Speaker 1: And walk on board everybody, and thank you for joining
Speaker 1: us for another edition of mid Rats. And as we
Speaker 1: are live today, I'd like to roll out my usual
Speaker 1: alter call. If you are with us live, go ahead
Speaker 1: and go head on over to the chat room. This
Speaker 1: is a free for all format. That means that Mark
Speaker 1: and I will will take all questions, well most questions
Speaker 1: in comments you may have during the course of the show,
Speaker 1: because we have our list of things that we want
Speaker 1: to talk with you about. But if you have better ideas,
Speaker 1: we already got Paul in there standing throw the cordette
Speaker 1: checking IDs and hey, besides that, we're ready to go,
Speaker 1: and we're not having a show next week, so some
Speaker 1: of the pre show stuff about the spooptacular, but we
Speaker 1: cannot go. Let the high holidays go have recognition. You
Speaker 1: know Mark I's speaking about you know what? The call
Speaker 1: today is free for all. And when I thought out
Speaker 1: because my neighbor has the eight hundred foot tall skeleton
Speaker 1: up in his yard. Now, all's Halloween spooptacular. But sometimes
Speaker 1: I think most all of our shows are kind of spooctacular,
Speaker 1: So I guess it was just the normal show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the specter of evil looms large in our podcast. Well, well, that's.
Speaker 1: Why we always have things to talk about. And one
Speaker 1: thing that I brought up and I got a good
Speaker 1: the listeners would have heard a hearty laugh is yesterday
Speaker 1: was a rather sarcastic and sardonic anniversary. It's the one
Speaker 1: year anniversary of our ongoing conflict slash guarding the Prosperity
Speaker 1: Prosperity Garden where the on nineteen October twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: USS Carney got the first birds away defending whatever needs defending,
Speaker 1: mostly themselves and others in the Red Sea. So that's
Speaker 1: another conflict we can say that has been going on
Speaker 1: for a while. It hasn't ended. That's the war we've
Speaker 1: had for the last year. And what Mark and I
Speaker 1: were talking about, I was like, well, let's roll that
Speaker 1: in to talking about the war that we might have
Speaker 1: in the next year. And if you haven't been paying
Speaker 1: attention to the last week with what's officially called by
Speaker 1: the People's Republic of China is Joint Sword twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four is they have as you would expect them to do,
Speaker 1: and as you would do too if you were in
Speaker 1: their shoes. They've turned the knob up, put the ratchet
Speaker 1: a couple of spots.
Speaker 3: It is doing some.
Speaker 1: Really interesting positioning and maneuvers around Taiwan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's it's fascinating to see how they've done this.
Speaker 2: They've been using coast guard ships, They've been using they
Speaker 2: haven't really put their heavy hitting naval ships out there.
Speaker 2: But their concept is if it's a blockade, they didn't
Speaker 2: call a blockade, they're they're they're looking at it, and
Speaker 2: this is this is the genius of their operation. And
Speaker 2: this is what we kind of discussed before we got
Speaker 2: started the show. But I'm looking at that and I'm going, Okay,
Speaker 2: if if I'm China and I don't want to send
Speaker 2: thousands of troops across the Strait of Taiwan, how do
Speaker 2: I make it so it's really difficult for anybody to
Speaker 2: do anything about what I'm doing. And I look at them,
Speaker 2: I go, well, there it is. You set up these
Speaker 2: coastguard things, you enforce. You declare that since Taiwan is
Speaker 2: really your territory and it's surrounding seas, are it are
Speaker 2: your seas? You declare that you're going to hould customs inspections,
Speaker 2: You're going to prevent bad guys from entering your waters
Speaker 2: Latti doa di DA and then you bring in your
Speaker 2: non military assets. Theoretically non military assets, your bear time militia,
Speaker 2: your fishing fleet, and if nothing else, you just get
Speaker 2: in the way of everybody that's trying to get in there.
Speaker 2: And the best case is you stop shipping into Taiwan
Speaker 2: and in that way you effectuate a blockade without necessarily
Speaker 2: to clary a blockade. And so my question to you
Speaker 2: was earlier and I'll ask it again now you're you're
Speaker 2: you're the strategy kind of guy. How does this look
Speaker 2: to you? Is it has a strategy given the options
Speaker 2: they have.
Speaker 1: And again I'll I'll caveat to apply about what I
Speaker 1: know what I don't know, but I can imply what
Speaker 1: I've seen. But yeah, it has a as an old
Speaker 1: operational planner. It just looks to me just playing smart
Speaker 1: because we think we know what well. He's She has
Speaker 1: said it out loud that he wants his military to
Speaker 1: be ready and they want to regain sovereign control over
Speaker 1: what they consider one of their provinces, the same that
Speaker 1: we would look at Maine, Hawaii, Florida, Washington State, that's
Speaker 1: one of their provinces. They just haven't regained control over it.
Speaker 1: And with that higher direction of guidance, I could see
Speaker 1: their planning staff coming up with, you know, three or
Speaker 1: four different courses of action. They could take a different
Speaker 1: different le everything from a the People's Republic China do
Speaker 1: their version of D Day, full scale military assault straight
Speaker 1: out of coss Fits, you know, do whatever you want
Speaker 1: to do to describe what is kind of interesting to
Speaker 1: look at if you or if you're writing action novels,
Speaker 1: what that would look like, all the way to something
Speaker 1: that would be really really low key, which is pretty
Speaker 1: much what they've been doing the last few decades, just
Speaker 1: with a little more emphasis, kind of like what we
Speaker 1: saw with twenty twenty four and what they're doing in
Speaker 1: the South China. See, we're just going to slowly turn
Speaker 1: up the heat bit by bit, but we really don't
Speaker 1: want to get in a shooting war with anybody. We
Speaker 1: had enough with Vietnam and seventy nine. We would rather
Speaker 1: just intimidate and bribe and corrupt our way to power.
Speaker 1: But in between those two steps is is kind of
Speaker 1: what you've outlined here. One thing that China has been
Speaker 1: very good at is they have continually and regularly using
Speaker 1: various levers of influence and power they've been. The number
Speaker 1: of nations out there that actually recognize Taiwan as an
Speaker 1: independent nation, and the amount of nations that can actually
Speaker 1: do anything about it is pretty much down to one us.
Speaker 1: By narrowing that, they've created the conditions where they can
Speaker 1: all of a sudden say that we're doing with their Coastguard,
Speaker 1: their maritime militia. They have enough units to do it
Speaker 1: without putting any of their warships to see. They can say,
Speaker 1: we are just going to be exerting control over our
Speaker 1: territorial waters, and we have customs requirements and inspections requirements,
Speaker 1: and we're just going to start implementing.
Speaker 3: Them in the waters.
