Episode 678: January Free For All

Welcome to mid Rats with foul 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 welcome aboard everybody. I am the aforementioned sal and congratulations on joining us for an end of January free for all. That's right, Mark and I. We do not have any guests today. It's just the

two of us. We're going to be looking not just the waterfront, but maybe a few things assure those things that are breaking above the background noise and the national security arena, and as we like to do with our free for all formats, if you're with us Live, if you go ahead and go to the bottom of the show page, that's where you will find the chat

room. We've already got some folks there standing by, and if you have some observations you'd like to share during the course of the show, or if there's a question you would like to ask the two of us, that's a great place to put it in there and we'll jump right on it when it comes in. And as always, if you're with Us Live, you look at the top of the show page, there is the studio number. If you're feeling brave and want to give us a call, you can call us

there too. But besides that, good afternoon, my illustrious co host. How you doing today. I'm doing well, sal Thank you for asking. Well, it's we were doing a little bit of a pre show here that and starting the show caught up with us. But that's life. That's a live show for for the what it's worth. But we were talking about, you know, some of the things to talk about today. It's like, you know, where do you Where do you start? There's so much going

on, and we've we've had some dedicated shows on various topics. But I guess one thing to start with if you look, if you look at the four areas that are absorbing most of the the digital print, so to speak, in this arena, it's the ongoing, going on year three almost of the Russia Ukrainian War, Europe's response to that. We have the Hamas Israel conflict that is going on since the seventh of October, and what started as part of that. But I think it's fair to say is evolving, if

it's not already into a separate challenge. That's the war on shipping emanating from Iran and her proxies. And of course there's everything going on in westpac with Taiwan that continues to evolve. And I guess for those that are joining us live, they've probably been soaking in the news of the day and the latest news of the day. I'll just use a reference point Christina Long, who does a really good job making sure that the numbers are right. She put

out today. I think it's right because the dd spokesman said there were more than one hundred and sixty one. The way Christina's numbers are looking at is US forces mostly in Syria and Iraq, but also as we'll talk about here in a second, and other places. Since the hamas Is Real war kicked off at the end of the first week in October, there have been one hundred and seventy attacks on Americans, twenty five injured, one critically injured.

There's been quite a few that they haven't given this number that has suffered from TVI, which when you're being attacked by missiles, those are big explosions that'll knock your that'll knock your bel for a bit. And today at a place called Tower twenty two, which is in the northeast corner of Jordan, near where Iraq, Syria and Jordan come together as a place called Tower twenty two

that I believe is at least partially staffed by California National Guardsmen. But we had three people killed in an attack in the last twenty four hours and a lot of people and I think some are our prior guests. We just mentioned the fact that it was just a matter of time that whether you're ashore or at our ships at sea, that when the enemy launches a bunch of stuff at your regardless of how dumb or primitive it is, you've got to be

right every time. They only need to be right once. And it looks like they finally hit what they've been naming at for a while. Yeah,

And I mean, i don't want anybody to die foolishly. And I'm not sure what these guys were doing where they are, but you know, I think somebody on on x formerly Twitter, I think you have to say that, right, you have to say formerly Twitter now all the time I think pointed out that the one of the problems with fighting off these missile attacks that have been taking place in the Red Sea is that and just exactly what you

said. What our guests last week said, is it. You know, you're if you're playing defense, you have to be right all the time. Just what you said. You have to be right all the time. And if if the Hooties succeed on hitting the US Navy ship with one of their whatever, however primitive or however sophisticated weapons they have, that's a major, major victory for them. And we just have to be really conscious of the fact that our guys are engaging in in war, whether we call it war

or escorting UH tankers and other vessels through the Red Sea. This is this is the real thing now. And and I don't know how long the US can sit by and watch people being shot at, wounded, injured, killed, and expending vast sums of money really every missile we shoot U and the Brits are doing it too, UH to defend merchant shipping without some kind of declaration that we're going to go after the people behind all this. And we

