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: Welcome aboard everybody, especially those that are joining us Live.
Speaker 1: As I always like to do, want to put out
Speaker 1: the altar call.
Speaker 2: There you are with us Live, and if you are
Speaker 2: so inclined, go ahead and head on over to the
Speaker 2: chat room. That's where you will have an opportunity during
Speaker 2: the course of especially today's show that if you have
Speaker 2: a topic you would like for us to discuss, or
Speaker 2: I just wanted to throw a question to either one
Speaker 2: of us. That's a perfect place to do it because
Speaker 2: we'll be there in the course of the show because
Speaker 2: this is our mid October Maritime Melee, or we could
Speaker 2: say the birthday edition. Happy two hundred and forty ninth
Speaker 2: Birthday to.
Speaker 3: The US Navy.
Speaker 2: In the pre show, Mark and I we're chatting about it,
Speaker 2: and we think we're also going to kick it off
Speaker 2: as kind of the hurricane recovery Melee because both of
Speaker 2: us have been impacted in one way from another. And
Speaker 2: even if you're on the West Coast or Hawaii or Alaska.
Speaker 2: I think everybody is one degree of separation away from
Speaker 2: somebody that had a significant impact from either Helene or Milton.
Speaker 2: So with that little kickoff, Hey, happy October to you.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you. Happy Navy Birthday to you. Not every
Speaker 4: Navy day has been a great Navy day, but just
Speaker 4: better than a lot of other days. So you know,
Speaker 4: I'm I'm glad we have a chance to say happy birthday, Jock. Yes,
Speaker 4: and hopefully everybody here will be around to celebrate the
Speaker 4: two hundred and fiftieth. That'll be interesting to see what
Speaker 4: we may have under our sleeve. But yeah, it would
Speaker 4: be the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room if
Speaker 4: we didn't broach it. Because as in all major natural disasters,
Speaker 4: the had are humanitarian assistance. Disaster response is not just
Speaker 4: something that we need to prepare to happen overseas, because
Speaker 4: I think from the time that it first started to
Speaker 4: grumble there off the Yucatan Peninsula to win, it just
Speaker 4: devastated everything from the Big Bend part of Florida, which
Speaker 4: when you live there you kind of expect that all
Speaker 4: the way up through Georgia Mountains of western South Carolina.
Speaker 4: But then the really big damage that we saw in
Speaker 4: western North Carolina where they just got rainfall that you
Speaker 4: just don't expect to see in your lifetime. Just incredibly
Speaker 4: devastating storm that there there are a lot of lessons
Speaker 4: for for everybody to think about. Yeah, it's uh, it's
Speaker 4: important that if you think you're in a safe area,
Speaker 4: you still have a disaster preparedness kit because you have
Speaker 4: no idea what's going to happen. I mean, it could
Speaker 4: be anything from from the sweet meteorite of death, or
Speaker 4: it could be a tornado, anything, but you know your
Speaker 4: house could disappear. You have to make sure you have
Speaker 4: some kind of of emergency system in place, where you
Speaker 4: have some food, some water set aside, some way to
Speaker 4: provide yourself, some emergency shelter. But you know that we
Speaker 4: were talking about earlier, we were talking about how well
Speaker 4: how we how do we tie maritime stuff into this.
Speaker 4: I think with sal mccarglean, it might have been John Conrad,
Speaker 4: but they're talking about the these ships that the the
Speaker 4: Maritime Administration is built their their national camera national security
Speaker 4: ships or something. One of them is being used at
Speaker 4: least for one of the Maritime Academies is one of
Speaker 4: their ships and they were pointing out those ships really
Speaker 4: are designed to health for situations like these disasters. And
Speaker 4: and I remember years ago there was somebody down on
Speaker 4: the Gulf Coast talking about taking an old refrigerated storeship
Speaker 4: and a FS and converting it into a a recovery
Speaker 4: ship for disasters like Katrina, like the recent both recent
Speaker 4: hurricanes that smashed into Florida, and allow these supplies to
Speaker 4: flow into a disaster area, especially the ones on the
Speaker 4: coast where we get to we get the hurricanes, UH
Speaker 4: and flooding, and allow these ships to come in and
Speaker 4: they can carry a heck of a lot more that
Speaker 4: you can carry on trucks and and UH and airplanes,
Speaker 4: bring in water, bring in food, bring in shelter. You
Speaker 4: know that that ought to be something that the the
Speaker 4: Federal Emergency Management Administration ought to be looking at to
Speaker 4: have a couple of these ships on standby in the
Speaker 4: in the Gulf Coast area or on the East coast
Speaker 4: where the hurricanes mostly happened. And also something on the
Speaker 4: West coast because of the hurricanes, I mean the earthquake situation,
Speaker 4: because seriously, bad earthquake can do a horrendous amount of
Speaker 4: damage and it's a it's a question of what kind
Speaker 4: of supplies you can get to the people who are
Speaker 4: going to be in need, and I think this is
Speaker 4: a job that the maritime services can provide. Historically, many
Speaker 4: years ago, I did a couple of blog posts on
Speaker 4: on how electricity was brought to some of these areas
Speaker 4: by Navy ships when prior conditions, when earthquakes had caused
Speaker 4: harm on the on the West Coast. There's no reason
Speaker 4: it can't be done on any of these other areas.
Speaker 4: If you can find a place to hook up and
Speaker 4: start providing power so emergency services can be can be feeled.
Speaker 4: I think that's an important thing to consider now. One
Speaker 4: of those things that you know people keep proposing, but
Speaker 4: always the budgetary restraints where people think, well, well, you
Speaker 4: just have the ship sitting around for long periods of time.
Speaker 4: If you look at the history of hurricanes in the
Speaker 4: Gulf Coast and on the East coast of Florida and
Speaker 4: North Carolina and Georgia South Carolina, the need is going
Speaker 4: to be there every single year at some point.
Speaker 2: And I think there's also you know, any disasters, the
Speaker 2: first thing people need to look at is water. You
Speaker 2: can anybody who's been to Seer School knows you can
Speaker 2: go a long time without food, relatively speaking, but you
Speaker 2: can't go along without water. The only thing worse than
Speaker 2: no water is bad water, because then you have gi
Speaker 2: tract issues that will dehydrate you even faster, and you know,
Speaker 2: right after water. And it was one of the more
Speaker 2: interesting things that I saw. And for those that have
Speaker 2: been to the really anywhere in the mountains, but especially
Speaker 2: the mountains of North Carolina, there are some very winding,
Speaker 2: very narrow roads with some beautiful houses. You've got lots
Speaker 2: of people who we they retired to Florida. They spend
Speaker 2: one summer in Florida and they go, let's go up
Speaker 2: to North Carolina instead. There are a lot of people
Speaker 2: that retire up to the mountains because the weather is great,
Speaker 2: the people are great, the crime is low, it's relatively affordable,
Speaker 2: can't beat the views. But with that comes to people
Speaker 2: that have needs that use some people who don't have
Speaker 2: good help, people who are insulin dependent, people who have
Speaker 2: oxygen and a lot of those roads are barely passable
Speaker 2: now on foot. And there were people who will do
Speaker 2: the backcountry camping trips with their mule trains and they
Speaker 2: just repurpose them.
Speaker 3: Who needs what?
Speaker 2: And they're everything from mule trains to people using privately
Speaker 2: on helicopter and that created a lot of aircraft deconfliction issues.
Speaker 2: One thing I kept thinking of two things that tied together.
