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 good day everybody. Glad to have you on board.
Speaker 1: And if you're with us Live, I'd like to go
Speaker 1: ahead and do the altar call to extend an invitation
Speaker 1: to you to find the chat room. That's a place
Speaker 1: where if you have some observations you would like to
Speaker 1: share during the course of the show, or even some
Speaker 1: questions you would like for us to address to our guests.
Speaker 1: We'll be monitoring that for the next hour and we'll
Speaker 1: be glad to bring your ideas and roll that into
Speaker 1: the conversation. And also if you don't already, if you
Speaker 1: have to run off and do something before the show
Speaker 1: is done, or you're with us live and are you
Speaker 1: just happen to me the first time you're listening to
Speaker 1: mid Rats and you want to make sure not miss
Speaker 1: our shows. If you go over to iTunes, Spotify, Spreaker,
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts, go ahead and find us
Speaker 1: and subscribe. It's for free, and that way the podcast
Speaker 1: will be ready for you in case you can't join
Speaker 1: us live, or you just have a busy life like
Speaker 1: folks have. Now today we're going to It seems like
Speaker 1: an esoteric topic when we started off, but the last
Speaker 1: ninety six hours especially, it's kind of broken above the
Speaker 1: background noise. And depending on how closely you've been tracking
Speaker 1: Navy and military selift issues, you're probably on the spectrum
Speaker 1: of shocked, dismayed, or perhaps which is kind of where
Speaker 1: I am. When the news came out this week that
Speaker 1: the Navy will reportedly sideline seventeen vessels due demand power shortage,
Speaker 1: and our friend Samula Grone see I even mention your
Speaker 1: name now and then Sam he's the one that broke
Speaker 1: the story, And in the last ninety six hours a
Speaker 1: lot of people have picked it up. A lot of
Speaker 1: people have reached out to me, and I'm sure my
Speaker 1: co host and our guests as well, because these aren't
Speaker 1: just ships that nobody needs. These are high demand, low
Speaker 1: density assets. We're looking at a fleet oiler, a dozen
Speaker 1: Spearhead class expeditionary fast transports, and two four deployed Navy
Speaker 1: expeditionary sea bases. Over seven hundred impacted mariners will be
Speaker 1: reassigned to other ships and the This is affecting a
Speaker 1: lot of these ships. Some of them are mixed ships,
Speaker 1: but they're mostly USNSIE merchant mariners. But there's also some
Speaker 1: US Navy personnel that can be impacted as well. The
Speaker 1: Chief of Naval Operation supposedly is calling this a quote
Speaker 1: great reset. Well is it really? And that's what we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about today with our returney guest doctor
Speaker 1: salam Marcogliano. He is the chair Department of History, Criminal Justice,
Speaker 1: and Political Science Campbell University and host of the must
Speaker 1: watch YouTube channel What's going On with Shipping? Sal Welcome
Speaker 1: back to mid Rats.
Speaker 2: Guys. Thank you so much for having me back. I
Speaker 2: know this is Mark's worst nightmare. Two sALS. It's always
Speaker 2: a nightmare for him to deal with this.
Speaker 1: The other Sal like we called you are originally many
Speaker 1: moons ago we first had you on, and I just
Speaker 1: want to emphasize for the listeners here, Unfortunately, because we
Speaker 1: are audio only here on mid Rats, you are not
Speaker 1: blessed with that beautiful visage that Sal has over his
Speaker 1: YouTube channel. I just would everybody really needs to watch that.
Speaker 1: And last time we had you on, I kind of
Speaker 1: waxed your apple. But there have been a lot of
Speaker 1: people through the years, and I'm sure you've heard it
Speaker 1: as well, sal who go, Well, it's kind of initial,
Speaker 1: there's not much of an interest. Well, you have the
Speaker 1: right background, the lot, right personality, and the right collection
Speaker 1: of shirts that you've really accumulated the right audience over
Speaker 1: there at YouTube, and I think that's helped everybody because
Speaker 1: you don't play to your audience. You're covering those issues
Speaker 1: that I know you've always covered and it's really increased
Speaker 1: U increased the awareness out there, like a lot of
Speaker 1: us have wanted for a long time. So before I
Speaker 1: get into the h get into the questions, I just
Speaker 1: wanted to to thank you again for doing that and
Speaker 1: to congratulate you on the great success you've had over
Speaker 1: at YouTube.
Speaker 2: Oh, I appreciate that. It's very nice you to say.
Speaker 2: And let's be clear, long before I started the YouTube channel,
Speaker 2: you were all very nice to have me on and
Speaker 2: so I owe no small amount to you guys getting
Speaker 2: my name out there and getting some attention to the
Speaker 2: stuff I was talking about at the time and writing about.
Speaker 1: The market always seeks qualities. I was just glad to
Speaker 1: we got you before you got too big for your breches.
Speaker 1: But getting back back at the topic at hand, I
Speaker 1: mean seventeen vessels. This is not a salami slice. This
Speaker 1: isn't a slight revision one to a standing policy. This
Speaker 1: is a significant move with seven hundred mariners involved. It
Speaker 1: didn't happen overnight, but there was some straw that finally
Speaker 1: broke the camel's back, or at least had the cno say,
Speaker 1: I got to do something. What do you think happened
Speaker 1: that finally reached us to this point?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this has been a long time coming. You know,
Speaker 2: Sam mcgrone actually called me before he released the story
Speaker 2: and we had a conversation. I had known about these
Speaker 2: ships beforehand, and Sam was really shocked by the number
Speaker 2: because these are you know, there's seventeen support ships, but
Speaker 2: there's seventeen out of the battle for US. These are
Speaker 2: counted in. About one out of five ships in the
Speaker 2: US Navy have merchant mariner cruise on board USNS or
Speaker 2: hybrid cruise where it's a mix of navy and civilian
Speaker 2: on And you know, I could take it back a
Speaker 2: long way to do this, but I'll take it back
Speaker 2: to the nineteen eighties where I think this really started.
Speaker 2: You know, in the nineteen eighties, there was a decision
Speaker 2: being made that really started this trend to what we're
Speaker 2: seeing today. You had the Cold War, the plan was
Speaker 2: to go for a six hundred ship navy were coming
Speaker 2: out of Vietnam and so the Navy was very focused
Speaker 2: on the six hundred ship navy. And this had two impacts.
Speaker 2: Number one, we saw that you know, we closed down
Speaker 2: the Navy shipyards. We transitioned four of the yards to
Speaker 2: just repair facilities. Weren't going to build ships in them anymore.
Speaker 2: So that meant Navy ship construction was going to go
Speaker 2: into commercial yards. That means that commercial ship building was
Speaker 2: going to go overseas, and that's what happened. The commercial
Speaker 2: ship building went over to Europe, to Korea, to Japan.
Speaker 2: But the US also decided to cut back on the
Speaker 2: subsidies for the international fleet. We had already seen a
Speaker 2: decrease in the domestic fleet because of the interstate highway system,
Speaker 2: the interstate pipeline system, so the JONZAC fleet, that coastal
Speaker 2: fleet reduced. And then with the loss of construction and
Speaker 2: operational differential subsidies, you don't have to build ships in
Speaker 2: the US anymore more. Because you think you couldn't because
Speaker 2: it was going to be too expensive, So ship operators
Speaker 2: went overseas, and US Navy contracts kind of flooded into
Speaker 2: the shipyards. The second element was coming out of Vietnam.
Speaker 2: Because we were increasing the size of the Navy and
Speaker 2: we had manpower issues in the US Navy, there was
Speaker 2: a decision made to start transferring over some of the
Speaker 2: auxiliaries to what was then MSTS to Military Sea Transportation Service.
Speaker 2: It transitioned over to Military Sealift Command, and you see
Speaker 2: the first vessel of the Teluga come over in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy three, and you slowly began transitioning auxiliary vessels over
Speaker 2: to what are called sivmore civilian merchant mariners. These are
Speaker 2: merchant mariners in the employ of the federal government. And
Speaker 2: that was the process. Then you win the Cold War.
Speaker 2: And the winning of the Cold War was fantastic on
Speaker 2: one hand, but terrible on another hand, because now all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, you don't need that six hundred ship navy,
Speaker 2: and we go down to a three hundred ship navy.
Speaker 2: And that three hundred ship navy means those shipyards that
Speaker 2: were counting on six hundred ships don't have them anymore,
Speaker 2: and so we have loss of quality and loss of
Speaker 2: construction in the shipyards. A lot of the issues we
Speaker 2: see today in shipyards that you've talked about on this
Speaker 2: show quite a bit can be traced to there. But
Speaker 2: then at the same time you see a reduction in
Speaker 2: the size of the Navy. You have issues like operational
Speaker 2: tempo perse tempo, and so we need to keep ships
Speaker 2: forward deployed longer, and there's a plan put afoot to
Speaker 2: basically transfer all the auxiliaries over to Military Sealift Command.