Speaker 1: And if Taiwan resists, then they have a an internal
Speaker 1: security i e. Of policing problem, and they can very
Speaker 1: well go in front of the cameras and can just
Speaker 1: slow down any type of international reaction by making very
Speaker 1: objectively legitimate arguments. This is our province. Nobody recognizes this
Speaker 1: as an independent nation anymore than they recognize Hawaii, Chechnya
Speaker 1: are whales as independent nations. And for too long we've
Speaker 1: tried to do this the easy way, But this is
Speaker 1: our province or we're going to take it back, and
Speaker 1: they'll this course of action that doesn't involve large landing fleets,
Speaker 1: doesn't belong taking car ferries and fulling them up with
Speaker 1: tanks and armored personnel carriers. It's basically strangling slowly Taiwan's
Speaker 1: ability to sustain itself. And then the Taiwanese people will
Speaker 1: have to come to a decision point on what they
Speaker 1: want to do, and a lot of that will determine
Speaker 1: upon what messages and support they're getting from the US
Speaker 1: over on the eastern side. And the argument's going to
Speaker 1: be and the United States has not helped itself, especially
Speaker 1: with what we did in two thousand and three in Iraq,
Speaker 1: with our reputation internationally about interfering in the internal affairs
Speaker 1: of other nations, and China positions itself very well. If
Speaker 1: in the course of trying to exert what they believe
Speaker 1: is sovereign power over their territory and addressing police issues
Speaker 1: with violent insurrectionists on their territory, why is the US
Speaker 1: seventh Fleet coming west of Wake Island to interfere in
Speaker 1: our internal affairs? If they couch it well, they can
Speaker 1: be clumsy on the diplomatic side of the House, but
Speaker 1: I think she's been very direct about what he wants
Speaker 1: to accomplish. And if they're setting the conditions to do
Speaker 1: what you outlined earlier, I tip my hat to that
Speaker 1: is a really solid course of action. If you want
Speaker 1: to end this decade long story in a relatively short
Speaker 1: length of time without losing much face, without potentially going
Speaker 1: to war, or more importantly, not having to bomb your
Speaker 1: way through that island at all of its valuable economic
Speaker 1: infrastructure that is in place there. If your National Command
Speaker 1: authority says that we need to do this by twenty
Speaker 1: twenty seven, which I believe he said in one context, now,
Speaker 1: how do you prepare that over the course of the
Speaker 1: next two to three years. If this is roughly the
Speaker 1: course of action that they've chosen to take, I don't think,
Speaker 1: regardless of what happens on the US side of the
Speaker 1: equation of political wise, how the Chinese could not succeed
Speaker 1: if they're willing to take the short term hit of
Speaker 1: doing what they need to do with with Taiwan. If
Speaker 1: that's the path they're taking again, I'll tip my hat
Speaker 1: to them. That's pretty darn smart. And if you really
Speaker 1: back up and look at the big pixels. That's kind
Speaker 1: of in the finest traditions of China for the last
Speaker 1: few thousand years, when they're at their prime. This is
Speaker 1: how they went.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think one of the other things that
Speaker 2: we did to look at I mean, what does the
Speaker 2: outside world do? What would the US do here?
Speaker 3: Here?
Speaker 2: The I mean, this is a classic law fair kind
Speaker 2: of situation. You know, we're doing something legal, it's our territory.
Speaker 2: We're recognized internationally by many countries, and you know, if
Speaker 2: you attack any of our ships, then that's that's that's
Speaker 2: you know, that's war, that's that's the cause of bell
Speaker 2: eye for them. They say, Okay, you know we were
Speaker 2: we were doing this peacefully and and and well within
Speaker 2: our international and national rights. And we've you know, we've
Speaker 2: long let it be known that we view Taiwan as
Speaker 2: our territory, and you know, it just I think it
Speaker 2: creates quite the conundrum for anybody who's trying to figure
Speaker 2: out how to respond to it, especially if they haven't
Speaker 2: been if they haven't when they weren't awakened by this
Speaker 2: going on in the last few weeks. Because if I'm
Speaker 2: sitting somewhere promised to be any kind of great strategic genius.
Speaker 2: But I'm sitting in an office somewhere somebody walks in
Speaker 2: and goes, you know, what are they doing over there?
Speaker 2: I think I'd be going, oh my gosh, what what
Speaker 2: is our plan A and Plan B and Plan C
Speaker 2: for responding to this? Because there are a lot of
Speaker 2: options that don't look real good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In the chat room, Paul and Camp brought up a
Speaker 1: couple of related issues. Paul said, you know what, how
Speaker 1: does this play into their moves against the Philippines And
Speaker 1: Camp was talking about India and Burma. He calls it
Speaker 1: may and Mar, but I don't call it Mayamar. I
Speaker 1: call it Burma because I'm just funny that way. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I think if they decided to do with that you
Speaker 1: and I were discussing with Taiwan, everybody else is going
Speaker 1: to back up. They're not going to want any part
Speaker 1: of that because China is already off her feet. I'm
Speaker 1: sure that she is. Even if they try to do
Speaker 1: the soft they'll have the Coastguard and the People's Militia
Speaker 1: out front, but they'll have their military at a high
Speaker 1: readiness force and they'll through dipic diplomatic means, says, you know, well,
Speaker 1: we'll work with our differences when we're done here. But
Speaker 1: everybody just needs to back off, and I think the
Speaker 1: international will back off because if you're the Philippines, India
Speaker 1: or Burma, regardless of what temporary issues you might have,
Speaker 1: Burma slash Maya and mar has plenty of internal issues,
Speaker 1: external issues that everybody's going to do that. Nobody, nobody
Speaker 1: wants to go to war over a island that they
Speaker 1: don't recognize twenty milli million people that as long as
Speaker 1: they get their semiconductors, they don't care what country of
Speaker 1: origin stamp it has on it. I think that the
Speaker 1: People's Republic of China has looked at it's timing and
Speaker 1: how it has prepared the international community space, the diplomatic space,
Speaker 1: whatever domain you want to call that, in such a
Speaker 1: way that they really wanted to have that twenty twenty
Speaker 1: seven date be valid. It's pretty smart, especially if the
Speaker 1: China Hawks in the United States have been primarily focused
Speaker 1: on a military response. What if there is no military
Speaker 1: response to something that is a law enforcement and an
Speaker 1: internal security operation by everybody's definition. Europeans aren't going to
Speaker 1: stand up for Taiwan. Japan is not going to stand
Speaker 1: up for Taiwan. South Koreans have other issues going on
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 3: They don't want any bit of that.
Speaker 1: The Vietnamese as long as nobody crosses their border, they're
Speaker 1: not going to do anything either. So again it goes
Speaker 1: back to how does it look for a relatively unprepared
Speaker 1: US military to sorty west of Wait basing out of
Speaker 1: guang And with anybody who does math knows that we
Speaker 1: really can't sustain combat operations for a length the time
Speaker 1: unless we're able to access the Philippines, Japan, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. It seems that this is not a bad
Speaker 1: time in the next twenty four months to be able
Speaker 1: to take that route, if that's the route they want
Speaker 1: to have. I think perhaps or may have been a
Speaker 1: period of time that maybe in the first decade of
Speaker 1: this century that China might thought that they might they
Speaker 1: there might be a way to unify the two countries.
Speaker 1: But I've seen people draw the line differently. Something changed
Speaker 1: in China around two thousand and five two thousand and
Speaker 1: six it decided to be less Pandamar and more dragon
Speaker 1: that they decided that probably wasn't the path that that
Speaker 1: was going to be successful for them. So they've been
Speaker 1: working on this path on their timeline, which they can
Speaker 1: do because they don't have elections every twenty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the question about the about the Philippines,
Speaker 2: I don't think China cares about the Philippines other than
Speaker 2: it's proximity to Taiwan and and what they've done to
Speaker 2: the South China Sea. I mean you can talk about uh,
Speaker 2: you know, boiling the frog. They have. They've created a
Speaker 2: situation there where it's uh and we you know, we
Speaker 2: discussed this guys. I don't know the way first started
Speaker 2: talking about the what they were doing there, but you
Speaker 2: know they're going to present you know, it's a fielt
Speaker 2: the company. We we now control the South China Sea.