Speaker 2: Some of y'all might remember a little under a decade ago,
Speaker 2: and I would love to get an update. Are the
Speaker 2: and I'm sure it's availableise I've looked it up. The
Speaker 2: Marine Corps experiment with two of the Kmax helicopters are
Speaker 2: the ones that have the intermeshing rotors, and I actually
Speaker 2: deployed to Afghanistan with them as uncrewed systems to resupply
Speaker 2: where the most simple of all things take off from X,
Speaker 2: go to Y, drop load go from Y to X,
Speaker 2: and they carry up to six thousand pounds. Now that's small.
Speaker 2: Helicopters with the Kmax is a little bit smaller than
Speaker 2: a sea sprite. Most in the Navy. You know about
Speaker 2: the SH two about how small that is. But you
Speaker 2: also have what we've all seen in Afghanistan. Not in
Speaker 2: Afghanistan and Ukraine, and for those that have been around agriculture,
Speaker 2: knew they were around before they became in use in Ukraine.
Speaker 3: Those are those very.
Speaker 2: Large agricultural use quad copters that were used in a
Speaker 2: similar way that people would use crop dusters. But they realize, hey,
Speaker 2: this thing can carry. I don't know how much they
Speaker 2: can carry. I know they carry least five hundred pounds
Speaker 2: or more. They can also drop things. I think the
Speaker 2: Ukrainians call their militarized versions baba yaga. They're big, They're
Speaker 2: the size of a little bit, you know, a California
Speaker 2: king a wingspan is about what they look at. But
Speaker 2: again that's something that humanitarian assistance disaster response. Maybe your
Speaker 2: only open field is somebody's backyard or a local counties
Speaker 2: parking lot. Maybe you don't want to risk a big
Speaker 2: helicopter to come in, But if you can get the
Speaker 2: right corridors by planning ahead of time, there are some
Speaker 2: ways these systems that have a variety of uses, but
Speaker 2: especially in humanitarian systems disaster response, a lot of the
Speaker 2: problem is getting important things in isolated locations, and maybe
Speaker 2: a mule might not be the best way to do it.
Speaker 2: A little small drone maybe can bring a couple of
Speaker 2: day supply of insulin, but when you're dealing with lots
Speaker 2: of people, are you dealing with things like oxygen. You
Speaker 2: need something that can carry significant weight to isolated, remote
Speaker 2: locations that prior aren't very well prepared, and the right
Speaker 2: answer can't be is we'll have a solution in three weeks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think those are the unmanned. The
Speaker 4: first thing is, I'm really impressed with all the private
Speaker 4: helicopter pilots who went and volunteered and have done heroic work.
Speaker 4: And I'm also now that I mean it takes long
Speaker 4: time to get people mobilized. Those guys were able to
Speaker 4: mobilize faster because they didn't have to answer anybody. The military,
Speaker 4: the National Guard, and the active duty forces required a
Speaker 4: little more time. And first thing is that if I
Speaker 4: was talking about this earlier, that you have to be
Speaker 4: ready to live on your own. I mean, this is
Speaker 4: what FEMA, this is what the Red Cross will tell you,
Speaker 4: three or four days on your own, have food, have water,
Speaker 4: or have a way of getting water, and and some
Speaker 4: way to shelter yourself. And fortunately an Edmund that cold
Speaker 4: up in the mountains. But uh, you know, if the
Speaker 4: hurricane season goes on through November or into early November,
Speaker 4: so it's conceivable that you could have some really cold
Speaker 4: nights up there, and some of these people would be
Speaker 4: uh seriously in jeopardy of hypothermia, you know, but they
Speaker 4: also have to learn to look around to their their situation.
Speaker 4: You can get pretty cheaply. These life straws allow you
Speaker 4: to drink water right out of streams and not and
Speaker 4: not worry about some of those things you were talking
Speaker 4: about earlier. You can use these sawyer filters and there
Speaker 4: are other catered in filters that hikers use. You know.
Speaker 4: You can do a few quartz at a at a
Speaker 4: time with those things. Fill up a bag and they
Speaker 4: call them a sea knock bag conoc bag that you
Speaker 4: can fill with dirty water, run it through a filter
Speaker 4: into a water bottle, and you've got water, you know.
Speaker 4: And that means if you have a stream nearby, or
Speaker 4: you know where a stream is, or you have a
Speaker 4: lake nearby that didn't that didn't disappear down the side
Speaker 4: of a hill, you know, you can go get water.
Speaker 4: You can purify it yourself. You can just use clorox.
Speaker 4: You can you can let it settle. You can use
Speaker 4: these other pills, the iodine kind of pills to get
Speaker 4: the water ready, you know. But that's really important that
Speaker 4: you know how to do that, and a lot of people,
Speaker 4: you know, we always assume that civilization is going to
Speaker 4: be civilized all the time, that people have not read
Speaker 4: enough Prepper books or or Apocalypse Now books. Who you know,
Speaker 4: what happens when the power goes off? Where are you
Speaker 4: going to? Where are you going to store your lensen
Speaker 4: is insulin? Is there a Is there a way to
Speaker 4: dip it in a stream to keep it cool? I
Speaker 4: mean it's got to be. You know that you can
Speaker 4: keep the insulin apparently fifty nine eighty eighty six degrees
Speaker 4: for up to twenty eight days and will continue to work.
Speaker 4: But you've got to make sure that you have what happens,
Speaker 4: you know, the keeping it drop, just like we used
Speaker 4: to cool beer. I hate this, yeah, Beer and sodas
Speaker 4: and watermelons used to dip them in streams to keep
Speaker 4: them cold until you're ready to eat them. So, you know,
Speaker 4: people have to be thinking about this stuff. And you know,
Speaker 4: it's not that it takes a rocket scientist to do this,
Speaker 4: but it is important that if wherever you go, you
Speaker 4: have to be thinking about, well, what if? What if
Speaker 4: the tree falls in front of my car? Tree falls
Speaker 4: in back of my car? Here I am stuck in
Speaker 4: the middle of the road and it's the beginning to
Speaker 4: get cold, it's rainy, and I don't have any food,
Speaker 4: you know. It's it's not you need to carry a
Speaker 4: as you say, you don't need to carry a month
Speaker 4: supply of food in the car with you. But it's
Speaker 4: a good idea to have some kind of way of
Speaker 4: capturing water, some way of purifying that water, cleaning that
Speaker 4: water up so you can drink it. And if you
Speaker 4: have some food stuff, it's always a good idea to measure,
Speaker 4: you know, to ration it out so you don't eat
Speaker 4: it all in the in the first ten minutes of panic.
Speaker 2: And I think it's also a good lesson that you
Speaker 2: don't have to be in great danger area where the
Speaker 2: expectation is like besides the time, well even when I
Speaker 2: was in the Navy, but for most of the Navy,
Speaker 2: I think pretty much I was in the zone. But
Speaker 2: I live in a hurricane zone. Hurricanes are just part
Speaker 2: of life, and you know, folks around here are expecting them.
