Welcome to mid Rats with Salm from Commander Salamander, an Eagle one from Eagle Speak at Seer Shore your home for a discussion of national security issues and all things maritime. And good day everybody, and we're glad to have you on board for another addition of mid Rats. And if you are with us live, I would like to extend an invitation to you to scroll down to the
bottom of the show page. That's where you will find the chat room, and that is the perfect place if during the course of the show you have some observations you want to share, are some questions that you would like for us to direct to our guests, that's the perfect place to be there. We already already have Stephen and Paul there standing a fort at the quarter deck ready to greet you, and anyway, feel free to jump in with the
conversation. And as always, if you've got to run off and take care of some business if you haven't done already, go over to iTunes or Spotify wherever you get your podcast, look up mid Rats and go ahead and subscribe. That way, we will be ready for you at a time it's more convenient to your schedule. And on today's show, what we're going to look
at is the aircraft carrier, everybody's favorite thing to argue about. We've talked about it a lot here on mid Rats because it is really the supercarrier at least, it's a unique capability that our Navy has enjoyed unquestioned dominance at for my lifetime, and I'm not a spring chicken. Been longer than that. It's been almost a century. But it's not so much like all weapon systems, and this is kind of one of the core of what we're talking about.
It's not so much the ship, it's the what are you trying to do as a navy? What as the fancy kids like to say, what effects are you trying to do? How are you trying to push forward national policy at sea? The carrier, like all weapon systems, it's a tool. So what we're going to look at today, we're going to look at the aircraft carrier in the fleet structure that is built around it, the challenges,
the opportunities to compromise. And our guest today is going to be Jeff Vendenegel, commander a United States Navy, and as a reference point today we're going to be looking at his book titled Questioning the Carrier Opportunities and Fleet Design for the US Navy. You can find a link on the show page. And Jeff is joining us today as an author to discuss the issues related to his book, and he does not necessarily represent the US Navy or any other
organizations he may be associated with. Jeff, Welcome to mid rats, Thanks lot for having me, gentlemen, glad to be here. Well, I appreciate you taking some time out of your day, and it's great having authors on because it always has a real easy opening question for me. And I just want to point out to the listeners if they haven't had a chance to look at your book yet, it's a very digestible two hundred and twenty eight
pages. But this is and you know, Bravozula, it's you for doing this for people that are reading this, especially those that either are are new to the game or trying to get up to speed. It has sixty eight pages of notes and indexes. So if people really get interested or does the I didn't think about it that way, and they see that footnote, you're giving them the opportunity to really expand their knowledge base. And with that kind of ball tied up for you. Tell us about your book? What's it
about? Great? You make an interesting point about the index in the notes, right, So nothing in there is from my personal experience, from my expertise. Right, It is from a lot of smart people from throughout naval history up till today that have written on this subject, and I tried to
learn from them and incorporate their thoughts in this book. But in simplest term, the book argues that the age of the large nuclear powered aircraft carrier is coming to an end, not because of its vulnerabilities, but because there are now better ways to design the fleet to accomplish the Navy's missions. Now, make no mistake, Like you talked about the large nuclear powered aircraft carrier,
it is the most powerful warship in all naval history. No single ship can match its president's value in peace time, and no single ship can match its flexibility and its firepower and wartime. However, I believe we need to. I believe we need the most powerful fleet possible, not the most powerful ship possible. And I believe a fleet so centralized and so dependent on eleven ships is not as capable as one that embraces some modern opportun in fleet design.
The carrier's flaws. They are growing, but they are not new. Carriers have always been expensive, they've always been somewhat vulnerable, they have always featured in arrowing, will range much shorter than that of land based aircraft, and they have always centralized a great deal of power onto a single ship. And for more than seventy years, the US Navy accepted those flaws because the ship's many benefits outweighed those flaws and there was simply there's no better alternative. That
is no longer true today. The advent of missiles means that every ship in the fleet can use the error's premier weapon, instead of them being limited only to large capital ships, as was true for most of naval history. Modern networks enable fleets to accurately share more information, faster and over longer distances than at any point in naval history, and I think, taken together, that
means fleets can now diversify their kill chains to unprecedented degrees. I think advances in scouting and communications and weapons technology enable those opportunities, and they allow for a four structure that performs the carrier centric fleets functions more effectively using a Navy consistently of more platforms with less total risk and within the same long term budget. Now, obviously, like I said before, that I did not identify
these opportunities. The Navy has known about them for decades, and the Navy has made great progress capitalizing on them. Much of the Navy's work in this in these areas have already improved our fleet. However, I do not believe we can fully capitalize on those opportunities while remaining within the confines of the same rough force structure that we have had for decades, with most platforms and most
operations focused on the CBN, the large nuclear powered aircraft carrier. We will have improvements, but those improvements will be incremental, not fundamental, and I believe we'll need to achieve every possible improvement to be ready for the sea control mission against the People's Liberation Army. Navy, Well, let's talk a little
bit about you. You describe a force which would change the structure of the Navy as we see at today, and part of that was that many more you've listened to a whole bunch of ships like like the the Steel class corvettes and the and the Constellation class frigates and and some changes I gathered to the
to the DDGs. We currently have talk a little bit about that what what I know, it's not a structure that necessarily is the one you perceived being one down the road, but it's an interesting concept talking a little bit about
about how these things would mesh in the way you view it. Sure, I think a lot of my work centered on this quote from Admiral Nimitz and when he was talking about aircraft carrier obsolescence at the at the end of the Second World War and people were trying to argue, hey, there's nuclear weapons now, those surface ships, including carriers are obsolete, and Nimitt said, what determines the obsolete of a weapon is not the fact that it can be
