Speaker 1: Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander, an
Speaker 1: Eagle one from Eagle Speak at Seer Shore your home
Speaker 1: for a discussion of national security issues and all things maritime.
Speaker 1: And welcome goard everybody. Glad to have you after a
Speaker 1: few weeks off that you're gonna take some time to
Speaker 1: join us today for another edition of mid Rats, and
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Speaker 1: way we can be there at a time for more
Speaker 1: to your convenience and after most of the May doing
Speaker 1: what life has equal one glad to have you on board,
Speaker 1: to have a chance to talk again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's good to be back. I don't know if
Speaker 2: everybody else is missed talking to you, but I've kind
Speaker 2: of missed it.
Speaker 3: That's a high compliment.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: It's one of the things that.
Speaker 1: I exchange emails with an individual that I rather value
Speaker 1: his opinion earlier today and he said a couple of
Speaker 1: nice things like, well, I'm just a guy with a keyboard,
Speaker 1: coffee and inability to shut up, and the rats is
Speaker 1: always a good opportunity to talk about the things that
Speaker 1: are happening. And we picked the right day because the
Speaker 1: breaking news on the national security front from the Russia
Speaker 1: Ukrainian war, it seems to hit a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: hot button items that we've been talking about here on
Speaker 1: the show since twenty.
Speaker 2: Cent Yeah, it's uh, you know, I love the fact
Speaker 2: that people are beginning to extrapolate what the Ukrainians have
Speaker 2: done to things that could happen. And I mean, we
Speaker 2: can get into a lot of that later on, but
Speaker 2: it you know, John Conrad has been beating the drum
Speaker 2: about the danger of some of these container ships bringing
Speaker 2: stuff in and people have been pooh pooing that because
Speaker 2: you know, he was focusing i think originally on the
Speaker 2: missiles or you know, club whatever that club thing is,
Speaker 2: the pup k the Russians have. But you know this,
Speaker 2: these are if you've seen the videos of the drones
Speaker 2: that have been used for these attacks, that they're not complicated.
Speaker 2: I mean, they're just looks like things you could go
Speaker 2: down to your local hobby store and pick up and
Speaker 2: strap a a bump to it. You can to wipe
Speaker 2: out up a nice air.
Speaker 1: Force base, and most of it seemed to be the type.
Speaker 1: And there's some really good photos that the Ukrainian government
Speaker 1: have already released on how the trucks were configured and
Speaker 1: the type of drones that they had there Mark one
Speaker 1: Mod zero three D printed with a few other things
Speaker 1: that you bolt on afterwards. It is you've got to
Speaker 1: tip the hat to the Ukrainians. They're in their fourth
Speaker 1: year of war against a nation that has better demographics
Speaker 1: than they do, is four times larger than they are,
Speaker 1: and already took some of their most strategical land. They
Speaker 1: manage to push it back and they are schooling the
Speaker 1: rest of the world on what the future possibilities are
Speaker 1: when it comes to combat, how these things can change
Speaker 1: and adjust, and the you know, more than a golf
Speaker 1: clap to the Ukrainians, regardless of where you stand. I
Speaker 1: know there are there are some people out there that
Speaker 1: are pro Russian who aren't bad actors or just have
Speaker 1: interesting ideas, but don't care. You know where you are.
Speaker 1: You have to respect the audacity. And the Ukrainian put
Speaker 1: out that they've been spending about eighteen months planning that.
Speaker 1: I don't doubt that because anybody who before I was
Speaker 1: last in Russia two thousand and nine, and the security
Speaker 1: getting out of there is not what you would think
Speaker 1: in the West. It's still got a little bit Soviet
Speaker 1: tends to it. But to get from Siberia to the
Speaker 1: airfield that I can't pronounce, it begins with an o
Speaker 1: that's up there right south of Murmansk that houses the
Speaker 1: Northern Fleet, which originally their indications like they're hitting the
Speaker 1: Northern Fleet headquarters, but looks like they're hitting the strategic
Speaker 1: aviation at the airfield that's south is there, which makes
Speaker 1: sense with the larger effort, and even for those that
Speaker 1: have peacetime sensitivity towards attacks. If just back up and
Speaker 1: look at the initial primary effect, you would have trouble
Speaker 1: picking a better target set, even if you We can
Speaker 1: talk about later on. There's some really positive second and
Speaker 1: third order effects to this, but the primary effect is
Speaker 1: the Ukrainian people on an almost nightly basis, are being
Speaker 1: attacked in their cities various locations, and the worst of
Speaker 1: the attacks are coming via air launched missiles. It can
Speaker 1: only be carried by heavy bombers, the bears, the backfires,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And these are high demand, low density assets.
Speaker 1: They can only put as many missiles on target as
Speaker 1: they can get mission capable birds in the air, and
Speaker 1: they're not building backfires and bear bombers like a shoe factory.
Speaker 1: So they've taken out a lot of their units that
Speaker 1: are really hitting their civilian populations hard. So it's great internally,
Speaker 1: it's great from a operational point of view, and it
Speaker 1: also begs the question. This gets into some of the
Speaker 1: second third order effects, the psychological maybe little SI outs
Speaker 1: that they play it right. This also plays right into
Speaker 1: a century old Russian fear and why they have no
Speaker 1: natural borders and continue to expand they're highly insecure, and
Speaker 1: we all remember during World War Two as the Russia,
Speaker 1: as the Germans advanced, they would take things apart and
Speaker 1: move back into the interior because they have defense and depth,
Speaker 1: kind of like how we think we have the Atlantic
Speaker 1: and the Pacific oceans to protect us. This undermines that
Speaker 1: critical psychological center of gravity for Russia, and I think
Speaker 1: internally the Russians are going to react to that in
Speaker 1: ways that will also benefit Ukraine and the conflict.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm curious about whether they've I think the Russians
Speaker 2: are going to accuse the Fens and the Swedes or
Speaker 2: the Norwegians whoever. You know, they have all that border
Speaker 2: up there at the top, and if they're attacking Urmask
Speaker 2: and they're attacking those air bases to the east of that,
Speaker 2: how are they getting the you know, we saw the
Speaker 2: drones flying out of the trucks. How are they getting
Speaker 2: those things up there? And whose roads were they using
Speaker 2: to get them there? So if I were the Russians,
Speaker 2: Fens and the Swedes and the Norwa'd be gone.
Speaker 1: And the also, you know, the Russians have got to
Speaker 1: be thinking to themselves and I'm paraphrasing for those that
Speaker 1: know him and they follow him on ext Joshua Steinmon
Speaker 1: what he's been asking for years is we left it.
Speaker 1: Let in millions of unvetted people across our southern border,
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of them are citizens of the PRC.
Speaker 1: How many Savage Hodge teams are already in place here?
Speaker 1: So the Russians have to be asking themselves the same thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: did did the Ukrainians? Did they fire all of their
Speaker 1: capabilities on one day? Or their follow up attacks? And
Speaker 1: you can really come up a nation really fast if
Speaker 1: you get paranoid about every truck, everybody who doesn't have
Speaker 1: a pure Russian accent that you run into down the
Speaker 1: side of the road. And I think it's a viable concern.
Speaker 3: Maybe you do.
Speaker 1: This was one of those things that the Ukrainians they
Speaker 1: had one shot, they were going to take it. But
Speaker 1: there's a non zero chance they have other teams and
Speaker 1: other targets that they're going to wait and pull that
Speaker 1: card out at a time of their conveniences. Have got
Speaker 1: to react to that, and there is a really good
Speaker 1: lesson for everybody to take in that regard as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sitting there thinking, well, we saw this you know,
Speaker 2: they were apparently using fairly large cargo trucks. You know,
Speaker 2: a Honda Odyssey could carry five or six of these things,
Speaker 2: I guess in the back. And somebody was really determined
Speaker 2: to do some damage. Out of the scale of this,
Speaker 2: but enough to really affect things. I mean, power stations,
Speaker 2: pipelines a little harder, John, because most of them are underground.
Speaker 2: But there are the places where they do them up
Speaker 2: out of the ground, and they got big storage tanks.
