Speaker 1: And welcome on board everybody. We appreciate you joining us
Speaker 1: for another edition of mid Rats and put forward the
Speaker 1: altar call if you happen to be with that esteemed
Speaker 1: cohort that is with us Live if you'd like to.
Speaker 1: We've already got a few folks that have jumped into
Speaker 1: the chat Kent Nec and a couple of brothers. That's
Speaker 1: a great place, especially for today's show that if you
Speaker 1: have some observations you want to share, or even some
Speaker 1: issues that you would like addressed during the course of
Speaker 1: the show, that's the perfect place to do it. You
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Speaker 1: don't cost you a penny, and it's the best way
Speaker 1: to keep up with you. And when I mentioned about
Speaker 1: the extra joy of the chat room, that's because today
Speaker 1: is in our free for all format. Mark and I
Speaker 1: have some ideas that we want to chat about, and however,
Speaker 1: we are open to questions or topics that you might
Speaker 1: want for us to bring up during the Horse of
Speaker 1: the day, and I'll be watching the DMS on Twitter
Speaker 1: and we'll all be watching the chat room there on Riverside.
Speaker 1: So we're going to go ahead and dive into it.
Speaker 1: Because we cheated, we did a pre show. I think
Speaker 1: we do want to talk about. So hey, Mark, good afternoon,
Speaker 1: and why don't we kick it off with what you
Speaker 1: and I both wanted to pick at, which is the
Speaker 1: topic that remember us being very skeptical about back in
Speaker 1: the previous decade when Maybus was second now and that
Speaker 1: is how exactly big is our fleet?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a some Some people may have noticed that
Speaker 2: John cud and I had a He cited an article
Speaker 2: that had question, you know we had a three hundred
Speaker 2: ship navy or something. Anyway, he said we had about
Speaker 2: two hundred and thirty USS ships that his worships, and
Speaker 2: I said, it not that high. Basically, we have eleven carriers,
Speaker 2: sixty eight subs, nine cruisers, maybe seventy eight destroyer, seventy
Speaker 2: six destroyers, which I think includes the DDG one thousand,
Speaker 2: which I think is a three ship group that we
Speaker 2: don't know what to do with, twenty six lcs's, and
Speaker 2: then we have eight mine warfare ships and several lcs's
Speaker 2: are going to be going taking over that role with
Speaker 2: their new mine hunting system that's finally coming to effect,
Speaker 2: what fifteen twenty years later than they should. And we
Speaker 2: have thirty four amphibs, and you can add all the
Speaker 2: numbers anyway, done at it, we don't have that many
Speaker 2: ships surface ships to fight. And then those sixty eight
Speaker 2: submarines I referenced, those include the the SSBNs and the
Speaker 2: ss gns. So how many of those are actually attacked submarines?
Speaker 2: You can do the math yourself, but the navy is
Speaker 2: not as big as many of us think, particularly if
Speaker 2: you subtract the thirty four amphibs. You don't and you
Speaker 2: and as John pointed out, you don't count the auxiliaries
Speaker 2: which are operated by military Seal of Command and manned
Speaker 2: by siv mars. So you know, and it depends on
Speaker 2: how you want to count things. And the LCS accounting
Speaker 2: as a worship now we've they've been improved, but you know,
Speaker 2: there's a question there as to what we're actually doing
Speaker 2: with those ships.
Speaker 1: I resigned myself to the fate of LCS years ago,
Speaker 1: but when you look at numbers, you really have to
Speaker 1: even if you want to be fair two thirds of
Speaker 1: a ship, because she's not kind. A multi mission ship
Speaker 1: has a lot of limitations. If many years late after
Speaker 1: commissioning the first one, if they were really that useful,
Speaker 1: we'd see them a lot more. So you've got to
Speaker 1: be careful with that. And I think another thing did
Speaker 1: especially when you look west towards the world's now largest
Speaker 1: navy with the People's Republic of China. Unlike China, we are,
Speaker 1: by requirement, a two ocean navy. The PRC can at
Speaker 1: their luxury stay east of Singapore and south of No
Speaker 1: Malaska and just focus on the Pacific. We don't have
Speaker 1: that luxury. Regardless whether we have a conflict to the
Speaker 1: west of US or conflict to the east of US.
Speaker 1: We can't totally abandon one ocean or the other. So
Speaker 1: that rarely is a situation that I think I was
Speaker 1: going to say, that is a situation that you can't
Speaker 1: really appreciate unless you take out the map and look
Speaker 1: at that. And that impacts the amount of numbers of
Speaker 1: actual warships that you can take west to the International
Speaker 1: date Line if we have to, and if you want
Speaker 1: to break those down by those ships that actually carry
Speaker 1: usable offensive weapons. That means you have a VLSSELL that
Speaker 1: fits something more larger than a hell fire missile that
Speaker 1: even necks it down further. It's not a gnashing of
Speaker 1: teeth or rending a closed things. But I think it's
Speaker 1: important that we, as in all things, that we're honest
Speaker 1: with ourselves and we're very upfront by what type of
Speaker 1: battle fleet we can actually put west to the international
Speaker 1: date line. Because those who play in the game, they
Speaker 1: can whisper sweet nothings to each other in a hushed voice,
Speaker 1: but they understand what's between the lines. However, a lot
Speaker 1: of the civilian leadership in this country, they they don't
Speaker 1: have that nuanced understanding. And they see two eighty two
Speaker 1: eighty five preten whatever number you want to put up there.
Speaker 1: They think that's the actual number of warships that we
Speaker 1: could take west if we had to. And even if
Speaker 1: you're optimistic and use you it takes three to make one,
Speaker 1: or Brian McGrath says it's more like four or five
Speaker 1: to make one. That's a very realistic number that I
Speaker 1: don't think that we are as open to each other about.
Speaker 1: And the PRC has similar limitations when it comes to
Speaker 1: maintenance but there are certain characteristics about our nation and
Speaker 1: our requirements that's distinctly different from our greatest challenger in
Speaker 1: the Pacific.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And what's happening is that, you know, we, because
Speaker 2: our ships are so expensive even take so long to make,
Speaker 2: we're beginning to look at people suggesting and rightfully so,
Speaker 2: you know, stopgap measures to get a force that can
Speaker 2: supply our fleet when it goes across the ocean. And
Speaker 2: that's part one. Part two, fend our own shores and
Speaker 2: take up pick up the slack of what would be
Speaker 2: left behind when when all our big gray halls go
Speaker 2: someplace else. And so there was an article in Proceedings
Speaker 2: called crash Fleet Emergency ship Building Program by Lieutenant Commander
Speaker 2: Brian Adornato, US Navy Reserve, and he, you know, he
Speaker 2: makes some good points that there are a lot of
Speaker 2: ships in reserve. We don't these days. Platforms don't matter
Speaker 2: as much. There are a lot of ships off when
Speaker 2: you I've argued for years about these offshore platforms. Were
Speaker 2: used them to prototype the unmanned surface vessels. But you
Speaker 2: know they can be manned. They can you can put
Speaker 2: weapons systems on them. Our weapon systems aren't like the
Speaker 2: old days where he had a sixteen inch gun mount
Speaker 2: that required you know, eight decks and the huge storage
Speaker 2: bind We have other things that can fit on these
Speaker 2: smaller units and would provide homeland security along with the
Speaker 2: coast guard units that are out there. You know, the
Speaker 2: the the whole effort the Navy itself is making to
Speaker 2: do unmanned stuff is important. By x posts today on
Speaker 2: the number of ship boat builders in the United States
Speaker 2: are like forty three hundred of these of these companies
Speaker 2: making small craft. You know, if we really cranked the
Speaker 2: levers and every one of those produced ten craft that
Speaker 2: the Navy could use and convert to unmanned and arm
Speaker 2: up in some way. You know, that's that's that's a
Speaker 2: forty three thousand unit size unmanned stuff. Then you can
Speaker 2: use these ampibs for something useful, which is to help
Speaker 2: tote those things across the ocean where they could be used.