all know who those people are. They're they're the Iranians, And you know, are we going to do anything about it? Are we going to continue to pretend like like this is just the hohoth. He's doing this all by themselves. And obviously whatever we've done right now, it's h there's no deterring here, there's just punishing. Uh there. How you get from punishment to

deterrent I don't know. But if you don't want them to keep shooting others, you have to degrade their capability, which is finding out where their weapons are swored, and you have to stop new weapons from getting to them. And nobody's used the b word blockade to actually do a blockade. And there have been a few people who have been talking about a new approach to Iran and things that now that we have Americans dead, that they're going to have

to do. I don't know. Secretary of State Lincoln and the National Security of Buyers are Sullivan. They've kind of made their career back to the Obama days on finding a way to get whatever that secret sauce they're trying to get out of the Iranians to do that. Could the President administration change to a little more robust structure against at least Iranian's proxies, Absolutely it can't. I just don't know whether the Blinking and Sullivant team will are the right people to

make that pivot. I'm sure there are people in the Biden administration who would like to make that pivot, but they're not the ones making the decisions right now. I guess if directed to, they would, But I don't see how you get through that wall of the people that they've put in positions that really really believe that a rough pro small, as the fancy people say, with Iran as the best way to prevent them from getting nuclear weapons and to

create other positive effects down the road. I don't agree with them, but it's a position. I have a feeling, at least from the outside, they're going to get additional pressure to tighten things down. And yes, the three individuals killed were not killed by the Huthi, but they're all Iranian proxies. One thing that I think we need to be careful about, and at least under the president ministration. I don't think this is going to be an

option, but you never know is going feet dry over Iran. That's that's not a step I think anybody wants to take. I don't think we're there yet. We got lots of proxies to go through, and there are things that we can do before getting too much feet dry in Iran, like the one thing that I saw today, and I'm sure there's there's some good intel

also that has the truth on that is. I'd encourage the listeners if they're not aware of it, Glenn, google Shaheed, bog Harry, that's b A g h e R. Why there also had another ship Shaihed something else I can't pronounce, and I can't read my writing, so I don't want to spell it out to you, but bog Harry, we'll get you there. What they've done is actually something that we've talked about us doing, but we haven't converted a couple of their merchant ships into a smooth version, a

modernized version of what the Atlantic Conveyor would have done. It's a helicopter and a drone carrier that is actually not part of the Iranian Navy properst Iranian Iranian

Revolutionary Guard Core Navy. Before once we get through clawing through some of their proxies, I think those platforms that again a smart intel guy could probably tell us, and I think it's probably true may have been involved in, if not intel gathering for the Huthis, but maybe some of those mysterious drone strikes on ships off of Omon between Oman and Pakistan might have originated from there. Those would the interesting things to have them no longer be seaworthy. I guess

it'd be applied way of saying it. Yeah, you know, I don't really want anybody to go to war with or Rant. I just want a Ran to stop doing what they're doing. And if you know, if sometimes you don't want to do what you have to do, and I think that

this is becoming that point. We cannot allow this type of behavior. I mean, it's bad enough that this is revealing what we all know anyway, that ships that are fairly close to shore are going to be subject to can be subject to missile attacks, and they don't have to be sophisticated weapons systems

to go after those ships. We saw it with the Israelis when they somebody fired what appairs to the Chinese c A oh two missile look that there that their ship had kind of missed, uh, the the Israeli ship and hammered a merchant ship further out. I think did some damage to the to the Israeli ship. But uh, you know, this is this is something that we keep talking about and and we can't. We can't bring you know, we have to be really careful about bringing our carriers too close to the shore.

They make great targets. We can't. We have to be We are betting that the the d d G s we have can continue to fend off the the attacks. And you know, the I'm always reminded of the of the of the the scene in in uh Red Storm Rising, where you know, after you've fend fended off a whole bunch of of attacks and the next wave comes and you're you've already gone Winchester. So, uh, it's a

problem we've got. You know, we have limited uh magazine capacity on those on the ships that are out there, and if you know, that is a concern. I guess we can keep rotating ships in and out, but we better have a better way of a good way of re arming those things. And I'm not sure can't be done at sea. So I know they're trying to work on that, but these are challenges that we need to face up to and deal with. So far, we've been lucky and very good.