Speaker 2: We control everything that would be of any interest to
Speaker 2: anybody outsee because it's all our internal water, it's our
Speaker 2: nine dash line, and Taiwan is our terrritory. Anybody who
Speaker 2: invades this stuff is violating the international law by as
Speaker 2: you just said, I mean, they're going after our internal affairs.
Speaker 2: It's our territory. And they have the benefit especially with
Speaker 2: Taiwan where they have you don't have to have armed forced,
Speaker 2: you don't have to have your big navy ships out there,
Speaker 2: because you've got the coast, you've got all their coastal batteries,
Speaker 2: all the all the the the airfields, everything else, and
Speaker 2: the and the long distance missiles, which would be you know,
Speaker 2: that's everybody. You're looking. Well, I'm gonna send my fleet
Speaker 2: in there. Well, you know, what are you going to
Speaker 2: do about their d S twenty one's or wherever they are?
Speaker 2: And and and you know what are you gonna do
Speaker 2: about about the defense of Guam? And is it worth?
Speaker 2: This is where the question is going to come to
Speaker 2: the leadership of the West and the US in particular,
Speaker 2: what is it worth to challenge this if if they
Speaker 2: can't if they use this plan? What what? What is it?
Speaker 2: What's the what? At what point do we say the
Speaker 2: cost is too high to fight against this? I mean
Speaker 2: we've had this discussion with an number of guests on
Speaker 2: the show that that somewhere along the line you begin
Speaker 2: to weigh these these decisions and what what the cost
Speaker 2: is against whatever the benefit is. And you know, the
Speaker 2: way they've the way they've to me, the way they've
Speaker 2: been setting this all up, is that it's it's you know,
Speaker 2: nobody else is concerned, but theirs. And I, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm sure I'm not the only one that's that feels
Speaker 2: that this is an interesting strategy, but I see there's
Speaker 2: really a way to hamstring any kind of response against.
Speaker 1: And it's not like we're in a condition that we
Speaker 1: can really you know, build up for the fight. And
Speaker 1: this is something I'm thinking about right and on next week.
Speaker 1: Maybe i'll write tomorrow, maybe i'll write Wednesday, maybe I
Speaker 1: don't write at all. But there, and we've mentioned it
Speaker 1: a couple of times here, there was an inflection point
Speaker 1: that we are now spending and there's a scary as
Speaker 1: you know what graph out there that it outlines this.
Speaker 1: We're spending more on interest on our debt than we
Speaker 1: are on our national defense, and it's only going.
Speaker 2: To get worse.
Speaker 1: And the latest and I missed this on the first
Speaker 1: read of it, but the CNO's navigation plan that she
Speaker 1: came out with, which I it's it's a fine plan.
Speaker 1: I've seen worse. This is fine.
Speaker 3: There's plenty to work with here.
Speaker 1: But the one thing that's not so much what's in
Speaker 1: it is what's not in it. It pretty much admits
Speaker 1: that while we need and we want a larger Navy.
Speaker 1: They we're not going to get because there's just there's
Speaker 1: not going to be the money to get it. And
Speaker 1: I fully appreciate those people who they say, well, we
Speaker 1: just need to find the money. We just need to
Speaker 1: get the money because is what we require. That's fine,
Speaker 1: that's your opinion. I don't think that's that's very realistic.
Speaker 1: I think we have the reality of the budget being
Speaker 1: what it is. So if we're stuck at about two
Speaker 1: nine and a high percentage of that are platforms like
Speaker 1: lcs that are limited in their utility, and any type
Speaker 1: of fight against China, it's actually much smaller than that.
Speaker 1: For China's timing, it might be pretty good because in
Speaker 1: a way, because we've been talking big about what has
Speaker 1: it been ten years since our Pacific pivot that President
Speaker 1: Obama announced, and we've had Davidson and there's Davidson window,
Speaker 1: and we had got Paparo out there. We're talking a
Speaker 1: pretty big military discussion. But in a way, we've we've
Speaker 1: balked for you baseball fans, we've balked on the Pacific
Speaker 1: pivot because we haven't backed it up with the resources
Speaker 1: for the fight in the Western Pacific, which is going
Speaker 1: to be a maritime and aerospace fight. We just we
Speaker 1: haven't done it out. See how we're going to do
Speaker 1: it with the present And this is not a political statement,
Speaker 1: it's just a reality statement. It belongs to both political
Speaker 1: parties with the present leadership and philosophy underlying both towards
Speaker 1: national defense. I don't see how you're going to get
Speaker 1: any big change it will move that number. As such,
Speaker 1: if you've got a fight with what you got right
Speaker 1: now west of the International dateline.
Speaker 3: To the math.
Speaker 1: Against that scenario. We started the show with that of
Speaker 1: all the possible courses of action, and that's probably the
Speaker 1: one that has the highest degree for success for the Chinese.
Speaker 1: And I think that door is open for him. They
Speaker 1: want to step through it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's you know, we've we've not only have
Speaker 2: we not actively improved our position in the in the
Speaker 2: Western Pacific, we've hurt ourselves. You know, we we close
Speaker 2: Red Hill. Yeah, I know it's polluting and all that stuff,
Speaker 2: but but now you know what was the fallback plan.
Speaker 2: We're going to have a bunch of tankers somewhere that
Speaker 2: are full of oil, you know, the the equivalent of
Speaker 2: Red Hill. Well, I don't know where that has gone,
Speaker 2: and you know, how are we going to get that
Speaker 2: stuff across the Pacific? You know, they we already know
Speaker 2: we were when we were talking to I think Dean
Speaker 2: Chang or Tean Chang I for somebody. But we're talking
Speaker 2: about the the Chinese have recognized. Maybe it was some
Speaker 2: of the Chinese, it was Toshi Toshi Yasha Hari, you know,
Speaker 2: wis we're talking about the Chinese recognizing World War two lessons. Well,
Speaker 2: you know the US is the logistics thing is what
Speaker 2: kept them in the war. And you're going, Okay, well,
Speaker 2: what are we going to do about it? Well, they
Speaker 2: may have noisy submarines, but we don't have enough assets
Speaker 2: to protect our valuable logistics ships from noisy even noisy submarines.
Speaker 2: So there are a bunch of issues where we've shot
Speaker 2: ourselves on the foot before things get off the off
Speaker 2: this start. So what you know, I think there are
Speaker 2: a lot of questions about preparedness and what we've done
Speaker 2: to as you say that the pivot to the Pacific,
Speaker 2: because I I'm having trouble figure out where we've other
Speaker 2: than putting some marines into the Philippines, I'm not quite
Speaker 2: sure where we've enhanced our abilities to fight anybody out
Speaker 2: in that area.
Speaker 1: Ye. Big part of it is we again, as we've
Speaker 1: been discussing here well over a decade, is there hasn't
Speaker 1: been either the sense of urgency or the right combination
Speaker 1: of people to change the mindset, to change the processes
Speaker 1: and the procedures that we fell in love with in
Speaker 1: the post Cold War era that gave us the luxury
Speaker 1: of taking our time for these developments, while we've missed
Speaker 1: a couple of generations of both aircraft and ship and
Speaker 1: land power development. The People's Republic of China that used
Speaker 1: to be way behind us is if you want to
Speaker 1: look at an individual quant qualitative point of view, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're still ahead of them, but that delta continues to
Speaker 1: shrink as they go iteration by iteration by iteration. You know,
Speaker 1: do they even have the equivalent of a SM two
Speaker 1: or an SM two alpha, much less an SM three.