Speaker 2: They're they're low cost snuffs since they're generally made out
Speaker 2: of fiberglass, and we're taking lessons here from the bog
Speaker 2: ammers of the the Iranians. But you know, we could
Speaker 2: we can weaponize those things, use them, and they are
Speaker 2: as expendable as anything much more expendable than say the
Speaker 2: old pt Boat movie with John Wayne and Robert Montgomery, with.
Speaker 1: A couple of the systems that we already have developed
Speaker 1: and we've talked about here a few times, like the
Speaker 1: Mark seventy thick system, container eyed missiles that can carry
Speaker 1: a couple of tea lambs are an S and six even,
Speaker 1: and there's a few other variants of things. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's even a maritime version of the iron Dome system.
Speaker 1: And of course you always have the bolt On anti
Speaker 1: ship cruise missiles for NSM and harpoon, and we have
Speaker 1: the portable which is pretty much what the piratee system is,
Speaker 1: is the Mark forty one VLS and a container, and
Speaker 1: it melds up pretty well. With that innocent question I'll
Speaker 1: put up earlier, is just saw an a notice about
Speaker 1: the HCMS Sacksville, which is a Canadian Naval Museum ship,
Speaker 1: which was which is one of the surviving Flower class
Speaker 1: corvettes that before the Second World War was a type
Speaker 1: of whaler, and there was as we always find out
Speaker 1: when war takes place, we don't have enough ships to
Speaker 1: cover second and third tier missions. In this case, it
Speaker 1: was convoy escort and it wasn't a perfect solution, but
Speaker 1: it was a ship that was already in production. Everything
Speaker 1: was done. They just need to modify it. And they
Speaker 1: did a good job in the core of the war.
Speaker 1: But every time the ship came in, the good idea
Speaker 1: fairy came down to the pier, not just with ideas,
Speaker 1: but with boatloads of stuff that they were going to
Speaker 1: improve on it. So they did nice iterative improvements during
Speaker 1: the course of the war. And so I put out
Speaker 1: a question, you know, what type of ships do we
Speaker 1: have that the engineering work is done. They can be
Speaker 1: produced all over the place in number. Are not a
Speaker 1: perfect solution, but we'll displace water and you can slap
Speaker 1: some weapons on it. And our favorite yardbird Byron he
Speaker 1: mentioned what always is in the back of my head,
Speaker 1: and I think we've talked about it here before, and
Speaker 1: those are the platform supply vessels, offshore supply vessels osvs,
Speaker 1: things such as the people use for construction support. They
Speaker 1: use them a lot to the offshore hydrocarbon, oil and
Speaker 1: gas wells. And they're they're interesting ships because they go
Speaker 1: from one hundred and fifty to three hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: feet long. They have the superstructure and the accommodations forward.
Speaker 1: But then because they bring a lot of equipment back
Speaker 1: and forth to the platforms, they have a huge flat
Speaker 1: area in the back that is easily customizable with a
Speaker 1: little bit of imagination and some weld qualified people. And
Speaker 1: I think that is the right answer. If a balloon
Speaker 1: went up somewhere and all of a sudden, we had
Speaker 1: a big requirement that we didn't have time to have
Speaker 1: a five year development cycle and three years to build,
Speaker 1: and it had to be perfect, and it had to
Speaker 1: meet all of navisty seas exquisite requirements. We just needed
Speaker 1: holes in the water that can carry something forward. I
Speaker 1: think that's the right answer. We probably also would give
Speaker 1: us an opportunity not just for building them, but there
Speaker 1: are a lot of them out there on the civilian
Speaker 1: market in the place of in case of a real
Speaker 1: national emergency, Uncle Sam can can take what it needs
Speaker 1: to execute. So I think that's probably what we would see.
Speaker 1: The modern version of the Flower class corvettes and similar
Speaker 1: vehicles would be those offshore supply vessels.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that follows along the fineavy tradition of calling
Speaker 2: up like in World War One. I think they have
Speaker 2: yachts and other private former you know ship's boats that
Speaker 2: were being used for anti submarine operations. They'd fit them
Speaker 2: up with a couple of I guess depth charges or
Speaker 2: something and maybe a deck kun of some kind and
Speaker 2: let them and turn them allers looking for submarines. You know,
Speaker 2: that wasn't the best program in the world, but sometimes
Speaker 2: you just got to do what you got to do
Speaker 2: that would work. You know, an article that I talked
Speaker 2: about from proceedings I'll put a link up on our
Speaker 2: website or eventually says there are three hundred of those
Speaker 2: offshore vessels right now that are are sitting idol. You know,
Speaker 2: it wouldn't take a genius to say, you know, if
Speaker 2: they're sitting iidol, we'd probably buy them for or rent
Speaker 2: them for a song, harm them up, and then all
Speaker 2: you need to do is find the people to operate them.
Speaker 2: And I suspect if we got that many sitting idol,
Speaker 2: there's some some offshore crew guys who would like to
Speaker 2: earn some extra money, being chiefs or first class petty
Speaker 2: officers or ensigns in the Navy, who you could organize
Speaker 2: into squadrons and have them operate to provide some assets.
Speaker 2: Do a lot of the jobs that we're now doing
Speaker 2: with DDGs and even nlcs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can. You could poop poo their cabildies
Speaker 1: all day long if you want to. But we're not
Speaker 1: building frigates. We're not building destroyers for first tier missions.
Speaker 1: And if you read back in my base of my thirties,
Speaker 1: I read every first hand account I could get hold
Speaker 1: of of the both US and German U boat and
Speaker 1: submarine skippers in World War Two, as when they are
Speaker 1: out there operating and doing what they did so well,
Speaker 1: if they had a submarine chaser, or the Japanese had
Speaker 1: a lot too, or one of those trawlers that they
Speaker 1: knew was equipped with depth depth charges, they reacted as
Speaker 1: if they did have a destroyer coming down on it,
Speaker 1: because yeah, it may only carry you know, a half
Speaker 1: dozen to fifteen anti submarine depth charges, but it only
Speaker 1: takes one to knock out a sub And it's the
Speaker 1: same thing if you have a bunch of ships out
Speaker 1: there that aren't carrying you know, one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: eight land attack cruise missiles, but they are carrying a
Speaker 1: half dozen of something that might be interesting, and you
Speaker 1: have twenty of them, that really complicates an enemy because
Speaker 1: now they no longer have this body of water. I
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about or this line of approach.