Speaker 2: But it don't have to be a hurricane as anything
Speaker 2: that can happen. What happens if you lose power for
Speaker 2: a week or two weeks, there can be circumstances that
Speaker 2: it's not a storm that causes power. You don't again,
Speaker 2: you don't have to read funky books to know that
Speaker 2: that's a definite occurrence. You look at some of the
Speaker 2: stories that have come out of Ukraine and they're just
Speaker 2: parallel of stories you've always seen in civil conflict, where
Speaker 2: people who have never in their life really had to deal,
Speaker 2: even very poor people with a lack of running water,
Speaker 2: a lack of a regular supply of food, lack of
Speaker 2: heat and cooling our shoes. Even it does not take
Speaker 2: long with there's a whole list of things that can
Speaker 2: happen that everybody should have. You don't have to be
Speaker 2: a like whatever that character was from the last of us,
Speaker 2: who was who had been in his whole life of
Speaker 2: preparing for the world to end. You don't have to
Speaker 2: be one of those guys. You just have to be
Speaker 2: able to take care of yourself and the people in
Speaker 2: your family, and maybe a couple of other people too,
Speaker 2: until the rest of civil society comes around. And I think,
Speaker 2: you know, I liked how you brought up early on.
Speaker 2: Now not just the private pilots, but a lot of
Speaker 2: private individuals. They went up and volunteered whether it was
Speaker 2: helping clear their street or helping their neighbor who might
Speaker 2: be mobility impaired. Are a bunch of college kids grabbing, uh,
Speaker 2: grabbing a couple of friends and loading up a car
Speaker 2: and going up to where Samaritan's purse it was in
Speaker 2: western North Carolina, going how can I help? And it's
Speaker 2: amazing when you have what two hands can do in
Speaker 2: the course of seventy two to ninety six hours in
Speaker 2: a good organization, multiply that by a couple of thousand,
Speaker 2: and government can handle the big pixel stuff, but the
Speaker 2: little pixel stuff sometimes get overlooked. But if you have
Speaker 2: good volunteers and good organizations that you can link up with,
Speaker 2: it's solid. And I think there are lessons from this
Speaker 2: domestically that I think does play into the national security.
Speaker 2: Are in a humanitarran assistant disaster response we talk about
Speaker 2: we have a lot of those capabilities a resident in
Speaker 2: the National Guarded Reserves. Yeah, they're great for wartime situations
Speaker 2: or in responding like we did in Haiti fifteen years
Speaker 2: ago or so after that earthquake, but they're also pretty
Speaker 2: good when you have a hurricane, a bad forest fire,
Speaker 2: your North American natural disaster that we have it. It
Speaker 2: makes a difference.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a NEYC is in the in the chat room communications. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's key. Uh. I have suggested the past, and I
Speaker 4: think that the Northern Command was US. Northern Command was
Speaker 4: looking at this at one point and maybe think they
Speaker 4: bought several thousand small AM radios, MFM radios, so those
Speaker 4: things ought to be dropped. Somebody had to fly over
Speaker 4: these things and and drop those things where people are.
Speaker 4: You don't have to have one for every person, but
Speaker 4: you have to have one that can reach a number
Speaker 4: of people so that they're you know that because if
Speaker 4: they're battery powered and there and there are people on
Speaker 4: the ground who can transmit information is absolutely essential. You know,
Speaker 4: we're here, we're here to help you, will be as
Speaker 4: with you as soon as we can stay near your house,
Speaker 4: protect yourself, you know all that stuff that that's the
Speaker 4: information that's important. Then and if you know, if somebody
Speaker 4: up there has a has a CB radio or HAM
Speaker 4: radio or somebody that they can broadcast say and I've
Speaker 4: got thirty five people around me, that's great. But the
Speaker 4: other side of it is the people that are being
Speaker 4: affected need to know that there is help on the
Speaker 4: way and what the what the current information is. And
Speaker 4: I think that's I think that's a vital thing, and
Speaker 4: that ought to be the case in every single disaster.
Speaker 4: I mean, wherever you lose our normal TV and radio,
Speaker 4: there ought to be a system to have. And I
Speaker 4: know the HAM operators do this because they they they
Speaker 4: are pretty mobile about this, but they can't reach everybody.
Speaker 4: But there ought to be a system where we can
Speaker 4: get to the public radios where they can listen in
Speaker 4: to what's going on. I think it's very important for
Speaker 4: national security because that stops a lot of the running
Speaker 4: around in circles that you see where people are panicking
Speaker 4: and they don't know, you know, I don't know what's
Speaker 4: going to happen next. We've all got to get on
Speaker 4: the road immediately. You know, you jam the roads up,
Speaker 4: you you cost all kinds of other issues. I think
Speaker 4: that that is a that's a vital it can be
Speaker 4: able to communicate and have people understand what's going on.
Speaker 2: Another thing that was an eye opener for me. And
Speaker 2: by the way, Starlink is not a sponsor of mid Rats, However,
Speaker 2: if Elon would like to sponsor an episode or two,
Speaker 2: please get in touch with Mark Ryle along, I'll have
Speaker 2: you look over the contract. But when internet's down, God
Speaker 2: bless our our major wireless providers. The towers are pretty resilient.
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, I need to check on some things
Speaker 2: on the Internet. I'll just use cell data. When everybody
Speaker 2: who usually uses Wi Fi all of a sudden hops
Speaker 2: on their service provider to do sell data, your throughput's
Speaker 2: not too great. And I was thinking about a lot
Speaker 2: of these isolated counties that we saw in western North Carolina,
Speaker 2: and you know, even down in southwest Florida, we still
Speaker 2: have people that don't even have power yet, simply because
Speaker 2: that store was so impressive in so much of we
Speaker 2: that we do. Now, from a communications point of view,
Speaker 2: you need Internet connectivity and you've got a starlink MANI
Speaker 2: that you can pick up and that's this is the
Speaker 2: kind that's about the size of a laptop and gives
Speaker 2: you satellite communication. They cost about six hundred bucks and
Speaker 2: fifty dollars a month for roaming, charges up to one
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty five if you need unlimited. But that
Speaker 2: that is something that you can't give one to everybody.
Speaker 2: But if you have various locations that you can drop
Speaker 2: a Starlink Starlink Mini, you can set up command post
Speaker 2: to back up for the radio. You get a lot
Speaker 2: more bandwidth that way, other people can come in. That's
Speaker 2: something else that I think is in our modern age.
Speaker 2: It's something to ponder for your disaster kit, especially if
Speaker 2: you're really out in the boonies and isolated. How do
Speaker 2: you communicate if you don't have a cell tower or
Speaker 2: you need to be able to get internet connectivity for
Speaker 2: whatever reason? It used to be you know, Antenta the
Speaker 2: size of a Volkswagen. Now it's the size of a
Speaker 2: fifteen inch laptop, and it's really approaching affordability for a
Speaker 2: lot of people, but definitely for governments. And if you
Speaker 2: look at I want to say Murphy's law, but it's
Speaker 2: not Murphy's law. What's the law where everything doubles at
Speaker 2: eighteen months? You know what I mean?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well they'll be a bit more affordable computer computer gosh,
Speaker 4: I can't remember it. Yeah, I mean, I think starlink
Speaker 4: is great. I'm sitting here thinking, well, a lot of
Speaker 4: phones now have surprisingly have satellite emergency satellite communication. I
Speaker 4: know that the I know, the Apple phones, do I
Speaker 4: think the you know? And you can go if you're
Speaker 4: going to spend some money, I mean, you can go
Speaker 4: get these some of these Garmin GPS things, but their
Speaker 4: satellite communications devices too. So if you're a hiker and
Speaker 4: you're off in the boildies, you fall down or break
Speaker 4: your leg, you can get on this little tiny garment
Speaker 4: thing and book right up to a satellite and send
Speaker 4: out your emergency message and tell people you can. They'll
Speaker 4: know where you are because it sends out a signal
Speaker 4: and they can come rescue you. And you know, so
Speaker 4: those of us who do a lot of hiking have
Speaker 4: those things. And again I know starlink has. One of
Speaker 4: the things about that or six hundred buck one is
Speaker 4: that you can also use it for short term operator.
