are they going to want to get back into
it. I don't know, so I think it's a it's a good question
to ask, an important one because of the you know, the amount of
grain and other act product products that are exported from Ukraine. Well, Chris,
we've taken up an hour of your time and it's been great talking to
you again. Anything you want to tell us about what you're working on in
the addition of the article you've mentioned not really just trying to figure out what
to do with all my free time now that I'm retired from the Navy and
re orient that energy and time into something productive. Well, I just spent
a couple of days working outside in a hundred degree heat. So you can
always find hobbies that evolve a lot to sweat, but hey, Chris,
it's um. It's been a great hour. It's great talking to you again
and look forward to the opportunity next time. Thanks a lot, guys,
glad to be here, and thank you everybody for joining us for another edition
in mid Reds and until next time, we hope you have a great Navy
day. Cheers. Won't to marry me and believe you being to blame me,
Cy Folding of the same long Dippernany, it's a long way to go.
It's a long way to dippernanny to the green, and I know I
don't by the condealing and well lest Dowell, it's a long long way to
dippery. But my life like the