Speaker 1: I don't have to worry about it. It makes their
Speaker 1: job much more difficult. Numbers matter, even if it's not
Speaker 1: a first tier ship. Think the love the teenth and
Speaker 1: nineteenth century definitions of I guess it hurt people's feelings
Speaker 1: that we don't use them anymore. First class, second clap class,
Speaker 1: third class, fourth class ship. And then you had your
Speaker 1: brigs and your sloops, and they had a very diverse,
Speaker 1: worse set of tools to choose from. And those empires
Speaker 1: pretty much cover the globe with them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's you know, we get worried about things
Speaker 2: like escorting ships across the Pacific. And I think I've
Speaker 2: said before that if you using modern aviation technology, which
Speaker 2: means long range patrol planes and putting helicopters on the
Speaker 2: decks of some of these vessels you're trying to get
Speaker 2: across the ocean, and many of them already, especially our
Speaker 2: military seedlift command ships, many of them already have flight
Speaker 2: decks and can support and sustain helicopter operations. Know, those
Speaker 2: helicopters can drop SOUNA buys you can you can, and
Speaker 2: they can drop torpedoes and depth charges and things, so
Speaker 2: you can you can escort vessels using that most of
Speaker 2: the way across the Pacific. And that's probably most of
Speaker 2: the way is good enough because the range of the
Speaker 2: current Chinese submarines is such that they're probably not going
Speaker 2: to to be bothering us too far east of the
Speaker 2: International Dayline.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But and I think again, you know, you have
Speaker 1: to look to prior conflicts, how regards how long they are,
Speaker 1: ago to look at various conops. And I think you
Speaker 1: made a very good point is there's not unlike what
Speaker 1: we did in the Pacific. Everybody likes to talk about
Speaker 1: the jeep carriers and the light carriers. Yes, you know,
Speaker 1: everybody knows Tappy three. They were used in frontline, but
Speaker 1: a lot of what they did was just burying aircraft
Speaker 1: across the ocean. That you had a couple of JEP
Speaker 1: carriers that carried a squadron to two and they would
Speaker 1: get west of the Midway and Wake Island until they
Speaker 1: got in range of the fleet carriers and then the
Speaker 1: air wings would fly off to their to replace combat losses.
Speaker 1: You had, I forget the technical term, maybe you know
Speaker 1: it the tanker relay system where the tankers would come
Speaker 1: off the West coast and would meet the fleet tankers
Speaker 1: somewhere in the Pacific and transfer their loads, and that
Speaker 1: made it much more efficient fight forward. So if we
Speaker 1: have a low density threat east of the International Dateline
Speaker 1: or east of Guam, wherever you want to draw that line,
Speaker 1: that requires an escort, John Conrad, your concern, as we've
Speaker 1: talked about for years, Yeah, maybe you can't afford to
Speaker 1: have a DDG out there, But what if you had
Speaker 1: a good enough former all shore supply vessel that had
Speaker 1: enough service to air missiles to handle. If the Chinese
Speaker 1: were lucky enough to get a unit or two out there,
Speaker 1: or had the ability should a submarine show up or
Speaker 1: something they think as a submarine, can go out there
Speaker 1: and at least make it go away, just like our subchasers,
Speaker 1: hence the name chased away submarines. They sunk a few,
Speaker 1: but they got mission kills on a lot more. It's
Speaker 1: an idea that has been used before with great success.
Speaker 1: Technology has changed, the challenge has changed, but I think
Speaker 1: the logic remains sound.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't. I don't have any problem with that.
Speaker 2: I think that the challenge is that we have to
Speaker 2: quit thinking that everything has to be perfect and we
Speaker 2: just need good enough for a lot of this. And
Speaker 2: somebody was talking about we'd have to to h on
Speaker 2: the chat the same way we would have to give
Speaker 2: physicals to all these guys that want for the offshore crew. Well,
Speaker 2: Cirrosi's deliver is not a big issue if you're only
Speaker 2: going to use these people for four or five years.
Speaker 2: But I'm not sure whether medical other medical issues. We
Speaker 2: want people who know how to operate the boats are
Speaker 2: and are good enough sailors. They can they can do
Speaker 2: the job, and are motivated to do the job. You know,
Speaker 2: it's one of those things. And you know, we also
Speaker 2: have to be aware. And John, there's an article that
Speaker 2: John had in this Marine Corps thing that I can't
Speaker 2: Marine Corps University publication. I'm going to put the link
Speaker 2: up here a minute. I'll called carriers and amphibs and
Speaker 2: he's talking about that, you know when and you you
Speaker 2: mentioned it earlier. When civilian leadership of the Navy they
Speaker 2: think of carriers and amphibious ships, and that is a
Speaker 2: problem for us because he also points out in this article,
Speaker 2: as many others Sampton Greedy Tan Greedy for another name.
Speaker 2: You know, we've got a problem. They going after the
Speaker 2: Chinese in their backyard is a hard, hard problem. And
Speaker 2: our carrier aircraft don't have range, and we don't want
Speaker 2: to put our carriers and arms away because they're expensive
Speaker 2: and have a lot of people on them. So and
Speaker 2: when're amphibs, they're slow, they're not well equipped defensively, and
Speaker 2: we're going to put thousands of marines and equipment on
Speaker 2: these things and send them east or west in this case,
Speaker 2: that is that's a problem. And he's pointing out that
Speaker 2: maybe we don't. That's not the navy we currently need.
Speaker 2: So we really need to think. But we need to
Speaker 2: think fast, because we don't have enough time to be
Speaker 2: messing around with the waiting for the perfect solution to
Speaker 2: our shipbuilding problems. When we have solutions that will be
Speaker 2: would present a challenge to any enemy. As I said,
Speaker 2: if you put forty three thousand small boats out there
Speaker 2: that are armed and we can control them, and I
Speaker 2: believe we could do that, then that that creates incredible
Speaker 2: issues for anybody on the other side. And they don't
Speaker 2: even have to be I mean, they could just carry
Speaker 2: they could go out and sink on purpose and be
Speaker 2: and lay minds that way if you had nothing else
Speaker 2: to do, you know, let's let's let's make things hard
Speaker 2: on the on the other folks.
Speaker 1: And I'll repeat what I think I've been saying every
Speaker 1: third show now also because I think the concern is
Speaker 1: where we going to get the people to man then
Speaker 1: we don't have a huge emergant fleet roger that acknowledged. However,
Speaker 1: one thing we do have in the Navy is actually
Speaker 1: what we don't have is the Army and Air Force
Speaker 1: do a great job of repurposing the experience they have
Speaker 1: when people leave active duty to take them into the
Speaker 1: National Guard, the reserves, and the Air National Guard doing
Speaker 1: pretty much what they did on active duty, but on
Speaker 1: a part time basis. The Navy Reserve, we don't re
Speaker 1: don't recapture a lot of our experience at all. So
Speaker 1: a little bit of imagination and uh, maybe a funding
Speaker 1: line you could you could fill a lot of that gap,
Speaker 1: or at least do some experiments out of a couple
Speaker 1: of coasts. Nor iFolk would be a great place San Diego,
Speaker 1: where you have a lot of people who leave active
Speaker 1: duty and stay who might actually enjoy a reserve gig
Speaker 1: that has a ship attached to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was. I was CEO of a mobile inshore
Speaker 2: undersea warfare And for those of you unfamiliar with that,
Speaker 2: it is a command information a combat information center in
Speaker 2: a box. So we had radars, we had we had
Speaker 2: a sonar. We took SONA buoys and dropped them and
Speaker 2: we you know, you can run those things if you
Speaker 2: can do that from a shore base, and we could
Speaker 2: also be mounted on a on a offshore vessel. Did
Speaker 2: some operations with the Coast Guard and some other people,
Speaker 2: and that provides the kind of asset you need because
Speaker 2: it's the same same SONA. If I'm not too far wrong,
Speaker 2: it was in your p threes and you know that
Speaker 2: may not be the current technology, but it wouldn't be
Speaker 2: hard to bang together some of those things again and
Speaker 2: use those to make the undersea aspect, the ASW aspect
Speaker 2: of using commercial type vessels viable.
Speaker 1: Especially some of our frontline allies, like our allies and
Speaker 1: friends like the Filipinos or even the Taiwanese, they would
Speaker 1: love to have somebody walk off a plane with that
Speaker 1: ability take this bay and make me feel more comfortable
Speaker 1: with it.
Speaker 2: Well, my point was that that we have former sonar
Speaker 2: techs that and if they want to be in the reserves.
Speaker 2: There aren't too many reserve billets for sonar techs here.