Speaker 4: You know, so if you don't want to run whatever
Speaker 4: it is for fifty dollars a month forever, you can say, okay,
Speaker 4: and I'm going to be up in the mountains for
Speaker 4: in my hunting cabin for a couple of months or
Speaker 4: a couple of weeks. I just you can. You can
Speaker 4: buy a short term and use it for that. But
Speaker 4: the disadvantage is you have to have electricity. I think
Speaker 4: it has to plug in somewhere, right, I guess you
Speaker 4: could use if you have a car, and you could
Speaker 4: probably cut up into your car somehow, but.
Speaker 2: It has it has a DC capability where you can
Speaker 2: even run it off of those really cheap photo cells
Speaker 2: solar powered.
Speaker 4: I guess the lack of a better price goal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have a have a few options. There another
Speaker 2: thing that up, Yeah, thank you Wore's law. That's the one.
Speaker 4: There we go.
Speaker 2: And there are also things that those that don't do
Speaker 2: much boatings may not be familiar. Are those who don't
Speaker 2: have anautical background, which if you don't thinks we're coming
Speaker 2: to miteats. But the for the emergency beacons that you
Speaker 2: have to go straight to the satellites now used to
Speaker 2: be back in the day if you got one of
Speaker 2: those are horribly expensive and then they would just blare
Speaker 2: off on guard and irritate everybody. But nowadays it uploads
Speaker 2: your lap long satellite data. You're right there for nance.
Speaker 2: And we had a an incident recently off Florida where
Speaker 2: these people, as happens there, their boat went down and
Speaker 2: they I seen a reporter of refrigerator was probably their cooler.
Speaker 2: They use their cooler for flotation. Their boat had any
Speaker 2: fib but they also had a personal one that they
Speaker 2: that they strapped on and that's that's how the coast
Speaker 2: Guard was able to find them. For those that haven't
Speaker 2: done search and rescue at sea, you can be on
Speaker 2: a twenty two foot twenty five foot thirty foot boat
Speaker 2: that's above ground and you're hard to see. You disappear
Speaker 2: real fast. Ocean is big. People are small. But if
Speaker 2: your two guys hanging on to sixty four court cooler
Speaker 2: as your flotation, yeah, you know that it just might
Speaker 2: be your time. But those personal emergency devices is also
Speaker 2: something that if you are really, really really isolated in
Speaker 2: a situation, you pop one of those off, they're going
Speaker 2: to see there's somebody at this lat long who hasn't
Speaker 2: having an emergency, that that's something else that might be
Speaker 2: worth consideration, especially you're somebody who's insulin dependent.
Speaker 4: You never know, Yeah, I think you know, this is
Speaker 4: a lot of what we're were talking about is logistics.
Speaker 4: A lot of it is free empty logistics. You know,
Speaker 4: if if everybody is prepared, no matter where they live,
Speaker 4: to go three or four days without having electricity, without
Speaker 4: having uh water that's that comes through their pipes and
Speaker 4: uh you know, have enough food that that helps everybody
Speaker 4: in emergency and I have a certificate in uh Community
Speaker 4: Preparedness and Disaster Management, and it is one of one
Speaker 4: of the topics we have is the self help. I mean,
Speaker 4: the self help goes a long way. People need to
Speaker 4: be able to take care of themselves and tell until
Speaker 4: you can get in. At some places, as we now
Speaker 4: see in the mountains of North Carolina, some places are
Speaker 4: a lot harder to get to in three or four
Speaker 4: days than you'd think because when your road washes out
Speaker 4: and the bridge washes out and the only access is
Speaker 4: you know, non existent, then that and you know, it's
Speaker 4: nice for a mountain house up in the middle of
Speaker 4: no place, but it does create problems trying to get
Speaker 4: to you if something bad happens. So you've got to
Speaker 4: be prepared to hang in there by yourself.
Speaker 2: For Rett well, one thing that we've grouped about are
Speaker 2: the many things we grossed about on occasion, is to
Speaker 2: almost to a fault, the United States is blessed with
Speaker 2: one of the greatest water systems water transport systems on
Speaker 2: the planet, Mississippi River, all the canals we have, the
Speaker 2: Inner Coastal Waterway, And when I was looking at all
Speaker 2: these trucks on I ninety five and seventy five, and
Speaker 2: luckily none of the bridges were lost. And then you
Speaker 2: look over at the inner coastal Waterway, or you look
Speaker 2: at a thoroughfare like the Saint John's River, or if
Speaker 2: you go up north, you know the various canals, the
Speaker 2: Great Lakes, all the tributaries of the Mississippi. When you're
Speaker 2: looking at heavy things like fuel and lots of food
Speaker 2: for lots of people, you know, you've got to wonder
Speaker 2: if there's more ways that we could be able to
Speaker 2: use those waterways and situations like this or at least
Speaker 2: have this scenario. But in order to have that stuff
Speaker 2: that either has to be subsidized by the government. Are
Speaker 2: we do other things to make it economically feasible. I
Speaker 2: know that one reason why we have so many semis
Speaker 2: on our roads is there are some externalities human made
Speaker 2: beyond what the Good Lord gave us that makes water
Speaker 2: transport in our inland waterways not quite as effective as
Speaker 2: just loading things on a truck and movement.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it should be. We should use that system.
Speaker 4: The only problem is that sometimes you'll get uh, you know,
Speaker 4: river flooding in the Mississippi and Missouri. Some of those
Speaker 4: other rivers. I mean, even if they're even if they're
Speaker 4: dam Uh, the dams carry a lot of load. It
Speaker 4: is an issue of you know, how far can you
Speaker 4: get up and how bad can things be? I don't know,
Speaker 4: you know, so I don't remember how much the river.
Speaker 4: You know, that's probably New Orleans when when the levee
Speaker 4: when either blew up the levee or whatever they did
Speaker 4: to to flood the lower lying areas. But you know,
Speaker 4: that's a that's an issue. You've got water everywhere, not
Speaker 4: necessarily can you take barges and get and towboats and
Speaker 4: get stuff up and down? But uh again, if you
Speaker 4: if you you know, it's a it's a question of, uh,
Speaker 4: we have a stuff pre stagum because we don't have
Speaker 4: enough stuff free stage. And the answer is, well, we
Speaker 4: sure we do. We have a lot of stuff pre stage.
Speaker 4: It's in grocery stores, water, you know, wal marts, costcos,
Speaker 4: all the stuff places that have mass things. It's just
Speaker 4: a matter of being able to tie it all together
Speaker 4: and get get people working on we have to talk
Speaker 4: about something else. Are you still there?
Speaker 1: Sell?
Speaker 4: Well, this is fun we're selling with so hew okay, yep,
Speaker 4: I'm here. Okay, good, We ought to talk about we
Speaker 4: ought to talk about missile loading at sea, talk about logistics.
Speaker 2: Speaking of logistics, yeah, I at a lot of folks
Speaker 2: should know. If not, well, it is a link on
Speaker 2: the show page after the show. But you know, back
Speaker 2: to the Future episode seven, we on board one of
Speaker 2: our quickly disappearing Taekwondo class cruisers. We demonstrated that we
Speaker 2: could reload a VLS cell Comma again at c very.