Speaker 2: There were studies done, and while some people think it's
Speaker 2: cheaper to do it with a civilian crew than a
Speaker 2: Navy crew, it's not exactly true. The thing you get
Speaker 2: is you free up those Navy personnel to go on
Speaker 2: combatant in warships, and most importantly MSc crews aren't impacted
Speaker 2: by operatingational personal tempos. You can send them out to
Speaker 2: sea and they can go out for nine, ten, fifteen months,
Speaker 2: doesn't matter. You can send them out there, and as
Speaker 2: long as you had a pool reservoir of merchant mariners
Speaker 2: to dip in, you can. Nineteen eighties, the merchant marine
Speaker 2: was four hundred and fifty ships well fast forward to
Speaker 2: the modern day. Let's go to the you know, twenty tens.
Speaker 2: All of a sudden, what we begin to see is
Speaker 2: the diminishing of both the US Navy and the merchant Marine.
Speaker 2: We go from a four hundred and fifty ship merchant
Speaker 2: marine down to one hundred and eighty ship merchant marine.
Speaker 2: And the process that Military Sealift Command uses to crew
Speaker 2: its personnel operates under the federal guidelines. I sailed as
Speaker 2: a merchant mariner for MSc, and I was amazed when
Speaker 2: I came ashore and I got a job working at
Speaker 2: MSc headquarters that my leave policy on the ship was
Speaker 2: basically the same leaf policy I had ashore, which is
Speaker 2: fine when I'm a sure you know, when I'm home
Speaker 2: every night, I'm home on weekends, get my holidays off,
Speaker 2: get a snow day once in a while. In DC,
Speaker 2: I can do a compressed work schedule, work gnawing out
Speaker 2: of ten days during two weeks. You can't do that
Speaker 2: on a ship, and it just didn't work. And when
Speaker 2: I first sailed with MSc in the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 2: you were six months on in maybe two months off.
Speaker 2: If you were lucky, you got two months off. MSc
Speaker 2: went to a policy of well, we're going to do
Speaker 2: four months on two months off. But the problem has
Speaker 2: been the pool. They just don't have sufficient mariners to
Speaker 2: do it. And what has happened is that the mariners
Speaker 2: that are out there aren't doing four months, they're doing six,
Speaker 2: they're doing eight months. They're not getting off in the
Speaker 2: time a lotted they have And Sam quoted this in
Speaker 2: his article, they have fifty five hundred mariners for forty
Speaker 2: five hundred positions. That doesn't allow you to do four
Speaker 2: months on two months off. To do four months on
Speaker 2: two months off, you need one point five people for
Speaker 2: every billet. They have one point two, and that creates it.
Speaker 2: But I think the gall the thing that really has
Speaker 2: been the thing that has set this off more than
Speaker 2: any other issue was COVID, and COVID impacted Military Sealift
Speaker 2: Command in a way most people don't understand. The commander
Speaker 2: of MBSC at the time, Admiral Wetlawfer, decided to issue
Speaker 2: what's called a gangway up order. It's infamous in that
Speaker 2: Military Seal of Command. One day he sent out in
Speaker 2: order to all the ships that the gangways are up.
Speaker 2: Nobody comes on and nobody comes off. You're on the ship.
Speaker 2: You're stuck on the ship. You can't get off, and
Speaker 2: he held everybody on the ship. Now, some ships were
Speaker 2: in dock in Norfolk and San Diego and Pearl and
Speaker 2: other places, and some of the crews were you know,
Speaker 2: you have apartments ashore, They go ashore every night. They
Speaker 2: had their cars on the dock, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: they're stranded on the vessel. But the worst part was
Speaker 2: is not just that they were stranded on the vessel,
Speaker 2: but navy crews and contractors could come and go as
Speaker 2: they like, and this created huge bad blood. It's one
Speaker 2: of the few times I can tell you that all
Speaker 2: the maritime unions got together and wrote a joint letter
Speaker 2: arguing about these actions, and mariners answered with their feet.
Speaker 2: They just quit. They just left. And now we're in
Speaker 2: a situation where if you go to the MSc web
Speaker 2: page right now, they are advertising for every position in
Speaker 2: MSc short of master and chief engineer, and they are
Speaker 2: throwing money at this issue. They are literally just offering
Speaker 2: massive signing bonuses trying to get anybody to come to
Speaker 2: see right now because they're churning through personnel and they
Speaker 2: actually have a problem on the backside of this in
Speaker 2: that the senior officers, the mid and senior officers, second made,
Speaker 2: second assistant engineers and higher are working so much that
Speaker 2: they can't get off that they're actually hitting the federal
Speaker 2: cap in pay. They can't get paid anymore because they're
Speaker 2: making as much as I forget what the cap is,
Speaker 2: but they've hit the cap, and so now they're accruing
Speaker 2: leave instead of pay, but they can't get to leave,
Speaker 2: so they're kind of trapped on board. And this has
Speaker 2: created a massive problem in MSc. Now we can talk
Speaker 2: about what Animal Sobek is doing with the solution, but
Speaker 2: I'll stop here because I just gave you a lot.
Speaker 3: Well, let's let's talk about where the shortage of personnel is.
Speaker 3: Where are we talking masters, the mates or are we
Speaker 3: talking the able bodied seamen? Where is this shortage that
Speaker 3: we really need to address by recruiting people.
Speaker 2: So you know, in the past you can target it. It
Speaker 2: was usually the junior officers was always the issue you have,
Speaker 2: But now it's across the board. I mean, you have
Speaker 2: people leaving all ranks, so you know MSc is taking
Speaker 2: the hiring chief mates to come on board, something I
Speaker 2: had never heard of. Really too much. No one came
Speaker 2: from the commercial industry at that senior of a level
Speaker 2: over into MSc. But that's the kind of the dire
Speaker 2: straits they're in now. So I mean they're looking for
Speaker 2: everybody to in and that's what's generating this big issue
Speaker 2: in that they need more personnel. They just don't have
Speaker 2: the personnel and they're leaving. And so what Admiral Sobek
Speaker 2: has decided to do is, you know, he needs more personnel.
Speaker 2: But the problem is now you have created such bad blood.
Speaker 2: You've created such a bad work environment. Again, this is
Speaker 2: not Aermald Sobac animal, Soovik just inherits this, but you've
Speaker 2: created a work environment where it's very hard to get
Speaker 2: people to come work for MSc. And so how do
Speaker 2: you increase your labor pool? And the way he's going
Speaker 2: to do it is by choosing these seventeen ships, twelve
Speaker 2: fast transports to expeditionary support bases, to akees. These are
Speaker 2: logistics support ships that are over in the pre positioning
Speaker 2: role and one fleet oiler. He's going to take those
Speaker 2: crews off put them into the man power pool so
Speaker 2: that now he can increase the pool for reliefs. The
Speaker 2: problem is that this man power pool he's pulling those
Speaker 2: ships from. A lot of those crews aren't very familiar
Speaker 2: with underweight replenishment. A lot of them went over into
Speaker 2: those ships because they didn't want to do underweight replenishment.
Speaker 2: They liked the schedules they got with an EPF or
Speaker 2: with a expeditionary support base or with the prepositioning ships.
Speaker 2: So it's not exactly clear that these seven hundred crew
Speaker 2: members are going to provide the relief he wants. And
Speaker 2: then you've got to have this sandwich with a program
Speaker 2: to bring more mariners into it. Right now, they're at
Speaker 2: the lowest level they've ever been for recruiting merchant mariners
Speaker 2: out of the state, and Federal School Military Sealift Command
Speaker 2: has sent one of their captains over to King's Point,
Speaker 2: the Federal Merchant Marine Academy, to be there on a
Speaker 2: permanent basis so that he can recruit for MSSE constantly.
Speaker 1: I feel sorry for Braderal Soloviec because brand reputation, once
Speaker 1: it has been critically damaged, both internally and externally, it's
Speaker 1: very difficult and it takes a long time to repair that,
Speaker 1: and it takes sustained performance over the course of to
Speaker 1: use one of my favorite delineations of time. It takes
Speaker 1: three or four PCs cycles i e. A decade plus
Speaker 1: to fix this, and it's it's a hard thing because
Speaker 1: when people leave a job or they leave a career
Speaker 1: and go to do something else, it's usually for a
Speaker 1: few reasons. Some are easy to fix, some or not.
Speaker 1: It's pay where they found they can pay money someplace else,
Speaker 1: Quality of work, quality of life. People are willing to
Speaker 1: have a quality of work, quality of life if it's
Speaker 1: a calling like a doctor or a sailor or a mariner.