destroyed, but that can be replaced by another weapon that performs its functions more effectively. And so that is the Uh, That's what I'm getting at with this hypothetical fleet. What I know came the name is the flex fleet, right. That is the point of the flex feet is not to be this perfect structure that we're gonna you know, we're gonna go up and start building, is purely to try and meet imitsi's standard to show that we we have
a great fleet. UH, the carrier centric fleet is extremely powerful, but we can do even better than that if we're able to move past the confines of the carrier centric fleet. And so identified some opportunities that I think are out there for us, UH, breaking the age of the missile and networking
our fleet and from those two diversifying our kill chains. And so those are sort of the abstract opportunities, and from there are trying to translate into a a hypothetical fleet, a realistic four structure that we could actually go up and build that is technically realistic, financially realistic, operation realistic. So in that fleet based on the ground rules, Like I said, technologically realistic, right is not lots of technologies that are decades away. It minimizes the number of
new classes of ship. And it does that to make it politically realistic, and it uses the same long term shipbuilding budget. And I started with the Navy's battle Force inventory goals for twenty forty nine, the last year of the twenty twenty thirty years shipbuilding plan, and I made changes to shift it to more of a structure like the new Navy fighting machine, which is a four structure proposed by Captain Wayne Hughes at the Naval Postgraduate School so and to get
down the details. It adds missile corvettes and missile arsenal ships to improve our ability to do sea control and contested power projection. It starts shifting naval aviation to light carriers to to improve their geographic spread and platform numbers. It builds more Constellation class frigates than the Navy's current plan to increase the number of platforms and missiles we'd have in the fleet. And it increases the size of the
combat logistics force to supply that in large fleet. And then it pays for that by canceling the remainder of the four class, reducing the number of planned new construction Arli Berken follow on ddg's the DDG X, and then cancels plans for the conventionally armed Columbia class SSGN as a surface fleet in the Flex fleet contract would have a lot to would have significantly increased numbers of missile cells. And then in one of the subsequent chapters, I try and compare the Navy's
planned fleet of twenty forty nine. In this hypothetical flex fleet and in the Navy's various mission areas, and I think in a lot of mission areas, this hypothetical fleet could outperform the Navy's twenty forty nine fleet. Right that it has something like forty two percent more warships, eighty six percent more missile launching surface ships, twenty nine hundred additional missile cells. But again, flex fleet, far from a great solution, has lots of problems, lots of unanswered
questions. I just think it gets to name. It's the standard of can we do even better than our current carrier centric force? And if so, then there's a lot of much smarter people out there with a lot of great
ideas for gamble. Captain Klin at the Naval Postgraduate School and his colleagues, or Dmitri, you, Philipoff and his colleagues at SIMPSAK, or lots of people within the Navy or the Center for Naval Analyses, right, all have lots of great ideas which I don't think we can fully capitalize whils staying within
the confines of the Carr centric model. I think a great thing about your book is, as you would expect a nuclear trained submarine office, or you've done the math is if people want to grab hold of, like your flex fleet design, you gay, okay, I've done the math. Here's the numbers. If you want to argue that you know, ten percent this whey that way, we can do that. But I thought it was also good
because a little habit of mine. We've all no reason to name names here, but we've all read some people's theories of what the future fleet will be and your eyes rolled the back of your head because they just, you know, wave away technology risk, program risk and stuff like that. And I like the twenty forty nine data point because twenty forty nine may seem like a long time in the future for folks, but it's really not. Twenty forty
nine is to today what nineteen ninety one is to today. It's the same time difference. And when you look at plus or minus a couple of years from that nineteen ninety nine, that is where the thought processes came forward to what we saw in the first decade of the century, the often discussed age of transformation that begat lcs CG x DDG one thousand, et cetera, and so forth, that you know, kind of waved away a lot of the
technology and the program risks. But what you've done is I've liked how you've put firm boundaries on here, is technology technologically realistic, financially feasible, and only incorporate a real new A lot of you're doing here, they're not They're not revolutionary, they're not transformational. They don't require an obtainingum or pixie dust. It's all either existing systems. Are you know Mod two or Mod three programs that we have coming across h the transom here. Talk for a little
bit about how you you when you're trying to intellectualize twenty forty nine. What are those those hard barriers you say you see? What are those? It's all known unknowns. Do you think could shape things one way or another inside the next few years? Great? Thanks? Yeah, I mean you hit on the head. There's lots of technologies already out there that I mean, again the Navy's taking advantage of and we have available now because of the Navy's
hard work. But for this, I think of Eugenie Eli Right, So something like nineteen ten, he gets in his biplane and he takes off from the cruiser Birmingham, right, And so it's just like rickety Wooden ramp in this rickety biplane. But he takes off and it's the first time that an aircraft has ever launched from a warship in naval history, right, incredible accomplishment. Did the Navy immediately restructure it's forced, you know, it's the fleet
around the aircraft payer. No. And was that because of you know, obstructionism or anything like that. No, because it was because it takes a very long time to develop the technologies that are necessary to change the UNI. This Navy, this huge organization with thousands of people and ships and everything like that. And so just because Eli was able to launch an aircraft from a
warship doesn't mean that the Navy was ready to transform its fleet structure. It took a long time of experimenting and testing and working and all sorts of stuff to get the Navy ready. And then when a mission came along that required naval aviation and that aircraft carrier, the Navy was for the most part ready because of the work of people like Eli and Admiral William Moffatt and other pioneers
like that. And so I think we're in a similar sort of era today in that there's lots of these technologies that I talk about in the book. They've been around for decades before I was born, right, missiles and network communications and things along those lines, and lots of people have written about them, and the Navy has done lots and lots of work on them. We haven't restructured the fleet to fully take advantage of those opportunities, not because of
obstructionism or people are stuck in the paths or anything like that. It's just because it takes a very long time to develop those technologies to make them robust enough to change the fleet structure, which again is a massive thing, and like you talked about, yeah, twenty forty nine, that's a long ways away, but in shipbuilding world, that's I mean, that's tomorrow, And it takes a long time to build a ship and to change a fleet structure.