Speaker 2: You know, my my comment was excellent, more faster, I
Speaker 2: should have added, and you know, can we do it
Speaker 2: with Arley Burks too. It is a hard thing to do,
Speaker 2: but most things in war are hard to do, and
Speaker 2: one thing that keeps hitting my head over and over
Speaker 2: again recently. There's a lot of the arguments I have, well,
Speaker 2: this is too hard, this is too difficult, this is
Speaker 2: too dangerous. Yes, and if you're looking at peacetime operations
Speaker 2: and what we do every day in peace, but we
Speaker 2: need to be thinking more and more, which we haven't
Speaker 2: thankfully had to do in a few decades, about the
Speaker 2: fact that we're going to be asked to do significant
Speaker 2: combat operations at sea in the Western Pacific if China
Speaker 2: is actually not bluffing about the challenge that she's going
Speaker 2: to do in order to get her place back in
Speaker 2: the world. And if so, we need to be prepared,
Speaker 2: and we need to be capitalized at peace to do
Speaker 2: things that are difficult and a bit dangerous because it's
Speaker 2: a long long distance from Hawaii or the West Coast
Speaker 2: to the western Pacific if your vlsls are empty and
Speaker 2: you've got to leave. So I guess it's a nice
Speaker 2: but limited capability. But we can't make it faster and
Speaker 2: more safe if we don't experiment and test.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so we're experient many and testing, but we're
Speaker 4: years late. And in the interim we have to you know,
Speaker 4: it's got to be there's got to be some smoother
Speaker 4: way to do this. But uh, in the interim, we
Speaker 4: should be equipping barges, powered barges, maybe even autonomous barges
Speaker 4: that can you know, it's like the uh, like the
Speaker 4: aircraft loyal wingmen. We need these loyal missile barges that
Speaker 4: can accompany the force and they can go sit somewhere
Speaker 4: out of out of any range of the Chinese threat
Speaker 4: and power themselves forward and then have a place where
Speaker 4: we can they can meet the ships and the ships
Speaker 4: can can either you use those barges to fire whatever
Speaker 4: weapons we're going to be shooting and to and expend
Speaker 4: the barge capacity first before they get into their own magazines.
Speaker 4: And you know that that could be if you had
Speaker 4: money via I think a Ticonderuga class cruiser had two
Speaker 4: sixty one cell launchers. I think that the various birks
Speaker 4: have odd numbers of one sixty four thirty two launch anyway,
Speaker 4: so you've got a bunch of these launchers on the
Speaker 4: other destroyers. But yeah, need more than that, and you're
Speaker 4: gonna need several barges, and it could be anything from
Speaker 4: converted merchant ships. So with enough deck space to carry
Speaker 4: these things that can hold the launchers, which weigh I
Speaker 4: don't know, thirty three thousand pounds or something, they're pretty heavy,
Speaker 4: and you know, some system for being able to transmit
Speaker 4: the information to shoot information to the to the the
Speaker 4: things in the in the launchers so they can they
Speaker 4: can be fired accurately where they're supposed to go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw a lot of the people critiquing, well,
Speaker 2: you know, two ships side by side is dangerous. You
Speaker 2: have to find a nice.
Speaker 4: Sorry, old unrepped guy here laughing at them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have to find a quiet bay. You know
Speaker 2: what our our grandfather great grandfathers for some of you kids.
Speaker 2: So back in the ages of coal, all the coaling
Speaker 2: places were very well identified. People fought wars over having
Speaker 2: nice quiet bays. You can go in and do it. Plus,
Speaker 2: okay if it's too hard, if you want out of
Speaker 2: the box ideas. If you need a stable ship to
Speaker 2: reload forward, okay, here's Sal's good idea ferry throw a
Speaker 2: spot against the wall Chapter eight and thirty two. Whether
Speaker 2: it's the US Fitzgerald on the motor vessel Troms Shelf.
Speaker 2: A lot of people remember the Samuel B. Roberts was
Speaker 2: taken back off a mighty servant too. These are these
Speaker 2: ships that you drive another ship one and then they
Speaker 2: pump out the water and they lift your entire ship
Speaker 2: out of the water. Okay, that seems pretty stable. What
Speaker 2: if you had one of those ships that could bring
Speaker 2: on board your Urley Burke lock it up. You don't
Speaker 2: have to go all the way out of the water,
Speaker 2: but enough that there's no movement between the two, and
Speaker 2: then you can load them from there. That's another option
Speaker 2: to look at if you want to modify one of
Speaker 2: those ships that has been put in ordinary somewhere. But
Speaker 2: the excuse is that it's too hard, we can't do it.
Speaker 2: These are people that I don't think are really thinking
Speaker 2: about why we have a navy and what we're going
Speaker 2: to ask our sailors to do here in the next
Speaker 2: five years or fifteen years or maybe never. We need
Speaker 2: to have that capability to reload thevlsls west of the
Speaker 2: International Date Line, and saying Yakuska in Japan and Subic
Speaker 2: Bay is another place we can do it, or even Darwin,
Speaker 2: that's not an answer, because those are all under the
Speaker 2: guns are the missiles of the enemy's artillery. They can
Speaker 2: strike all those facilities that they want to. We need
Speaker 2: a place that we can, with relative safety and security
Speaker 2: and minimal risks, be able to do these operations without
Speaker 2: having going all the way back to the West Coast
Speaker 2: or Japan. And I know that we're on the cutting
Speaker 2: edge that eventually the entire planet will be under the
Speaker 2: gun of conventional prompt strike. It's okay, we'll deal with it,
Speaker 2: but I don't see any viable option besides finding a
Speaker 2: way to make it happen. Then to make it happen,
Speaker 2: and I think the Navy knows that that's why they're
Speaker 2: trying to bring back that capability. It just doesn't seem
Speaker 2: to have the right hand doesn't have the sense of
Speaker 2: urgency that the left hand keeps signaling to everybody. And
Speaker 2: I find that disconcerting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sort of thing used to be done by tenders.
Speaker 4: If we had destroyer tenders, you could pull up alongside
Speaker 4: they had a crane. You could probably load you know,
Speaker 4: all your VLS cells from a tender and or you
Speaker 4: could even here's one of those old concepts we had
Speaker 4: during World War Two, one of those big floating drive
Speaker 4: docs where you could drive your destroyer into the dry dock.
Speaker 4: Really need to have that much stability, and it could
Speaker 4: raise it up above uh and stabilize it and load
Speaker 4: you with the cranes they had on those things. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's not like we haven't had these problems. For we
Speaker 4: had We've had to reload and rearm battleships, cruisers, uh, destroyers,
Speaker 4: do you name it, for years and years and years.
Speaker 4: I mean I was on an ammunition ship we used
Speaker 4: to transfer to, you know, going on lunishment at sea.
Speaker 4: We'd go alongside, we'd give them bombs and bullets and
Speaker 4: sometimes oil and uh missiles. And by the way, working
Speaker 4: with the nuke missile guys with a large missiles was
Speaker 4: a huge paint of the rear because the nukes checklists
Speaker 4: are so anyway we would we've done it. It's not.
Speaker 4: It doesn't have to. We don't have to invent reinvent
Speaker 4: every wheel. We just need the ships, but the capabilities
Speaker 4: to do what we need them to do. And when
Speaker 4: you get rid of your tenders, and I whoever came
Speaker 4: up the idea of doing away with was destroyer tenders
Speaker 4: ought to be how to find him fe's down, dig
Speaker 4: them up and and hang him because that's a huge
Speaker 4: asset to a fleet that's going to be far flong because.