Speaker 1: But that has its limits, especially when you want things
Speaker 1: like a family and a life, and there's also the
Speaker 1: leadership in the environment. The easiest thing there to fix
Speaker 1: is your pay. And you know, you mentioned something to
Speaker 1: me that had me modify a question I was going
Speaker 1: to ask later on, but I want to fold it
Speaker 1: into this. You talked about when you went on shore
Speaker 1: duty that you leave on the same on shore duty
Speaker 1: is the same as it is at sea. And you know,
Speaker 1: we look at the seven hundred mariners put to the sideline.
Speaker 1: There is no shortage of bureaucracy on both the Navy
Speaker 1: and the military sea lift commands. Side of the house
Speaker 1: ashore who don't deploy that are making good money, making
Speaker 1: good policy, and the promising one thing and doing another.
Speaker 1: It reminded me in some ways of a certain mindset
Speaker 1: that I don't know how we get around it. For
Speaker 1: the Litoral Combat Ship, their initial manning con ops was
Speaker 1: And I bring this up all the time because it
Speaker 1: makes a point that I don't think it has been addressed.
Speaker 1: It was all designed around burning your people out. Literally
Speaker 1: you could see up on the PowerPoint slide. Lcs can
Speaker 1: deploy for four months because basically people are losing their
Speaker 1: mind because they have been working so hard for so long,
Speaker 1: and you're not going to be retaining people like that.
Speaker 1: It's an objectification of your your sailors and your mariners
Speaker 1: that it's like a piece of machinery. Well, I know
Speaker 1: we're supposed to, you know, change the oil at two
Speaker 1: thousand hours, but we're going to go to twenty five
Speaker 1: hundred today and we'll accept the risk. You know, that's
Speaker 1: not machinery. That's people. And I want to talk to
Speaker 1: you a little bit about the human capital. These people
Speaker 1: that have left and won't come back. These are people,
Speaker 1: you know, reals of what their sources are or what
Speaker 1: their position that have invested years to decades of their
Speaker 1: life and the training involved invested in putting somebody in charge,
Speaker 1: because you don't want anybody on the bridge during underway
Speaker 1: replenishment next to a nuclear eca carrier. It's extensive. When
Speaker 1: you invest in these people and they leave and they
Speaker 1: don't come back.
Speaker 2: Oh it is. And you know, this is why MSc
Speaker 2: uses civilian mariners and they don't contract this out because
Speaker 2: there's been you know, discussions about that for a long time.
Speaker 2: Well we'll just you know, contract this out. And because
Speaker 2: if you look at contract mariners, those that sail with
Speaker 2: the unions, they have a much better leaf policy. Me
Speaker 2: by the Marine Engineers beneficial association is basically one on,
Speaker 2: one off, one month on, one month off. It's a
Speaker 2: little different depending on the ship, but basically it's that
Speaker 2: schedule that you have and that allows you to have
Speaker 2: at least the semblance of you know, normal routine. But
Speaker 2: the problem is you can get anybody cycling in on that.
Speaker 2: You know, one of the things that you wanted at
Speaker 2: MSc is people who are familiar with underwear punishment, with
Speaker 2: rig operations, with the operations that's unique to Military Sealift Command.
Speaker 2: And let me be clear. You know, you talk to
Speaker 2: the crews out of Military Sealift Command, they love the job.
Speaker 2: I'm I loved it when I did it. It was
Speaker 2: the best job in the world. It was great. It's
Speaker 2: just if you were like me getting ready to get married,
Speaker 2: you cannot tell your wife when you'd ever be home,
Speaker 2: you know, because you just couldn't make a schedule because
Speaker 2: at the time I was six months on, two months off,
Speaker 2: but there was no way they were meeting that, and
Speaker 2: it was just impossible. You know, at least Navy schedules
Speaker 2: you have, you know, shore duty at some point MSc,
Speaker 2: it's completely at sea the entire time. I had to
Speaker 2: quit MSc and come back to work at MSc headquarters
Speaker 2: and get rehired to do that. And this has been
Speaker 2: the issue. And this has been, you know, again a
Speaker 2: long issue. I've had debates and talked to MSc about
Speaker 2: this since I left MSc in the nineties, and they
Speaker 2: have been making this push. And let's be clear again,
Speaker 2: there were a lot of efforts to do this, to
Speaker 2: fix the lead policy, to get more personnel in there.
Speaker 2: You know, this has been the bane. And I also
Speaker 2: go back to another issue, which I think is really
Speaker 2: really crucial here is that the MSc mariners are not
Speaker 2: in the chain of command when it comes to MSc.
Speaker 2: They operate the ships, but they're really not in the
Speaker 2: chain of command. They don't have a say in how
Speaker 2: policy is set in Norfolk or even at the area commands,
Speaker 2: and I think that is a tragic mistake. I really do.
Speaker 2: They will bring port captains ashore to help in the
Speaker 2: manning and operations, but not really the policy. You know,
Speaker 2: Admiral Sobek should have a senior master chief engineer at
Speaker 2: his side as a deputy vice commander of some kind
Speaker 2: to you tell them that. And if you look at
Speaker 2: the five sees's that MSc has none of them sail
Speaker 2: for a military sealift command. So you know, I think
Speaker 2: there's a big issue with that, and the crews feel that.
Speaker 2: I mean, you had some tragic accidents that happened here recently.
Speaker 2: I mean you had a suicide on board one of
Speaker 2: the akes out in Bahrain. You know, that ship had
Speaker 2: the third night on board kill himself on the bridge
Speaker 2: of the vessel, and then that vessel had to get
Speaker 2: out the sea the next day or two because they
Speaker 2: had to meet a schedule. There was no stand down,
Speaker 2: there was no you know event for you know, let's
Speaker 2: switch this ship out and crew, you know, the schedule
Speaker 2: had to be met, and that was jarring to I
Speaker 2: know members of the crew who left as a direct
Speaker 2: result of that. And this has caused problems in the fleet,
Speaker 2: and again I don't think many in the Navy appreciate it.
Speaker 2: We just saw the Royal Fleet Auxiliary crews go on
Speaker 2: strike because they haven't gotten a pay raise for fourteen years.
Speaker 2: But they are treated immensely different than the MSc crews are.
Speaker 2: They get four months on, two months off, I think
Speaker 2: is their schedule, and it's a pretty rigid schedule they
Speaker 2: operate by. So I think that the Navy really needs
Speaker 2: to take attention to this, and I think that they
Speaker 2: were trying to get this passed very quietly. I think
Speaker 2: they were going to release it on Friday before Labor
Speaker 2: Day and hopefully make it wouldn't make the news. But
Speaker 2: it's reached a point of criticality here where they're doing
Speaker 2: this on the eve of a presidential election, which I
Speaker 2: don't think anybody wanted to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one of the other things I see is that, uh,
Speaker 3: and we've We've a number of people have talked about
Speaker 3: this before, but I know you mentioned in one of
Speaker 3: your one of your brilliant videos, there's no credit given
Speaker 3: to the the sid mars for their time spent war zones,
Speaker 3: so that they don't get any special medals, they don't
Speaker 3: get any combat pay as far as I know. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's they're out there side by side. Obviously they're they're
Speaker 3: re arming or refueling the the carrier to so the
Speaker 3: aircraft can get their their fuel. And they've got all
Speaker 3: those destroyers and other escorts they've got to go fuel.
Speaker 3: They're out there in the in the in the danger
Speaker 3: zone as they used to say, they're in the Gulf War,
Speaker 3: and uh, and they're not getting a whole lot out
Speaker 3: of that, is it. And they also don't get a
Speaker 3: lot of the benefits of if they're If you park
Speaker 3: an oiler next to a destroyer inport, the destroyer guys
Speaker 3: can go to the exchange and go to the the
Speaker 3: various dogs and stuff. But I think those those civilian
Speaker 3: mirrors don't get to do that. They're they're not allowed
Speaker 3: to do a lot of that stuff.
Speaker 2: No, they could do it overseas, but not in US ports.
Speaker 2: And again that was another major issue during COVID that
Speaker 2: that really came to the forefront. That was a problem.
Speaker 2: And you know I made this point. You know, the
Speaker 2: ship's coming back from the from the Red Sea, the
Speaker 2: Eisenhower Battle Group, which did a fantastic job. You know,
Speaker 2: they got combat action ribbons. I know, combat action ribs
Speaker 2: only go to Navy vessels, and the crews got that.