And I just think with some of these technologies that we have, and because of the hard work of the Navy that we you know, we're in a position now because of all that work, to start moving away from the care centric fleet. Yeah, I think that somewhere you're the concern you have, and I think you make a really good if I were a if you were an associate in a law firm, and I'm a lawyer, so I could say these kinds of things you're associated law firm, I would really be
impressed with the brief. The brief you've laid out here. I mean, this is a really good argument you've made, and it's very logical. It makes a lot of sense, and you base it on the sound concept that are the potential enemies we face want to get deeply into the aerial denial area denial, and they've been able to push the carrier back. And then due to other changes we've made, we've limited the range of the aircraft on the
that are on the carriers. So the further back we get pushed, the arsenal that that makes a carrier work can't really play in the game anymore. So talk a little bit about about the the arguments that you make that that why this flexileet with more ships, more dispersal networking works better than than the than the I think it's four percent of the navy that occupies forty percent of
our naval personnel. Let's see that we have now great well, So I think, like I said at the Big Game, right, the CBN is the most powerful ship in the fleet if it can operate as designed, and for many many years, because we control the seeds, it could operate as designed. And so it went off and did great things for the navy, and they did great things for the nation and from Libya, you know, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, i Raq, all over the place. Aircraft
carrier has done great things. And that's because it excels at presence missions right and permissive power projection. On the presence factor, right, there is no ship that can make headlines like an aircraft carrier does. And for permissive power projection right, no fleet structure, including this hypothetical one that I talk about, no structure is going to match the carrier's ability to generate sorties from uncontested
sees. However, and so if we think those are the missions that we're going to focus on going forward, presence missions and per missive power projection, that would be a very reasonable conclusion. It's what we've done for a long time. It's what we've done well for a long time. However, I think if we need to focus on sea control and contested power projection against the
peer adversaries such as the People's Liberation Army, Navy. Then I think different structures can do that even better and so, and part of it is because we live in the age of the missile so much. I just think, yeah, So, throughout naval history there's close relationshipie in physics and the errors capital ship or sorry the sorry, let me back up. There's been a close relationship between the era's capital ship and the weapon that it carried, just
based on physics. So only huge multideck ships align like HMS Victory could physically carry dozens of cannon, and only huge battleships like USS Missouri could physically carry sixteen inch guns, and only huge aircraft carriers like USS four can physically launch dozens of thirty fives. And so as a result of that relationship, most of the fleet could not use the era's premier weapon. They smaller ship still did lots of important things, but they generally could not carry sixteen inch guns
or dozens of that thirty fives or anything like that. However, I think the missile changes that relationship. It means every single ship in the fleet, plus aircraft and unmanned vessels or submarines or support vessels or a figure ships or even trucks can carry the error's premier weapon. And that is an incredible opportunity
today for fleets. And that is I think more than anything, what gives this flex fleet contractor the edge over the carrier centric fleet is that instead of most fleet operations having to flow through the CVN, and with a lot of the fleet supporting the CVN, now every almost every single platform in the fleet
can use the ra's premier weapon. It can deliver its own attacks. Now, obviously larger ships are still more cable in smaller ships, but but no longer it's it's suicidal for a small ship to fight against the large ship. Because we live in the age and the missile and those missiles are They're inexpensive, they're technically simple to operate, they don't require local air and maritime superiority. They be launching large numbers without tactical human financial risk of demand aircraft.
They have a huge payoffice successful little downside if they fail, and they're exceedingly difficult to defend against because the attacker has advantaged in physics, numbers, and time. And so if you add that with our ability to network the fleet and thus diversify our kill chains, I think that gives us a great opportunity, right, we can design a fleet built around both small and large large platforms that all have the ability to close the kill chain independently or cooperatively.
That fleet has more platforms, launching more weapons from more vectors, more domains, and that all makes it hard for the enemy to defend against attacks and raises the chances that we'll complete at least one kill chain to destroy the target. I like how you emphasize a fair bit something that can get lost in a lot of these conversations because there's so many factors involved here. But it's it's the question that you asked early on in your book. It's, quote,
what is the most effective way to damage the enemy? Unquote? And you just mentioned your answer to Mark's question about the age of the missile, And it's interesting how in you know, here we are in twenty twenty four trying to get people to focus on that ultimate question. You know, what is quote outgoing and incoming the most effective weapon to use? Because if you want to say, when was the age of the missiles coming out party?