Speaker 2: These were you know, this was this was a unit,
Speaker 2: these units and there were a whole bunch of them
Speaker 2: for a while, uh that had billets for sonar techs,
Speaker 2: that had billets for for radioman and and other people
Speaker 2: you know, bos and mates and and cbs because the
Speaker 2: way we operated. But you know, the reserves, the reserves
Speaker 2: are really small right now, and they're very dependent on
Speaker 2: the number of people who leave. There's a I don't
Speaker 2: know what the exact I'm sure there's some formula that
Speaker 2: says we can only have this many reserves, you have
Speaker 2: this many people on active duty. But that's got to
Speaker 2: change too, because there are people out there that would
Speaker 2: be happy to be available if called on to do
Speaker 2: the jobs that they were trained to do a while ago.
Speaker 2: And yeah, they may take a cut and pay, but
Speaker 2: you know, how long is this Are you going to
Speaker 2: call them up for it? And what is the interest
Speaker 2: if it's the safety of our country? That appeals to
Speaker 2: a lot of people who served the Navy and then
Speaker 2: got out for various reasons.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you need to grow your military capability
Speaker 1: in an environment where you also are staring at unimaginable debt,
Speaker 1: there's efficiency to be had if you have a national emergency.
Speaker 1: The quote, well it take them ninety days to get
Speaker 1: full of speed. Okay, Well, having somebody who's could be
Speaker 1: fully up to speed ninety days beats having nobody to
Speaker 1: get up the speed. So that may be worth looking at.
Speaker 1: And speaking of, you know, we got the quick. One
Speaker 1: thing I was also looking at kind of related to
Speaker 1: the numbers was and we've had people arguing on both
Speaker 1: sides of this equation. And as I have grown to
Speaker 1: be more comfortable saying the because I was pretty much
Speaker 1: brought into it for a while. This theory sounds good,
Speaker 1: sounds logical, but facts in reality always seem to kick
Speaker 1: it in the teeth. Kind of along the same lines
Speaker 1: as if in the nineteen twenties, if we decide that
Speaker 1: General Mitchell was right and Nimitz was right, so we
Speaker 1: don't need anything but heavy bombers and submarines, and we
Speaker 1: can get rid of surface ships, we wouldn't have won
Speaker 1: World War Two. It's very seductive to look at some
Speaker 1: things and not try to take a bigger picture. And
Speaker 1: one I'm speaking about specifically, this is a number of
Speaker 1: aircraft carriers we have is everybody wants to get rid
Speaker 1: of the aircraft carriers. And there was a little little
Speaker 1: bit of funky stuff that went on. I'm convinced it
Speaker 1: wasn't by accident because I remember former Secretary Defense Gates
Speaker 1: says that we need to in order to maintain what
Speaker 1: he said at that point, twelve carriers, we need to
Speaker 1: be decommissioning one every four years. Well, the last of
Speaker 1: the Nimics class carriers and Nimmet's Hole one left a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago for their theoretically final deployment fifty years old.
Speaker 1: But when you look at the last of the Niemens class,
Speaker 1: which was the George Herbert Walker Bush to the first
Speaker 1: of the Ford Class from commissioning date to commissioning date,
Speaker 1: that was about eight years. And you also had the
Speaker 1: first Hole one of the Ford Class, Whole two is
Speaker 1: the Kennedy. We're looking about eight years there. So in
Speaker 1: sixteen years when we should have used the Gates formula,
Speaker 1: should have commission four carriers, well commissioned two. Now right now,
Speaker 1: when you look at it, it says, from the Kennedy
Speaker 1: to hold three, the Enterprise looking about four years, and
Speaker 1: the Enterprise to a hole four, which is the Miller
Speaker 1: about three years, so close to four years, so kind
Speaker 1: of getting back on step to every four years. But
Speaker 1: there was a huge gap that we're going to see
Speaker 1: just to be able to keep eleven carriers out there,
Speaker 1: and it's going to drop unless they're going to find
Speaker 1: some way to extend some of the Nemetzes beyond fifty years.
Speaker 1: Because when we started going after the Houthies aggressively, the
Speaker 1: sect f Hegseth ordered the let me make sure I
Speaker 1: got my carriers right. The Vincent and her strike group,
Speaker 1: which is one cruiser in three DDGs to head out
Speaker 1: of into a pay coom to where the Truman is.
Speaker 1: And they've extended the Truman, and every time something comes up,
Speaker 1: it's like, we don't have enough carriers. We need to
Speaker 1: have more carriers. We need to give them out there.
Speaker 1: Maybe the Knimits is going to nuke it's way across
Speaker 1: so the Truman can go home. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: one thing I would really like to see is an
Speaker 1: acknowledgment of this. If we're optimistically from a couple of sources.
Speaker 1: I saw three years from Enterprise to Miller. Now the
Speaker 1: other two CVN eighty two and eighty three theoretically are
Speaker 1: going to be the Clinton and the George W. Bush.
Speaker 1: We don't need two carriers named Bush. Maybe the new
Speaker 1: SECT now will fix what Del Toro wasn't authorized to
Speaker 1: do but did anyway. But anyway, if we can get
Speaker 1: CVN eighty two and eighty three closer to three years
Speaker 1: between commissioning Vice four or more, that might help relieve
Speaker 1: what we're going to see here in the next ten years,
Speaker 1: which is going to be even more short of carriers
Speaker 1: than we actually need.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think we have to again, we have
Speaker 2: to rethink what we're doing, you know, because carriers right
Speaker 2: now are operating in fairly safe waters, relatively speaking, compared
Speaker 2: to what they would do if they faced the people
Speaker 2: who are now operating much more sophisticated anti ship crews
Speaker 2: and ballistic missiles and the ranges that those things can have.
Speaker 2: And we're just going to keep moving these things by necessity,
Speaker 2: going to keep moving these things further offshore. The advantage
Speaker 2: we have with the hoo Thies is that I don't
Speaker 2: know where they're getting their guidance information, but it's not
Speaker 2: exactly current because the carriers have been pointed out by
Speaker 2: people before the carrier moves. The carrier operates in such
Speaker 2: a way that it moves. So if you have a
Speaker 2: fifteen minute delay and guessing where the carrier is, you're
Speaker 2: not going to know where the carrier is. It's going
Speaker 2: to be someplace else because they travel at high speed
Speaker 2: or can travel high speed, and you have to know
Speaker 2: which direction they're going and whether they're God forbid zigzagging
Speaker 2: speaking is a guy used to follow carriers around under
Speaker 2: spur That could be fun anyway. You know that targeting,
Speaker 2: the targeting problem is hard, but it's it's not as
Speaker 2: hard if you're a country like China that has satellites
Speaker 2: and all kinds of ways of surveilling where our assets are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we were kind of teasing the Huthi saying that
Speaker 1: when they tried to attack the Truman, they were off
Speaker 1: by one hundred miles, and I think the evening of
Speaker 1: the fifteenth or the sixteenth, we downed a dozen of
Speaker 1: their flying lawnmower drones as they tried to find the Truman.
Speaker 1: We need to be careful. That's like the old joke.
Speaker 1: Before World War One, the British Army was used to
Speaker 1: chasing people through the desert armed with nothing but a
Speaker 1: club as they had their lee infield. It's a little
Speaker 1: different than the German Army. We just need to be
Speaker 1: careful that we respect the fact that those anti shiplistic
Speaker 1: missiles that the HOUTHI are lobbing at our carriers are
Speaker 1: the moleivalent of a single shot forty five seventy rifle
Speaker 1: versus a modern mauser of the row and from the
Speaker 1: mid eighteen hundreds of late eighteen hundreds of technology. And
Speaker 1: I'm concerned about that a little bit. But smart people
Speaker 1: I think are very aware of that is just finding
Speaker 1: the ability to get the holes in the proper sensors
Speaker 1: and weapons forward. So, like you said, if we have
Speaker 1: to take our carrier strike routs west, but we keep
Speaker 1: moving them east because the threat's too big, then we've
Speaker 1: pretty much seated a large part of the battle space
Speaker 1: to whoever wants to take it, who has that modern capability.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's I mean, what's sun sou say that
Speaker 2: the best general can win without fighting. I mean, if
Speaker 2: you create a situation where your opponent looks at what
Speaker 2: they're facing and goes, oh, well, it's not worth it.