Speaker 2: But you know what was missing was where were the
Speaker 2: Merchant Marine expeditionary mets. Where was Marit? Where was MSc
Speaker 2: with the awards for the cruise of Patus and Supply
Speaker 2: and Kanawa and Shepherd and Amelia Earhart and the console
Speaker 2: tankers that were out there providing them. You know, we
Speaker 2: were talking about this before the show. Supply pumped twenty
Speaker 2: times twenty times its capacity during its nine months deployment,
Speaker 2: which you know, a normal you would see maybe three
Speaker 2: to four times on a normal deployment. That gives you
Speaker 2: an idea of scope and scale that these ships were performing,
Speaker 2: and they're absolutely crucial to it. You know, Merchant mariners
Speaker 2: on board those vessels, the masters of those ships are
Speaker 2: in the Unified Command. I mean, I mean they are
Speaker 2: you know, part of the carrier battlegroups. They're integrated. And
Speaker 2: let's not talk about the fact, by the way, that
Speaker 2: the ships are completely unarmed. I have no weapon systems
Speaker 2: at all on board for defense beyond a Nixy system
Speaker 2: that they need to be told to deploy it when
Speaker 2: something happens. There's no sea, no sea rams, there's no
Speaker 2: defense systems except for some small arms on board. This
Speaker 2: is you know, a critical gap in them. And now
Speaker 2: you're seeing seventeen vessels being pulled out. And when you
Speaker 2: start looking at those seventeen vessels, twelve Spearhead class fast transports,
Speaker 2: those have been a ship that's been trying to find
Speaker 2: a mission for the you know, fifteen years they've been
Speaker 2: out there. Some will just say they're just a you know,
Speaker 2: works program for hostile but you know they've been being
Speaker 2: used more and more as time goes on. But the ESBs,
Speaker 2: the Poller and the Williams, those are platforms that sinks
Speaker 2: want more and more. I mean, the combatant commanders want
Speaker 2: more of these ESBs. You cannot read, you know, a
Speaker 2: monthly episode of a monthly magazine of proceedings without seeing
Speaker 2: an article in there about ESBs, the akes, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: they're coming out of the prepositioning fleet, but they would
Speaker 2: love to have them out in the replenishment fleet and
Speaker 2: losing an oiler. That's crazy right now when you look
Speaker 2: at how strung out our oilers are. We're running the
Speaker 2: Kaiser classes into the ground. The Lewis classes have got issues.
Speaker 2: We've seen three of them come out, but none of
Speaker 2: them have deployed yet because of issues with them and
Speaker 2: other issues we have percolating behind the scenes. You know,
Speaker 2: the Navajo class salvage vessels are coming out late. We're
Speaker 2: already plenishing. We're getting rid of salvage vessels. There's no
Speaker 2: salvage vessel out in the Red Sea right now to
Speaker 2: help with the issue out there. We're seeing issues in
Speaker 2: the sealift fleet, where the selift fleet's over forty four
Speaker 2: years old. The recapitalization is not going fast enough. We're
Speaker 2: losing ships faster than we bring ships in. And then
Speaker 2: we're drawing down the Army and the Marine Corps pre
Speaker 2: positioning program. So I mean the amount of things that
Speaker 2: are hitting the fan right now. Just to use the
Speaker 2: court I use on my ship My show all the time,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of ship happening.
Speaker 1: There is and that's a great lead in where I
Speaker 1: would encourage everybody look at what's going on in the world,
Speaker 1: and everybody loves to see they have you know, where's
Speaker 1: the fleet. So you got a picture of the globe
Speaker 1: and have a little dot, you know, the Abraham Lincoln's here,
Speaker 1: the Teevelt Roosevelt's here, the USS carneya is there. And
Speaker 1: most people look at that, but they don't realize. And
Speaker 1: this is why I think it actually soaked in. Which
Speaker 1: is why this this news is getting the attention because
Speaker 1: enough people are being told this, but I don't think
Speaker 1: we can say it enough. Is if you do not
Speaker 1: have these the mariners and these u U s and
Speaker 1: S auxiliaries out there, your oiler, your your supply ships,
Speaker 1: you can't fight, you can't always pull into port. Or
Speaker 1: if there isn't an oiler available and somebody thinks a
Speaker 1: brilliant idea for you to pull into port, you open
Speaker 1: yourselves up to things like the USS coal. As things
Speaker 1: get hotter and the world gets crazier, you want to
Speaker 1: be able to supply your warships at sea, at sea
Speaker 1: because you can control that, where you can't control things
Speaker 1: even end quote friendly unquote ports. So I don't see
Speaker 1: any indications from the South China Sea to the Black
Speaker 1: Sea to the Red Sea. And boy, I think we
Speaker 1: can do a whole show just on salvage ships and
Speaker 1: icebreakers and what a self owned this is from a
Speaker 1: strategic point of view. But I don't want to go
Speaker 1: to that rabbit holecase. I'll get all excited. But where
Speaker 1: are we six months, eight months down the road if
Speaker 1: we keep doing these like we talked about last episodes
Speaker 1: on the USS side of the house, is we're back
Speaker 1: to the eight nine eleven month deployments. Those don't happen
Speaker 1: without the auxiliaries. And now we've put seventeen to the side,
Speaker 1: so we have an even narrower pool at which to
Speaker 1: pull from. So is this a reset or is this
Speaker 1: a gamble that could really have repercussions here in twelve
Speaker 1: or eighteen months from now.
Speaker 2: Well, I am of the opinion that, you know, Admiral
Speaker 2: Sobek has taken a great gamble here. And you know,
Speaker 2: Sobek was the guy who took the charge on the
Speaker 2: pier when the Bonhamer shard caught fire. He was the
Speaker 2: he was the admiral came down and basically was the
Speaker 2: guy who sat there and said we're gonna start fighting
Speaker 2: this fire. We're gonna put the wet stuff on the
Speaker 2: red stuff, and he took action. Unfortunately, he has suffered
Speaker 2: for that. It's the reason why he's still a one
Speaker 2: star as the command under of Military Sale Command. Remember
Speaker 2: MSc used to be a three star billet back in
Speaker 2: the day. Now it's been degraded down to one star billet.
Speaker 2: Should be a two star billet. But we're waiting for
Speaker 2: Sobek's promotion, but it's been kind of hung up with
Speaker 2: the bon Armbashard. But I think he's at a moment
Speaker 2: here where he is showing the leadership that's needed, you know,
Speaker 2: pulling those crews off. He's doing what he needs to do,
Speaker 2: very similar to what we see going on with Admiral
Speaker 2: Fagan over in the Coastguard laying up ships because she
Speaker 2: wasn't going to run ships and run him with minimum
Speaker 2: cruise and throw money into into maintenance. She wanted to
Speaker 2: prioritize so Sobek through fleet forces. He's doing this through
Speaker 2: fleet forces. Remember he's under he's kind of dual hat
Speaker 2: in Sobek. He's got Transcom over him on one side,
Speaker 2: he's got us fleet forces on the other side. He's
Speaker 2: working with fleet forces and saying, listen, I need to
Speaker 2: pull these seventeen ships out. We need to maximize the ships,
Speaker 2: because even having all the oilers manned was a problem
Speaker 2: because they weren't all manned. There were cases in the
Speaker 2: spring of this year. I know for a fact that
Speaker 2: there were no option rational oilers on the East coast
Speaker 2: of the United States. You actually had Arley Burke destroyers
Speaker 2: having to come back into port to refuel a Craney
Speaker 2: Island in Norfolk, something that does not typically happen because
Speaker 2: there are no oilers available and the kaisers are in
Speaker 2: such poor material condition that many of them. You've got
Speaker 2: two on the East Coast, one on the Gulf Coast,
Speaker 2: two out in Singapore laid up in yards right now
Speaker 2: because it's just the maintenance is so hard. And then
Speaker 2: you have crewing issues where you have ships coming back
Speaker 2: in and you're pulling crews off to get crews onto
Speaker 2: deploying ships so you have enough people to fly five
Speaker 2: rigs at a time on an underway replenishment ship. I
Speaker 2: think SOBEC really is working a plan here. He's going
Speaker 2: to take that pool of seven hundred mariners. He's going
Speaker 2: to put them into the pot This will allow him
Speaker 2: and his office to start rotating mariners and improve morale.
Speaker 2: That's the key thing he's got. He's got to improve morale.
Speaker 2: I get I get danged by MBSC all the time
Speaker 2: because I talk about this and they're saying, you're, you're, you're, you're,
Speaker 2: you're highlighting the problem. It's like, I'm not highlighting the problem.
Speaker 2: Everyone knows what the problem is. They got to address it,
Speaker 2: and now they're addressing it. And if you can do that,
Speaker 2: that's great, But there's other steps that have got to follow.
Speaker 2: He's got to get a recruitment process out there to
Speaker 2: bring in unlicensed from the SIU schools. He's got to
Speaker 2: get licensed personnel coming out of the state maritime academies.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you're not pulling a certain percentage from
Speaker 2: the state maritime and federal academy, that's a problem. You
Speaker 2: need to address that. And then you've got to work
Speaker 2: on the retention problem. And then finally you have to
Speaker 2: work on increasing the policy for manpower. MSc for many
Speaker 2: years sat there and said we will get by II sir,
Speaker 2: this is will do what we have to do, and
Speaker 2: they can't do that anymore. They have got to sit
Speaker 2: there and say we need the personnel to do this.