I got to commend the crews of all the ships involved that they've been able to do such a good job fighting, fighting, the fighting down these drones and missiles and ballistic missiles and all that. And you know, the the air crews from the carrier that have been engaging in the modern the day's version of the scud hunt, trying to find the launchers and and equipment to the Hoothies. They've apparently taken out quite a few of them. But you

know, I'm wondering how fast the Hoothies can recycle their equipment. How much stuff did a rant actually give these cloths? Yeah, how many doll does it take to replenish it. That's where that some type of blockade against the Hooti coast. I don't know how much they're able to smuggle in overland, but as any logistics guy can tell you, when you've got to move heavy things in volume, it's got to be done by sea. You can only

do so much by ashore unless you're using rails. And this is something heck, you know, we're going into our fourteenth year here. We've been talking about this for over a decade, but this is another data point that popped into my mind while you were speaking a couple of minutes ago. Small conflicts give you big hints about what you need to focus on for the next war.

And if you look at modern warship design, it's was there a threat from the air, Yeah, there was, besides planning for the you know REDGI size backfire attacks in the in the North Atlantic, which is what the good old Tom Kak at the F four before was supposed to bleed them out before they came in. And then we got our ages ships to do that. But one looking at consistent volume of fire that would become an inbound And so if we are reaching a time we're even fourth tier competitors, our hostile

forces can flood the air with things. How does that? How does that make us think about not just the designs of our ships, but when you look at our and again I'm going to channel John Conrad here, who's going to defend all of our merchant vessels that we're going to be relying on going

going west? And you know, take a snapshot of what the Houthis and the Iranians are doing right now and put five more years of R and D and production and modifications on top of that, and what are you looking at in twenty twenty nine that could be very very interesting, Like what you're looking at in nineteen thirty six versus what you're looking at in nineteen forty one,

because we're not the only ones that are looking at it. Anybody who was looking at trying to make access to the seas either unaffordable or ineffective or inefficient. The flying lawnmowers still need to be shot down, and if they're mixed in with higher capable assets as well, it really can run through what ships

do you have out the escort there? And that's what people with fleet design need to do, not just in the US but in other nations, is look at the ships you're presently building and ask yourself, is this really designed for what we think is coming that we need to modify it, maybe do another flight, or was this all based upon theory that didn't quite plan out like we thought. Yeah, it's a good question, I think. You know, you go back in history and you look at the effect the first

torpedo boats had on ship design. You know, you begin to get these huge battleships and stuff with those with those torpedo blisters and all that kind of stuff. You know, do do you change your design to meet the flying lawnmower? You change to meet the heavier threat. You know, I don't

know. I think you know, we're relying on technology, to modern technology to beat weapons that are pretty basically pretty simple and apparently, uh, you know, we're good at it, but there is always that risk that we're not. You know, all it takes is one and you know it would be somebody pointed out in the chat room. You know, the C and N effect is is in place we lost We've already lost. We lose three guys in the in the in Jordan, and we lose two seals trying to

board a dow uh which was apparently transporting weapons to the hoof. He's so you know, this is not this is not this is war. I mean, I don't you know, you can call it whatever they want, but this is this is war. I mean, somebody's somebody's interfering with your ability to do whatever is you want to do. That that is that becomes more than just a nuisance that that's that's that's what we used to call war. I don't know, I don't know what goes in the minds of the administration

when they're dealing with this. You know, are were going to send another strong letter to the to the Iranians, they don't do this, or well, well, this time we really need it. I mean, I remember a number of red lines we were drawing the in the sand. If if X happened, you know, we were going to really really do something, and nothing ever panned out in those cases. I do think it's kind of refreshing, and you and I are old enough that we can remember such a

time. I think what's been interesting is what's been lacking in any of the conversation about what's going on here is the United Nations, Uh, the United The only thing you're really reading about the United States right now is how they're the schools that they had in Gaza were just terrorist training camp. So if that that part of the post war dream, I mean, it died a long time ago. I saw it die in Afghanistan when it was just ridiculous.