Speaker 2: You need that deepot level maintenance. Ship's company can't do everything,
Speaker 2: nor should they be asked to. And with additive manufacturing nowadays,
Speaker 2: even back in the day, you know, the the tenders
Speaker 2: had the ability, and I think the submarine tenders still do.
Speaker 2: And aircraft carrier aim ds are kind of mini tenders
Speaker 2: into themselves. But you need a part, it's not available.
Speaker 2: Oh it's made out of copper. Just a minute. He'll
Speaker 2: take a solid block of copper. You'll go have a smoke,
Speaker 2: come back and there's your part because they have a
Speaker 2: million machine that can create it, have a whole cloth.
Speaker 2: You even have to wait for DHL to send something
Speaker 2: to BA Rain so you can have a CV twenty
Speaker 2: two fly out there and bring it back and hopefully
Speaker 2: not crash on the return. Yeah, and there's a lot
Speaker 2: of it. I think is analysis to paralysis. And plus
Speaker 2: we just it's like you and I like to talk
Speaker 2: about it sexy, but boy is it important? You know,
Speaker 2: which would you rather have five Arley Burks and no tenders?
Speaker 2: Are four Arly Burks and a tender? I would I
Speaker 2: would take Option B every day of the week.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think. I think. Uh, if you look at
Speaker 4: the way we treat our aviation equipment, where we have
Speaker 4: people on the carriers are capable of repair, replacement, all that.
Speaker 4: And if you look at the way we treat even
Speaker 4: our ground based air you know that there are maintenance
Speaker 4: crews that work on those things. It's not a matter
Speaker 4: of that we don't do that with some equipment. It
Speaker 4: just seems to be that the idea of having a
Speaker 4: floating maintenance ship go along with the fleet. Uh, it's
Speaker 4: just something that went out of fashion and we need
Speaker 4: to get that back.
Speaker 2: It sure does, and there's also the secondary effects. Again,
Speaker 2: any seed is very active in the chat room other
Speaker 2: folks that are listening life. If you want to jump
Speaker 2: in the chat room and feel free to join in.
Speaker 2: But he brings up a real good point transiting in
Speaker 2: and out of theater to do reloads. Not only is
Speaker 2: there the tyranny of distance, you're also you're burning up
Speaker 2: a lot of fuel, especially in the Pacific, being that
Speaker 2: we don't have enough replenishmentships and we've thrown away red hills,
Speaker 2: you know, burning up a bunch much if fuel might
Speaker 2: not be the best utilization when we can have something
Speaker 2: else forward, And it goes into that and I can't
Speaker 2: stand the word battlemindedness. I hope somebody can come up
Speaker 2: with a better one, but we need more, kind of
Speaker 2: like the utility of destroyer tenders is. Because we've had
Speaker 2: two generations without them, people are forgotten, at least most
Speaker 2: people have forgotten what that utility is. But you also
Speaker 2: have to keep asking the question that if you are
Speaker 2: exquisitely designed to be able to meet peacetime exercise and
Speaker 2: deployment requirements, Okay, what are you going to do for war?
Speaker 2: If you can just bear to not meet, as we
Speaker 2: saw recently, the peace time and the surge deployment requirements,
Speaker 2: then what are we going to do for war? The
Speaker 2: reason is we're going to have trouble winning the war,
Speaker 2: and that's the most expensive thing for a nation to do.
Speaker 2: And we recently saw in the recent attacks on Israel
Speaker 2: by Iran a little better than their attack that happened
Speaker 2: a few months ago.
Speaker 4: Is all.
Speaker 2: This is an open source so I'm trying to I'm
Speaker 2: trying to tie different open source threads together here. I
Speaker 2: reserve the right to be completely wrong, and if I
Speaker 2: had the classified information, I wouldn't talk about it anyway.
Speaker 2: But we have heard more than one report that we
Speaker 2: expended a year's production of SM three's, which incidentally is
Speaker 2: just a dozen. The rest go to Japan and other
Speaker 2: people helping defend Iran and Iraq. Boy, I can't get
Speaker 2: my eye countries right today? Can I defending Israel? Helping
Speaker 2: defend Israel against the Iranian missiles? And then I saw
Speaker 2: this weekend that Israel has requested the US Army and
Speaker 2: we're going to do it. We're deploying a THAD battery
Speaker 2: THAA D that's their ballistic missile defense. It's able to
Speaker 2: reach out and touch it much higher and further than
Speaker 2: that the Patriot Packed three can do. It's somewhere between
Speaker 2: Patriot PAC three and SM three, and that means that
Speaker 2: we now have US Army soldiers on the ground in Israel,
Speaker 2: and I'm kind of thinking there might be a connection
Speaker 2: between the two where the US Navy has said we
Speaker 2: don't have any more SM three to give unless we're
Speaker 2: going to take out of ships in the Pacific that
Speaker 2: we already don't have enough SM three's to do. So
Speaker 2: another only other option is the Army THAD batteries haven't
Speaker 2: been doing any shooting, but the US Navy has been
Speaker 2: at it for the better part of the year in
Speaker 2: the Red Sea and off Israel, So I think that's
Speaker 2: an interesting And then yet about the utility of seapower
Speaker 2: where it's it's not on land, so you don't have
Speaker 2: to worry about everything from car bombers to one hundred
Speaker 2: and seven millimeters rockets to mortar teams to snipers. You
Speaker 2: don't have to worry about host nation legal issues. I
Speaker 2: don't have to worry about having an airhead to getting
Speaker 2: in and out of you've got a DDG bloating off
Speaker 2: the coast. It can show up when it wants to,
Speaker 2: It can leave when it wants to. If people did
Speaker 2: what you and I said, it have the ability to
Speaker 2: replenish whenever it wanted to. But that's only as good
Speaker 2: as the weapons it's able to carry and then sustain
Speaker 2: in the fight. And when they can't sustain the fight,
Speaker 2: they gotta leave. But if you still have an outstanding requirement.
Speaker 2: Because I think again I'm just reading through the through
Speaker 2: the lines through an open source, I'm pretty confident that
Speaker 2: Israel probably does not have very many of their arrows,
Speaker 2: which is their version of I mean, it's not the
Speaker 2: same thing, but accomplishes the same mission as bad which
Speaker 2: is blistic missile defense. They're probably pretty thin there, and
Speaker 2: we're the only people are going to help Israel anyway.
Speaker 2: I just thought that was a real interesting development that
Speaker 2: we're now going to have US Army soldiers preparing for
Speaker 2: combat in Israel. So hey, welcome to October twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sustainment, sustainment, sustainment, logistics, logistics, statistics, I mean, you
Speaker 4: know how much how many times can can people talk
Speaker 4: about it. I hope, uh, you know, I don't know
Speaker 4: what it would take to open for raytheon or wherever's
Speaker 4: building these missiles, to open up more production lines. And
Speaker 4: let's you know, we really need to seriously rearm and
Speaker 4: and because if we're if we're looking at a major
Speaker 4: war and we and we go in virtually unarmed, that
Speaker 4: that's not going to go well for anybody.
Speaker 2: No, and I think for those that are on X
Speaker 2: I would if you don't know already, Tom Shugart, he
Speaker 2: has a focused on a laser beam on the satellite
Speaker 2: data that's coming out of the Chinese shipyards, and he
Speaker 2: had a real interesting one where one of their major
Speaker 2: shipyards they have twenty four what we.
Speaker 4: Would call.