Speaker 1: Somebody has that answer, but you can't get that answer
Speaker 1: out of this gift. But I think it would be
Speaker 1: dangerous to assume that their missiles are low quality, are
Speaker 1: primitive for what they need. Unlike us, they don't have
Speaker 1: hundreds of short, short range and medium range, intermediate range
Speaker 1: ballistic missiles with USA written on it facing them unless
Speaker 1: you're going to get some high Mars in there, which
Speaker 1: good luck with that. So they don't have to have
Speaker 1: those capabilities. What they'd have to be able to deal
Speaker 1: with is American cruise missiles and American aircraft, and that's
Speaker 1: a very different challenge and one that I think is
Speaker 1: well within their qualitative delta, whatever that is here in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. And there was something that I think
Speaker 1: we talked about last week by bringing up again that
Speaker 1: I think plays in to the scenario you outlined earlier
Speaker 1: in the show as well as they have in serial production,
Speaker 1: like so many pieces of a Lego two dozen what
Speaker 1: we would call medium endurance cutters under production and just
Speaker 1: one shipyard. Tom Shugart had a nice little post on
Speaker 1: that a blow over a week ago. That's the perfect
Speaker 1: vessel if you want to make sure that you have
Speaker 1: a customs inspection on every ship coming in and out
Speaker 1: of quote your ports unquote, that that would be a
Speaker 1: tremendous capability to have, especially new construction, because then you
Speaker 1: don't have to have one third of them in intermediate
Speaker 1: maintenance if they've all been produced in the same year.
Speaker 1: So I'll know when those will have their shakedown cruises done,
Speaker 1: but they looked and such a production that if they
Speaker 1: really are motivated, probably by twenty twenty five, those twenty
Speaker 1: four ships will be up and ready ready to run.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we had the capability to put
Speaker 1: twenty four medium endurance cutters in the water inside of
Speaker 1: one fisc year, but the people are probably China share does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's how he is actually looking at a book
Speaker 2: that was written at nineteen ninety called Narrow Seas, Small
Speaker 2: Navies and Fat Merchantmen by Charles Coberger, who's a tired
Speaker 2: postcard captain. He like a lot of coasts, you know,
Speaker 2: he's interested in small boats and stuff. But he does
Speaker 2: have some interesting points here. He says ignorance and disinterest
Speaker 2: in the part of the US naval authorities and violence
Speaker 2: in the narrow seas is with several striking exceptions for
Speaker 2: verbial our continued unpreparedness for such warfighting results each time
Speaker 2: such emergency arises, in long delays before we're able to
Speaker 2: react effectively, and most recently and somewhat embarrassing call for
Speaker 2: help to reluctant allies. This will no longer do you know,
Speaker 2: and he's pointing out the same thing. Later on in
Speaker 2: his book, he points out that we keep thinking of
Speaker 2: the way we design our fleet that we're talking about Mahanian,
Speaker 2: you know, we make fun of the Japanese. We're thinking
Speaker 2: we're the big battles of the major fleets fighting each
Speaker 2: other out there at sea somewhere, you know, but we
Speaker 2: see in reality that it's not that way now. In
Speaker 2: the Red Sea is a perfect example, you know, the
Speaker 2: you don't have to have a navy in the narrow seas,
Speaker 2: as he said, given modern technology, shore based airpower, fast
Speaker 2: attack craft, submarines, missiles and minds can achieve sea denial
Speaker 2: without requiring superior surface naval forces. This has tended to
Speaker 2: deprive traditional sea power of its ability to command narrow
Speaker 2: seas adjacent to enemy held lands. Guess what all that
Speaker 2: stuff around Taiwan, all the stuff around the Philippines, you know,
Speaker 2: those are that those fit the definition of narrow seas.
Speaker 2: You're not going to take your carrier battle group into
Speaker 2: the Strait of Taiwan to fight the war, there's no way.
Speaker 2: So what assets should we have to fight that war?
Speaker 2: And who's been thinking about that? The littoral Littal combat
Speaker 2: Ship was supposed to be one approach, but we all
Speaker 2: know how that worked out. I asked them on X
Speaker 2: the other day, anybody's seeing any contracts for the fast
Speaker 2: attack craft that we're going to be needing to fight
Speaker 2: the Western Pacific. No, nobody's seen those contracts because there
Speaker 2: aren't any. And I don't know what's going on with
Speaker 2: The Congress has got to be aware of the limitations
Speaker 2: of the kind of navy we have. We are not
Speaker 2: built to fight close in to shore battles, no other
Speaker 2: ways to do that. And you know, I think we've
Speaker 2: talked about that in the past, but I think this
Speaker 2: whole situation creates a it's a it's a real problem
Speaker 2: for us. You know, if we're always preparing for the
Speaker 2: last world, we better start preparing for the next one.
Speaker 1: I've had I've made similar comments in the past. Google, Well,
Speaker 1: that's that's what the Litoral combat ship is for. Theatoral
Speaker 1: combat ship is roughly the size of a World War
Speaker 1: Two destroyer. It's not a fast attack craft. It's very
Speaker 1: lightly armed, and it was designed in an intellectual erranium
Speaker 1: or over twenty years ago. It's it's not the answer.
Speaker 1: And again it goes back to you know, ten years
Speaker 1: after the Pacific pivot. It's our our acquisition structure is
Speaker 1: so risk adverse and hide bound. It lacks the ability
Speaker 1: to respond, innovate and create in an appropriate cycle. Now,
Speaker 1: you look at the development of ships and aircraft from
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties through the nineteen sixties, which if you
Speaker 1: do the map, that's just forty years. So back up
Speaker 1: forty years and go back to nineteen eighty four and
Speaker 1: ninety four. Excuse me, and you look at the No.
Speaker 1: Eighty four Yeah, there we go. You look at the
Speaker 1: pace of development in the iterations. We are still producing
Speaker 1: F sixteens and F fifteens designed in the nineteenies, modern ning,
Speaker 1: et cetera. That's wonderful, that's nice. But even when we
Speaker 1: try to advance our systems no longer when not talking
Speaker 1: about systems, our acquisition systems, our development cycles that in
Speaker 1: theory should support the national security requirements, but it's been flipped.
Speaker 1: The national security requirements support the acquisitions. I think a
Speaker 1: perfect example of that. Bravozulu to the folks and naw
Speaker 1: there who made this decision what the Air Force now
Speaker 1: calls the next generation air Dominance ingad what the navyes
Speaker 1: call it, F eighteen XX. We decoupled from the Air
Speaker 1: Force and said you do your thing. We're going to
Speaker 1: do our things because of the lessons that people that
Speaker 1: are like talking about Plight Company with the F thirty five,
Speaker 1: so we want to do our own thing. Well after
Speaker 1: untold billions of taxpayer dollars have already been expended on this.
Speaker 1: The Air Force is called a full stop because they
Speaker 1: want to develop. They don't think that what they've been
Speaker 1: doing is affordable, which same problem we have with CGX.
Speaker 1: People lack program control and making hard decisions, so everybody
Speaker 1: got a trophy and you can't afford it when everybody
Speaker 1: gets a trophy, so it's unaffordable. In fact, they don't
Speaker 1: think that it meets future requirements. Well, nobody knows what
Speaker 1: future requirements are, so it looks like they've gone they
Speaker 1: went down the exquisite route and realized it can't happen,
Speaker 1: just like CGX.
Speaker 3: The Navy, though, is continuing on with its version.
Speaker 1: So we're not going to get stuck in a compromised
Speaker 1: spiral like we did with the F thirty five. Again,
Speaker 1: it's running late, but we haven't called a stop to it.