Speaker 2: There are whole bunch of players where they are. I
Speaker 2: just don't know, you know what systems we see these
Speaker 2: guys fly these drones into buildings, in and out of buildings,
Speaker 2: down into into caves. You know, that's pretty impressive, and
Speaker 2: I'm thinking, you know, if they're that good, what what
Speaker 2: kind of net can you put up that protects at
Speaker 2: aircraft to the point that how do you get it
Speaker 2: out of there without you know, opening up the net
Speaker 2: to lingering a lingering drune. You know, these are all
Speaker 2: questions that can't be answered right now, but it is
Speaker 2: as you said, there are so many things that make
Speaker 2: you ponder the what ifs, and a lot of our imaginations.
Speaker 1: One thing that really caught my attention is there's an
Speaker 1: interesting video out there. They evidently while their attack drones
Speaker 1: were attacking, they had a reconnaissance drone right over the
Speaker 1: flight line where a bunch of bare bombers were lined
Speaker 1: up as the attacks were going. So they're getting real
Speaker 1: time post strike analysis because they have one of their
Speaker 1: drones uplinking via However, they're uplinking watching it. Okay here,
Speaker 1: you know this is probably a full kill. This is
Speaker 1: probably a mission kill. This one they might be able
Speaker 1: to fix. We missed this. So they're getting real time
Speaker 1: data on what they're attacking. And of course you have
Speaker 1: all the syops involved in that as well. And the
Speaker 1: thing that popped into my head. Everybody's talking about AI
Speaker 1: and how wonderful it is. As these were controlled by
Speaker 1: operators located some ways communicating somehow getting their live feed
Speaker 1: and some interesting. But we are very close to the nexus,
Speaker 1: and I know it's in the lab, and it may
Speaker 1: very well be in some secret squirrel location already just
Speaker 1: waiting for the for the Jags to give it a
Speaker 1: thumbs up. But we know other nations won't be as reclusive.
Speaker 1: But we are right on the cusp and we should
Speaker 1: assume it's already here, just has it been produced at scale.
Speaker 1: The wherewareof of the merger of two things. It's no
Speaker 1: longer science fiction, it's no longer military fiction. It's reality
Speaker 1: of processing ability is required to process multi spectral imagery
Speaker 1: coming off a secret heead with producing those secret heads
Speaker 1: in a very affordable way, or coming together such that
Speaker 1: you don't even need GPS, you don't need fiber optics.
Speaker 1: Back for decades we had the ability to fly Tomawk
Speaker 1: missiles through people's windows just with train matching software. You know,
Speaker 1: run it off of a equivalent chip from the from
Speaker 1: the Night teen eighties. So you combine AI's ability to
Speaker 1: think fast, the computers that can keep up with that
Speaker 1: think fast, and the data stream that's coming off of
Speaker 1: affordable seeker heads, we are reaching very much a point
Speaker 1: that you can park a truck somewhere and you don't
Speaker 1: have to have a man in the loop. You just
Speaker 1: tell the logarithm at this time or under the following conditions,
Speaker 1: open up the roof. You're looking for this type of
Speaker 1: type of return, go forward and do nasty things. That
Speaker 1: is what should really keep people up at night, because
Speaker 1: then you're if you can't keep them out and away
Speaker 1: from your bases. Then how do you defend yourself from
Speaker 1: such things?
Speaker 3: And that's a hard problem. Is a similar.
Speaker 1: Problem to your English Army or French Army brigade leader saying,
Speaker 1: how am I going to cross three hundred meters in
Speaker 1: the face of an interlocking fire of a maximum machine gun.
Speaker 1: It's the same type of challenge. There's an answer to it.
Speaker 1: I don't think that, at least at scale, anybody has
Speaker 1: an answer to this capability that take what you've seen
Speaker 1: today and then assume that can happen without a human
Speaker 1: and a loop at all. You just flip the switch
Speaker 1: from red to green and drive to the nearest border
Speaker 1: and see what happens in twelve hours when it goes off.
Speaker 1: It's it's the reality is no longer science fiction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as you were saying, I remember an experiment be
Speaker 2: a skinner. The psychologist was training for the for the
Speaker 2: government was training pigeons to peck at pictures of targets
Speaker 2: to guide weapons to their location during World worked. I'm thinking, well,
Speaker 2: you know how much more I mean that was. You're
Speaker 2: not the brightest creatures in the face of the planet,
Speaker 2: but you don't have to be that bright. You know
Speaker 2: if you can know that the image of the image
Speaker 2: of what you're looking for, and I assume that even
Speaker 2: these fairly dumb chips can do that. You don't need
Speaker 2: to really be super sophisticated. You just need to be sophisticated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's just it's a great demonstration. A lot
Speaker 1: of times, and we've talked about these issues with a
Speaker 1: variety of guests over the years, and it's all in
Speaker 1: and will we have this exercise. We have a small
Speaker 1: little example. Well, this is something that's real world, very operational,
Speaker 1: very hostile environment. It's an order of magnitude more difficult
Speaker 1: to get a truckload of attack drones from Siberia to
Speaker 1: the outskirts of the Northern Fleet headquarters in Russia than
Speaker 1: it is to do the same thing in the US.
Speaker 1: And you talk to anybody who does border security where
Speaker 1: people hide, you know, fitanol, marijuana, illegal aliens and trucks
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. If you have to do more
Speaker 1: than a curse research, it gets clogged up tremendously on
Speaker 1: your border crossings. Now they have greater border areas to
Speaker 1: defend a little more porous, especially in Central Asia and
Speaker 1: East Asia. So if you have plenty of time, and
Speaker 1: you have a good plan, and you know who all
Speaker 1: the coruct people that are easy degrees, you can see
Speaker 1: how they got there. And it also had me thinking
Speaker 1: about concept that can get some people to roll their
Speaker 1: eyes out and can make accountants upset. And I got
Speaker 1: to give credit where credit is due. And this I
Speaker 1: know this seems like yesterday to you and me, but
Speaker 1: it was a while ago.
Speaker 3: In some of his.
Speaker 1: Final year or year and a half or so, maybe
Speaker 1: the last few months that Admiral Harvey was an active
Speaker 1: duty he started beating a drum and I found some
Speaker 1: stuff that I wrote about it at the time, back
Speaker 1: in twenty ten. I believe it is. I don't know
Speaker 1: exactly where it was. I couldn't find the article because
Speaker 1: so many of the links back to twenty ten are
Speaker 1: dead now. But he was emphasizing the need for strategic homeporting.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for secondary lessons we need to take
Speaker 1: as we think about this, because we need to look
Speaker 1: very very hard at strategic homeporting. And I'll have this
Speaker 1: link over on the show page, and for those that
Speaker 1: are in the chat room, I'll put it up in
Speaker 1: the chat room a second for folks to look at
Speaker 1: if you're on X you can see it. Tom Shugart
Speaker 1: Eback in August of twenty twenty four. And Tom's really
Speaker 1: good at seeing these things. He has for all those
Speaker 1: that learned navigation training on the East Coast. Everybody knows
Speaker 1: about the Craney Island area and thimble Shoals. Anyway, it's
Speaker 1: the Norfolk waterfront. And he asked, all the way back
Speaker 1: thirteen months ago, quote, what if I told you as
Speaker 1: I type this, there is a vessel associated with the
Speaker 1: Chinese People's Liberation Army that could be equipped with many
Speaker 1: drones of anti ship cruise or anti ship cruise missiles
Speaker 1: and was parked less than four miles from the bulk
Speaker 1: of the US Atlantic Fleet. And he makes a few
Speaker 1: more comments. From there, I think this and this is
Speaker 1: a point that we need to be raised again. Six
Speaker 1: it actually got written into law.
Speaker 3: There was.
Speaker 1: A push for strategic homeboarding. If people recall we were
Speaker 1: going to have a battleship Service Action Groupe that was
Speaker 1: going to be homeboarded in Staten Island of all places.
Speaker 1: Going back to your sategic onboarding, because that made sense
Speaker 1: when you're facing the Soviet Union and all the little
Speaker 1: nuclear missiles fling around, and then there are nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: we had that rash of efficiencies and brac closures. There's
Speaker 1: a big push for just the opposite master air bases
Speaker 1: where we would locate, for instance, in as Jacksonville, it's
Speaker 1: a Master ASW base. All the pights and a lot
Speaker 1: of helicopters and a lot of other fun things are
Speaker 1: located right there at in s Jacksonville, right next to
Speaker 1: the Saint John's River.