When I was in diapers back in nineteen sixty seven at the hands of the Egyptians, which is a much longer timeline than the timeline from throwing a string bag off the end of a cruiser to the Battle of Midway. So this isn't something that has happened overnight, but it's been that that slow evolution of both defense and all fence. And one of the things you've also done the math on that really kind of got my attention and got me focused on that.
It has to do with the fact that, you know, some things that haven't changed is the size of the Earth, the nature of the surface of the Earth. But what has changed is our technology, and when you look at surveillance, reconnaissance intelligence, that the change and the ability for even second tier or third tier adversary adversaries have a better awareness of what's on the planet. That that kind of has worked in conjunction with the hard math that
missiles represent. Absolutely. I think one of the historically the carriers best offense and one of its greatest attributes has been its ability to remain unlocated and you know, it's mobile, it can move, so it's difficult for the enemy to track it. I think its ability to stay hidden just like any other large surface ship today is more difficult than at any point throughout naval history.
Right, just trends in scouting and communications makes it exceptionally difficult to keep a large platform, you know, as large as recognizable as a nuclear power aircraft care makes it very very difficult, difficult to keep that hidden for any appreciable amount of time. And so obviously that affects all surface ships, not just cbns, but it's especially problematic for the CBN because it's you know, it's so recognizable and its signature is so huge. And then also its loss would
be I mean it would be catastrophic. Right, Lots of ships we can lose and would be painful but would not fundamentally alter the the power or the structure of the United States Navy. But losing a ship of twelve billion dollars that recommends that represents the might of the American Navy and of the country. They would have unmatched catastrops. They would have unmatched financial and diplomatic and operational
impacts. And all that comes down to, you know, like you're talking about scouting and how difficult it is to remain hidden at on the surface of the sea today. I mean, if the Japanese could find carriers in using nineteen forties technology. And if the Argentinians could find surface the surface fleet using nineteen eighties technology, then surely our adversaries can do likely do it today using all those same tools, plus satellite networks and advanced sensors and communications and cyber
attacks and things along those lines. Just makes it very, very difficult to keep something like that hidden for so long. And like we know from Captain Hughes, if it can be found, that can lead to attacking effectively first, and that's the key to to tact the CETSI yeah, I'm going to say the spirit of Wayne Hughes is alive and well. In your book one of one of the one of the one of my uh you're kind of talking.
It's part of the book you talk about some of the obstacles to something like the flex fleet being developed because for years guys like Hughes and and Sabrowski and other people have have said, we don't need the huge carrier, we need to diversify, we need we need to think differently. And the resistance, uh sometimes of the large corporations. I think your example that that Huntingdon
Industries, whoever, the big shipyard in Norfolk that makes their carriers. But there was a great quote that you had about the uh from from Barnie Rubble that it doesn't seem reasonable presumed that the strategic future the United States hinges on
a few thousand shipyard workers in Virginia. I mean, the way you the way the book is structured, we would have to produce a lot of the corvettes and more frigates, and then these missile vessels, which I think we had to talk about down here a little bit, to the big brass missile boats. I mean, I like the concept. I'm a big fan of missile barges of nothing else, but to talk a little bit about how the money would be shifted away from some of the larger entities. And this is
to appease that the shipyard workers. So these guys would still have work,
it would just be a different kind of work. Definitely. Yeah, I think I think this change would need to come from within the Navy, but that to accomplish it, we would have to earn the buy in from lots of key organizations, including industry, right, and so I mean that's part of the reason why I think the Marine Corps Force designed twenty thirty has been successful because it wasn't just the marine, right, they went out and they
earned buy in from all the numerous constituencies that had some sort of part to play, and to shift past the carrier centric fleet, right, that would be even that would be infinitely more difficult than Force Design twenty thirty, which
is already you know, an impressive thing that they pulled off. And and so if we're going to do this, like I said, I think the Navy would need to lead that shift just because of how complex and how difficult and how long this will take, and that you know, the million factors
that will go into such a shift. But then that, but then the Navy will certainly need to earn buy in from constituencies such as hi I, right, because you know, like you said, right, it's not like, uh, it's not like we can afford as the nation to just say, oh, well, you know, we're not gonna use hi I anymore and we're just gonna move on or anything like that. Right, they are. Clearly we need shipyards building ships. I'm just saying that we should shift
what types of ships we build. And so obviously there's a future for a building you know, aircraft, carres or submarines and whatever else we choose to build. But I just think shifting away from the CV and and aligning incentives for all the constituencies, that's going to the important part for the Navy to earn that sort of buying as we go forward. I'd also say for like Catain Hughes and amal Sterbrowski and those you know, obviously distinguished gentlemen that made
these cases well well before I did much better than I ever could. I think part of the challenge that they face was that they were writing, you know, thirty years ago when we did not have a credible adversary at sea. I think Captain Hendricks has talked about this, how fleet design is a function of both technology and the mission of the fleet, and so you know, we probably have the technology to evolve the fleet thirty years ago when people
like Captain Hughes and amial Sebrowskian and such were making these arguments. However, I don't think we had the mission at the time, right. And so there's the Cold War had just ended, and the Chinese Navy was an obsolete coastal force, and so we control the seas, and so we probably focused
our attention to power projection from uncontested seas. But now, because of the hard work of the Navy developing those technologies, and because we now have the People's Liberation Army Navy to face off against, I think we have both the technology and the mission to start evolving the fleet. Well, let's look a little bit at the People's Republic of China's navy, because you're exactly right.