Speaker 1: The cno mentioned recently, you know that her direction to
Speaker 1: the program is focuses on a lot of what we've
Speaker 1: wanted to see as well, which is a focus on survivability, range, affordability.
Speaker 3: Those things.
Speaker 1: We'll see how it comes out, so you know, the
Speaker 1: whole joint concept. This can be a little little star going.
Speaker 3: See.
Speaker 1: This is why he want everything to be one program
Speaker 1: because the program risk is non zero. And you know
Speaker 1: who knows that the Air Force can't get their act
Speaker 1: together in the FA eighteen replacement, which is what this
Speaker 1: is for the whole of including the growler. If that's
Speaker 1: a good enough platform, then maybe the Air Force will
Speaker 1: go okay, we'll take the hatch. So it might work
Speaker 1: out in the end, but again it's taking so long.
Speaker 1: The Air Force is looking at having their end gad
Speaker 1: replaced the F twenty two.
Speaker 3: We'll recall while.
Speaker 1: The Gates got rid of, the F twenty two was
Speaker 1: at one third or one quarter the size of the
Speaker 1: buye they wanted to have because it.
Speaker 3: Was too expensive.
Speaker 1: So it looks like the Air Force acquisitions is it's
Speaker 1: repeating the mistakes that have been identified for years, but
Speaker 1: nobody is willing to make the effort to change, and again,
Speaker 1: we talked about this almost every show last week. I
Speaker 1: talked to some individuals as well on this topic offline,
Speaker 1: and they all just blink. It's almost like the job
Speaker 1: is too big, the system is too much of a monster.
Speaker 1: The knots are tooth thick that they're nobody sees a
Speaker 1: way to change. I don't know if there's a technical
Speaker 1: term for organizations that they know they have to change.
Speaker 1: It's existential that they have to change, but it's so
Speaker 1: hard that they won't. I don't know what the right
Speaker 1: word to describe that, but I think that's kind of
Speaker 1: where we are.
Speaker 3: And you can have what the Air Force is doing
Speaker 3: with INGAD. As reference to Zula's.
Speaker 2: I think the term you're looking for is bankrupt. If
Speaker 2: you're talking corporations, you're too kind. Well, you know, so,
Speaker 2: I can't remember it was Wayne Hughes or who we
Speaker 2: talked to, but you know, people have suggested that we
Speaker 2: have these these and it could have been Hendrix and
Speaker 2: his Ford's not Ferrari's. You know, it's fine to have
Speaker 2: a big, cool, blue water fleet, but it's also necessary
Speaker 2: to have the fleet that you're going to fight with.
Speaker 2: And if we're going to fight in narrow seas in
Speaker 2: the literals, if and all that, we have all these
Speaker 2: options that people have presented us to have presented to
Speaker 2: the US over the years. We've looked at the the Visbee's,
Speaker 2: We've looked at other you know, frigate type or I'm
Speaker 2: not even sure what the the other word is for
Speaker 2: ships that size. And then we had, you know, these
Speaker 2: things like the M. E. D. Stiletto from Chips. We
Speaker 2: had the our own patrol hydrofoils heavily those those were sweet.
Speaker 2: I mean, those were heavily armed, went fast, didn't draw
Speaker 2: much water. And you know, if you if you lose
Speaker 2: on how many people they had on them, eight ten,
Speaker 2: I don't know, you know, if that makes them more expendable.
Speaker 2: Reminds me of the of the World War Two torpedo boats.
Speaker 2: You know, they were expendable at least, but then you know,
Speaker 2: they provided They weren't great at the job, but that
Speaker 2: was a lot of problems with the torpedoes and and
Speaker 2: some of the other things, but some of the missions
Speaker 2: they carried out we were quite important. You know, we
Speaker 2: just need to get that. Certainly, during Vietnam, we had
Speaker 2: a lot of Riverine forces, and we're using things like
Speaker 2: minesweepers to do some of the interdictions from a time operations.
Speaker 2: I mean, I just think there are people, but it's
Speaker 2: not career enhancing. You know, if you're if you're the
Speaker 2: expeditionary force, what do you call that? The the guys
Speaker 2: who run the small boat operations?
Speaker 1: Now, na will expeditionary comeback command?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I wait to see the first one
Speaker 2: of people who comes out of that who makes flag. Now,
Speaker 2: maybe I'm wrong, Maybe I'm maybe they've already made flag
Speaker 2: and I just don't know it, but it is from
Speaker 2: from where I see things. That is one of those
Speaker 2: things like, yeah, that's nice, we have this program and
Speaker 2: they do things like harbor protection and stuff like that,
Speaker 2: but you know where the where are the bigger assets,
Speaker 2: where are those very potent missile boats, raft semi submersibles.
Speaker 2: I'm let's take some lessons from the from the as
Speaker 2: the Marines have done, the narcotics importers from South America.
Speaker 2: Let's let's think. Let's think some small, highly armed quick
Speaker 2: votes that can can can sneak through things. I mean,
Speaker 2: I just it's just it just amazes me that we
Speaker 2: are so limited and to if it's not from Boeing
Speaker 2: or Raytheon, it gets no votes. I mean, that's that's
Speaker 2: that's just absurd.
Speaker 1: I think I think part of the problem is too
Speaker 1: and this is derived from too many years of peace.
Speaker 1: Is like, for instance, before I get back to my point,
Speaker 1: I was about to make so easily distracted. You know,
Speaker 1: everybody likes to poo poo the Oliver Hair Perry Oliver Perry,
Speaker 1: Oliver H. Perry class frigates, but when you actually look
Speaker 1: at their combat record, they're a pretty darn effective platform.
Speaker 1: But I think part of our problem is in times
Speaker 1: of peace because you don't have real world examples, and
Speaker 1: the few that you have people like to ignore is
Speaker 1: your war game. And you'll find nobody that likes war
Speaker 1: games better than I do. But war games are very
Speaker 1: limited because your war games are shaped and bounded by,
Speaker 1: first and foremost about how you're doing war game, who
Speaker 1: your judges, what your entering arguments are, what your assumptions are.
Speaker 1: But they are also very limited to the fact that
Speaker 1: there are certain things I don't care if you have
Speaker 1: it eight or twelve sized did die that you can't quantify.
Speaker 1: There are two maths driven for instance, you know, you're
Speaker 1: talking about the smaller ships, and everybody adds things on
Speaker 1: they're not smaller ships because they're not quote capable enough.
Speaker 1: But everybody loves to talk about Taffy three. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about Taffy three for a little bit. Tappi three. Everybody
Speaker 1: who listens to mid Rats should know what that is,
Speaker 1: if not google it. I'm not going to spend twenty
Speaker 1: minutes explain it. But the Japanese Center Force had the
Speaker 1: battleships Yamoto no Goto, Congo, Haruna had the heavy cruisers
Speaker 1: and I can't pronounce Japanese Choki, Haruga, Karuma, Saruza, Shikuma,
Speaker 1: Tone and light cruisers. They had eleven destroyers. It was huge,
Speaker 1: and they got turned around by Tappy three that had
Speaker 1: three destroyers. And it's a shame we don't have destroyers
Speaker 1: with these names today. The whole, the Harriman and the Johnson,
Speaker 1: and the destroyer escorts, the Dennis, the Butler, the Raymond,
Speaker 1: and the Samuel B. Roberts, the og and forget which
Speaker 1: book it was, but years ago I read where they
Speaker 1: were talking about the destroyer escorts. And by this time
Speaker 1: of the war there were people in the Navy, who
Speaker 1: were you know, patting the destroyer escorts from the head says,
Speaker 1: you know what, you only have one battery of torpedoes.