Speaker 3: It's about three miles wide.
Speaker 1: There you have the fleet concentration areas of Norfolk, Virginia,
Speaker 1: as Tom outlined, and you also have you know, look
Speaker 1: at everything we have in San Diego. All you have
Speaker 1: to do is some goober to have a one of
Speaker 1: those penthouse apartments up there least long enough, and like
Speaker 1: that shooter in Vegas years ago, have a few days
Speaker 1: going up and down the elevator with a few boxes
Speaker 1: and you can wreck some sugdicate significant habits. We are
Speaker 1: almost inviting exactly what happened to the Russians, but from
Speaker 1: a naval perspective. And just look at what is import
Speaker 1: on Christmas in San Diego, in Norfolk, and for lack
Speaker 1: of veterforate and even in Mayport, especially with our aircraft carriers,
Speaker 1: and then play out what the Ukrainians were able to
Speaker 1: do to the Russians. We have intentionally and consciously in
Speaker 1: peace created an incredible strategic risk two ours that nobody's
Speaker 1: talking about. And again I want to give full credit
Speaker 1: to ad Mcharvey. He was the last flag officer who
Speaker 1: saw this and was able to mention it back in
Speaker 1: twenty ten. And it's only underlined and bold and blaring
Speaker 1: and red right now that we need serious people and
Speaker 1: serious jobs to talk to the accountants, and we need
Speaker 1: to look back at strategic homeporting. We back when you
Speaker 1: and I were kids, just on the East coast, we
Speaker 1: had chips. I think we had like almost a dozen
Speaker 1: ships based in Newport, Rhode Island.
Speaker 3: We had them.
Speaker 1: Charleston off of Mayport was much larger. I had two
Speaker 1: aircraft carrier. As a matter of fact, I also saw
Speaker 1: a link back ten years ago when they were going
Speaker 1: to put carrier.
Speaker 5: In fact, I think I have that let me quote that.
Speaker 5: Did I save that article? I think I did, but
Speaker 5: at the time it was Andrew Crenshaw. Anyway, not important,
Speaker 5: I'll put it up on the show links. But they
Speaker 5: were going to move a nuclear carrier, and they said
Speaker 5: it should be in There should be a nuclear carrier
Speaker 5: homeported in Mayport, Florida, with all the accessories required to
Speaker 5: take care of a nuclear power ship.
Speaker 1: By twenty nineteen. Of course it never happened. So that
Speaker 1: was a get twenty ten, twenty eleven, twenty twelve, something
Speaker 1: like that. So we've we've lost another opportunity to protect ourselves.
Speaker 1: I don't know whether it'll get footing our traction, but
Speaker 1: here we are given another tap on the shoulder. Will
Speaker 1: people that make a difference be able to react to it?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know how the aircraft are rate at
Speaker 2: at Mayport, but I do know that the aircraft at
Speaker 2: some of the we have consolidated all these forces. We
Speaker 2: have a bunch of squadrons at an Nassociana. We have
Speaker 2: a bunch of squadrons at the base in the middle
Speaker 2: of in the middle, but in this in the San
Speaker 2: Joaquin Valley, and themore we have a squadron. You know,
Speaker 2: we have these different things. But when you go to
Speaker 2: visit these sites, or you go to an air force base,
Speaker 2: they don't scatter the airplane. And now it looks like
Speaker 2: the days of right with the pictures you see of
Speaker 2: Pearl Harbor and the Philippines before the Japanese attack, they had,
Speaker 2: you know, to prevent sabotage, they clustered all the planes together,
Speaker 2: but all that did was making much better target for
Speaker 2: the aircraft coming in. And yeah, and your point is
Speaker 2: well made. And we do the same thing with the ships.
Speaker 2: You know, So if you're on the cruiser destroyer carrier
Speaker 2: piers there in Norfolk, that's a that's a very tempting,
Speaker 2: I weld think, a very tempting target.
Speaker 1: What is the response that we have to take away
Speaker 1: from this? We'll get more information on this.
Speaker 2: I was wondering. I mean, the Russians have a pretty
Speaker 2: good jamming capacity, but it seems not to be it
Speaker 2: as far back as the bases that got attacked. You know,
Speaker 2: they're they're using this anti jamming equipment or the jamming
Speaker 2: equipment locally and on the front, but apparently they were
Speaker 2: all lax on using it at these more remote bases.
Speaker 2: And then you get into the question, well can you
Speaker 2: you know, how do you how many free you know,
Speaker 2: do you have frequency skipping jammers that you can place
Speaker 2: out there to make sure you've covered all your bases?
Speaker 2: Do you. You know, as we're talked a little bit to
Speaker 2: some people are going, oh, we need nets over all
Speaker 2: this stuff. Good, good luck with that. But you know what,
Speaker 2: what what are we going to do? And what kind
Speaker 2: of sensitivity of radars we have that can pick up
Speaker 2: some of these small things? And if you do have it,
Speaker 2: what assets do you have to take them down?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And then you have how long do you keep those running?
Speaker 1: And for every countermeasure, there's a there's a counter countermeasure.
Speaker 1: And it's fair to say the Russians have gotten complacent.
Speaker 1: It's very convenient to keep all your planes lined up
Speaker 1: in an ice straight line were, you know, a couple
Speaker 1: of thousand kilometers away from the front. You know, what
Speaker 1: are they gonna what are they gonna do? Fly a
Speaker 1: bunch of quad copters over us? Actually it's exactly what
Speaker 1: they're going to do. And so that's another one of
Speaker 1: those lessons I hope we take on board because I've
Speaker 1: been hearing this since a station there. We have less
Speaker 1: than twenty fully operationally capable B two Spirit bombers, which
Speaker 1: we use as a lever all the time. People think
Speaker 1: we have a lot more, we don't, and they're homeported
Speaker 1: literally right in the middle of the US in Missouri.
Speaker 1: It's a very very safe, very very secure place. Yes,
Speaker 1: if you're thinking nineteen eighty seven, it is a very
Speaker 1: very safe and very very secure place. But is it
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five. I don't think it is. It's
Speaker 1: no less safe and secure than any place else. So
Speaker 1: going back to the comment about strategic homeporting, so if
Speaker 1: you have a strategic asset you do not have a
Speaker 1: lot of do you put them all on a location
Speaker 1: that is as vulnerable as if it was in Guam
Speaker 1: or Japan or any place else, or do you accept
Speaker 1: perhaps a little more logistical challenge and a little more
Speaker 1: expensive peacetime expenditure. Do you have them on two bases?
Speaker 1: And that is one of those things that on December eighth,
Speaker 1: a lot of people pointed the finger and.
Speaker 3: Said look, look, look, look, look.
Speaker 1: But it didn't make a difference, because on December sixth
Speaker 1: everything looked okay. You know, the whole thing with the
Speaker 1: attack on Pearl Harbor and what we would see in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty one, the warnings were there. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: the word games we played, the simulated attack on the
Speaker 1: Panama Canal. The games we played in actually attacking Honolulu itself.
Speaker 1: But back in nineteen eighteen was the first air raid
Speaker 1: by carrier HMS Furious, which is a converted battle cruiser.
Speaker 1: It was upset I think it was six or seven
Speaker 1: swopped with camels after the German Navy's base near the
Speaker 1: Danish border near the Keel Canal, and they had abandoned
Speaker 1: the airship base. They actually lost some equipment, but it
Speaker 1: took it out. It was I think it was like
Speaker 1: April twenty eighteen or so, but that was the introduction.
Speaker 1: And of course we even had the bridge attack on Toronto,
Speaker 1: which was kind of underlined to the Japanese what they
Speaker 1: needed to do in Pearl Harbor a few years before.
Speaker 1: So there's there's lots of build up to new capabilities
Speaker 1: and war and you get these warnings, but do you
Speaker 1: have the right people listening to them? And that's the
Speaker 1: one thing that I really take away from this is
Speaker 1: some people voices this is a concern, but it's not
Speaker 1: a concern of the Ukrainian so to speak. These heavy bombers,
Speaker 1: the bears and the backfires their dual use. They're also
Speaker 1: part of the nuclear triad for the Russians. So as
Speaker 1: you take out more and more of their assets. Yes,
Speaker 1: they'll have fewer assets to attack Kiev with with cruise missiles,
Speaker 1: but that also makes the strategic nuclear deterrent for Russia
Speaker 1: a little less than what would have already was that. Again,
Speaker 1: that's all theory. Nobody's going to nuclear war with Russia.