Speaker 2: What you know, we have to find some of the
Speaker 2: way to deal with that, and that is winning without fighting.
Speaker 1: And one of the one of the keys to that is,
Speaker 1: you know, not just the carriers with the air wing
Speaker 1: we put on it. And I'm really looking forward whenever
Speaker 1: we finally get the stats, and a lot of it
Speaker 1: will be classified for years, maybe we'll get some good
Speaker 1: data and a half a decade or more. But there
Speaker 1: was the announcement that came out this week. They're calling
Speaker 1: it the F forty seven, which is interesting, but in
Speaker 1: GAD has been announced that Boeing's going to produce that.
Speaker 1: Evidently the prototype has been flying for a few years,
Speaker 1: so they know what they're getting in theory, and we
Speaker 1: should be able to produce those in numbers. It's designed
Speaker 1: to take the place of the F twenty two that
Speaker 1: was produced and relatively, I think it was like one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty seven, of which a couple of dozen
Speaker 1: of those aren't even combat capable. That'll be nice if
Speaker 1: we can get that in production sooner more than later.
Speaker 1: The Navy version of that is the FA x X, which,
Speaker 1: now that Boeing has gotten in GAD. I would find
Speaker 1: it exceptionally unlikely that they're also going to get the
Speaker 1: FA xx because they have very different requirements. Thank goodness,
Speaker 1: we're not trying to do an F one eleven or
Speaker 1: an F thirty five where all services have the same
Speaker 1: platform ands that we compromise into suboptimal systems. But I
Speaker 1: read a few months ago that Lockey Martin has backed
Speaker 1: out of the competition group for the FA xx for
Speaker 1: the Navy, which left Boeing and Grumming. But if Boeing
Speaker 1: is going to be taken in get my guess is
Speaker 1: this decision has already been made, they just haven't finalized it.
Speaker 1: An announcement that means that whatever no that Grumman is
Speaker 1: developing will be the Navy's new aircraft. I think the
Speaker 1: last aircraft that had a Grumming flavor on it was
Speaker 1: the Aborted eight program back thirty some odd years ago.
Speaker 1: It was canceled by then Secretary Defense Cheney. But it
Speaker 1: would be nice to have something with some Grumman blood
Speaker 1: coming back in. I was really curious when that announcement's
Speaker 1: going to go and what in those final requirements concerned range.
Speaker 1: I'd be very interested to see what that aircraft's range
Speaker 1: is compared to the super Hornets that it will replace,
Speaker 1: and eventually it'll fly with the F thirty five, which
Speaker 1: doesn't have the best range in the world because in
Speaker 1: the Pacific fight for the Navy and for the air
Speaker 1: Force too. But they've got their own issues with these
Speaker 1: new engines, the ability to do supercrews, a long ranged
Speaker 1: carrier based aircraft carrying long range standoff weapons. Again going
Speaker 1: back to what we were talking about with what a
Speaker 1: lot of militarized afshore supply vessels can do for you,
Speaker 1: that complicates the enemies scheme of maneuver when they don't
Speaker 1: know what vector or what body of water is or
Speaker 1: is not safe for them to assume there's no enemy.
Speaker 2: In Yeah, it's an interesting you know, some people are
Speaker 2: saying that the current F thirty five maybe one of
Speaker 2: the last man fighters. I don't know, I don't know,
Speaker 2: you know, I know that the I'm sure the fighter
Speaker 2: pilot community has a totally objective view on on the
Speaker 2: on the approach to that, but I'm certain that they're
Speaker 2: with the idea of these uh wingman unmanned wingman things
Speaker 2: that the number of manned aircraft is going to diminish.
Speaker 2: The question is are they going to be the management
Speaker 2: are able to manage these these unmanned aircraft to make
Speaker 2: them do what they want to do. What kind of
Speaker 2: way you get into the communications aspect of this and
Speaker 2: how we're going to tile this stuff together. My mind
Speaker 2: just goes all fuzzy on app. It's a complicated problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think some people, and if people take this personally,
Speaker 1: that's fine with me. It's probably intended to. I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people that are reading too much
Speaker 1: military fiction and aren't thinking broad enough, or are relying
Speaker 1: on exquisitely designed vignettes when they say that we're not
Speaker 1: going to have manned fighter aircraft anymore. Technology and computing
Speaker 1: and AI and sensors will enable expanded use of unmanned
Speaker 1: system but there are some missions that you're not going
Speaker 1: to give to an unmanned aircraft, for instance, interceptions unknown
Speaker 1: aircraft coming in from point X. You need a human
Speaker 1: being that is physically there that you can rely on
Speaker 1: and who is accountable. You're not going to rely on
Speaker 1: a video stream or a data stream coming from a
Speaker 1: remote platform that can be blocked, spoofed, or otherwise bothered.
Speaker 1: You need a human in that loop. And that's just
Speaker 1: just one example. So people can theorize, but I think
Speaker 1: the first nation to decide to have all their aviation
Speaker 1: be unmanned on a tactical point of view will regret
Speaker 1: that decision sooner more than later. So I would let
Speaker 1: somebody else make that mistake while we continue to develop
Speaker 1: proven systems, manned and unmanned that meet our requirements. When
Speaker 1: you get your theory ahead of your practical experience, that's
Speaker 1: when you get things like the original manning concept for LCA.
Speaker 1: That's where you get the list of ah, let's produce
Speaker 1: a hundred navalized one hundred and fifty five millimeter gun
Speaker 1: that you can't use all the other one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty five millimeter ammunition and you can only use special
Speaker 1: bespoke weapons. And that I believe would have been related
Speaker 1: to the have some commonality with the ex caliber round,
Speaker 1: which is useless now and Ukraine because the Russians have
Speaker 1: found a way to mess up with its guidance system.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I listen and I'll entertain that. But I'm
Speaker 1: very suspect of those that look at me straight in
Speaker 1: the eye and with confidence tell me that no new
Speaker 1: aircraft should be unmanned. I don't think they're they're fully briefed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that there's a certain a certain aspect
Speaker 2: of the way human pilots fly that is different than
Speaker 2: what you can. You know, you don't have to. You
Speaker 2: don't have to. They have to. They have their own issues.
Speaker 2: You know, they can't take the sharp turns that an
Speaker 2: unmanned aircraft can because of the g forces and the
Speaker 2: other things that would affect operations. But they, you know,
Speaker 2: you're the intuitive ability to understand what's going on. The
Speaker 2: ability is that some people have to get the big
Speaker 2: picture as they're doing things that they can see more
Speaker 2: than just what's right in front of them. They get
Speaker 2: the whole bottle wax, so to speak. Uh, you know,
Speaker 2: I think that's would be mentally difficult if you're a
Speaker 2: drone pilot sitting on the beach somewhere, or if you're
Speaker 2: trying to use AI to operate these things, because unless
Speaker 2: they're very good at sorting out all kinds of oddities
Speaker 2: that are out there, I think a lot of mistakes
Speaker 2: could happen rather quickly using those concepts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, we're it's funny ways, it's good
Speaker 1: to talk about, you know, the future developments and for
Speaker 1: the fighting Pacific, what we have to replace the F eighteen.