You know, when we go back again Tone ninety nine and the world especially contested at sea, and we're still in the light post Cold War era, things are very different here in twenty twenty four. So when you look at the People's Republic of China and her navy, what do you see about their fleet design, what they've invested in. Yes, I think they I think there's a lot of you know, do D reporting everything along those lines of
that they are focused on WARTC and thinking and opposing fleet. I mean Captain Finnell had that. I mean he had that quote at US and I West about ten years ago, and at the time it was sort of shocking that he said of it. Now I think wildly accepted that that is the People's Liberation Army Navy, right, they're they're clearly focused on winning control of the
Western Pacific. And again, you can read any sort of like the annual d D Report to Congress on the on the the Chinese fleet and read about their prolific use of missiles and how I mean every single essentially every single platform, aircraft, et cetera in their fleet has very capable anti ship cruise missiles.
I think of the Falklands were right, and so in that war, the Argentinians had just seven exists anti ship cruise missiles and with those seven missiles, they think two Royal Navy ships and they cause significant damage to a third. So today a single Chinese Hube missile craft has more anti ship cruise missiles than the Argentinians had or used in the entire war. And uh right,
the Chinese Navy has reportedly thousands of them. So it's just the again, just more evidence that we live in the age of the missile and that we need to do everything possible to capitalize on that because obviously our adversaries are doing the same. Yeah. I thought it was interesting when you when you got into the discussion of the of the subsurf, I mean, the threats to the character then, and certainly the subsurface threats submarines and miz are key to
those. But at one point you discussed the effect of having so many anti ship cruise missiles on the submarines where you could put ten submarines uh out of the range of art detection. But all they need is a is A is a targeting queue, and they can they can, they can launch a lot of anti ship cruise missiles at a carrier and UH and and and go from
there. Talk talk a little bit about that that kind of threat and what what that means in terms of of what we have to do try and protect the carriers, which I think is as your book points up pretty well, is is it's not quite a hopeless task, but it's pretty gard close to it. Sure, I would recommend your listeners go to the China Maritime Studies Institute at the Naval Work Hallege Train and they've done lots of great work studying
the the Chinese submarine fleet. And I mean one of the things they've talked about is exactly what you're you're getting out of the use of how Chinese submarines are in many ways anti surface platforms and that instead of you know, trying to them, trying to drive around and develop their tactics and get close for
torpedo shots and everything like that. They're essentially like a floating mine with an anti ship cruise missiles that they can stay off in wherever they you know, whatever area they can find, and then when they get queuing from somewhere else,
launch their missiles. I think I really try to learn the lessons of naval history, right because any sort of fleet designer is going to you know, we always we use all available tools, war games and exercises and intel analyzes and things along those lines, and they're all valuable tools, but I don't think anything matches the value of naval combat and learning from that. However, there's very little naval combat above the seas to learn from, and there's
you know, there's significantly less beneath the seas. There's the I think the only three times a summarine has engaged in combat other than launching tomahawks since World War Two is the Indo a Pakistan War of nineteen seventy one, Pons War of nineteen eighty two, and the North Korean thinking of a South Korean corvette in twenty ten. And so you know, it makes it very difficult to learn the lessons of naval history to understand the impact that submarines will have today
on the aircraft carrier or any sort of surface ship. But I would again go back to the Falklands War. Right there, a single nuclear powered submarine, the HMS Conqueror, launched a single Savo and sank a single ship. The HMS Sorry that Ara General Belgrano and the Argentinians withdrew their entire fleet to port out of fear of additional attack. So the one time that we've seen
the nuclear power submarine go into combat, it defeated the entire navy. And so today our adversars have a lot more submarines than what the Argentinians had, which is just you know, one or two at sea throughout their war, which even that one or two the Royal Navy could not find throughout the entire
war and launched something like two hundred torpedoes at it. Fast forward to stay right, our officers have much larger undersea fleets and and so it just I think it makes it would make it very very difficult to generate the perfect defense that we need for a priceless ship. The aircraft carrier. I think the aircraft carrier's defense above the seas and beneath the seas is very very good,
right is the best defender surface ship in the world. But I don't think that defense is still good enough for a ship that we cannot lose, that we must protect because of how important and how valuable it is, and in the era of capable submarines, I just think that would be a very difficult task. Now. To be clear, you know, I am a sum ariner, so I am not arguing that, like you know, surface sheep
surface ships are suddenly obsolete or anything like that. I think there's many of the Navy's missions that submarines can't do or can't do as effectively as surface ships. But I just think centralizing so much of the fleet fire apart on eleven
ships is inadvisable when we have to face modern underseat threats. I do like how you it almost almost pre empty by a fan of comment, was he's just making the stuff out of your Head's like, no, here's Here's reference is a through f from history, which found because you only have in your right there there are limited, limited points of reference for modern naval warfare. But there are clear trends that you can see. And I liked what you
brought up about the Royal Navy and the Falcon Islands. I know most of it is still on the high side, but for for those for those that's still I have access to zippernet. If you have the ability to see the classified briefing on the ASW weapon usage of the Royal Navy. It it'll sober you up real fast about what people will drop on what they think is a submarine. It's I think that goes with Mark's comment about this is a great
a great scary story if you read it a certain way. But I wanted to speaking of history learning lessons, I've want to You can't see the future, obviously, but congrat from page fourteen, name dropping to Houthi's because there's
the book's come out. We've ossibly had a few months a very real world experience about what are our ships can do and perhaps what our allies can't do against anti ship cruise missile even probably again I'm just guessing here generation zero or generation one anti ship ballistic missiles and even a new twist of the sub sonic flying lawnmower variety of anti ship drones that we've seen off of Houthie controlled Yemen.