Speaker 1: But you know that's part of the second and third
Speaker 1: order effects, and you can trace it back to the Russians.
Speaker 1: Even though they're in the fourth year of war against
Speaker 1: Ukraine and people have they've already seen long range drone
Speaker 1: attacks and ones or two. I know that somebody on
Speaker 1: the Russian Joint staff had warned and briefed to this
Speaker 1: era and was told to sit down and shut up.
Speaker 1: Raise a raise a shot glass of vodka to that
Speaker 1: man or woman who had done that. But they're going
Speaker 1: to have to have to respond to this, both militarily
Speaker 1: to make a point, but also I think in how
Speaker 1: they can figure what they have left of their long
Speaker 1: range aviation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's gonna be it. I mean, it's gonna be
Speaker 2: a challenge for them. As I as I put on X,
Speaker 2: I don't think if I'm the Russian air marsh or
Speaker 2: whatever he is in charge of all these bases and
Speaker 2: security and stuff that I've been near any tall built,
Speaker 2: any windows and tall buildings the next few months. And
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure the guy who raised his waist and said,
Speaker 2: you know, this could be a problem for us and
Speaker 2: got told to sit down and shut up is going
Speaker 2: to be in that same boat. Because the last thing
Speaker 2: you do, and in Russia is oh. I was right
Speaker 2: back then, and I was listened to you know, you
Speaker 2: kill them both, they both get they both get bounced.
Speaker 2: But you know, let's connect some dots. I mean, we
Speaker 2: had the the drones flying over Laning, the Air Force base.
Speaker 2: We don't know who, who who they belonged to, at
Speaker 2: least they haven't officially said who they belonged to. We
Speaker 2: have these the giants, as Cant and John had been
Speaker 2: talking about. It was the giant balloon that what traveled
Speaker 2: across our country before we finally shot it down somewhere
Speaker 2: over South Carolina or over the shore line shore off
Speaker 2: South Carolina. I mean, what are we thinking? And you know,
Speaker 2: we know that the Chinese have a sophisticated surveillance satellites.
Speaker 2: It's not like these these balloons and these these other
Speaker 2: things are doing it except testing I keep you know,
Speaker 2: you keep probing for weak spots, right, you probe here,
Speaker 2: you probe there. And and so we've had these Chinese
Speaker 2: nationals trying to get onto military bases. We've had, I
Speaker 2: mean all kinds of things like that that that when
Speaker 2: you look, you know, you go, okay, well it's an
Speaker 2: isolated incident. But you know, after you get about thirty
Speaker 2: five isolated incidents, then you begin to go, well, maybe
Speaker 2: it's not as isolated as I thought. Now, as you
Speaker 2: point out for many of our bases there are you know,
Speaker 2: we don't do a lot of let's put our base
Speaker 2: bases way out in the woods. And now the Strategic
Speaker 2: Air Command used to do that. I mean, as my
Speaker 2: dad was an officer in the Strategic Air Command, we
Speaker 2: we had some really interesting bases that we would we
Speaker 2: would go to Guam was one of them. Worksmith Air
Speaker 2: Force Base up north up in Michigan, but there were
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of them, was a big chain of
Speaker 2: these bases. Aunt SAC used to keep bombers in the
Speaker 2: air all the time. So there was always some airborne
Speaker 2: response group that in this the early days, but was
Speaker 2: out there flying around and if called on, would go
Speaker 2: forward and do their mission. Now that was a different
Speaker 2: kind of war, a different kind of time. We did
Speaker 2: used to worry about that kind of sneak attack. But
Speaker 2: these these drones, they're small, they're hard to detect, as
Speaker 2: John has said, if you know, I'm talking about them jamming.
Speaker 2: But if you're got using a terrain guidance system and
Speaker 2: you don't, you can fly in low and slow and
Speaker 2: nobody's going to pay any attention until you've done your deed.
Speaker 2: So we really need to think about, as you said,
Speaker 2: dispersing the force, figuring out how we could make it
Speaker 2: more difficult for us to be targeted. And I keep thinking,
Speaker 2: we've said that so many times about Guam and and
Speaker 2: the bases in Japan and everything in the Pacific that
Speaker 2: you know, it's like that are people listening to this stuff?
Speaker 2: Because why are we doing the same thing over and
Speaker 2: over again. I think it's going to get better. Well,
Speaker 2: we'll protect Wuam with these, you know, all the assets
Speaker 2: the army has, the patriots, the the the the other
Speaker 2: missiles that are that are are a little further out.
Speaker 2: But you know what, what what is to stop as
Speaker 2: we've already said, and innocent looking Chinese instant looking Chinese
Speaker 2: fishing vessel. Vessel just have to be floating by and releases,
Speaker 2: you know, three dozen drones and directs them towards the
Speaker 2: various bases on Guam. It's you know, it's we're not
Speaker 2: thinking right.
Speaker 1: I think we're thinking for convenience. For instance, you know
Speaker 1: you mentioned Guam Peopley'll say, well, you know, we we
Speaker 1: we'll put a fad battery there, and you know, we'll
Speaker 1: put the army system there. Okay, fine, how many how
Speaker 1: many missiles is that? Let's use around numbers. They say,
Speaker 1: we got, well, that gives us twenty missiles. Okay, are
Speaker 1: you doing shoot?
Speaker 3: Look? Shoot or shoot? Shoot?
Speaker 2: Look?
Speaker 3: Shoot? How many?
Speaker 1: How many weapons will you be able to quote service
Speaker 1: unquote with you have there?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 1: Another constant in warfare is a defending entity playing runs
Speaker 1: out of ammunition. It has to surrender. May not have
Speaker 1: inflicted a single bite on the enemy, but the enemy
Speaker 1: comes forward. They were only issued three rounds, and they
Speaker 1: fire their three rounds and then they look at their
Speaker 1: officers and go, I've done all that I can.
Speaker 3: Do, now what?
Speaker 1: And that that is one of the dangers that you
Speaker 1: have by putting everything in Guam, Even assuming the political
Speaker 1: risk and agency risk of being in Japan or South
Speaker 1: Korea or even Australia to the side. If we're putting
Speaker 1: everything in two or three locations and we're defending it
Speaker 1: on paper, but when you war game and it doesn't
Speaker 1: look too pretty, we're kind of fooling ourselves. But I don't
Speaker 1: think we're fulling the enemy.
Speaker 3: The enemy can.
Speaker 1: Count too, and they've got we've talked about here about
Speaker 1: the great unscheduled range time data we've gotten in the
Speaker 1: Red Sea the last eighteen months. We have, but the
Speaker 1: Chinese have as well. They can also do the math,
Speaker 1: and they have very good spies in this data. They
Speaker 1: have more access to classified material than probably the people
Speaker 1: that are authorized to have it. So they're going to
Speaker 1: know that for this many cruise missiles detected, they fire
Speaker 1: this many weapons. For an anti shipulet missile, they fire
Speaker 1: this many of this type of weapon. For attack drones
Speaker 1: on the low end, they use this and they say, Okay,
Speaker 1: we have X number of ships out in front of
Speaker 1: us that will probably have this load out A or
Speaker 1: this load out B or this load out C. How
Speaker 1: many weapons do we need to fire at them until
Speaker 1: they're Winchester and that's what a lot of people, and
Speaker 1: we've talked about it here, have been looking at the
Speaker 1: challenge in the Pacific as well, And I don't think
Speaker 1: that just packing everybody together on a few locations makes
Speaker 1: that map work any better, because I think what it
Speaker 1: really does is it gives your your risk level higher
Speaker 1: because should your defenses be inadequate on one location and
Speaker 1: you've packed all your stuff in this location because you
Speaker 1: think it's more secure, then you have a compounded problem.
Speaker 3: It's it's it's ugly.
Speaker 1: But again, we're not the first people to talk about this.