But I think that it's not only dead, it's been it's been dug up, gibbeted, stabbed again, and they're being left out there. So they're they're do we return back to the era that the nobody's gonna look at the U n to to do anything except maybe after the fact, individual nations and their friends are just going to have to step forward and do something.

And going back to the ship design bit for a second. I got to give him credit and Trent Tellenko, who I joined with John Conrad on one of John's spaces over on X. But he had me thinking this weekend, which is always appreciated, is he made a point about again fourth rate Yemen power has everybody thinking about what was once literally science fiction conjecture anti ship ballistic missiles. And we can assume that what they're using is you know, Mod

zero generation zero. I mean, these are not advanced anti ship ballistic missiles, but the stream bags that we threw off the front of a cruiser within a couple of decades was the Battle of Way, So these things can advance pretty fast. And he made a good point that if you have your major your major ships, which for most of our allies is a frigate. But

let's just go ahead and draw a line. You know, your seven thousand ton frigate north, if it doesn't have anti ship ballistic missile capability, you know, can it really defend itself? Can you know? If you have a purpose built like it's an issuing quote. Maybe I'll bring up later about the the Australia's Hunter class frigates come on board. We're supposed to be anti submarine warfare frigates. But when you are a small navy, you only have

a few units. They've got to be ready to dance at the party they get invited to. They're not able to pick the dj and the dance floor. They're not big enough to do that. So if you have one of those ships seven thousand tons or higher, are you really building it for what you're being hinted is the threat that you're probably going to face, or one of the streats you're going to face, or are you trying to just design a ship for what best fits the vignette personality at the moment decided was their

preferred war they would like to fight. Had me thinking a lot about that. Miniaturization is great. The modern version of AEGIS and other radars are pretty darn impressive. Mark forty one vls, Mark fifty seven vls. The advances we've made in the standard missiles recently official pressler allies is impressive. But is it impressive amount to be able to answer that in the affirmative here in five

to ten years? I don't know, But if you've got the ballistic missile, which technology that's not the expensive part and the fancy part, that's the seeker head. If you get the right technology and the right programming and the right seeker heads, you can make a lot of old dumb missiles be very,

very capable and precision targets. That I think, uh is one of those again little hints that we're getting right now to think about that is either fascinating or terrifying, depend upon which end of the rocket you're sitting on. Yeah. Boy, something you said just just reminded me of of again historical lesson, and then that thought flashed and disappeared. I'll come back to it probably, Yeah, I think I think the concern is that that if and

I think you and I have discussed this at some point. You know, if you have stealth ships, stealthy ships, the way to defeat those is you don't have to use radar. You put your like the Chinese, you put your militia out watching, watching the water, and the militia phones in it says hey we got a I got a US D d G sitting out

here, you know, and and gives the coordinates. That's how you beat stealth and and that's how you also don't give away the position of your of your of your radars and all that stuff that we would normally try and take out, uh, so we could do whatever we want to do. The the the issue I have and one and we've noticed. I know that sand de Cardliano is has noted there's a Iranian merchant d quote ship that is drifted along in or out of the Red Sea and uh seems to be providing information

to the hooties about what possible targets are. You know, then that is the poor man's uh sophisticated satellite system and everything else. You know, you just you throw a boat out there, and you put some people in it and and they call it in and I just you know, we we sometimes get too carried away with technology and not think in practical terms of you know, how do we defeat an enemy who is who is sophisticated enough to have the missiles, but not too proud to put two guys in a rowboat doing

their spotting for them? Yeah, I think you're you're exactly right. And how do you how do you counter that? You can't jam that, especially with all the different connectivity going hither and yon uh and war knows anybody that's done tracking up and down the Red Sea. You can't stop everyone to look at everything. And you also have the cold hard fact a lot of our

listeners here have have done a Suez transit. As you're doing a Suez Change transit, you're looking up and waving at people in their in their apartments as you as you go down towards the Great Bitter Lake. One of those people just has to be paid aid. You know about whatever it is a thousand Egyptian pounds a month to report every ship that goes by. It's not doesn't have to be a sophisticated intel gathering when you really have such a relatively small