Kind of what are some of your quick look lessons that you've seen so far and how does that bounce off of some of the research what you did for your book. Yeah, great point. Well, like I said, right, I think there's numerous resources we can use to prepare for future combat, but that naval history is the most important of them. And so that's what makes the actions and the Red Sea so interesting and so important to learn from. I don't think that there are any wildly new lessons here, but
reinforcements of lessons we've already learned throughout naval history. And none of this is the comment or judgment on what we've done so far and opinion on what I think we should be doing or anything like that. Right, that's not my place, it's not my purpose here. It's just my attempts to understand the lessons of naval history. And obviously this is very recent naval history. So firstly, I think this whole series event shows the value of the Navy right
throughout its history. It's been very difficult for the Navy to convey to the public the vital functions it performs in peace time functions that the other services largely
cannot do. I mean the Navy enavals, trade shows, flag Grisher's allies, the tourist adversaries, all from powerful and flexible platforms, that they arrived quickly on station with minimal support if they're not there already, and whether that was Ford and hirsch Rich group quickly arriving off Israel after Hamas's attack or the fleet's defense are shipping against attacks. I mean, I think the Navy has excelled in its peace time rule in a way that is more visible and more
understandable to the American public than normal day to day operations. Right, it's difficult to explain to the average citizen why they should care about the writings of Alfred A. Mahan, But it's easy for that average citizen to understand that the Huthis are attacking the ships delivering his Amazon products and that those deliveries are now going to be slower and more expensive, but that the US navyes that see protecting those citizens' deliveries. I think, with a secretary defense needed a
powerful deterrent force. On short notes, he did not turn to the Army Air Force. Right, very capable and pressive forces, but they have huge logistics trains would take weeks or months to arrive. Right, he ordered the fleet to the Eastern Mediterranean instead of weeks of planning and packing and talking and moving in shipping, it just took a few Young's helmsman to shift a few
rudders and reposition the fleet to where the President needed. I think second, I think the last few months showed yet again the value of the aircraft carrier. Right. Like I said before, there's no shit that can match its to turn value or ability to protect power from uncontested sees, the exact two missions that are called for in the region right now, where there's powerful air wing, unmatched endurance and logistics. Right, it was immediately ready to deter
additional attacks on Israel and launch strikes on our adversaries. And I think third, the Houthis attack on shipping and our fleet reinforced that we live in the age of the missile and that tactically offense dominates at sea. Right, I think we like you talked about the you know, I think we agree the Houthis rebels living in the desert are not the most technical, technologically advanced,
or capable adversary and navy as they have faced. But despite those advantages, right, they have had a huge impact on global trade and US Navy operations. And a huge reason for that is because they've been able to use missiles which again cheap, easy to operate, don't require much infrastructure to use, don't require error or maritime superiority, and have a little downside if they fail. And then on the other side, defending against those missiles requires constant divigilance
twenty four to seven, requires advanced censors, very capable interceptors. And then whereas the attacker only needs one missile to get through, the defender has to interceptor avoid every single incoming shot, meaning the attacker always has the advantage at sea. So I think all those sorts of factors informed the conclusions of my book. Right, the defense is very very good. It is the best
defended surface ship in the world. However, in the age of the missile, with the advantage always on the attacker side, with modern trends and scouting weapons technology, and with a very capable adversary, now, I do not think that we should plan for a perfect defense for such a priceless shift, And I think my final takeaway from the action of the Red Sea is that it again demonstrates the carrier's utility for permissive power projection, but offers little evidence
of its sea control or contested power production capabilities. Right, we already know that the carrier excels have been on area strike see Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. Right, that just reinforces what we already know.
I think, however, some people have tried to make the argument that this shows the carrier is still the premier fighting unit C. But the Huthis do not have a navy and they do not have an air force, And I don't think we should confuse the carrier's great success against that irregular force as evidence of the platforms, sea control or contested power production capabilities against the PLA N
or another adversary. Yeah, I think the actually, in terms of your book, it's the d d gs and the whatever, the the International, the French and Italian UH and the Brits in their in their constellation type frigates sort of ships UH that are that are doing a lot of the load of shooting down these things as they're as they're the Hoothies are tossing out as they're on the way. The carrier has been used to trying to It reminds me
of the scud hunts during desert storm. You know, they shoot, they they move and and then you're either blasting empty sand or you're you're if they if the people are smart, they're shooting these things from mosques and other places where if they get hit, they they can can go complain about things.