Speaker 1: It's been talked about for thousands of years. But you
Speaker 1: have to what was the big phrase last decade, distributed lethality. No,
Speaker 1: you need to distribute your risk. And this is again
Speaker 1: one of those one of those warnings people need to
Speaker 1: distribute their risk. And even if you do that, just
Speaker 1: on a rough count, I've seen a couple of maps,
Speaker 1: it looks like they struck at least three airfields, maybe
Speaker 1: more so. The Russians may have had their strategic aviation
Speaker 1: assets quote well distributed unquote better than we do, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean they're not able to get hit. If
Speaker 1: you have a well run operation like the Ukrainian side.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's and it's not just I mean, the other
Speaker 2: side of it is that if what's you know, you
Speaker 2: can you can attack the bases, that that may be doable.
Speaker 2: But it's the other it's the infrastructure. We need to
Speaker 2: continue to operate the country and provide for those the
Speaker 2: base support and all that. Then that is, you know,
Speaker 2: that is our weakest to me, our weakest. No, it
Speaker 2: is if you want to cut power. We've seen what
Speaker 2: happens when the power goes out, you know, and if
Speaker 2: it was a multi you know, very large enough attack
Speaker 2: took out a few lines that can be replaced in repair,
Speaker 2: but that takes time. You know. We've talked about the
Speaker 2: fuel tanks, the field storage, all those issues, and we
Speaker 2: haven't even talked about the fact that many of our
Speaker 2: works where we have the ships like San Diego have
Speaker 2: a very limited entrance and exit and difficult to get
Speaker 2: out of there if somebody were to do something to
Speaker 2: off there off ballast point. I mean, it is the
Speaker 2: same thing with San Francisco when we were there. I'm
Speaker 2: not sayingbody would would sink the or managed to drop
Speaker 2: the Golden Gate bridge, and that it may not water
Speaker 2: may be deep enough there that with that wouldn't make
Speaker 2: a difference, but it's still a challenge. If somebody was
Speaker 2: to come in on one of those Chinese fishing vessels
Speaker 2: and lay lay a few mines, and where were mine
Speaker 2: warfare assets in that area? Same thing up in Washington State,
Speaker 2: same thing in Norfolk. We don't have. Uh, you know,
Speaker 2: if you're going to about thimble Shoals and all that
Speaker 2: good stuff and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. You know,
Speaker 2: if you want to cut down access to our ports
Speaker 2: on the East coast, most of them are not exactly
Speaker 2: right on the beach. Mayport maybe the actually the easiest
Speaker 2: one to get it out of on these.
Speaker 1: That has the best sea and acre detail on the navy.
Speaker 3: And you know that.
Speaker 1: There's a follow up question. Okay, so what do you
Speaker 1: do about it? You've got it, you've got to retake,
Speaker 1: you've got to refurbish, and you got to rebuild. Where
Speaker 1: would we have new bases? Well, the same place to
Speaker 1: have the old bases. And we've talked about that here before.
Speaker 1: Newport could take or could take ships again, so could Charleston.
Speaker 1: If you can stop the people from building condos on
Speaker 1: the old base. North Charleston in twenty twenty five is
Speaker 1: not North Charleston in two thousand and five. I can
Speaker 1: tell you that up and down the West Coast there
Speaker 1: are also lots of options, but you're going to run
Speaker 1: into all three of those dates, a lot of local
Speaker 1: opposition from the political side of the house, But the
Speaker 1: federal government has lots of ways to recapture that, and
Speaker 1: you will have the arguments that it's more expensive. I'm
Speaker 1: happy to have the discussion of people. They'll say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what. Just to use round numbers here.
Speaker 1: You can have one base with five carriers and twenty destroyers,
Speaker 1: or you can have two bases with three carriers and
Speaker 1: seventeen destroyers. I'll take the second option every day of
Speaker 1: the week, because when you look at that beautiful little
Speaker 1: chart that Tom put up thirteen months ago, combined with
Speaker 1: what we've seen people can do, and this has been
Speaker 1: a concern for decades. Yeah, you can have all your
Speaker 1: ships located one place at D minus one, but at
Speaker 1: D plus one, you'll be lucky if you have a
Speaker 1: third of them left. Because no competent peer adversary is
Speaker 1: going to go to war with the US and not
Speaker 1: try to take advantage of Norfolk and San Diego.
Speaker 3: It would just be.
Speaker 1: Professional malpractice to the nth degree to be at D
Speaker 1: plus one and have those places be quiet. I just
Speaker 1: don't see it happen.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I think I think you're right. We're just
Speaker 2: right now. We're just talking Navy facilities. But you know
Speaker 2: we also have you know, the the the air bases
Speaker 2: are not like Travis, which is a pretty important base,
Speaker 2: like Dover Air Force Base. We have, you know, we
Speaker 2: have some fighter bases Shaw, a whole bunch, but you know,
Speaker 2: the ones we used to have up in the northeast.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure we have what we have up there anymore,
Speaker 2: if there is anything, and you know, it's it is
Speaker 2: a sobering thought to think, well, you know, we need
Speaker 2: to spend encourage the various industries to harden themselves. I mean,
Speaker 2: with the power companies need to think about how they're
Speaker 2: going to harden these long distance transmission lines. You know,
Speaker 2: we we we're pretty good on things like the reactors
Speaker 2: around electric producing electricity producing reactors, they're they're pretty tough.
Speaker 2: It would take quite a lot to knock one of
Speaker 2: those things out. That's not that that's not their weak point.
Speaker 2: Their weak point is always in the transmission system. So
Speaker 2: you know, we need to we need a whole of government.
Speaker 2: Here we go again, a whole government approach to this.
Speaker 2: We need to have a readiness zar or something. I
Speaker 2: need to add more people to the payroll. But you know,
Speaker 2: somebody's got to be thinking about these things. And where's
Speaker 2: our red team. Where's the red team who's thinking? You've
Speaker 2: got to think like the Chinese. We have a lot
Speaker 2: of people who've been doing that. We need to put
Speaker 2: them in a position where they can they can act
Speaker 2: on this stuff. You know, we wait and we keep
Speaker 2: going to the same thing. We could do a lot
Speaker 2: with less expensive ships and what we have. We but
Speaker 2: we have really good expensive ships and we don't want
Speaker 2: them to be wasted. And you know, but it is
Speaker 2: easy to go Winchester if you have a limited magazine.
Speaker 2: And we keep talking about you know, what happened to
Speaker 2: the railguns, what happened to the we're late we're a
Speaker 2: cool laser gun, you know systems and all that, because
Speaker 2: we we need to have those those large capacity systems
Speaker 2: that don't run out of out of bullets, you know,
Speaker 2: after after fifty or sixty shots, and there are.
Speaker 1: Some people who will argue that, or at least try
Speaker 1: to make the point that yeah, yeah, we have these
Speaker 1: these vulnerabilities, so does everybody else.
Speaker 3: And my answer is that do they.
Speaker 1: A lot of this vulnerability comes from the opening hours
Speaker 1: of any major conflict, especially if no changes are made.
Speaker 1: China doesn't have that same because I can foresee no
Speaker 1: circumstance at which the United States or any combinations and
Speaker 1: nations would initiate war with the People's Republic of China
Speaker 1: out of the blue. There is no bolt out of
Speaker 1: the blue attack coming from the east onto the Chinese
Speaker 1: Pacific coast.
Speaker 3: There just isn't.
Speaker 1: So any type of conflict that would come against the PRC.
Speaker 1: They would be able to set the table the way
Speaker 1: they want and then we would respond to it. So
Speaker 1: and are there as many concentrated areas they only have
Speaker 1: one coast.
Speaker 3: It's not that long.
Speaker 1: There's a great target set there, but we've got to
Speaker 1: get there to service it, and they have a great
Speaker 1: ability to also contact. Classic example, the Royal Navy and
Speaker 1: the American Navy were huge and dominated the Atlantic, but
Speaker 1: it's still almost lost. The war against the Central Powers
Speaker 1: in the First World War, who could barely get a
Speaker 1: couple of U boats underway by the time the end
Speaker 1: of twenty seventeen came around, are the end of forty four.