Speaker 2: If you have forty five hundred billets at Military Seal
Speaker 2: of Command, you should have at a minimum six seven
Speaker 2: hundred and seventy five people working for you. You should have,
Speaker 2: you know, at least one and a half people. Ideally
Speaker 2: you should have two. You should have you know, up
Speaker 2: to nine thousand. But there's no way you're going to
Speaker 2: do that. And I think if they start improving the
Speaker 2: work style, and they start improving the leave policy, you know,
Speaker 2: they're put in starlink on the ships, they're they're making
Speaker 2: things better. I think that they can start seeing it,
Speaker 2: but it's going to take a concentrated effort. The problem
Speaker 2: is a lot of damage has been done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gonna I was going to to point
Speaker 3: out the chain of command for MSc, which is complicated.
Speaker 3: I mean transcon transcom Fleet Forces Command, US PACK Fleet
Speaker 3: and the Assistant Secretary of the Mayvy for Research, Development
Speaker 3: and Acquisition. I can't imagine how complicated that makes life
Speaker 3: for the for the poor admiral in charge of MSc.
Speaker 3: But one of the things I'm looking at is, you know,
Speaker 3: we have all these requirements, we have we have a
Speaker 3: need for people to be an MSc, and yet we
Speaker 3: mandate the same requirements that the Coast Guard puts on
Speaker 3: any civilian merchants sailor. And I'm wondering if they cannot
Speaker 3: get into that system and make it a little easy
Speaker 3: for people to transition and say out of the active
Speaker 3: duty for US, if that's what they want to do
Speaker 3: to become a you know, a part of the of
Speaker 3: the Selifts Command. I know that the I'm sure the
Speaker 3: the detailers and the people who are running the Navy
Speaker 3: personnel aren't really happy with that concept, but it seems
Speaker 3: to me we could make it a lot easier than
Speaker 3: all the hoops that they make these guys jump through
Speaker 3: to be able to sail with MSc.
Speaker 2: Oh. I think there there are many things that could
Speaker 2: be done to make it easier. Let's be clear. I mean,
Speaker 2: their requirements set on merchant mariners by IMO, but the
Speaker 2: US Coast Guards that's additional standards, and then sailing with
Speaker 2: MSc puts a whole nother level on top of them.
Speaker 2: You know, one of the things that happens when you're
Speaker 2: with MSc and you know, you report into the pool
Speaker 2: of mariners who are you know, you get into the pool.
Speaker 2: You're the group that's going to be sent out to
Speaker 2: is when you're in the pool, you have to do training. Well, well,
Speaker 2: you're doing that training, you're not earning leave. You know,
Speaker 2: you're not earning shore leave. And so there's there's crazy
Speaker 2: things that you're working but you're not working that needs
Speaker 2: to be ironed out. They're they're still doing the old
Speaker 2: school where you were based on the east or west coast,
Speaker 2: and so they will only pay for you to fly
Speaker 2: from either the east or west coast, depending on where
Speaker 2: you're hired from. So if you're living in the middle
Speaker 2: of the country, you have to pay for your own
Speaker 2: way to get to the east coast to fly out.
Speaker 2: There's crazy things that just need to be ironed out
Speaker 2: and fixed. But you know, working, you know, we've talked
Speaker 2: about military the mariner, but you know, the crew, the
Speaker 2: graduates out of the US Marcharny Academy should be one
Speaker 2: of the key pools that we're pulling out of, but
Speaker 2: we're pulling less. You know, we're in single digit percentages
Speaker 2: of what we're pulling out of the mariners from all
Speaker 2: the state schools to go sailing. And you know, the
Speaker 2: irony is MSc is throwing so much money at the
Speaker 2: problem that I know of third mates coming out of
Speaker 2: the state maritime schools. They go sail for MSc, they
Speaker 2: have a bad experience, they can't get off for eight
Speaker 2: months because they're stuck on the ship. But they've earned
Speaker 2: so much money, they've paid off their student loans, and
Speaker 2: they don't want to go back out the sea. They're
Speaker 2: fine just kind of hanging out, and they know that
Speaker 2: MSc is looking for mariners, so they'll just hang out,
Speaker 2: lay low, and then come back in a few months
Speaker 2: and get hired again. That doesn't create a really great
Speaker 2: service pool. And we haven't even talked about the fact
Speaker 2: that what happens when the balloon goes up and there's
Speaker 2: actually a crisis where there may be shooting, you know,
Speaker 2: on the high seas, do these mariners stay? What happens
Speaker 2: if the crew on an MSc oiler in San Diego says,
Speaker 2: you know what, I'm not going to do this. I'm
Speaker 2: going to go work at a power plant. I'm going
Speaker 2: to go work at Starbucks. I'm not going to do this.
Speaker 2: And we don't have the critical oilers and underway replenishment
Speaker 2: vessels that we need. This is you know, back in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, I wrote a piece for the CNO's Histories
Speaker 2: Essay contest. I got second prize because it was about logistics.
Speaker 2: You never get first prize we write about logistics. But
Speaker 2: I talked about the fact is, you know what if
Speaker 2: the you know what, if there was a war in
Speaker 2: the Merchant Marine didn't come. I think that is a
Speaker 2: serious issue. We need to be talking to. What is
Speaker 2: Plan B if all of a sudden we don't have
Speaker 2: enough crew members, if we didn't have enough oilers on
Speaker 2: the East coast to handle Arley Burke destroyers on routine basis,
Speaker 2: what happens when this stuff really hits the fan?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you talk about the you know, the great reset.
Speaker 1: The Great Reset in many ways I think needs to
Speaker 1: be the reset between the ears of policymakers and senior leaders,
Speaker 1: because if you don't have what looks like to an
Speaker 1: accountant as an inefficiency and a surplus during times of peace,
Speaker 1: then you can't make it happen when war comes. And
Speaker 1: you know, here we are in a lukewarm piece where
Speaker 1: we have a lot of demands and we're at this
Speaker 1: step and it's I'm not sure, Well, I have my
Speaker 1: suspicions as anybody's talked to budget people have, but somebody
Speaker 1: has managed to sell as the environment we have to
Speaker 1: live in that this can be done on the cheap,
Speaker 1: paying bargain basement prices you get which you pay for
Speaker 1: for people, and to build it off of a view
Speaker 1: of dealing with your employees that dates back to the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, the nineteen sixties, and show me what your
Speaker 1: priorities are and I could probably find out how that
Speaker 1: goes with your budget. And I just did a little
Speaker 1: bit of googling while while you're answering the last question,
Speaker 1: and the president's twenty twenty five budget request for MARAD
Speaker 1: the Maritime Administration was eight hundred and fifty nine point
Speaker 1: seven million, and on top of that was nine hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy four million from DoD to acquire, upgrade, maintain
Speaker 1: vessels and the Ready Reserve Fleet and the National Defense
Speaker 1: Reserve Fleet. So if you add those two together, we
Speaker 1: have what is at one point seven to one point
Speaker 1: eight billion. Now, in the same budget, we spent four
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars to the Jovini consultants out of Northern
Speaker 1: Virginia to analyze to analyze again problem appreciation, DoD spending
Speaker 1: and supply chain issues is a beautiful report with wonderful graphics.
Speaker 1: I wrote about it a couple of weeks ago, splendid
Speaker 1: for four hundred million. Everybody should watch it. You paid
Speaker 1: for it. And we also have budgeted two point four
Speaker 1: billion to Deloitte and Letouche. However, you pronounce that consultancy
Speaker 1: to quote identify, build and deliver holistic solutions facing the
Speaker 1: submarine workforce and industrial base unquote, which we know has issues.
Speaker 1: And again going back to kind of what I mentioned
Speaker 1: in the universion, we have these huge bureaucracies and mare
Speaker 1: AD DoD don You know you mentioned the what was
Speaker 1: it five sees? None of the OCS sees are expensive.
Speaker 1: If you never had one on your manning document, what
Speaker 1: are what are they doing? Such that in my little
Speaker 1: basic math, two point four billion plus four hundred million
Speaker 1: is two point eight billion. We'll round it up to
Speaker 1: three billion dollars, which is not quite twice, but we're
Speaker 1: getting up there. More than the budget we have between
Speaker 1: MARD and DoD's forces to support the ready reserve fleet.
Speaker 1: The money is there to Part of the people problem
Speaker 1: is we're trying to do too much with too few people,
Speaker 1: so we abuse the people and the people go elsewhere
Speaker 1: and we have a still smaller pool. But again going
Speaker 1: back to the things I mentioned before, if money is
Speaker 1: the first thing, there's money out there, it just needs
Speaker 1: to be properly allocated.
Speaker 2: Well, again, I think this has to do with the
Speaker 2: fact that MSc is very low on the totem pole
Speaker 2: when it comes to missions within it. I mean, if
Speaker 2: you think about it, sobec as a one star is
Speaker 2: controlling one hundred and ten ships at one time or another,
Speaker 2: I mean, that makes him a larger fleet commander than
Speaker 2: any of the numbered fleet commanders that there are out there.