But I think you're the lesson is well made. I mean the shore based UH group with the with modern technology, which is in this case fairly simple missiles or as Sal says, the uh the uh uh rice Krispy box drones. You know they can do They can do a lot of damage, and
they can do it fairly far out at sea. We've seen in the Black Sea the Ukrainians using uh these uh remote uh uh semi submersible units taking out big chunks of the Russian Navy. So I think there's a lot to be concerned about if you're if you're worried about a giant aircraft carrier, and I think your your book happily points out that it's smaller uh dare we stay at more expendable ships that that may be the way of the future. Helped fight
this kind of thing. Yep, I think, I mean every one of those ships is less survival than a CBN, right, make no mistake. But Ameral Sabrowski had this great quote that I really liked about. It is, you know, fleet survivability, not platform survivability, that matters. And so I think this large distributed fleet that the Navy is already identifying, and I think in many ways working towards I think that is a more survivable option
than one centered on eleven ships, that that we must protect. A couple of items that you talk about in about the middle of your book, that you know, if you want to watch somebody get to flop sweat real fast, when especially if you're all a surpose fleet, if talk about unlocated submarine
are all of a sudden you find yourself in a minefield. Again, these are threats that have been with us for a century, but especially at the end of the Cold War, and I really look at mine warfare in this regard, but also anti submarine warfare is there's been a lot of assumptions about what can be done from the air and on the surface to try to counter both of these threats. So when you're looking at, you know, a proposed fleet for twenty forty, mine, what are some of the critical capabilities
of vulnerabilities that you see from these two old scourges of the skimmers. That's uh, your unknown submarine and your minds. Sure yeah so uh, but I forget who I actually quote in the book. But you know, ASW it is a team sport, right, it requires lots of platforms searching for a submarine. And so we have chosen as a navy to build exquisite platforms. And you know that's obviously an understandable decision, and those are great ships.
The unintended consequence of that is we have a smaller you know, we have fewer ships than what we would like. We do not have a huge fleet inventor because because we chose those exquisite ships, and so I think to
effectively do anti submarine warfare, you need lots of platform searching. So that's what I tried to do in this in the flex fleet contract, right, So uh, increase the number of consolation class forgets that we're playing on building, and then adding more, adding some ASW caability to some of these core vettes and just spreading the field as much as possible to find some merge threats before they're able to attack us. And then also that it's much of the
flex fleet structure sort of acknowledges that we are going to take losses, and so it tries to prepare for that eventuality, and it does that by spreading out the capabilities to more ships. And so when those summarines do have an impact and they do sink a ship, it is not catastrophic and it is not fundamentally changed the power of that fleet. It is still painful and it
still has the impact, but the fleet overall can continue to fight. I think if anything overall when trying to get across in this book is that the fleet metrics matter. Right, So there is no ship that's going to compete with a fore class, and there's no class to ship that's going to complete compete with a fore class. Right. It is is very very powerful,
and nothing on a one to one comparison is going to beat it. But I think there are fleet structures that can compete with the carrier centric model UH, and they can do even better than our already impressive fleet in our various mission areas, including anti summary and warfare as you talked about, or in minds as well. Right, so no one wants to talk about minds. Uh, they're boring. I don't want to talk about minds. But they're they're going to have a huge you know, they could have a huge impact
because again they're they're cheap, they're easy. And then, uh, if you have a very very powerful ship and then you've lost it to just a
few minds, I mean that that is that's a painful day. Yeah, I want to go back to the the cond I think a really excellent point you made in the book about these uh you call them the brass missile ships, and and the effect of those is you would load up a ship with with a lot of the vertical Laune cells and it would it would expend those aiming at things, picked up my DGGs and other assets, and but when they empty, they would just go back and reload and another one would take
their place. Talk a little bit about that concept and why why that's a benefit to the navy and be able to keep as front line ships on the line rather than how to go back there are yep, yep. So the idea is again trying to keep things technologically simple. And so I know, you know, the Navy's working very very hard on figuring out how to reload
VLS at C and I have no doubt that we will get there. But I try to go the simple route instead of trying to figure out how to do that at THEE, I just said, let's just replace the entire VLS
bank. And so if you're going to if a DDG shoots all of its missiles and has to go back to port, that is painful for the fleet, right because DDG is very very capable, and we lose all sorts of capabilities, right, and oli Burke is much more than just its missile cells, right, great radar and sonar and command control and all sorts of things like that. And so but it's you know this arsenal shit that we're talking about, and that can be a merchant ship or I mean, we have
some unmanned platforms that are working toward that. When that ship leaves, well we really just lose its empty missile cells, so it's not a big impact. And so that lets more capable ships like DDGs stay at sea and do great things, and then you can just cycle out these much cheaper ships that
are really just just AMO ships. And so again that lets the Navy's most capable platforms do what they do best and keep all the ddg's many impressive capabilities at sea and then but at the same time gets a lot more missiles into the fleet. A lot of issues. I have a little little diddy alleys try to I try to say to people who who kind of get fidgety when you talk about change, is like, hey, I understand, change is different. Different is scary, scary as bad, So let's not do anything
different. And when you look at our wonderfully complex acquisition system that we've imposed on ourselves and our two year election cycles, those are the two things that really popped on my mind. On a quote that you have, and I'm going to steal this and use it for future use, Jeff, so please please don't sue me for it, but I'll do a look, I'll quote
you to yourself for the listeners who haven't gotten to page seventy yet. Quote changing a baseball team are any fleet structure can be difficult and temporarily expensive unquote. And that second part, the temporarily expensive, I don't think we have the muscle memory we being the navy side, or really any military side of
the equation. Our senior leadership on the civilian, the milit terry side, and even the navalist influencers out in the civilian sectors have good muscle memory on how to discuss about temporarily expensive especially inside of a palm cycle, to get gains at year five, six seven. Because there's also a history of people
over promising and under delivery about savings. What are some of the ideas that you have, besides some of the hard math that you'd have demonstrated your book, that could could help people to start to do that message about how change does have some initial costs but that investment really pays off down the road,
because that's a hard cell. Definitely. Yeah, there are many problems with my book that people could point out and they would be right, And one of them is that I don't really delve into details of like short term you know what you're talking about, short term how to get small wins and start shit this evolution. Right, I say, well, here we are, and thirty years ago or thirty years from now, this is where we should
be, and someone smarter than me, let's figure out the middle. But a lot of it is, you know, maybe similar to what the Marine Corps did right they before they you know, it's not like we're just kind of now, it's like, hey, we're done building carriers. The end right A ton would have to change and that means we would have to think
about a lot of this before we started doing something like that. And I don't know, like I said earlier in the show, I think it would be more you know, lots of organizations are needed, we have to earn their buy in, But I think the Navy would have to lead that.