Speaker 1: So maritime powers can completely dominate what little maritime powers
Speaker 1: a land power has, but they can take it and
Speaker 1: still be able to once they have land to keep it.
Speaker 1: So I think it's a different set of concerns, and
Speaker 1: I'm not not as concerned about that type of scenario
Speaker 1: with Russia here, but I think the Europeans need to
Speaker 1: because should the war in Ukraine go south, the security
Speaker 1: situation in Europe will be very different than it is today,
Speaker 1: and they are well within range of a huge land
Speaker 1: border of uncertainty, and they are extremely vulnerable to this
Speaker 1: type of attack and warfare, especially with the lack of
Speaker 1: control and relative lawlessness you have in the interior of
Speaker 1: cottinental Europe. So I know the Europeans have got to
Speaker 1: be looking at this really, really, really close, because the Russians,
Speaker 1: if nothing like to copy good ideas has to do
Speaker 1: the Chinese, though, after they lick their wounds and embarrassment
Speaker 1: rage a little bit about the successful Ukrainian operation, they're
Speaker 1: gonna go, Okay, how do we do that to our enemies.
Speaker 1: I think they already have a lot of the resources
Speaker 1: to do that, but but they're going to go down
Speaker 1: that path. And I think that's more of a concern
Speaker 1: for our European allies it is for us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't want the most self satisfied group of people.
Speaker 2: I've talked to and along people in the European countries.
Speaker 2: You know, why would anybody do anything to this? We're
Speaker 2: you know, we're just blouse blouse and it's and it's
Speaker 2: you know, I'm centered as what I said. When you know,
Speaker 2: if I'm Finland and I'm I'm Sweden and I'm Norway,
Speaker 2: and I'm looking at where do these where are these
Speaker 2: drones that attack, uh the Northern Fleet and Mermansk and
Speaker 2: those other those air base Where do those guys flying from?
Speaker 2: Because you know they don't have they don't have super
Speaker 2: ranges and uh, you know, if I'm the Russians, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna be complaining the least complaining and wondering that that
Speaker 2: very question. And would they do anything against those those
Speaker 2: three Nordic countries? Uh? You know then are they and
Speaker 2: you know where else? So they what what would you
Speaker 2: do if you were Russia? You know, they've got asset,
Speaker 2: they got allies. It is Paris. I think Paris is
Speaker 2: still burning today, right, are the mobs still running rampant
Speaker 2: in Paris? To uh, you know, it's not like it
Speaker 2: was was. You know, all we're the French and we're
Speaker 2: only the French. They've we've invited so many uh what's
Speaker 2: the right word, disruptive forces into our countries that you
Speaker 2: know that that could be a real issue as we
Speaker 2: go down the road, especially as you said, you know,
Speaker 2: we we we know there were a large number of
Speaker 2: military age Chinese people coming over the boarder and you know,
Speaker 2: if you're looking for those teams and I've read so
Speaker 2: many apocalyptic novels now about excuse me, about what could
Speaker 2: happen if those if those guys get active, are activated,
Speaker 2: because you know, it is it, it is real. It's
Speaker 2: a real question for us. So you know, they don't
Speaker 2: have to with us, with our country, don't you know.
Speaker 2: Some of the scenarios are always they could grab an
Speaker 2: elementary school somewhere, and you know, but we would be
Speaker 2: so caught up in that we might forget to do
Speaker 2: look for the other things that would be coming down
Speaker 2: the pipe. So it's you know, it's really somewhere somebody
Speaker 2: needs to be thinking about all this stuff and figure
Speaker 2: out how how the response is going to come. I
Speaker 2: know that that is part of the planning for for
Speaker 2: some organizations, but it's got to be it's got to
Speaker 2: permeate down through the system.
Speaker 1: And there you know, all is not completely lost and
Speaker 1: worthy of depression, so to speak. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I noticed is the old cliche that I love
Speaker 1: so much is right when you're sick of saying something
Speaker 1: is when people finally start to listen to you. And
Speaker 1: you know, one of the one of the things that
Speaker 1: we keep harping on about that people say, Okay, what
Speaker 1: are you going to do about? It has to do
Speaker 1: with our shipbuilding business industry and our ability to repair
Speaker 1: what we have. And that's really since the November election,
Speaker 1: it's gotten a lot of additional attention, which that's important.
Speaker 1: It's one thing for me and you and our small
Speaker 1: little conversation coffee clatch to talk about. It's got to
Speaker 1: reach a larger audience. And I noticed there on a
Speaker 1: few days ago on May twenty, of all the establishment
Speaker 1: rags you can think of, and I use that term
Speaker 1: with great affection, the Atlantic is on that list, and
Speaker 1: Arvin Row from the Welcome to the Party gift inserted
Speaker 1: directly here quote who killed America's shipbuilding industry despite being
Speaker 1: economically and militarily reliant on shipping US has an astonishing
Speaker 1: lack of maritime capability unquote that's the title subtitle Hallelujah.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is a little infuriating knowing who the audience,
Speaker 1: your average Atlantic reader is, that this would be a
Speaker 1: surprise to them, But that's just the reality we live in.
Speaker 1: But that is good news is this realization is expanding
Speaker 1: beyond our normal talking circle. And you know, it's not
Speaker 1: like that article was published on you know, George's feed
Speaker 1: and seed in Valdosta, Georgie's newsletter. This is in the Atlantic.
Speaker 1: So it's going to ask a lot, a lot of questions.
Speaker 1: And they have that classic picture from a Kaiser yard
Speaker 1: that has one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
Speaker 1: nine nine liberty ships lined up in that World War
Speaker 1: two yard. You've probably gotten this pushback as well. We
Speaker 1: will go and we're not going to be able to
Speaker 1: do it, just like World War two todd where you
Speaker 1: can find the workers. Well, nobody is asking for you know,
Speaker 1: Rosie the riveter to strap on her headband and hop
Speaker 1: on board a ship. This is twenty twenty five, and
Speaker 1: there are some really smart people that are working on
Speaker 1: ways to build ships differently. That kind of echoes a
Speaker 1: little bit towards the end of the Second World War
Speaker 1: how the Germans were able to build their submarines part
Speaker 1: by part. But I what I've been thinking about is,
Speaker 1: and I kind of threw some snark at science fiction
Speaker 1: people the other day, but science fiction is nice when
Speaker 1: it's well written. It gives you stuff to think about.
Speaker 1: And the movie that came out over a decade ago,
Speaker 1: I think it was Tom Cruise movie that had a
Speaker 1: minority report and one of the standard issue Tom Cruise
Speaker 1: chase scenes and report they're going through a car factory
Speaker 1: this building, and he actually helps in a car right
Speaker 1: at the end of the factory and drives off on it.
Speaker 1: But it's very interesting when you look in the background
Speaker 1: what they were talking about in this, you know, just
Speaker 1: on the edge of reality future time point. It's an
Speaker 1: automated car factory where you had robotics, highly refined materials
Speaker 1: being able to put together in an exact way that
Speaker 1: only robotics can be. That there was nobody involved in it. Now,
Speaker 1: how do you scale that up to huge ships? I
Speaker 1: don't know, but in parts and smaller ships kind of
Speaker 1: like the maritime version.
Speaker 2: Not exactly.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about three D printing ships. We're not there.
Speaker 1: But there has to be a way that you don't
Speaker 1: have to have nine thousand and Rosy the riveters with
Speaker 1: a wrench in their back pocket, climbing all over a
Speaker 1: still structure in the middle of the day to build
Speaker 1: a ship like modern technology, if it's given a chance,
Speaker 1: and perhaps you know, going small, going big, that is
Speaker 1: an interesting spot. I'd like to see more work on
Speaker 1: the possibility of that and per ton of ships. How
Speaker 1: many full time equivalent personnelities that take to build a
Speaker 1: warship today and it did in nineteen forty five, And
Speaker 1: what would be our goal in twenty thirty five to
Speaker 1: be able to build a ship at you know, the
Speaker 1: present day is one? Can we do it at point eight?