Speaker 2: And but you know he's not treated that way, and
Speaker 2: none of the MSc commanders have been treated that way
Speaker 2: in many ways, especially after and I know it's a
Speaker 2: big point for you to Goldworder Nicholas changed everything. When
Speaker 2: you know, the Navy controlled a lot more of what
Speaker 2: they did than now they do, and that was a
Speaker 2: big issue. And you know, if you look at the
Speaker 2: way MSc was created back in nineteen forty nine, we're
Speaker 2: coming up on the seventy fifth anniversary of it. On
Speaker 2: October first is the big anniversary for MSc. They want
Speaker 2: to celebrate this. So the great resets coming right at
Speaker 2: this period of time. Their original you know trifecta. What
Speaker 2: they did was sealift. They did you know, troop ships,
Speaker 2: they did cargo, and they did fuel. That's what they did.
Speaker 2: Those are the three things they did. And over time
Speaker 2: it's morphed into this and so that now MSC's primary mission,
Speaker 2: what they focus their entire time on, almost exclusively, is
Speaker 2: on naval support, whereas MARAD is now looking at sealift.
Speaker 2: When if you look at what Marad's mission is, it's
Speaker 2: supposed to be in promoting and enhancing the US merchant Marine,
Speaker 2: a job I will tell you that the MERID does
Speaker 2: not do very well at this time. And this comes
Speaker 2: again to this whole point of sea blindness I think
Speaker 2: that we have. And one of the reasons at the
Speaker 2: very beginning I kind of took you through that long
Speaker 2: kind of history issue is because it's all intertwined, it's
Speaker 2: all kind of wrapped in together, and the fact that
Speaker 2: we have been sea blind so much has really impacted
Speaker 2: now so much so that when you look at the
Speaker 2: shipbuilding programs of the twenty tens and where we are
Speaker 2: today in you know, just building a frigate or trying
Speaker 2: to get any platform up and running without it, you know,
Speaker 2: going into massive cost overrun. CBO just came out with
Speaker 2: five point one billion dollars for three coast Guard icebreakers.
Speaker 2: You know, this, this is all related. This is this
Speaker 2: is the issue we have. It's one of the reasons
Speaker 2: why in the most recent NDA you had this issue
Speaker 2: for a national maritime strategy, because I think we've been
Speaker 2: looking at navy strategies exclusively along with military without looking
Speaker 2: at the commercial side. And you know, give me that
Speaker 2: money you gave for that study, and I mean I
Speaker 2: can make I can fix things right now. I mean
Speaker 2: a lot of things can be fixed, you know. And
Speaker 2: I think one of the big ones is leadership. Is
Speaker 2: showing the leadership that number one, that MSc cares about
Speaker 2: its mariners. That's what they want. You know, when that
Speaker 2: ship comes back from the Red Sea, that the MSc
Speaker 2: commanders on the pier, that the marid you know, administrator
Speaker 2: is there, you're giving them, you know, acknowledgment, you're thanking them.
Speaker 2: You're making it as big as the Secretary of the
Speaker 2: Navy going on the Eisenhower and recognizing that. But more importantly,
Speaker 2: you're ensuring that there's reliefs for those crews so they
Speaker 2: can get off, go home and be with people, and
Speaker 2: more importantly, have a life. I mean, there's quotes in
Speaker 2: that story by Sam Lagron talking about the fact that
Speaker 2: mariners just see you know that they all they're going
Speaker 2: to get out of working for MSc is a big paycheck,
Speaker 2: but they're not going to have a family life. They're
Speaker 2: going to go through multiple marriages, and by the time
Speaker 2: they retire, they are dead within a year or two
Speaker 2: because they have nothing left to live for. It's a
Speaker 2: really sad story. And you can't not help but think that, man,
Speaker 2: I would quit too if I was a mariner at
Speaker 2: that point. And that's going to have a detrimental effect
Speaker 2: on the Navy because now twenty percent of the ships
Speaker 2: in the Navy are banking on those crews.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that few people who have not been
Speaker 3: a participant in the logistics force, and I will say
Speaker 3: I was. I served in an AE actor in Vietnam period.
Speaker 3: We deployed for eleven months, came back for four, deployed
Speaker 3: for seven. We were busy, and you know, there's a demand,
Speaker 3: a demand cycle for all this stuff. And if you
Speaker 3: have too few ships, and we ran out of ships
Speaker 3: after the Eastern Offensive back in seventy two. They were
Speaker 3: bringing aes from the from the East coast because you know,
Speaker 3: they knew we needed more of the logistics force there
Speaker 3: then than was present when the when the North Vietnames
Speaker 3: came across the border. So you know, the demand cycle
Speaker 3: is what should be driving. Is that we talk about it.
Speaker 3: For the carriers, we've got a problem with keeping them going,
Speaker 3: and we're running. We're running the carriers into the ground.
Speaker 3: We're running a lot of the destroyers into the ground,
Speaker 3: and we certainly are running the combat logistics force into
Speaker 3: the ground. Now. As a guy who's done a few
Speaker 3: on reps myself, it is it is great work. It
Speaker 3: is the best ship driving you could do. And I've
Speaker 3: driven destroyers to I love destroyers. You've got so much power.
Speaker 3: You can't do much wrong because you can always make
Speaker 3: up for it. If you've got a single screw ship
Speaker 3: and you're trying to go alongside somebody, you know, then
Speaker 3: there are some some white local moments, But it is
Speaker 3: great fun once you're doing it. And the crews when
Speaker 3: we were busy, they were really they enjoyed the UNREPP stations.
Speaker 3: But you've got to sell that story, and you've got
Speaker 3: to make it so that people don't think this is
Speaker 3: all they're going to be. All they're going to be
Speaker 3: doing for the next fifteen years is stand at the
Speaker 3: same unrep station watching palettes of something go across. It's
Speaker 3: got to be it's got to be something better than that.
Speaker 3: And I don't you know, as we all know, money
Speaker 3: is a motivator, but it's not the key motivator in
Speaker 3: your life. There are so many other things that matter
Speaker 3: more than money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, MSc has the opportunity. You know,
Speaker 2: it's one of the few sailing organizations, for example, that
Speaker 2: hire ordinary semens and wipers. These are people who have
Speaker 2: literally no training, you know, minimal training coming on board.
Speaker 2: They come on board and you know, one thing I
Speaker 2: love about the Merchi Marine is that it's a meritocracy.
Speaker 2: You can, you know, do your time in rank and
Speaker 2: then you move up. And you know, I had masters,
Speaker 2: you know who sailed twenty four different ships. Some of
Speaker 2: them were howsepipers. They came up from the enlisted and
Speaker 2: they were masters. I mean they were ship drivers, par excellent.
Speaker 2: I mean, you could not believe what they would do
Speaker 2: at a ship, and you know, that is the story
Speaker 2: that MSc has to do. But again it all comes
Speaker 2: to this issue where I think the Navy and MSc
Speaker 2: fails in promoting their mission. You know, the job that
Speaker 2: they did in the Red Sea should have been number one.
Speaker 2: That should have been something that was just in your face.
Speaker 2: How that doesn't get people recruiting. Hey, you can sit
Speaker 2: at home and play on your video game and shoot
Speaker 2: down stuff where you can come on board the Carnie
Speaker 2: and actually do it. You know, that to me is
Speaker 2: you know, the way you get people on and same
Speaker 2: thing at MSc. It's a great opportunity. But MSc also
Speaker 2: has to understand that the workforce is changing, and the
Speaker 2: Navy does too. You know, I see it on a
Speaker 2: college level. People are not going to stay in the
Speaker 2: same job for twenty thirty years, and so you've got
Speaker 2: to create jobs that you understand there's going to be
Speaker 2: a short time enrollment. People are going to come in,
Speaker 2: earn a lot of money and want to leave. So
Speaker 2: you've got to be prepared for that, which means your
Speaker 2: recruiting has got to be geared for that. Your training's
Speaker 2: got to be geared for that, and we need to
Speaker 2: really set that up because again, one of the things
Speaker 2: that is happening right now is that MSc is finding
Speaker 2: itself on the short side. They're in the press, and
Speaker 2: they don't like being in the press. They don't like
Speaker 2: this at all. They like being behind the scenes. Nobody
Speaker 2: in the Merchant Marine likes to talk about anything this.
Speaker 2: I've learned this from three years running my program. They
Speaker 2: don't like it when you talk about them because because
Speaker 2: they would much rather just be behind the scenes. But
Speaker 2: you know, since the global supply chain crisis, everyone's attention
Speaker 2: is drawn to the sea more than ever before. People
Speaker 2: are interested in this, and now all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: this story has hit the buttons. It's been on Fox News,
Speaker 2: It's made all the rounds that you surprisingly you would
Speaker 2: not expect, and that means you have to take the moment.