Speaker 3: Let's take those off and let's just.
Speaker 1: Give y'all more triple A because all of our war games,
Speaker 1: you know, triple A is what we need you for.
Speaker 1: You're never going to have to go on in the fight.
Speaker 1: The feedback from the from the destroyer escort guys were like, no,
Speaker 1: it's like, one day you're going to ask us to
Speaker 1: play with the big boys, and we need those torpedoes
Speaker 1: to play with.
Speaker 3: The big boys.
Speaker 1: And if you war gamed the Japanese Center Force against
Speaker 1: the three destroyers and four destroy escorts, you would never
Speaker 1: get the outcome of what actually happened there because you
Speaker 1: cannot quantify that. However, just because a small unit on
Speaker 1: paper does not match up to a big unit, if
Speaker 1: they're properly led, properly resourced, they can play the game
Speaker 1: a lot better than you think. And going back to
Speaker 1: some of the things we were talking about earlier on
Speaker 1: the show, I think the People's Republic of China has
Speaker 1: proven that where if you look since two thousand, if
Speaker 1: you look at the People's Republic of China's military and
Speaker 1: national security structures compared to the US, NATO, Japan and
Speaker 1: our allies, you would never have expected that they would
Speaker 1: have been able to advance as much as they have,
Speaker 1: But they have because of their focus and their leadership
Speaker 1: and a little bit of up. And it's the same
Speaker 1: thing for those smaller units. People say a fast attack
Speaker 1: craft X y Z, we don't need ten of those,
Speaker 1: we need two more early burgs. And I can make
Speaker 1: both arguments, but if you don't have that tool in
Speaker 1: your toolbox, then you don't have those options. If the
Speaker 1: decision was made that those destroyer escorts didn't need to
Speaker 1: be configured to do anything but triple A, would Taffy
Speaker 1: three have turned out the way that it did and
Speaker 1: probably not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a remember General Van Riper, Yeah, and we
Speaker 2: had him on I mean, we had him other show
Speaker 2: years ago and we were talking about the his word
Speaker 2: game where he violated the rules of the game or something.
Speaker 2: But but you know, swarming attack on ships. They basically,
Speaker 2: you know, they had to stop the clock and restart
Speaker 2: because it was an embarrassment up to that. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's not like we don't know these things. It's like
Speaker 2: we just don't want to think about it. And when
Speaker 2: you know, when they do think about it, Okay, how
Speaker 2: are we going to stop a swarm attack? And you
Speaker 2: know that, then it gets into well, we're going to
Speaker 2: have these cool weapons here and this and that and such,
Speaker 2: and you know, until we get those things deployed, you
Speaker 2: got you got some serious issues. And the other concern
Speaker 2: that people have about using smaller ships or smaller craft
Speaker 2: just getting them to where they're going to be used.
Speaker 2: And no matter how many times you give them a
Speaker 2: picture of a of a yacht carrier carrying uh, you know,
Speaker 2: several dozen yachts from through the Red Sea or wherever.
Speaker 2: You know, that gets ignored. How are we going to
Speaker 2: sustain them? And we can always go up with the
Speaker 2: same answer. Way. You sustain them with the tenders we
Speaker 2: don't have, or you turn you turn some of the amphibs,
Speaker 2: which are otherwise useless ships as far as I can
Speaker 2: tell them an engagement with with China, you turn them
Speaker 2: into support vessels for these smaller craft. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: not like we have to rethink everything. We have hauls,
Speaker 2: we have assets we could use. It's just that we
Speaker 2: have to have the somebody to make the decision. You know,
Speaker 2: it would be a really good idea if we had
Speaker 2: I don't know, one hundred PGG you know whatever the
Speaker 2: current version of a patrol hydrofoil missile would be. So,
Speaker 2: you know, and are they you know these some of
Speaker 2: these stealth things like the stiletto and the sea shadow
Speaker 2: and all those other cool things that came up when
Speaker 2: Sabrowski and Hughes and some of the other people who
Speaker 2: were really thinking about this problem. I mean, and how
Speaker 2: long ago was that? Twenty five years? What have been
Speaker 2: when doing for twenty five years?
Speaker 1: And you mentioned it earlier. But one of the worst
Speaker 1: arguments against it that I hear is it's the other
Speaker 1: side of the coin. Hav any of these people made
Speaker 1: admiral is People always say we can't design a career
Speaker 1: path for that. Well, we have no shortage of junior
Speaker 1: officers who would be more than happy to do this,
Speaker 1: because guess what, admiral. They don't want to be an admiral.
Speaker 1: They don't want to stay in for twenty years. They
Speaker 1: want to serve their country and then get out, and
Speaker 1: they'd be more unhappy to have their last last year
Speaker 1: in the Navy as the person in charge of a
Speaker 1: fast attack craft. They'd be more unhappy to do that,
Speaker 1: and then they'll get out, and then you could have
Speaker 1: some special mission service warfare. Guy who didn't get a
Speaker 1: destroyer can then be part of the flotilla command whatever.
Speaker 1: That and one thing we haven't looked at, And for me,
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong, I think we had some version of
Speaker 1: this with our riverine craft in Vietnam. But the US
Speaker 1: Army has some pretty impressive kit that is run by
Speaker 1: warrant officers, okay, kind of like the helicopters and some
Speaker 1: of their watercraft, which we talked about earlier this year.
Speaker 1: We will talk about that debacle today. Okay, fine, I
Speaker 1: bet you've got lots of BM ones out there and
Speaker 1: Ian ones who would love to run one of these
Speaker 1: ships as well, and would probably do a damn fine job.
Speaker 1: You know, why can't we look at what other services
Speaker 1: do to access some of the intellectual and professional capital.
Speaker 1: And they're enlisted forces? Yeah, you know, you got yeah
Speaker 1: four of them. One of them has Lieutenant j. G
Speaker 1: on it and the other three have warrant officers or
Speaker 1: senior chiefs are running them. Probably worked better that way.
Speaker 1: There are ways to look at that if you want
Speaker 1: that capability, but it has to get off the PowerPoint slide,
Speaker 1: it has to get off the podcast and actually get
Speaker 1: sponsorship program a record, which goes into our procedures as well.
Speaker 1: But it's the problem appreciation that we've been going on
Speaker 1: for a long time. We know the Imperial we we
Speaker 1: know what we need if we are going to be
Speaker 1: asked to fight west of international dateline, But are we
Speaker 1: resourcing it or are we just running on inertia? It
Speaker 1: mostly seems to be the last even you know, like
Speaker 1: Paul I Believe mentioned early on in the show, and
Speaker 1: I promised him we'd back to it. He asked about
Speaker 1: something we talked about last week, which was the number
Speaker 1: of SM three's that we expended. I saw a real
Speaker 1: nice comment over my substackle like it, and I want
Speaker 1: to try to use this term or often is if
Speaker 1: you're only producing a dozen items a year, that's not
Speaker 1: a manufacturing product, that's a craft project. So if we
Speaker 1: are crafting a dozen missiles that we will blow out
Speaker 1: in the course of one day against a fourth rate
Speaker 1: power that we're also attacking with B two to now,
Speaker 1: because we don't have other assets that can attack a
Speaker 1: fourth rate power, we've got to use B twos from Missouri. Okay, fine,
Speaker 1: then how do you transition from craft built to wartime production?
Speaker 1: That's a done good question, and I would love to
Speaker 1: have a supply chain guy. Maybe we could get one
Speaker 1: of the guys who got paid in that four hundred
Speaker 1: million dollar research project that Bob Work was involved with
Speaker 1: to talk about the supply chain issues. Where are those
Speaker 1: those barriers?