Speaker 1: Can we do it at point seven? Are we just
Speaker 1: going to be at point ninety five ten years? Technology
Speaker 1: is developing such that there's got to be a smarter,
Speaker 1: better way that we could build ships, because that gives
Speaker 1: you scalability.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I always worry about the Atlantic because I have
Speaker 2: the feeling many of the reader's food comes from the
Speaker 2: grocery store and they don't know any about the whole
Speaker 2: eco ecosystem out there that weren't grown and driven to
Speaker 2: and all that stuff, you know. So it's it is
Speaker 2: a it's a mixed blessing that it's there. But I
Speaker 2: just wonder how, you know, are these people going to
Speaker 2: really wrap their heads around the issue and what it
Speaker 2: would mean to them to have a strong merchant marine
Speaker 2: and you know, great shipyards and all that. And you know,
Speaker 2: I think John's talking in the in the chat room
Speaker 2: about we have twice the population roughly of what we
Speaker 2: had in World War Two. I don't know why we
Speaker 2: keep thinking we don't have workers. We must. You know,
Speaker 2: we could fire everybody from speaking as a as a
Speaker 2: as a retired lawyer, but half the people who work
Speaker 2: in white collar jobs could be a gainfully employee doing
Speaker 2: many other things and pushing a stack of paper from
Speaker 2: the inbox to the out box and doing their what's
Speaker 2: the thing?
Speaker 1: The TP reports The TSP reports TSP speaking of speaking
Speaker 1: of office space, one of my younger employees, she's been
Speaker 1: with us about a year now, she's she's great, she's
Speaker 1: she's twenty four. And we were talking to her about
Speaker 1: cultural literacy and she had never seen office space. So
Speaker 1: I gave I gave her an assignment. I was like,
Speaker 1: if you need to if you need a log on
Speaker 1: and have a have a an hour's worth of employment, fine,
Speaker 1: but you've got to watch office space.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: She had never seen that. So some of my I
Speaker 1: realized why some of my references weren't quite working with her.
Speaker 1: So I had her watch office space and maybe that'll help.
Speaker 2: So she didn't get twenty three schedu either.
Speaker 3: No, but that's okay, that's all right.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes you got to learn what other people
Speaker 1: around you don't know. So anyway that I think, you
Speaker 1: know you're comment about The Atlantic a spot on, but
Speaker 1: I guess because I am a closet optimist that when
Speaker 1: we have somebody from one of our friends from the
Speaker 1: General General Accountability Office, not the General Accounty Office, the
Speaker 1: General count Accountability Office, are you know, one of our
Speaker 1: our great public servants, you know uniforms up there in
Speaker 1: Congress and Senate, and they bring up the topic that
Speaker 1: maybe somebody go, Yes, I read in The Atlantic a
Speaker 1: couple of months ago.
Speaker 3: So maybe it opened the door. I don't know.
Speaker 1: But the more, the more discussions, the better. But at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, it's got to show up
Speaker 1: with money attached to it. And you know, riddled me this.
Speaker 1: Maybe you can help me with I've seen one of
Speaker 1: on for instance, at the Shangri Lau dialogue that Secretary
Speaker 1: Defense Hegseth was at, it was brought up. Then it's
Speaker 1: been brought up a fair bit in the last few
Speaker 1: weeks that we've been talking with our allies about spending
Speaker 1: five percent of GDP is the new goal that everybody
Speaker 1: needs to be ready for. If members charts are right,
Speaker 1: we are only spending about three percent right now. Does
Speaker 1: that mean that we're going to spend five percent of
Speaker 1: GDP on defense? I sure haven't seen that come out
Speaker 1: of Congress.
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't. I don't think we're going to see that
Speaker 2: because you know, there are two are Congress people for
Speaker 2: the most part, seem to be very intent on by
Speaker 2: spending enough money other people's money to get themselves re elected,
Speaker 2: rather than too many of them are that way rather
Speaker 2: than worry about what's good for the country. So there'd
Speaker 2: be a fundamental shift in the demand curve demands we're
Speaker 2: putting on our congress people too, And you know it's
Speaker 2: not you know that we want every lobby group that
Speaker 2: goes in there, whether it's for farmers growing cotton or
Speaker 2: or they know the the honeybee industry. You know, everybody
Speaker 2: got something they want Congress to help them fund and fix.
Speaker 2: And it's I think that psychology needs a chance. Fortunately,
Speaker 2: there seemed to be a number of people, and we've
Speaker 2: talked to a couple here who have the kind of
Speaker 2: a different mindset. But that's refreshing. Hope that that is
Speaker 2: a trend. But you know, it have to be that
Speaker 2: people who are not supporting advancing our defense get taken
Speaker 2: out at the polls and replaced by people who do
Speaker 2: care about what happens to this country.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't going to five percent of GDP. It's
Speaker 1: not all my planning assumptions. I assume that adjusted for inflation,
Speaker 1: will be lucky if we maintain the levels of defensements
Speaker 1: and spending we have right now. I do think we
Speaker 1: run into some danger if we're asking our friends and
Speaker 1: allies to spend five percent of GDP what a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of them haven't even reached the two
Speaker 1: percent mark yet, but we refuse to grow towards that mark. Well,
Speaker 1: I think Poland will probably get there on its own,
Speaker 1: maybe a couple of the Baltic states, though I think
Speaker 1: a lot of them. They're not big nations. They're like
Speaker 1: but are There are one point three million Estonians and
Speaker 1: one point nine million Lithuanians and somewhere in between there.
Speaker 1: For Latvians, well, they'll probably top out at two and
Speaker 1: a half three, which is better than where they historically
Speaker 1: have been. If we're not going to go to five
Speaker 1: percent two that I don't think we are. I just
Speaker 1: don't think financially we're going to be able to do it.
Speaker 1: I wrote something last week in a moment of depression
Speaker 1: about it. I keep reminding myself, but I think the
Speaker 1: planning assumption should be, if we're lucky, that we'll have
Speaker 1: constant dollars, which is we have a pretty good constant
Speaker 1: dollar amount we're spending on the military. It's just what
Speaker 1: we're spending and how we're spending. If you need to
Speaker 1: get more money, then you need to get it from
Speaker 1: someplace else. Dodge DoD might buy you one more DDG
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, but there's larger structural
Speaker 1: issues that need to take place, both on how you
Speaker 1: allocate the budget but also what you spend it on.
Speaker 1: And there is some lot of money out there pushing
Speaker 1: for things that I think will soak up too much
Speaker 1: of the available money a classic example, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people I know disagreeing on that, And that's fine.
Speaker 1: I reserve the right to be wrong, but I don't
Speaker 1: think I'm wrong here. The whole push to bring back
Speaker 1: the nuclear capable submarine launched cruise missile, our surface launched
Speaker 1: cruise missile. I was and you remember, you're a couple
Speaker 1: couple of months older than I am. But when I
Speaker 1: was at JO, I remember all the academic the overhead
Speaker 1: involved with having nuclear weapons. It's got an incredible cost
Speaker 1: to it. We don't need to be investing in that.
Speaker 1: We need to invest in more SM three, more SM six,
Speaker 1: things of that manner than bringing back something that the
Speaker 1: weird people in the skiff come out and want to
Speaker 1: talk about once a fiscal year.
Speaker 2: Yeact.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people looking for big ticket, glitzy
Speaker 1: items with a high per unit cost and a lot
Speaker 1: of overhead and tail that will probably never be used.
Speaker 1: Those people need to be invited to a brief later
Speaker 1: on in the day and not lead the discussion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, you know, the personnel, the personal reliability program,
Speaker 2: all that stuff, all the all the stuff you had
Speaker 2: to go through to get into those assets, the constant
Speaker 2: guarding of your launchers and stuff like that. It was magazines.
Speaker 2: I mean, it just takes a lot of energy and people.
Speaker 2: But somebody, somebody asked about the admiral that got fired,
Speaker 2: because you know, we talked about a little bit earlier
Speaker 2: before the show about PEO of Unmanned and Small Combatants
Speaker 2: was relieved, and he's also was the former former in
Speaker 2: charge of the constellation program. So there wasn't much said
Speaker 2: except a loss of confidence blah blah blah. But you know,
Speaker 2: I'm wondering whether is this a good thing? Is they're
Speaker 2: going to shake that program up, because that those programs
Speaker 2: unmanned and small combatants are where we really need to
Speaker 2: be focused a lot of our attention.