body of water, it's really not that big, but it is. And a lot of folks have made this point. When you look at the impact on the global economy, you look at the expenditure of not not too limited, but fairly limited number of precision weapons that you know, you're likely said if you don't you can laugh at everybody laughs at the flying lawnmower until it impacts your bridge and explodes. Then it's not funny anymore. Everyone has to

be taken down. It's uh, it's amazing the the cost to affects ratio that the Huthis and the Iranians are able to execute here on a global scale. You got to tip your hat to them. They given the deck of cards that they have and the resources they have, they're doing a damn good job. We could learn a few things from them, I think, yeah. And one of those things is to identify, and which they've done successfully, identify where your weak links are and your opponent. And if the weak

link is the the need to have have open seas. Uh, you know, the the Iranians, the Chinese, they're all you know, they're both probably the North Koreans for that. They're all interested in shutting down open seas. And what does that do to the world economy? They don't really care. I mean, if you're the North Koreans, you've got no world economy anyway. And the Iranians, you know, they're You're sitting on oil, so they think they'll always have something going. But you know, it's all

the chuck points. We've how many times over the last fourteen years, and we discussed choke points. So I think it's probably it's probably at least four or five times a year. So you know, it's that's the key, and I think anybody who gets a chance, and nowadays you can just google it. Look at the old maps of the British Empire at its height. It wasn't created by accident. And whether you're talking about you know, Yemen

used to be a British protectorate, UAE. The various emirates there had agreements with the Brits, Singapore, Sri Lanka, South Africa, I mean even British Guiana controlling the Great Circle route coming out of Brazil to Europe, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada for that matter. Uh, it's you look at look at wherever the British Empire used to be, and then overlap where the Chinese Belton Road is also looking at going to Uh. There's overlap there for a

reason. And one of them is what we've been talking about now is access into and out of the Red Sea and also the Persian Gulf, which we also saw last week. Something that we mentioned with one of our guests here a few weeks ago that everybody's looking for, you know, where are the Indians? And I forget the name of the ship when I stopped talking here. I'll look over at sal Moncagliano's TL and dig up the name. But there was a strike on a tanker that caught fire, and my memory served

me right. It was the French and the Indians that were helping out. I think the US may have helped out too, But the Indians actually put one of their firefighting teams aboard the ship, and it wasn't an Indian flagship. That wasn't an Indian I think the crew was all Indian and Bangladeshi. If memberships the right, so the Indians have have shown the flag, so to speak. They're not They're not shooting down drones or anything. But when you consider how oh, no, if hesitant is the right word, perhaps

prudent is a better word. I'll let an Indian expert explain it to me. But they they haven't been above the fold and news in the area. But good on the Indian Navy. Uh. They belong on the white hat team as opposed to the gray hat team that they seem to be more comfortable playing in. Yeah, the USS Carney was involved in helping to put that fire out. The French frigate alsas and the Indian navy frigate visa kaf but they speak English and idiot, but they name their ships and whatever the other

languages. Yeah, so uh yeah, I mean that's that's the way it's supposed to work. Cooperation at sea, we lend a hand. He noticed that the somebody has been trying to reavbilitate the Chinese recently and saying that they h and I guess the US has asked them to participate in the Red Sea escorting. And then other people went, well, you know, the Chinese are losing lots of money too because they're they're having the people, they're losing

business, they're losing the revenue from the transportation to Europe. Blah blah blah. I don't you know, I don't see them really helping out a whole lot now. They're they're they're free riding to a certain extent, and I think they are also fairly risk adverse. They've, for instance, they're they've been involved in counter piracy for a very long time off of the Horn of Africa. And you know, Claude bear Bay has done a great job documenting

the number of flotillas they sit out there and come back. They don't do a lot, though they're mostly using this as an opportunity. For instance, they're building a carrier capable pier in Djibouti. They are able to collect a lot of intel on how we and other navies operate, including the Japanese and I think the Indians have been there. I think the Brazilians might actually be