Speaker 2: I'm a firm believer that when you make the news,
Speaker 2: you have to run with it. And this should be
Speaker 2: the moment that we start talking about what this reset's
Speaker 2: going to do because people are paying attention.
Speaker 1: I agree with you. I share your frustration because there
Speaker 1: is a great story to be told and you could
Speaker 1: hear it a little bit when Mark was talking about
Speaker 1: his sailors in unrep uh, it's it's exciting, the sound,
Speaker 1: the smells, and again, you know, we have a huge
Speaker 1: public affairs bureaucracy and I'm not sure what they're they're doing,
Speaker 1: but there was just no visibility. You've got more positive
Speaker 1: press on showing and encouraging and putting being just a
Speaker 1: plain old sailor in such a great positive light. Was
Speaker 1: done on a Twitter account by the skipper of the
Speaker 1: Eisenhower of childa hill over there, where a lot of
Speaker 1: his content was just you know, here's m M three Schmucatelli,
Speaker 1: who's we will allowed escape from the reactor compartment to
Speaker 1: come up to the bridge to have a cookie. Here's
Speaker 1: her background and it you know. Then there's a picture
Speaker 1: that's worthy of a pulitzer that one of his people
Speaker 1: put up about one of his aviation Bosn's mate covered
Speaker 1: with chains. You know, that type of stuff that if
Speaker 1: you're sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty year old person who
Speaker 1: perhaps doesn't want to go to university for whatever reason
Speaker 1: and is looking for something else, and there is Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we've created things and you've brought up COVID that the
Speaker 1: minute you put something out like that, there are people
Speaker 1: who have other stories that they'll jump right on and share.
Speaker 1: But you can't counter the narrative unless you engage in
Speaker 1: the conversation before. And there's got to be somebody, some
Speaker 1: mariner out there who could be the merchant marine version
Speaker 1: of Childer Hill, because there are great stories out there,
Speaker 1: and you talk about the changing workforce, people don't people
Speaker 1: also want to be part of something. They want to
Speaker 1: be involved in something that's a little greater than themselves,
Speaker 1: something that's different than the normal experience of those people
Speaker 1: that they grew up with. And here you can go,
Speaker 1: how many years has it been since the Easter offensive? There,
Speaker 1: Mark of we look at that forty two years. It's
Speaker 1: been more than a week. But you could hear in
Speaker 1: Mark's voice and in your head you could almost see
Speaker 1: the face of his sailors and the job they were doing.
Speaker 1: Because it is a great story. Sal But I just
Speaker 1: why we cannot tell that story except almost by accident
Speaker 1: or by individual initiative by a very small number of people.
Speaker 1: I don't know. There, that's again part of the CNO's reset.
Speaker 1: It's got to be within her ears and on her
Speaker 1: staff but there are other things that need to be
Speaker 1: reset besides just seven hundred sailors coming ashore.
Speaker 2: No, no, no. And when you think about that, you
Speaker 2: know what Mark talked about with these friendship is a
Speaker 2: great one because you know, the other issue here is
Speaker 2: a fundamental one for the combatant commanders and how we
Speaker 2: would wage a peer to peer conflict today because one
Speaker 2: of the things we did became so dependent on MSc
Speaker 2: and the civilian mariners that we decided to, you know,
Speaker 2: morph together what were referred to as station you know,
Speaker 2: station ships and shuttle ships. You had the station ships
Speaker 2: which were usually those were the ones Mark sailed on.
Speaker 2: Those are the ones with Navy crews on board. They
Speaker 2: were providing the direct underway replenishment to the combatants out
Speaker 2: there at Yankee Station or up in the Persian Gulf.
Speaker 2: You know, that's that's what they did. And then MSc
Speaker 2: would do the shuttle ships. They would run the ships
Speaker 2: from the depots, from the from the ports and up there,
Speaker 2: and you know, they would still do undwaar replenishment with
Speaker 2: other vessels, but they weren't the primary well, you know,
Speaker 2: in the nineties and you know, post Cold War the
Speaker 2: two thousands, we got rid of that. We just morphed
Speaker 2: it all into one big thing, so that now shuttle
Speaker 2: and station ships are all the same thing. We got
Speaker 2: rid of the underway, you know, consolidation tankers, where we
Speaker 2: used to have a big, huge tanker fleet in MSc
Speaker 2: for commercial tankers. We got rid of that. And you
Speaker 2: know now we're waking back up today again, especially with
Speaker 2: the loss of Redhill. You know, we see MSc relearning
Speaker 2: the idea of console tankers. We see the start of
Speaker 2: a tanker security program, getting ten tankers commercial tankers out there.
Speaker 2: They can do it. There are fundamental flaws. I could
Speaker 2: talk to you about the TSP, but I don't want
Speaker 2: to eat up the time talking about that. But you
Speaker 2: know this means that, you know, we're used to fighting
Speaker 2: wars close to supply heads. You know, Korea, we had Japan, Vietnam,
Speaker 2: we had the Philippines, Persian Golf, we had Bahrain and Oman.
Speaker 2: If you've got to go across the Pacific, and I
Speaker 2: know you love to put that out there, so that
Speaker 2: the great graphic of the Google Earth showing the Pacific,
Speaker 2: you know, it's seven thousand miles. It's the tyranny of distance.
Speaker 2: This is going to be a big problem, and we
Speaker 2: are going to need the merchant Marine, We're going to
Speaker 2: need military Sealift Command. There is no way we do
Speaker 2: this with just what we have out there. If everybody
Speaker 2: thinks we're going to fight, you know, the Chinese off
Speaker 2: Taiwan with the seven fleet that's out there in westpac
Speaker 2: then and you know, you need to read about the
Speaker 2: Asiatic Fleet nineteen forty two and see how that went,
Speaker 2: you know, when there was nothing coming to back them up,
Speaker 2: because that's what they're kind of setting themselves up for
Speaker 2: here in this scenario.
Speaker 3: I want to command people, you you to watch your
Speaker 3: three parts so far, three or five part series on
Speaker 3: the history of MSc. And one of the things that
Speaker 3: particularly caught me was I was as I was watching
Speaker 3: that was you have this table that you put up
Speaker 3: about the difference between because you've done it, the history
Speaker 3: of MSc from it like to the Korean War. I
Speaker 3: think that was maybe that was the first or second
Speaker 3: anyway Korean Vietnam you put together, but the difference in
Speaker 3: the amount of shipping between World War Two and the
Speaker 3: Korean War you put you put this this this graphic
Speaker 3: of it. I'm looking at that going that is insane people?
Speaker 3: Did people not know that? It was a huge jump
Speaker 3: from what was required across the Pacific and World War
Speaker 3: two to what was word for the Korean War.
Speaker 2: Oh and Vietnam was even more and the Persian gone.
Speaker 2: The next episode I have is on underway replenishment. That's
Speaker 2: one of the reasons why the episodes don't come yet,
Speaker 2: because everything's been changing so much. So I hadn't put it.
Speaker 2: I had I've put it together, and I had taken
Speaker 2: apart and do it again. And then the fifth episode
Speaker 2: is going to be talking about the Persian Gulf War.
Speaker 2: And what becomes clear is is just the amount of gear,
Speaker 2: the mountains of supplies, fuel is just increase. And again,
Speaker 2: you know, this is something and I'm always amazed myself,
Speaker 2: John Conrad and a few others who who follow this
Speaker 2: are always amazed. When someone chimes says like, oh, we'll
Speaker 2: just fly the stuff in, It's like, are you nuts?
Speaker 2: It's like, do you not understand the tonnage we're talking
Speaker 2: about here? The amount of cargo is just mind boddeling
Speaker 2: you're going to need in a conflict, and we should
Speaker 2: be seeing that from what's happening in Ukraine and Russia
Speaker 2: right now in terms of the expenditure of weapons. Everything
Speaker 2: is just demonstrates that to us. And I think the
Speaker 2: Red Sea is another good one. Or that I mean
Speaker 2: it took a full fledged effort. It took the US
Speaker 2: and a supply, the patuxentt the Kanawa, the Airhard, the
Speaker 2: Amelia air Hard, and a console tanker to keep one
Speaker 2: carrier battlegroup operational in what I would argue is probably
Speaker 2: not as intensive an air combat situation as you would
Speaker 2: get off the West with Western Pacific, off the coast
Speaker 2: of China. And so if it took that much to
Speaker 2: keep a carrier battle group supply, what's our battle plan
Speaker 2: going forward? Because I gotta tell you right now, you know,
Speaker 2: you look at some of those images of the ships
Speaker 2: coming in. You know, they're they're warned that they are
Speaker 2: not getting the preventive maintenance they need, The crews are
Speaker 2: getting battered. And again you're relying on those to provide
Speaker 2: a key lynchpin for not just the Navy, but for
Speaker 2: the entire defense strategy of the United States.