Speaker 1: And then usually in those circumstances, it's always bothered me
Speaker 1: and I having known people who have been relief for command,
Speaker 1: I fully understand the forget the professional impact with the
Speaker 1: personal embarrassment that comes with that. However, for the greater good.
Speaker 1: I think we need to have more transparency on why
Speaker 1: people are relieved. You know, did the guy have a dui?
Speaker 1: Did he have a mental break? Did was he found
Speaker 1: doing extracurricular activities with people who owned the paperwork on
Speaker 1: or was it? Program and competence? Everybody should know that,
Speaker 1: especially those that are are coming up for commands, so they.
Speaker 3: Don't do that.
Speaker 1: I think it's healthy, but it also I think.
Speaker 3: Encourages the others. If we know that.
Speaker 1: People have been fired for poor program management or for
Speaker 1: telling being overly optim How can I say this about
Speaker 1: being rude providing overly optimistic expectations on program viability. I
Speaker 1: guess it would be a nice way of putting it.
Speaker 2: That's what happened to the was it the A eleven.
Speaker 3: Twelve?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know they were they were having
Speaker 2: a huge amount of difficulty getting the coding gone, But
Speaker 2: the people in charge of the program were not necessarily
Speaker 2: being straightforward about the problems they were encountering, and I
Speaker 2: think they got fired.
Speaker 1: And eventually, by the time they figured out how they
Speaker 1: were going to do it, the plane had become a pig.
Speaker 3: She's just too heavy.
Speaker 2: It's the naway.
Speaker 1: It was the same mentality that brought about the debacle
Speaker 1: of DVG one thousand and almost almost bit the forward
Speaker 1: all the technology risk. But that's I just realized we've
Speaker 1: already gone over an hour. I don't want to abuse
Speaker 1: everybody's time, but it's funny. When we started this in
Speaker 1: the pre show for the listeners, we said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: here's the list of things to talk about, but what
Speaker 1: happened today in Russia will probably dominate the conversation.
Speaker 3: That's what it is.
Speaker 1: But Mark, what comes to mind is there's nothing that
Speaker 1: happened with this operation that is really new, that's really shocking,
Speaker 1: that's really enlightening for those that have been in these
Speaker 1: discussions for a long time. Some people quoted, you know,
Speaker 1: ghost Fleet, why did that come out a dozen years ago?
Speaker 1: But what it does is it provides an opportunity for
Speaker 1: those that have been making those arguments, Hey, this is
Speaker 1: what we were talking about. This is actually happening. You
Speaker 1: need to go talk to person X, Y and Z
Speaker 1: and see what our capabilities are to either do something
Speaker 1: like this or to defend against it. Because you're not
Speaker 1: going to like the answer. You got a great opportunity.
Speaker 1: Hopefully those types of hard questions are being asked cause
Speaker 1: you know, Bravozulu to the Ukrainians and it sucks to
Speaker 1: be a Russian. But this is a great opportunity for US,
Speaker 1: our NATO allies, Japan and South Korea to kind of
Speaker 1: step back and go, Okay, who do we have focusing
Speaker 1: on this and related issues? You know, I want to
Speaker 1: brief Tuesday at fifteen hundred for no longer than forty
Speaker 1: five minutes, no more than forty five slides, thank you
Speaker 1: very much, and see what happens. So hopefully that's what
Speaker 1: is being done in a variety of places right now,
Speaker 1: because this is a gift if people are willing to
Speaker 1: accept it as such.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's it's a It points out that we
Speaker 2: don't need to always buy the most expensive unmanned aircraft
Speaker 2: you could by. So predators have been great. The other
Speaker 2: many of the other things have been great, but you know,
Speaker 2: these guys are basically taking chewing gum and cardboard boxes
Speaker 2: and weaponizing them, and we need to we need to
Speaker 2: be thinking smaller. We need to not get the big
Speaker 2: defense contractors involve. They've got to be a whole room
Speaker 2: full of geniuses with these with these drone programs that
Speaker 2: could could mass manufacture this sort of thing and it
Speaker 2: wouldn't even cause them to break a sweat. We just
Speaker 2: need to simplify the acquisition process. They don't have to
Speaker 2: be perfect the first five hours to fly to them.
Speaker 2: You know, we just need This is another one of
Speaker 2: those quantity versus quality issues and we need to get
Speaker 2: at it, hop on it hard.
Speaker 1: And for the not that we have anybody on our audience,
Speaker 1: but for you screen riders out in Hollywood, if you're
Speaker 1: looking for a really what could be a very fun,
Speaker 1: action packed modern war moody. This would be a great,
Speaker 1: great topic. Maybe one day they'll be able to ride it.
Speaker 1: But what a what a great mission, great job by
Speaker 1: the Ukrainians, and this how they did this and over
Speaker 1: the course of time, who was involved what because you know,
Speaker 1: some things went wrong and what went right? You know,
Speaker 1: who had their jockstrap left over the sidelines, all those
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a great story. I look forward to
Speaker 1: reading it one day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one last thing before we go. The Secon NAV
Speaker 2: was on Guam and you got to look at some
Speaker 2: of the barracks there and for the first time I
Speaker 2: remember the second NAV goes, we can't let this happen
Speaker 2: that the condition of these things is unsatisfactory. We need
Speaker 2: to take care of our sailors, and man's that's good.
Speaker 2: We've got nice young people coming into services and we
Speaker 2: don't have to treat them like they were going to
Speaker 2: the Ritz hotel or something. But we do need to
Speaker 2: make it so that they're not suffering from neglect. And
Speaker 2: I think that's where we are.
Speaker 1: Yep, that's a great thing to end the show on.
Speaker 1: Is first of all, Bravosulu to the second nap. We're
Speaker 1: going public with that, and can we talk a lot
Speaker 1: about people are a number one priority? And everybody wants
Speaker 1: to talk about missiles and ships, et cetera and so forth.
Speaker 3: But when you're the second.
Speaker 1: Nave and he's coming to the Navy with a fresh eye,
Speaker 1: it's the fact that he has the background of walking
Speaker 1: in and looking into organizations and find out what's working well,
Speaker 1: what's not working well, what needs to be added, what
Speaker 1: needs to be ripped out, how do you maximize the value?
Speaker 1: And if your people are one of your greatest assets
Speaker 1: and he walks in and see how we have some
Speaker 1: of them living, that's going to break out to him
Speaker 1: because he's he doesn't he doesn't owe anybody anything. He
Speaker 1: hasn't overlooked it in the past. For instance, if you
Speaker 1: had a sec NAB who was a retired four star
Speaker 1: admiral and he came out and made a statement like that,
Speaker 1: there would rightfully be a lot of people going, oh, really,
Speaker 1: where were you when that was on active duty. So
Speaker 1: here we have the second NAV just a few months
Speaker 1: into the job, looking at this and going, well, this
Speaker 1: is unsat Okay, these three things you brought me. You
Speaker 1: want me to sign off to put money, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what, We're going to take that money and we're gonna.
Speaker 3: Do this instead.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that's gonna happen, but that's the
Speaker 1: mentality that comes from those types of engagements. And I'll
Speaker 1: find a good article on that. I'll put it in
Speaker 1: the show notes for everybody to look at. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really really encouraging. And again, you know what I
Speaker 1: want to have the present housing situation for our sailors
Speaker 1: in twenty DDG, or what I want to bump up
Speaker 1: and modernize and make better living for our people and
Speaker 1: have seventeen DDGs. I'll take the seventeen. That's good to
Speaker 1: see and hopefully with some action on it. You know,
Speaker 1: take take care of your people. Used to be the rules,
Speaker 1: radical but true, and we get take care of people.
Speaker 1: I think we'll let folks go. Thank you everybody for
Speaker 1: joining us. We've had a great chat room today. I
Speaker 1: appreciate all the input. We'll catch you next time, and
Speaker 1: until then, hope everybody has a great Navy day.
Speaker 4: Cheers me and all leave a friend of becdily for
Speaker 4: you being to blame more longly love me silly folding
Speaker 4: your name.
Speaker 6: It's a long way to Dipperary. It's a long way
Speaker 6: to go. It's a long way to Dipperary, to the
Speaker 6: Queen go by becdi Fairwell leftwell, it's a long long
Speaker 6: way to Dipperate. But my life, my name,