Speaker 1: It's it's important if we if we get it wrong,
Speaker 1: we're in a little bit of a bucket of trouble.
Speaker 1: That's why we have the super Hornet, because we got
Speaker 1: a little bit of a bucket of tree. Then we
Speaker 1: have just military one on one, one oh one, and
Speaker 1: some interesting fantasy theories I think have been out there
Speaker 1: to explain it. I think a little bit of excuses
Speaker 1: in cope. I have my own very no shock here,
Speaker 1: my own little cynical response to it. But we now
Speaker 1: in response to the border security, we have two DDGs,
Speaker 1: which as we empty VLS cells in the Red Sea,
Speaker 1: I don't think we have a surplus of DDGs to
Speaker 1: do border security in the Gulf of America and off
Speaker 1: of I believe we have one in one of the
Speaker 1: to the east and one to the west. I don't
Speaker 1: know if what we're going after in Mexico with the
Speaker 1: cartels really requires a DDG or is that really the
Speaker 1: only thing that is available because we've under resourced our
Speaker 1: coast guard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I've seen a number of justifications. I'm
Speaker 2: and it's you know, a lot of it has to
Speaker 2: do with the AEGES system and all that. And you know,
Speaker 2: if it's I did some operations with the effect it's
Speaker 2: Customs pilots to work for me for a while. And
Speaker 2: you know they were flying this P three with a
Speaker 2: radome on it. They have a pretty good air picture.
Speaker 2: If you're using Customs aircraft, I think it's still in operation,
Speaker 2: and there's no reason we can't use air force assets
Speaker 2: to provide the same kind of picture, or even a
Speaker 2: shore base all those things. The shore based aircraft with
Speaker 2: the rate omes, I mean, it's the carrier based aircraft
Speaker 2: with the rate homes. You know, we got a base
Speaker 2: right there Corpus Christian you could fly out of. It's
Speaker 2: unlike it you have to go far to do the job.
Speaker 2: So I'm confused. I don't unless we expect I mean,
Speaker 2: that's that's I don't even know what that is. It's
Speaker 2: like using a a one oh five howitzer to squish
Speaker 2: ants or something. It doesn't make any sense to me.
Speaker 1: And it's also frustrating the fact that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of As most people know, there's a lot of inertia,
Speaker 1: and any type of military and government system where like
Speaker 1: the old dark humored British song about the First World War,
Speaker 1: we're here because we're here, We're here because we're here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have a half dozen US Coast Guard cutter stationed
Speaker 1: out of Bahrain. Okay, I mean maybe maybe we should
Speaker 1: have three of those in the based out of pasco Gooula, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: and three out of San Diego to help help with
Speaker 1: the mission. We have our DDGs and then we can
Speaker 1: send our DDGs east, UH or West. I That arrangement
Speaker 1: has been around for decades and I don't really think
Speaker 1: that's the best use of the US Coast Guard. And
Speaker 1: there was a real interesting I.
Speaker 2: Want to say, doesn't have something to do with with
Speaker 2: law enforcement having that you know, either have a ship
Speaker 2: with an alley an ld out on it or the
Speaker 2: Coast Guard guys because US Navy, I mean this uh
Speaker 2: can't do can't arrest people and all that good stuff
Speaker 2: because you know, and I think it's a mix up
Speaker 2: on the Posse Comatatis Act. But the idea was you
Speaker 2: could use there our Navy ships to provide the info
Speaker 2: that the and deliver the law enforcement detachments. But the
Speaker 2: Coast Guard guys had to do all the legal side
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I read where the DDGs will have Coast Guard
Speaker 1: debts on them in order to do that, and we've
Speaker 1: done stuff like this before. An absolute beautiful ship. Shame
Speaker 1: we only built one, but the old USS Long Beach
Speaker 1: CGN nine. Her last deployment I think it was ninety
Speaker 1: three or so, it was in the Caribbean to encounter
Speaker 1: narcotics because she was available and she's about to be decommissioned,
Speaker 1: so they sent her out there, the most glorious thing
Speaker 1: for a nuclear powered cruiser with beautiful missiles on it
Speaker 1: to do. But she could with her radar and it
Speaker 1: weren't even as she could cover the Caribbean pretty darn well,
Speaker 1: So you had that capability. But yeah, we've done that before.
Speaker 1: I just don't think with a lukewarm fight taking place
Speaker 1: right now and the Red Sea that maybe there's a
Speaker 1: very good excuse in the skiff that they could explain
Speaker 1: to it. But the optics of having DDGs off of
Speaker 1: Mexico while we have our Coastguard cutters defending the coast
Speaker 1: of Bahrain and Cutter and Kuwait, it's not a good visual.
Speaker 2: The Coast Guard was over there, I thought originally because
Speaker 2: we were doing the global War on Terror and they
Speaker 2: wanted to get involved in that, and then correct, I'm
Speaker 2: not sure what happened after that that we've kept them
Speaker 2: over there, but I can't imagine it's the kind of
Speaker 2: duty that those young people thought they were going to
Speaker 2: get into when they joined up for the Coast Guard.
Speaker 1: No, but I just realized it was forty eight minutes
Speaker 1: after the hours, like, wait a minute, Because the great
Speaker 1: thing about mid Rats is the elder statements of mid
Speaker 1: Rats actually was not on a big wheel during the
Speaker 1: Vietnam the post Vietnam era, whereas I was, so you
Speaker 1: I just know about it theoretical and listening to my
Speaker 1: da AD's friends who were Korean War veterans, so they
Speaker 1: had that whole point of view of the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: But you remember the nineteen seventies. You were in the
Speaker 1: military in the nineteen seventies, and you know the struggles
Speaker 1: that we had after the Vietnam War, and it seemed,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you want to draw the line
Speaker 1: at Grenada or whatever, but there was a certain impression
Speaker 1: of the military of the nineteen seventies, and the baby
Speaker 1: boomers were never going to be able to military people. Well,
Speaker 1: that actually worked out. Okay, everything worked fine. And there
Speaker 1: was an interesting article in the Financial Times as Germany
Speaker 1: looks at trying to get above two percent and get
Speaker 1: their army going. And I wanted to ask you about
Speaker 1: what you saw in person as we turned from what
Speaker 1: was generally saw as the problematic US military of the
Speaker 1: early mid to end of the nineteen seventies. A lot
Speaker 1: to be proud of afterwards. Is it was titled that's
Speaker 1: kind of funny German army struggles to get gen Z
Speaker 1: recruits ready for war and I remember a gen X guy.
Speaker 1: People say, oh, these gen X slackers will never make
Speaker 1: good military people. I think we did okay. But here's
Speaker 1: a little quote from the article. I just wanted to
Speaker 1: get your take. What advice you would give to the Germans.
Speaker 1: I'll try at the laugh of it is kind of
Speaker 1: funny to read quote from the Financial Times, and I'll
Speaker 1: link this over on the show page. As a podcaster
Speaker 1: and a freelance journalist, journalist Ole Nymann Nimoyn, I think
Speaker 1: maybe I'm bad with German names anyway, admits he enjoys
Speaker 1: freedom of expression and other democratic rights in his home country.
Speaker 1: Of Germany, but he would not fight or die for it.
Speaker 1: In a book published this week titled Why I Would
Speaker 1: Never Fight for My Country, the twenty seven year old
Speaker 1: argues ordinary people should not be sent into battle on
Speaker 1: behalf of nation states and their rulers, even to fend
Speaker 1: off an invasion. Occupation to a foreign power might lead
Speaker 1: to a quote shitty unquote life, he told the Financial Times.