And so just like the Marines did lots of thinking and experimentating or experimentation and things along those lines for a force designed twenty thirty, I think the Navy would have to do the same before it committed to shifting away from the carrier centric fleet. And I think, you know, obviously Navy has thought about it for a long time, and you know, lots of smarter people than me are already thinking about that and coming up with ways to slowly move us
in that direction. And you know, you're seeing some of these the smaller you know, we've got Consolation Class, right, which is it's not a small ship, but it is a smaller ship than what we've had in the past. And then you know, we've seen advances in hypersonic weapons, and we've seen advances in some of the unmanned platforms. I think all those things give the NATIVS leadership options to go to if we decide that it is that we've reached the end of the age of the CBN. Yeah, I want
to. I want to. We're getting close to the end. But I wanted to kind of have you discuss the the inertia that you foresee and using using the Marine Corps and General Burger's vision of where the Marine Corps is going to move, how does the Navy overcome well, the various because I shall shall I say conservative groups that do not want to change. I think that this is the best of all possible world yep. I think I think it starts with an apera we have. We can't it can't just be like,
oh, the carriage are vulnerable and should stop building it, right. We have to have a better answer, And like I said, the care centric fleet is very very good, so we would have to come up with something even better if we're going to do that to earn all those people as buy
ins all those organizations buy in. I don't. I'm an optimist and that I don't believe that there's some like a nefarious group that's gonna, you know, stop this, Like, yes, it'll be it'll be extremely difficult, right, I mean, presidents has tried to end the carrier and Secretaries of Defense everything and they have not succated. So yes, I got it. It'll be very, very difficult, but we've done it before. Right.
There's a story of obstructionist battleship admirals leaning up to World War Two and that
they stopped all innovation things like that, but that is a myth. I mean, in reality, the Navy made great progress developing the oily aviation because of UH leaders like Admirals William Moffett and William Simms and and Eli that we talked about earlier in the show, and so you know, they did all they developed new aircraft in new ways of fighting, and new training systems, and so that when a mission came along that required naval aviation seek control against
the Imperial Japanese Navy, the US Navy was from the most part ready because of their pioneering work. And so I think bottom line rate the Navy's leadership has done before, and I have no doubt that whenever they decide that it is time to shift, that they'd be able to do again. It would be very, very difficult, yes, but I think possible and I think necessary. Well, Jeff, like Mark said, you know, we're coming near the end of the hour and you still got a legit day job.
We're in the uniform, so I know you're a busy guy. And this was obviously a heck of a lot of work and research. Like I started the show with extensive notes and index. It can help the listener if they want to dive into a topic or two a little bit further. But if our if our listeners want to keep an eyeball on you on what your what's your thoughts and what you're focused on, where's a good place for him to go? And are you working on anything else? As a follow one?
Uh yeah, to find me, I mean, it turns out there's not too many Jeff Vanden angles out there, so be easy enough to find, you know, all that normal social media and such. And then as far as future projects, uh yeah, I mean I was trying to work on something, but you know, so hopefully earn a spot back in proceedings or simsect or somewhere along those lines in the future. But but no, thank you very much gentlemen for having me on. Well, it's been great,
and you're highly recommend that people read your book. It is. It is well laid out, very logical, and if you care about national defenses and navy issues, it'll probably scare it the socks off here and if you play, yeah, just in time for twenty twenty four Halloween. If folks haven't gotten, they can get ready. But thanks again, Jeff, and really appreciate you taking time to join us today. And thank you very much everybody
else for joining us for another audition of mid Rats. And until next time, we hope y'all have a great Navy day. Cheers, replied Paddy. Mike my loney wants to marry me and all leave a friend of becdily for you being to blame for love hold me, said, folding all the tame. It's a long way. It's a long way, a long Peeving again, moms, you've got a lot on your mind. Packing a lunch shouldn't be stressful. Fresh from Florida dot Com can help. They have plenty of
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