Speaker 2: A coastguard cutter sized vessels in parallel construction like all
Speaker 2: there a dozen times too, in different stages of production.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 2: They're pumping them out like twinkies at the Hostess factory.
Speaker 2: When you see what they're doing in the South China
Speaker 2: Sea and when you look at all the mischief they
Speaker 2: can play in the near shore waters, that's a interesting investment.
Speaker 2: Just like there. We recently saw their hube Fast patrol
Speaker 2: boats that have been down there bothering the Philippine Filipinos again.
Speaker 2: So it seems like they're going to reinforce success against
Speaker 2: the Philippines and Vietnam by building a lot of what
Speaker 2: we would call coastguard cutters. Just impressive industrial capability that we,
Speaker 2: believe it or not, we don't have.
Speaker 4: Well, I you know, the CNO is laid out that
Speaker 4: in the next couple of years we're going to produce
Speaker 4: a whole bunch of stuff which is going to assist
Speaker 4: in beating back this thread. But you know, we're wasting
Speaker 4: so much money on things that we shouldn't be spending
Speaker 4: the country as a whole, wasting so much money on
Speaker 4: things we don't need to spend money on. You know,
Speaker 4: it's just it's creating. We've turned so many people off
Speaker 4: these jobs. We've created a nightmare for ourselves. And you know,
Speaker 4: I keep going back to the peace devidend that that
Speaker 4: you know, it was just a matter of self deception.
Speaker 4: We you know, we we were convinced that peace had
Speaker 4: broken out and everybody who's gonna sit around seeing kumbay
Speaker 4: ah and uh, Meanwhile other people were thinking about how well,
Speaker 4: you know, here's what the US is good at. How
Speaker 4: can we how can we beat them at that? And
Speaker 4: if you look at the way the Chinese have their
Speaker 4: layered defenses and their active defense concept and what they
Speaker 4: want to accomplish out there, we really need to work
Speaker 4: on getting that first island chain with its own active
Speaker 4: defense and and then I know the Marines are looking
Speaker 4: at this, but you know, we need to have disperse
Speaker 4: small forces there. They need to be armed well equipped
Speaker 4: enough to to to make things uncomfortable for the Chinese
Speaker 4: should they move, and that requires the equipment that we
Speaker 4: don't seem to have right now. So I'm a little
Speaker 4: baffled how we're going to do this all in a
Speaker 4: couple of years. But I hope the CNO is right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't. I don't see the fairy dust in
Speaker 2: the next twenty four months. Well, you know, it's like
Speaker 2: the old phrase, when it comes the time to plant
Speaker 2: a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time
Speaker 2: to plant a tree is now. So the best time
Speaker 2: to get ready for this fight was, you know, twenty
Speaker 2: years ago. Though you probably couldn't have sold it, you
Speaker 2: should have been able to sell it ten years ago,
Speaker 2: because we're ten years past when President Mama announced the
Speaker 2: Pacific Sorry it's worth laughing about Europe and the Middle
Speaker 2: East just they can't quit us for some reason. But
Speaker 2: there's stuff that we could do now that if the
Speaker 2: pessimist are right and the balloon goes up in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty seven at the earliest, you know, what you do
Speaker 2: right now will start to tickle in the fleet unless
Speaker 2: you're just going to do you know things that will
Speaker 2: show up in twenty thirty five. So more, if more
Speaker 2: can be done now, that'd be nice. It will also
Speaker 2: be interesting to see, regardless of which party wins here
Speaker 2: in a few weeks in the national election, I think
Speaker 2: if Vice President Harris wins, she's going to want her
Speaker 2: own team. I think the Biden team has given enough time.
Speaker 2: She'll probably replace those with those new people. There might
Speaker 2: become new motivations. Trump obviously will bring in a whole
Speaker 2: new team with a vote in their teeth to disrupt,
Speaker 2: as we've talked about before. But see who again, Harris
Speaker 2: or Trump doesn't make a difference. But look at who
Speaker 2: they get as their sect deaf, who they get as
Speaker 2: their Secretary of the Navy, and why, And that might
Speaker 2: give you some vision if we're going to see something
Speaker 2: one way or the other what happens in Congress. Of course,
Speaker 2: that's where the money comes from. But you as it
Speaker 2: stands right now, it's it's been kind of a non
Speaker 2: issue in the election. I have an idea of what
Speaker 2: direction the truck Trump team might go, but people are policy.
Speaker 2: You won't know until you see what team he picks out.
Speaker 2: But as far as Harris goes, I would assume that
Speaker 2: there would be a lot of inertia even if she
Speaker 2: does replace all the top people, because all the second, third,
Speaker 2: and fourth layer people will probably move from Cherry to Cheribe,
Speaker 2: but it'll be the same people in the same worldview.
Speaker 2: So very very very similar to the priorities of the
Speaker 2: last three and a half years.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think Secretary of the Navy Del
Speaker 4: Toro is doing He's doing the large work in many ways,
Speaker 4: you know, I think he's just in a work And
Speaker 4: the CNO is certainly doing more than I thought she
Speaker 4: would in terms of thinking ahead, which is good. But
Speaker 4: you know, there we have we've railed it against before this,
Speaker 4: We've seemed a very army ground centric rather than the
Speaker 4: Navy centric, and that is a serious mistake, you know,
Speaker 4: when and I don't mind the army claiming to be
Speaker 4: the lynchpin of the Pacific. As long as is they
Speaker 4: put boots on the ground with the right equipment to
Speaker 4: do the job. They better start moving those people out there,
Speaker 4: because if the balloon goes up, there's no way we're
Speaker 4: going to get them mirror in time to stop a
Speaker 4: lot of things that could could be really bad.
Speaker 2: Just as it's another example of how we have no
Speaker 2: problem plugging other people's podcasts. I was listening to the
Speaker 2: latest Assements Net Assessment podcast with Melanie Marble, Marlowe, Chris
Speaker 2: Prebble and forget to say he hasn't been on Midrights
Speaker 2: yet so have trouble with his name anyway, And one
Speaker 2: of the things they were talking about and I was like,
Speaker 2: like the Leonardo DiCaprio meme where he's pointed the TV.
Speaker 2: I was like, that's my argument, but hey, it's just
Speaker 2: nic see the other people coming to the same solution.
Speaker 2: They were talking about the the fact that if we're
Speaker 2: really interested in the Army, I'm in the in the Pacific,
Speaker 2: that the Army is a support team and a third
Speaker 2: tier operator in the Pacific, and in a budgetary environment,
Speaker 2: if you need to get more money to shift to
Speaker 2: the Navy and the Air Force. It's got to come
Speaker 2: from the army, and you know, part of that has
Speaker 2: to be that, And like them, I would like to
Speaker 2: see a breakout on which bases they are and how
Speaker 2: they're counting them. But their research had one hundred thousand
Speaker 2: army personnel stationed in Europe in one way or another,
Speaker 2: and that's unsat that. That's that's not what is needed
Speaker 2: when our European NATO allies have both a greater population
Speaker 2: than we do and a higher GDP And if we
Speaker 2: needed to get it, it's going to have to come
Speaker 2: from Europe. And then how will NATO react and things
Speaker 2: like that we have I think is that this year,
Speaker 2: our next year that we're paying an interest off the
Speaker 2: debt as much as we spend on national defense one
Speaker 2: of those two. So I don't see a massive increase
Speaker 2: in the budget. So like former mid Rats guest Hertzinger
Speaker 2: said that, you know, hey, it's got to come from
Speaker 2: the army.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I think you're talking about a net assessment.