Speaker 1: Quote but I'd rather be occupied than dead unquote. Neumann,
Speaker 1: a self described Marxist, does not to be representative of
Speaker 1: gen Z in Germany, but his stance and his striking
Speaker 1: honesty about it tapped into a wider questions facing Europe
Speaker 1: as it re arms on the scale and has seen
Speaker 1: since the Cold War. And they have actually have a
Speaker 1: picture of this guy. I don't know. I won't say
Speaker 1: what he looks like anyway, So that's that's the take
Speaker 1: of the article, is they're going to have a problem
Speaker 1: because the new generation doesn't want to rise to the occasion.
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah. What I was told and what I
Speaker 1: saw from a distance, in what I saw in middle
Speaker 1: school and then saw the change in high school. It
Speaker 1: really had to do with, yeah, changing policy and procedures.
Speaker 1: But it was also about leadership and messaging that helped
Speaker 1: bring around a problem. How long how long was that
Speaker 1: period of time that you saw where things were quote
Speaker 1: challenging or bad to when you had the turnaround, because
Speaker 1: it looks like it was only seven eight years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say, yeah. I would say actually from
Speaker 2: seventy four to the end of the Carter administration when
Speaker 2: and Reagan got elected and there was there you know,
Speaker 2: it was we hadn't done we didn't we didn't win
Speaker 2: the Vietnam War, and so there was a lot of
Speaker 2: discontentment there. Raft A lot of people had joined the
Speaker 2: service because of the originally because of the draft and
Speaker 2: that that had ended. You know that the services were
Speaker 2: cutting people because they were they were too large. But yeah,
Speaker 2: morale was not real high in the services population, many
Speaker 2: of whom only had heard the anti war slogans from well,
Speaker 2: I don't know, nineteen sick whenever we first got involved
Speaker 2: in Vietnam until he finally left, but that was what
Speaker 2: they were brought up on. So you had a bunch
Speaker 2: of people who were anti military, anti war, anti establishment,
Speaker 2: many of whom now occupy government offices by the way,
Speaker 2: and so yeah, it was an unpleasant period of time
Speaker 2: to be in the service. And but you know, underneath
Speaker 2: all that, there was still a core of people who
Speaker 2: wanted to serve their country and who you know, when
Speaker 2: we went to the all volunteer force, you could then
Speaker 2: do things, you could weed out. It was really hard
Speaker 2: getting rid of people for a while. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: you had all these programs. So if you got somebody
Speaker 2: got caught using drugs, they'd go through a screening process
Speaker 2: that could either put back in the service or they'd
Speaker 2: get uh you know, some kind of uh you know,
Speaker 2: eventually you could have I guess in some ways you
Speaker 2: could discharge it. But it was it was a complicated
Speaker 2: process and was made more difficult by the by the
Speaker 2: Carter administration's approach to things. When Reagan took over and
Speaker 2: the and the system became if you got caught using
Speaker 2: drug it was a zero tolerance policy suddenly kicked in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember the posters. It was like not on
Speaker 1: my watts, not on my ship, not in my navy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and and that changed a lot of things
Speaker 2: because once it was understood that your shipmate was no
Speaker 2: longer going to be well theoretically, it was no longer
Speaker 2: going to be buzzed out of his mind. Then you
Speaker 2: you know, people really began and they you could lose
Speaker 2: your job and stuff. People began to take things a
Speaker 2: lot more professionally. And I think my overall thought was
Speaker 2: at the end of involuntary servitude and the military, the
Speaker 2: end of acceptance of behavior that shouldn't have been tolerate,
Speaker 2: drug use and other things. You know that that brought
Speaker 2: a whole different group of people in who were proud
Speaker 2: to serve. And it kind of kicked back up when
Speaker 2: we when we went to Greata and you ended up
Speaker 2: with movies like Heartbreak Ridge, where you know, the military
Speaker 2: was actually portrayed a fairly positive light and and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden things kind of kind of turned around.
Speaker 2: And then it didn't hurt that that with the as
Speaker 2: we got along the Gulf War and other things. Gosh,
Speaker 2: when did the first stop gun movie come out? Eight
Speaker 2: four eighty five? Were there? Remember? Yeah, I don't go
Speaker 2: anyway that that that played a big role in changing
Speaker 2: a lot of people's minds because everybody I knew then
Speaker 2: wanted to be fire pilots. Yeah, I think that. I think,
Speaker 2: I mean, you could you could probably stick it right
Speaker 2: at the biggest change came with the the all Volunteer
Speaker 2: Force and the end of the the Carter administration moving
Speaker 2: into because you know, everybody's down after the disaster and
Speaker 2: Iran and try to rescue the hostages, you know, a great,
Speaker 2: a great, very challenging operation and just happened to run
Speaker 2: into Murphy's Law. But you know, there was a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff and then it just kind of changed around
Speaker 2: because Reagan brought that kind of optimism that was missing
Speaker 2: before that. The long, the long hangover from Vietnam, I
Speaker 2: think was kind of over there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would I would offer to my German and
Speaker 1: European friends that I wouldn't take that article by Financial
Speaker 1: Times all that seriously, because really what it takes, it
Speaker 1: takes solid leadership and standards and drive. I was always
Speaker 1: impressed with the German officers I served with when I
Speaker 1: was a NATO. Their their professional core is exceptional, Their
Speaker 1: n c o s are outstanding, so kind of like
Speaker 1: which they've got a higher base to build from. That's
Speaker 1: that's one thing. The great things that were done during
Speaker 1: the Reagan era of the nineteen eight It was that
Speaker 1: was led by the officer and enlisted personnel who worked
Speaker 1: through the nineteen seventies, and they were that cores that
Speaker 1: built such an impressive structure that won the Cold War.
Speaker 1: It's not like the people who joined the Navy and
Speaker 1: from nineteen eighty one can really claim the fact that
Speaker 1: we fought one, not fought, but positioned in one the
Speaker 1: Cold War, though they did in ways. It was really
Speaker 1: those group of people that served in Vietnam and served
Speaker 1: through the nineteen seventies. Then when they were given the
Speaker 1: right direction and guidance and the right leadership, they were
Speaker 1: able to write the force and do some impressive things.
Speaker 1: And I would offer to the Germans if they're feeling
Speaker 1: MOPy like that that they're interviewing the wrong people, they
Speaker 1: absolutely can turned to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you could find it. I mean, at
Speaker 2: any point anytime in any country, you'll find some clown
Speaker 2: like the guy they interviewed saying, you know, well I
Speaker 2: better better dead than red. I mean, I think that
Speaker 2: was the one of the old mottos. And you know,
Speaker 2: there's they don't have a clue, they don't have a
Speaker 2: clue of what it was like. Uh. Then some of
Speaker 2: us saw the harm that was done, the damage that
Speaker 2: was done by the forces of evil that were trying
Speaker 2: to take over countries. I mean, if you look at
Speaker 2: the death toll, just look at Mao's China, you know,
Speaker 2: the death toll that his various efforts to control the
Speaker 2: population took the you know, I mean millions of people
Speaker 2: dead for no good reason, the Cambodians and the you know,
Speaker 2: the killing fields, all that stuff. Anybody was keeping their
Speaker 2: eyes open and knew what was going on. You didn't
Speaker 2: get You didn't get less concerned about communism. You've got
Speaker 2: more concerned about it because you could see that these
Speaker 2: just like with the Islamist terrorists, you know, they don't care.
Speaker 2: Life means nothing to them. And unless you get that,
Speaker 2: and you see where the threats are, the China's again,
Speaker 2: it's the Chinese, you know. I mean Mao told Nixon
Speaker 2: or Kissinger that guys want nucas. We've got a lot
Speaker 2: more people, you do. We can we can withstand a
Speaker 2: you know, nuclear attack. And you're going, well that that
Speaker 2: is not that is one of those really bizarre I
Speaker 2: just you know, we've got so many people we don't care.