Speaker 1: Being that we just can't, unfortunately, because our industrial base
Speaker 1: is so narrow. You made the comment earlier about people
Speaker 1: were talking about the h the job quote, jobs program
Speaker 1: for allso which I don't agree with either, but that's
Speaker 1: okay with me. You know, it takes a while to
Speaker 1: make a welder. Just ask our friends up at if
Speaker 1: in caanty areas they're trying to build the constellation. That's okay.
Speaker 1: We can have jobs programs or we wait for everythings
Speaker 1: come online. But if you look at the Davidson window
Speaker 1: and you're exactly right about and you don't have to
Speaker 1: be a genius to put in your red hat and
Speaker 1: to find how the People's Republic of China have laid
Speaker 1: some splendid little tiger traps in the Pacific, that'll make
Speaker 1: our logistics an even greater challenge it's already going to be.
Speaker 1: But if we got the right people, if we got
Speaker 1: the right money, and we got the right messaging to
Speaker 1: start to slowly turn the bow in the direction we
Speaker 1: wanted to go in to move that up. Is it
Speaker 1: time to look again at something that we just briefly
Speaker 1: mentioned at the start of the show. Is a lot
Speaker 1: of the USNN used to be uss? Is there anything
Speaker 1: to be gained to move the curve in an attractive
Speaker 1: direction by looking at reverting back at least some of
Speaker 1: the ships to USS instead of USNS. I.
Speaker 2: You know, one of the things I've talked about is,
Speaker 2: you know two of the AOEs supply an Arctic are
Speaker 2: over at MSc, but Rain the air and bridge or
Speaker 2: laid up on the West coast. I think they should
Speaker 2: be switched over. I think they should have a USS
Speaker 2: crew on and it let me be clear, the reason
Speaker 2: I want a USS crew on them is because we
Speaker 2: have created a kind of a bipolar relationship. We have,
Speaker 2: you know, bifurcated people's knowledge. You know, Mark had had
Speaker 2: knowledge of what it's like to work on an AE.
Speaker 2: He went on a staff. He had that knowledge. And
Speaker 2: if you look at a lot of the past commanders,
Speaker 2: they had that knowledge. They did their time and tour
Speaker 2: on an underway replenishment vessel, so they came to appreciate
Speaker 2: logistics and what it took. That's not out there right now.
Speaker 2: Everyone's on the receiving end, they're not on the delivery
Speaker 2: end of it. And I think that is really playing
Speaker 2: a factor in a lot of command decisions out there.
Speaker 2: And again, aoees you can put the full defense suite
Speaker 2: back on board. You can put all the sea rams
Speaker 2: and sea whizzes on them and get them out there.
Speaker 2: You know, we can build a new generation of AoE
Speaker 2: s out there. You can mark some of the aos
Speaker 2: for that. I think we can go back to where
Speaker 2: we were kind of in the nineties and two thousands
Speaker 2: with a mix between them. You don't need, you know,
Speaker 2: a US Navy crew probably on an AoE operating off
Speaker 2: the east and west coast, because again, you can do
Speaker 2: that with a civilian crew. They can provide the refresher
Speaker 2: training that's needed, they can surge up, they can provide
Speaker 2: the back fuel that shuttle ship that is really required.
Speaker 2: But most importantly, you know, it'd be great to have
Speaker 2: a senior officer, you know, a captain commanding an AoE
Speaker 2: and then becomes a battlegroup commander, goes on to be
Speaker 2: a fleet commander, goes on to staff. They understand them
Speaker 2: that logistics and I think, you know, this is the
Speaker 2: only area in the Navy where we don't put the
Speaker 2: people who are doing the job in charge of it.
Speaker 2: You know, seals are in charge of seals, some mariners
Speaker 2: in charge of some mariners, aviators in charge of aviors.
Speaker 2: Why why is Chowda Hill the captain of Eisenhower's cluss.
Speaker 2: He was a backseater. He was an he two guy.
Speaker 2: You know, you know he's not a swell, he's an aviator.
Speaker 2: Why do you put an aviator on there? Because aviators
Speaker 2: understand how to run carriers? Well, you know who understands logistics.
Speaker 2: No one's putting supply officers in charge of fleets and
Speaker 2: commands out there. They should, in my opinion, because they
Speaker 2: understand logistics. And so I think it's really we start
Speaker 2: rethinking the way we're doing things out there. And again,
Speaker 2: this is going to take a big discussion. I think
Speaker 2: it's time for us to have one of those big
Speaker 2: discussions about not just the size of the navy we have,
Speaker 2: but what do we want that navy to look like?
Speaker 2: Do we want one fifth of the US fleet to
Speaker 2: be crewed by civilians out there? I'm not trying to short,
Speaker 2: you know, cut MSS jobs. I think there's a lot
Speaker 2: of things that MSc mariners can do and should do,
Speaker 2: But you know is that the main job. Probably one
Speaker 2: that I think we can talk about sharing is something
Speaker 2: like that recruing the aoees.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a great idea, And trust me,
Speaker 3: you don't need as as going on board as a
Speaker 3: young officer, you know, it doesn't take you long to
Speaker 3: get up to speed and the operations of a of
Speaker 3: a of a combat logistics for ship. And the only
Speaker 3: thing you need is somebody with enough nerve to take
Speaker 3: a large ship and put it one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: feet away from another yard ship and not and not
Speaker 3: lose his nerve. And I will say to you.
Speaker 2: But you appreciate you appreciate it more. And you know
Speaker 2: you put a blue and gold crew on those four vessels,
Speaker 2: you can keep them. They can be the ones deployed
Speaker 2: with the forward carrier groups. I think you get a
Speaker 2: lot out.
Speaker 3: I agree with one hundred percent. That was one of
Speaker 3: the best skippers I had on any ship was a
Speaker 3: King's point grad and he, you know, he taught me
Speaker 3: a lot about ship handling. And you know, and especially
Speaker 3: when you've got there are limitations on those large ships,
Speaker 3: but you have word to deal with that. And once
Speaker 3: you do that, you can you can drive anything anywhere.
Speaker 2: Well, just imagine if you had a fort skylo grid
Speaker 2: on there. You're even more amazed.
Speaker 1: Well, sal we've we've run the hour and plus a
Speaker 1: few more. Really appreciate you again, taking time today to
Speaker 1: talk about a subject that I know everybody here is
Speaker 1: really passionate about, and it was nice to see that,
Speaker 1: at least a little bit, it's broken above the background
Speaker 1: noise and we'll get more attention for the listeners if
Speaker 1: they're if they're slow off the start and they aren't
Speaker 1: already tracking you, where's a good place for them to
Speaker 1: keep an eye out for you? And what can they
Speaker 1: look forward to on your next few episodes over at
Speaker 1: what's going on with shippings on YouTube?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, I mean, as you said right there, you know,
Speaker 2: check me out on YouTube what's going on with shipping?
Speaker 2: Posting videos every couple of days here. I follow obviously
Speaker 2: commercial shipping the largest segment, but also cover that intersection
Speaker 2: between commercial shipping and the military. I'm hoping to get
Speaker 2: those last two episodes out again. MSc is celebrating its
Speaker 2: seventy fifth anniversary here on October one, trying to put
Speaker 2: an article together on the history of that to get
Speaker 2: out either in the Proceedings or Naval History here. Also
Speaker 2: doing an article on the role of the Red Sea
Speaker 2: and the impact that has. In between all that, I'm
Speaker 2: working on trying to work on my book on Military
Speaker 2: Sealift during the First World War and the role the
Speaker 2: Navy and the Merchant Marine played, and that my plan
Speaker 2: is to cover that do World War Two and also
Speaker 2: finish up a book on the history of the Military
Speaker 2: Sealift Command, because I think it's an amazing organization. You know,
Speaker 2: I want everyone to be clear. I love that organization.
Speaker 2: It's one of my favorites. I met my wife on
Speaker 2: board the hospital ship Comfort. I think it is far
Speaker 2: none one of the most unheralded organizations that's out there.
Speaker 2: I think it's just so unique and the job it
Speaker 2: does is fantastic, and it really pains me when there's
Speaker 2: issues with it, and I think that's one of the
Speaker 2: reasons I get so high up on my soapbox. Plus
Speaker 2: I'm a little short, so it always helps me. It'll be
Speaker 2: a little bit.
Speaker 1: Taller, would have it any other way. Thanks a lot,
Speaker 1: sal look forward next time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks a lot. So it's been great talking to you, Ken.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me, guys, and thank you everybody for
Speaker 1: joining us for another edition of mid Rats. And until
Speaker 1: next time. I hope you have a great Navy day. Cheers.
Speaker 4: Want to marry me and a friend of Cody for
Speaker 4: your being to blame me, sir Folding. It's a long way.
Speaker 4: It's a long way. It's a long way the army
Speaker 4: to the Queen, and gob thick on it.
Speaker 3: Farewell, listen, well.
Speaker 4: It's a long long way to get the ray. But
Speaker 4: my wi, my bloom blo