Speaker 2: Zach Hoda, Yes, Zach, xactly. Sorry, Zach, thank you for
Speaker 2: covering all right. I barely remember my kids name.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm familiar with that from yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 4: you know, the army needs the army needs to produce
Speaker 4: now you know, the the and they send special forces
Speaker 4: teams to the Philippines to fight Abu Saif and that's great,
Speaker 4: but we I don't know where we're gonna put army guys.
Speaker 4: I mean, the Guama's WAMA is filling up. We got
Speaker 4: marines going in there. We got the air base, We've
Speaker 4: got navy facility, we probably you know, where where does
Speaker 4: the army go and where and how do they spread
Speaker 4: themselves out so that they provide, uh, the the stuff
Speaker 4: that we need. And that is something needs to be
Speaker 4: discussed at levels three high up. I don't see. But
Speaker 4: and I'm also curious as to how they get all
Speaker 4: this stuff there because, as we've talked about so many times,
Speaker 4: our c transportation system is a little bit screwed up
Speaker 4: right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's no good.
Speaker 1: How do we fix this?
Speaker 2: We have all these priorities, A lot of it's you know,
Speaker 2: decisions deferred, decisions delayed, and the fact that unlike the
Speaker 2: People's Republic of China that the view from Beijing, they're
Speaker 2: focused on. They have one mission. They want to be
Speaker 2: the pre eminent global power and to do that, they
Speaker 2: need to undermine the US. They need to be in
Speaker 2: a position. I think that that chairman she has told
Speaker 2: his military, I want you to be ready to I
Speaker 2: don't know what day he's told and he just wants
Speaker 2: to have the option of being able to take Taiwan
Speaker 2: by force. And I got a feeling that a few
Speaker 2: years ago his military didn't have a chance to And
Speaker 2: they said, well, in order to do that, we need
Speaker 2: to do X and Y, And he said, okay, then
Speaker 2: we're going to do that, and you keep me updated
Speaker 2: on when you think we'll be ready. I may I
Speaker 2: ask you to go, but I don't want that option.
Speaker 2: They have not decided that they want to play around
Speaker 2: in Europe or the Middle East in a military way.
Speaker 3: They have.
Speaker 2: I had a real great conversation last week with a
Speaker 2: jo that is getting out of the military, a huge
Speaker 2: loss to the US military. I've known this individual since
Speaker 2: they were a midshipman, and they've had an opportunity in
Speaker 2: the last few years to get a really close eye
Speaker 2: on what China is doing in the civilian sector across
Speaker 2: the globe. And it's very impressive what they're doing and
Speaker 2: is obvious what they're doing so it's a lot easier
Speaker 2: for the Chinese to be able to focus on the
Speaker 2: long game in the future. But we seem to just
Speaker 2: be the global fire brigade, going from issue to issue
Speaker 2: to issue without really being able to back up a
Speaker 2: bit and asking ourselves, you know, what, what are we
Speaker 2: what are we actually doing here? What is what do
Speaker 2: we need to do? What do we need to focus on?
Speaker 2: What do we need to ask more of our friends
Speaker 2: to do? Because we simply can't do it all? Because
Speaker 2: we do seem to be trying to do it all.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well I think we today somebody, I mean I
Speaker 4: responded to somebody about the absence of US ships. You know,
Speaker 4: what are the US ships doing to protect things in
Speaker 4: the Red Sea? And my question was what US shipping
Speaker 4: is going through the Red Sea? Salmoncardliano Salm Macardlano answered none.
Speaker 4: And you know now then then, oh uh, what's this
Speaker 4: name we've had about our show too? Here right, here's
Speaker 4: my here's my brain going plumpty thump chill and Conrad
Speaker 4: no no, yeah, pain yeah, yeah, said he said. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean that's why the Italian Navy just sailed its
Speaker 4: aircraft carrier to the to the Pacific. You know, they
Speaker 4: the Italians have a pretty good fleet and and they
Speaker 4: just they've been escorting uh Italian and European ships through
Speaker 4: the through the Red Sea. Great, Now, where's the shipping
Speaker 4: in the Red Sea going? Most of it's going to Europe,
Speaker 4: not going to you know, if we're getting our oil.
Speaker 4: But oil has always kind of gone around and those
Speaker 4: big super attackers has always gone around the tip of
Speaker 4: Africa or the other direction. But you know, this is
Speaker 4: this is a concern for everybody who's interested in freedom
Speaker 4: in the sea, and not just the United States of America.
Speaker 4: And so we've had we've had a lot of free riders,
Speaker 4: We've had a lot of these flag of convenience ships
Speaker 4: which may or may not be US owned. Why are
Speaker 4: we providing protection for the for the people who have
Speaker 4: registered their ships in Ecuador or Mongolia? I mean talking
Speaker 4: about countries that shouldn't have ship flags. I mean this
Speaker 4: is Switzerland. Yeah, we've reached new levels of absurdity. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's the idea was we would protect, certainly protect US shipping,
Speaker 4: and we do believe in the in the global freedom
Speaker 4: of the seas, but we can't. You know, we're out
Speaker 4: this doing doing this about eighty five percent on our own.
Speaker 4: Europe's got money that the EU. Maybe I don't know
Speaker 4: if they matches dollar for dollar in terms of gross
Speaker 4: domestic but I think it's pretty close considering they have
Speaker 4: the number of people in these countries. They have there,
Speaker 4: so let them carry some of the load.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 4: This is getting getting absurd. We're doing all of this
Speaker 4: and we're wearing our ships out. I mean, there was
Speaker 4: a somebody put up an older picture of the US
Speaker 4: is stout like a huge rust bucket. But that was
Speaker 4: when they'd been to sea for two hundred and twelve days,
Speaker 4: you know, I mean during COVID. Yeah, yeah, so they
Speaker 4: you know, we're looking better, the ships are looking better.
Speaker 4: But I know I know that they're wearing the ships out,
Speaker 4: you know from the from the carrier operations and all
Speaker 4: that stuff, that we're just we're just beating our ships.
Speaker 4: I mean, we're like horses there or saddles have been
Speaker 4: roaded hard and hung up wet and added that it's
Speaker 4: not a good thing.
Speaker 2: Eventually, eventually you have you need to have a reset.
Speaker 2: But can't stop, won't stop, the world doesn't seem like
Speaker 2: they want to give us a research but speaking of
Speaker 2: time we we have, We have prattled on for the
Speaker 2: full hour, simply simply amazing. What the good news is
Speaker 2: is we still have a few topics to talk about.
Speaker 2: So next week we might have a guest, we might not,
Speaker 2: but that's all right. We got plenty to talk about.
Speaker 4: That's true, and we don't ever seem to stick strictly
Speaker 4: to one point, which is good too, Squirrel exactly. Speaking
Speaker 4: of that, well.
Speaker 2: Hey, we appreciate everybody, and a nec we appreciate you
Speaker 2: in the chat room. You kind of you held the
Speaker 2: ford for about three or four people. Good comments there,
Speaker 2: and as always weppreciate everybody for join us for mid
Speaker 2: rats and until next time, we hope you have.
Speaker 3: A great navy day. Cheers.
Speaker 5: Molly Donney replied, worry Paddy all, Mike, my lonely one
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Speaker 5: folding your name.
Speaker 4: It's a long way to disper.
Speaker 5: It's a long way.
Speaker 4: It's a long way to differ.
Speaker 5: Between don be CODI well listen, well, it's a long
Speaker 5: long way to get away. But my wie, my bad