Speaker 2: That's an amazing attitude.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he wasn't bluffing. He really had that attitude.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's I don't know if we have, really
Speaker 1: because I always kind of grant a bit when we
Speaker 1: hear people talking about here in twenty twenty five, precedented,
Speaker 1: this precedented that you know, if you look at the
Speaker 1: fifteen year period, which is the same period of time
Speaker 1: from twenty ten to now, of nineteen sixty five to
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty. You mentioned it, and it just came to
Speaker 1: mind as you were talking about the Cultural Revolution, the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War, the killing fields of Cambodia, and you can
Speaker 1: kind of bookend it at the other at the end
Speaker 1: of the nineteen seventies with the Iranian Revolution and all
Speaker 1: the secondary effects. We're still dealing with. Things are actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're there are some challenges things to be concerned with
Speaker 1: right now. But those who live be from nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: five to nineteen eighty, that's a benchmark. I don't think
Speaker 1: we've really looked at or talked about much about the
Speaker 1: not only the rapid change and the shocking change, but
Speaker 1: it's just some of the unmitigated horror of that time
Speaker 1: period that we really don't haven't seen the last fifteen years.
Speaker 1: It should keep people humble, also be a little bit
Speaker 1: worried because the nightmar Is fifteen years like that could
Speaker 1: absolutely show up again.
Speaker 2: Oh it goes on all the time. You look at
Speaker 2: the Rwanda and the Hutus and the Tutsis, you know that,
Speaker 2: and what was going on Somalia the first time we
Speaker 2: got involved there, and you know it led to Blackhawk
Speaker 2: down in our tales between the leg withdrawal, the barracks
Speaker 2: bombing in the Bay Rout that killed all the Marines
Speaker 2: and got us to leave that time, even when Reagan
Speaker 2: was president. So you know, it is a march of
Speaker 2: these fanatics. Don't here what brand of fanaticism they have
Speaker 2: with islamis their you know, beliefs or communism, they you know,
Speaker 2: they don't they don't ever stop. And you know there
Speaker 2: has to be some forces that that and some group
Speaker 2: of people will stand up against it. And you know,
Speaker 2: so far, for the most part it's been the United States.
Speaker 2: Now you can look back on our history in the
Speaker 2: last few years and go, well, you know, we tried
Speaker 2: to do the right thing in Afghanistan. We tried to
Speaker 2: do the right thing interact. But the underestimation of how
Speaker 2: large the problems were and what they were trying to do,
Speaker 2: I think really cut deeply into the souls, the people
Speaker 2: that went over there and fought and came back and
Speaker 2: got and got sent back and back and back. And
Speaker 2: you knew that, you know, we were it was the
Speaker 2: Battle of Sisyphus. You were pushing it rock up hill,
Speaker 2: but it was rolling right back down. We were trying
Speaker 2: to do something that couldn't be done. That is the
Speaker 2: other side of it is we need a much more
Speaker 2: realistic approach. And this is what I thought we were
Speaker 2: gonna get with Colin Powell, and we did get at
Speaker 2: first was you know, they if you're going to go in,
Speaker 2: do it, go do it big, and then get out.
Speaker 2: You don't have to you know, the whole nation building
Speaker 2: thing we weren't going to do. Then we ended up
Speaker 2: doing every place. You know that his original tenants, which
Speaker 2: he took from somebody else. I can't remember who the
Speaker 2: original originator of those things was, but you know, those
Speaker 2: those were great ideas that we should still listen to,
Speaker 2: even though we didn't always didn't listen. He didn't even
Speaker 2: listened to himself after a while.
Speaker 1: And when I was a NATO staff officer, I had
Speaker 1: a because you have to put something on your walls,
Speaker 1: I had a picture of Colin Power and Powell and
Speaker 1: his thirteen Rules of Leadership up there, and I took
Speaker 1: it down in two thousand and eight. But for for topics,
Speaker 1: I'll explain over beers sometimes. Yeah, it's I think you're right.
Speaker 1: He his theories and that realist view. It would have
Speaker 1: been nice if it won out, and I think we
Speaker 1: could use a little bit more of that. That's why
Speaker 1: I'm willing to give a lot of grace and leeway
Speaker 1: to Bridge Colby. I'm not aligned with everything Bridge said,
Speaker 1: but I'm not fully aligned with anybody. That's okay, But
Speaker 1: having a realistic view of things, I think that helps
Speaker 1: making the hard and correct decision. Whereas yeah, we can,
Speaker 1: we can do this in Afghanistan, that was the soft
Speaker 1: and easy decision that actually didn't accomplish anything but what
Speaker 1: it accomplished in the end. So that is the sad
Speaker 1: reality next to the fact that we're already over so
Speaker 1: we got.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, well you know, let's go on. I mean it,
Speaker 2: the the ability to get people whipped out of shape
Speaker 2: for no good reason, but to have them turn violent
Speaker 2: is it's like what Tesla is facing. You know that
Speaker 2: why people would would do the things they're doing to
Speaker 2: other people's cars had nothing to do with the Tesla,
Speaker 2: you know, because they don't like the guy who founded
Speaker 2: the company, although they loved him when it was because
Speaker 2: he had these electric cars were good for the environment.
Speaker 2: It's it is. If you want an example of how
Speaker 2: mob terror gets started and how it can ratchet up
Speaker 2: so quickly, that is that is a great example.
Speaker 1: There is a little switch in the human and brained
Speaker 1: that for some people is eagerly easily tricked off like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's been noted in a lot of a
Speaker 2: lot of books I used to read, and we'll probably
Speaker 2: read more of.
Speaker 1: Well, that's great because that would give us more things
Speaker 1: to talk about in the future. You got anything that
Speaker 1: you're at your bubble around that this week that people
Speaker 1: might see.
Speaker 2: No, probably more on all this, you know, the car
Speaker 2: I'm really fascinated by the way we're looking at the
Speaker 2: carriers and how this is going to change. But I'm
Speaker 2: much more anxious that we get moving on these alternative
Speaker 2: you know, there was a big discussion with the last
Speaker 2: CNO about you know, she was going to crank the
Speaker 2: levers of whatever and get this production going on these
Speaker 2: other assets. Well we need to now is the time.
Speaker 2: There is no there is. We're running out of time.
Speaker 2: So I hope that Secretary of Hexith and whoever our
Speaker 2: Secretary of the maybe is going to be, and all
Speaker 2: those forces and DD get moving on this stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've I don't know whether I want to write
Speaker 1: on it or not. But one thing I'm looking at
Speaker 1: for tomorrow is Wall Street Journal had an article that
Speaker 1: folk because this is some of the challenges with my baby,
Speaker 1: I e. The Constellation class frigate. I may just have
Speaker 1: to take a deep breath and uh and write on
Speaker 1: that tomorrow, mostly just quoting other people's words because uh,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's a it's a sad thing. So that's
Speaker 1: about all I've got to start off too.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, then the next time we get together, well,
Speaker 2: I'm sure we'll have great ideas. We're a wonderful guest.
Speaker 1: One of the others. So hey, thanks everybody. We had
Speaker 1: a real active chat room today. I appreciate it. And
Speaker 1: until next time. I hope everybody has a great Navy day.
Speaker 3: Cheers to reside, Paddy A, Mike Mondoney want to marry
Speaker 3: me and a.
Speaker 4: Friend Cody for You'll be to blame hold me folding
Speaker 4: all the a way to dimpleary. It's a long way
Speaker 4: to go. It's a long way to diplar ary to
Speaker 4: the Queen, go think on it fair well, lift not well.
Speaker 4: It's a long long way to dippery. But my wide,
Speaker 4: my day,