commanding it right now. So they're able to steal ideas, see how other people operate, gather intel, but they're not willing to step forward and actually do something that other nations are at least partially doing. It's like the National Caveats List for the People's Republic of China is just no. They're just they're here doing their own thing for their own reasons. I guess in some ways you can respect that. For anybody to call them a responsible player on the

international scene, this just underlies the fact that they're not. Yeah, they've invested heavily in this and I'm here somewhere. They've invested heavily, and they've invested heavily in choke points. You know, they they have a different way of doing things than than we think about. So they've got a base in Djibouti, they've got stuff they've developed in the Suez Canal area, in the Red Sea investments with Egypt. They you know, they have a big interest

in the Panama Canal. They've got you know, they they they are taking care and they've you know, they're looking at the animal islands. They're trying to figure out how to get eliminate their choke points as much as they can. So you know, the the Chinese and the Indians are at at the

loggerheads and some of the animal islands. You know, they think they count that Singapore will somehow not participate in trying to shut off the stray of Malacca if if if the if they if the Chinese do something, But I'm not sure how they know that. You know, they they they really want Taiwan not I mean for a variety reasons, but not the least of which is

that opens up the first island chain for them. They don't have to try and go through straits they're contested, and you know, their their situation is such that they are looking out and probably the same thing that the Brits did, as you point out, I mean when the Brits had aid and they also had a partial ownership of the Suez Canal through some various companies until Nasser

nationalized the Suez Canal back in nineteen fifty six. I think it was you know, they they they can understand how things work, and and yet we're fumbling along. Am I am totally astonished at the Biden administration's decision not to develop the LNG port that would allow us to provide Europe with natural gas products, that would that would wean them from the the need to play with the Russians. And I just I'm was just stunned by that. I when I

first read that, I was like, oh, somebody's misinterpreted something. Somebody this is, you know, a bad headline writer. And after I read a couple of things that just he only gets mad about things so often. I from not just an energy point of view, but as you as you mentioned they are obliquely from a strategic point of view. It makes absolutely zero sense. The Europeans are going to have to get that natural gas from somebody.

So do we want to have expanded commercial ties with our European allies or do we want them once again to get in bed with parties that may not share our view And money gets you influenced people return your phone calls, and your ability to keep your citizens warm at winter time at an affordable price gets you even more attention. So who who does that? Who does that send power to cutter Russia? I don't I don't see any any nice, friendly

people there that are willing to do that. And uh, it's the wrong People are making decisions for the wrong reasons as a rack and stack their priorities. That's just not the priority. I you know, elections have consequences. That's international energy, economic slash diplomacy slash national security interlacing. That's just not one of the priorities. Yeah, well it's one of the it's the priority, but it's a different priority that makes that makes sense in the in the

greater scheme of strategic in the bigger strategic game. And you know, so they in order to in order to pander to uh part of the you know, I guess a big part of the Democrat Party. I don't know how big the ecological loonies are in that, but you know, in order to pander them, he's going to do this thing. And and and I don't think he or people who are close to him have you know, sat down and really weighed the consequences of this, and that that's what troubles me more

than anything. It's like, you know, some kid kid goes, oh, you know this is really bad for the environment, and they immediately respond by, well, then we'll shut it down. And that's just that's not the way theoretically, since they're now the adults in the room, that's not the way adults usually act. Now. It's it's and energy has to be created in order to have people be housed, fed, and work, and those energies, those kill a lots are going to come from some place,

and it's not natural gas. It's going to be coal. That's really another option some nation. There's a couple of nuclear reactors coming online here and there, but nothing to meet the demand. And there's been a rightfully good investment in using natural gas as a source of energy because it's actually relatively clean for

a quote fossil fuel unquote. Coal is not. Our friends in West Virginia would it would love for the price of coal to go up a fair bit, as of the folks in Kentucky. But it's I I don't see a good explanation anywhere. If you if any of the listeners out there. I've seen a good explainer why this is a good thing for the US or anybody else, Please let me know. But again it goes to ideology trumping reason,

which I think is what we're looking at. Is you have certain constituencies that poort you for doing why and this has probably got something to do with that. It's you know, nothing, everything is a compromise. Everything is a trade off, and that's just what we're going to have to see what effects this has at some point down the road. But after the experience with the Russian natural gas, I just can't believe that. Well. I also

can't believe what's happened to our strategic petroleum reserve. But it's it's been depleted for by the same people for the same lack of again, its priorities.