Speaker 3: Are that bottleneck?
Speaker 1: If we need to go from producing twelve a year
Speaker 1: to one hundred and twenty a year, how do we
Speaker 1: go from craft to maritime production. That would also be
Speaker 1: an indication that we're not continuing to balk on the
Speaker 1: Pacific pivot because it's clear what we really need if
Speaker 1: we decide that we will defend the interest of Taiwan
Speaker 1: with the US Navy, because it doesn't seem like we
Speaker 1: are backing that up with the actual production.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's vital that stuff like that gets
Speaker 2: you know, somebody needs to kick it and the people
Speaker 2: in the rear in and you know, we need how
Speaker 2: many more himers, how many more systems that we can
Speaker 2: use SM three's how many x y zs Because as
Speaker 2: we've many times have discussed on here, the rate of
Speaker 2: expenditure of weaponry and work far exceeds. Hey, what anybody
Speaker 2: can believe unless they're actually have fought in war and
Speaker 2: it is I mean, I just look at infantrymen in
Speaker 2: World Wark too, and you know how many how many
Speaker 2: rounds of ammunition did they consider enough to go into battle?
Speaker 2: And you just you figure when you read the books
Speaker 2: that their idea of what they had to carry was
Speaker 2: a whole lot more than what the book said they
Speaker 2: were supposed to carry. So it just uh, some you know,
Speaker 2: maybe it's because we have a somewhat of a vacuum
Speaker 2: at the top where there'sn't anybody seeming to take charge
Speaker 2: with any seriousness of where we're going with this. I mean,
Speaker 2: I know SECT now seems to be trying some, and
Speaker 2: c Ando seems to be trying some, but I don't
Speaker 2: know if anybody on the hill or in the executive
Speaker 2: branch is really paying attention to what the needs are
Speaker 2: if if we had to go fight a real fight.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw one person responding to common Amay a few
Speaker 1: years ago about magazine Depth. He said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: we we ran a war game recently that showed X,
Speaker 1: Y and Z, and I was like, Okay, what was
Speaker 1: your VLS load out? You know tomahawk to you know
Speaker 1: tee lamb standard missile? What variety of standard missile? He
Speaker 1: just kind of blinked at me. He's like, well, I
Speaker 1: remember off the top of my head. But you know,
Speaker 1: everybody was was able to properly engage when we do
Speaker 1: the percentages of say, okay, well what was your launch?
Speaker 1: There's your launch protocol? Shoot look shoot or shoot shoot
Speaker 1: look shoot. He just kind of looked at me and blink.
Speaker 1: He didn't say one way or another, which told me
Speaker 1: you didn't know. But you can run these games where
Speaker 1: you say everybody's going to go shoot, look, shoot, which
Speaker 1: means you fire and missile. See if you hit your target,
Speaker 1: and if you miss, you fire again.
Speaker 3: Shoot look shoot.
Speaker 1: But I got news for you. If you've got if
Speaker 1: you're the skipper of a ship and you've got a
Speaker 1: couple of cruise missiles and anti ship ballistic missile coming
Speaker 1: at you, you're gonna shoot shoot, look, shoot, And if
Speaker 1: you do more than that, you're going to do that
Speaker 1: as well, because you don't have a luxury time and
Speaker 1: that totally changes your consumption rate, and eventually those ships
Speaker 1: are going to have to come off the line especially,
Speaker 1: and this is why a lot of the smart people
Speaker 1: that you and I talk to always go back to
Speaker 1: VLS sells. If a decision has ever made that our
Speaker 1: fleet needs to go west of the International date Line
Speaker 1: to do stuff in the Western Pacific, is you're going
Speaker 1: to have, I assume, especially with our cruisers going away,
Speaker 1: it seems like every couple of months you're going to
Speaker 1: need a heavy teelam load out because you're going to
Speaker 1: have to engage targets shore. And for every bank of
Speaker 1: mark forty one vs sls you fill up with the
Speaker 1: tee lamb, that's one that you can't put a aired
Speaker 1: air missile on. So how long do you go Winchester
Speaker 1: until you run out? And then how do you reload that?
Speaker 1: Where do you find those? How long does it take
Speaker 1: to get there? Do you once you have X number
Speaker 1: of ships with you use up most of their their
Speaker 1: long range anti ship missiles, but they still have their
Speaker 1: their Tomahawk missiles? How long do you have them continue
Speaker 1: with you when they can only do point defense with
Speaker 1: their their c ram or their essms. They have got
Speaker 1: quad packed and a few of them. Now that's the
Speaker 1: real hard math that I don't think a lot of
Speaker 1: these war games are capturing, but there are some other
Speaker 1: war games that do capture it. And that's when you
Speaker 1: talk to people who just they say, yeah, we got
Speaker 1: out of a war game and I can't talk about
Speaker 1: the details, but I need to drink, and that's I
Speaker 1: think those So there are people out there that are
Speaker 1: running what I think you and I would consider a
Speaker 1: real hardcore war game because they get they need a
Speaker 1: drink and they won't talk about it. But that's not
Speaker 1: what you hear up on the hill. You know, war
Speaker 1: games are like anything else. You can pick, pick and
Speaker 1: choose what you want. But the math, the math is
Speaker 1: pretty harsh. If you look at when did the Hoofy
Speaker 1: shoot at the Mason?
Speaker 3: Was it almost ten years ago? Anyway? If you look
Speaker 3: at some of.
Speaker 1: The engagements we had, especially in the last year, we've
Speaker 1: got some really good figures about the expenditure requirements. The
Speaker 1: next NDAA that comes up, it'll be interesting to see
Speaker 1: whether that's reflected any of the numbers that come out
Speaker 1: of that tube. But they're going to have to find
Speaker 1: the money from someplace else. I don't know whether they're well.
Speaker 2: I think it's going to take somebody like like cno
Speaker 2: or as Secretary of Navy to go to Congress and say,
Speaker 2: you know, you want us to provide to maintain the
Speaker 2: sea lanes in an open condition for the rest of
Speaker 2: the world. We're going to need a whole hell of
Speaker 2: a lot more money and a lot more attention paid
Speaker 2: to what we're doing as far as the as the
Speaker 2: c services go. Because just as we've proven the Red Sea,
Speaker 2: you know, that is one of those problems where we've
Speaker 2: spent a lot of organs and we now got the shoes,
Speaker 2: say the Air Force involved with it, B two. That's great.
Speaker 2: I'm glad they you know, big ground penetrating whatever in there.
Speaker 2: But you know, has the problem been solved? Is it
Speaker 2: going to be solved?
Speaker 3: We?
Speaker 2: You know what what what is the next nation that
Speaker 2: that has a some beachfront property that's going to threaten
Speaker 2: the international trade because they can't you know there? Is
Speaker 2: it going to be one of the Southeast Asian nations
Speaker 2: that's unfriendly to the rest of the world. I've got
Speaker 2: got missiles now that can range out to see and
Speaker 2: if you guys don't do what I want, then I'm
Speaker 2: going to stop all merchant traffic going through here I mean,
Speaker 2: and this is this, this could grow, what's the what's
Speaker 2: the worst? This could get out of hand quickly? And
Speaker 2: the line from Red October.
Speaker 1: Yeah it again, it's all incentives and distance in it's like,
Speaker 1: well it worked for it worked for Yemen, why can't
Speaker 1: it work for us?
Speaker 2: And you know you can't.
Speaker 1: And not all the world's nations are led by people
Speaker 1: who learned how to conduct their trade craft at the
Speaker 1: model you in in high school.
Speaker 3: There are.
Speaker 1: Are some hard players out there who cut their teeth
Speaker 1: somewhere else besides the weekend and and over, and you
Speaker 1: can't deal with those people like you did with the
Speaker 1: kid who came in from San Diego when you're seventeen.
Speaker 1: And they are going to respond to power, what works,
Speaker 1: what doesn't work. And that's the whole essence of.
Speaker 2: Terrence.
Speaker 1: I guess it's not only what you say, it's what
Speaker 1: you do. And I don't think that we have a
Speaker 1: really great record of that. Recently, Again, the damage from
Speaker 1: what we did in Afghanistan is it's going to have
Speaker 1: some stick to itiveness when it comes to us being
Speaker 1: able to get some friends. Also lost a lot of
Speaker 1: goodwill amongst our legitimate friends from Iraq, and that's going
Speaker 1: to stick with us for a while. So a little
Speaker 1: bit of humility about not only what we've done, but
Speaker 1: our perception of the world, I think is helpful. And
Speaker 1: a part of that perception of the world is to
Speaker 1: understand that Koreans, Russians, Chinese, Burmese, they don't think the
Speaker 1: same way do. They don't think better, they don't think worse.
Speaker 1: They're human beings just like you and me, but they
Speaker 1: have a different perspective on how you achieve your personal
Speaker 1: and national goals. And we used to be able to
Speaker 1: spot weld other cultures onto this global international order that
Speaker 1: we've tried to put together, but I'm not sure those
Speaker 1: welds are holding as well as they should.
Speaker 3: And a jolt to.
Speaker 1: The system, like the People's Republic of China being able
Speaker 1: to relatively bloodlessly call the world's bluff and exert full
Speaker 1: control over Taiwan, that might pop that weld. And that's
Speaker 1: a different planet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's the same thing we keep discussing.
Speaker 2: If every war becomes you trying to turn whoever you're
Speaker 2: fighting into your friends by making them a democracy instead
Speaker 2: of just going in and killing the bad guys. And
Speaker 2: you know, sometimes that has consequences like you get a
Speaker 2: bad front page copy on the New York Times, like
Speaker 2: Israel gets right now, you know, but there is no
Speaker 2: Sometimes there's just no choice.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: There are people out there, and it's not understating things
Speaker 2: for the the Israelis have put it. You know, they're
Speaker 2: dealing with a cult that does not mind dye because
Speaker 2: they think if they die fighting for their cause, they're
Speaker 2: gonna they get they go to heaven and get their
Speaker 2: seventy because it's seventy versions. I can't remember anymore. Seventy
Speaker 2: seventy two. Yeah, I don't know why that number anyway,
Speaker 2: it's you that is that, that is the that is
Speaker 2: the mindset you got to you gotta fight, and it's
Speaker 2: you know, we were never going to convert everyone in
Speaker 2: Afghanistan to be uh people who would like to live
Speaker 2: in They maybe would like to live in Scarsdale, but
Speaker 2: they're not the you know, that's that really is not
Speaker 2: part of their goal in life, which is to achieve
Speaker 2: status with such that they would get rewarded with seventy
Speaker 2: two of something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, Yeah, you brought up Israel, and in
Speaker 1: the back of my head, I gotta wonder is kill
Speaker 1: them all a valid strategy. But I think what we've
Speaker 1: seen is the stalding nature of those horrors of the
Speaker 1: seventh of October of twenty three, that that reset a
Speaker 1: lot of assumptions.
Speaker 3: Inside of Israel.
Speaker 1: They they they have tried land for peace. They've tried,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll exchange a thousand prisoners for one of ours.
Speaker 1: They've tried a lot of things, and they've had success,
Speaker 1: and they've had neutrals. Egypt is a neutral, I would
Speaker 1: call it when you look at the tunnels coming from
Speaker 1: Egypt and the Goths, but that that's.
Speaker 3: Just old fashioned corruption.
Speaker 1: They had a lot of success with the Gold States
Speaker 1: and even Saudi Arabia, who wants to modernize, because they
Speaker 1: have you know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend,
Speaker 1: and they all have that enemy of Shia Iran, which
Speaker 1: as long as it's under the control of the fundamentalist
Speaker 1: is going to be a problem. But when it comes
Speaker 1: to Hamas and Hezbala, all these exquisite international arrangements, and
Speaker 1: let's be clear, the international community not only is abandoned Israel,
Speaker 1: it's downright hostile to it. When you look at the
Speaker 1: UNIFIL forces in southern Lebanon, who were obstensibly there to
Speaker 1: promote peace. They promoted an incredible military infrastructure by Hesbla
Speaker 1: right there on the Israeli border. In the Israelis have
Speaker 1: basically told the un stay in your tower, don't get
Speaker 1: in our way.
Speaker 3: We've got to do things.
Speaker 1: There's a realization, I think inside the Israeli mind that
Speaker 1: these international niceties they were trying to play along with
Speaker 1: for the last thirty some odd years that wind up
Speaker 1: getting over a thousand of their citizens murdered, tortured, rate
Speaker 1: kidnap and they're done playing. So maybe if you're dealing
Speaker 1: with irrational people, all you can do is kill them
Speaker 1: where you find them, which is kind of what they're doing,
Speaker 1: probably doing a lot, a lot kinder than a lot
Speaker 1: of nations are. I always look at you know what,
Speaker 1: if we had something similar coming out of northern Mexico
Speaker 1: that all happened in a day, and you scaled up
Speaker 1: for population, would we do anything different?
Speaker 3: I don't think so.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: I think we Well, if you go historical precedents, I mean,
Speaker 2: if the raids on a Columbus, New Mexico and and
Speaker 2: the thempunity of action that was let down there by pershing.
Speaker 2: I think we we did respond, although we were going
Speaker 2: after a theoretically at an army I guess, but yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean terrorism. You know the original goal of our
Speaker 2: physicition in Afghanistan was to punish the terrorists and the
Speaker 2: people who support them. And you know, once you've done
Speaker 2: a certain level of that, you hope that they get
Speaker 2: the message and they quit doing whatever they were doing.
Speaker 2: But you know, to go in and then decide, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: and also we're gonna make sure all the goats are
Speaker 2: properly groomed and everything else that's head just just gets
Speaker 2: mind bodiling how much wastage there is and things that
Speaker 2: did really move the war forward at all, get us
Speaker 2: out of the situation we went into.
Speaker 1: Well, hey, I just I just realized that we have
Speaker 1: just spent an hour, so we have used up our
Speaker 1: quota for everybody. I don't know anything any as my
Speaker 1: Army friends would say, any saved rounds before we signed
Speaker 1: off for the day.
Speaker 2: I wasn't gonna laugh at the at the Army's Navy
Speaker 2: because their bow ramp fell off one of their one
Speaker 2: of their craft. But I'm tired of beating up on
Speaker 2: army right now, So that was it very.
Speaker 3: Very charitable of you?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I had a few things left on my
Speaker 1: sheet as well, but we can easily go for another hour.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank everybody who did join us live
Speaker 1: and who hopped in the chat room. We had some
Speaker 1: real good exchanges there, and again, we're not gonna have
Speaker 1: a show next week, but Lord Willing.
Speaker 3: In the creek don't rise. We will see you.
Speaker 1: There in November. Thanks for being with us today. Thank
Speaker 1: you everybody. I hope y'all have a great Navy Day.
Speaker 3: Cheers,