What can I trade? Can I tra maid all of this low priority item that I don't understand or care about for a return on unrelated items that are higher up on my constituency's priority lists When you do the math that way, because sadly, not everybody, not everybody agrees with our priority list, I think that's where you get those disconnects, and at some point down the road, you'll have enough negative consequences that somebody else have to come by and clean

it up or repair it as best as possible. Well, when I was in the well business in Texas, there was a period of time when we spoke a lot about letting the Yankees freeze in the dark. And you know, apparently the Biden administration has decided they're going to let the Europeans freeze in the dark and see how that goes. I don't, you know, I just don't get it. And it's not I'm inside probably I'm going to end

on this. It is not how you treat your friends. You know, you don't promise them that you're going to be there for them and then you and then you turn around and walk off, leaving them pulling the bag, so to speak. That's right, kind of rolling back a bit. Speaking of friends, I've been looking for I have a dedicated like I'm gonna look at nothing but this for the next hour. But I've been trying to find

an answer. Of all the nations you think would be really interested in having a presence and promoting security in the Indian Ocean, it would be the Australians, But they don't have a big navy. They can only pick out a few things to do, and they do have a leftist center government right now, but I don't think of this arena that really plays into it. Who

knows. I'm not an Australian political expert, but when you're looking at at designing ships that we've talked about a lot here, the newest Australian it's a variation of the new British frigate that's coming on board the Type twenty six.

They're calling it the Hunter Class and it was originally kind of like we talked about before earlier in the show about what you think you're going to need, advice, what reality tells you you need and when you are these little navies, like relatively small navies, but what units they have are capable like the Australians is when you're invited to the party, you know, do you actually have the right kit to show up and contribute And a lot of times you

can get We have this problem and we've talked about the submarine threat many times through the years, and it is a serious threat and it's kind of a dark art and to itself, and it's helpful to have platforms that are very very good at it, and the Australians the side of their Type twenty six was going to be at asw focused frigate. Okay, that's great. There

are a lot of compromises with it. But interestingly, other people in Australia are looking at what's happened recently and are kind of raising their hands and going, excuse me, excuse me, because the ship is now looking to displace about ten thousand tons, which is more than a flight three Arly Burt, which I think I know a flight two A is a little somewhere north of

nine thousand tons, but there's ten thousand tons. Those originally even planned to be eighty eight hundred tons, So their one hundred class frigates are what we would call destroyer. But it doesn't have because of what they wanted to do for anti submary warfare. They don't have very many VLS cells. And there's this one thing in Defense News by Nigel Pittaway that I just wanted to quote

here for a second. This is from the article Here we go. I want to do a little bit longer than before, because it's our show. We have plenty of times quote VLS cells has become a convenient proxy to assess the combat power of warships. By this standard, the Hunter class for against thirty two vlsls fall short of other warships of similar size. Heller total defense is The critics case is that the Hunter is a very poor value for money

for such a small number of cells and the resultant combat capability. But it is more complex of an issue than simply numbers. He added, vls cells are used primarily for air defense missiles and then land strike missiles. The primary role of the Hunter is ASW antisubmary warfare. So does it need more than thirty two cells? But the primary role of the Hunter is ASW Why did the Department of Defense require significant design changes that are primarily about enhancing anti air

defense capabilities? Unot What that just screens out to me is so body is just really blinkered not realizing that you're not You might not be interested in the air threat, but if you're out there doing a sw within range that air

threats can be very interested in you. Yeah, that's right, and but you know that the other side of this is that uh and I'm pleased to see that that the NAFCY people, the Rapid Development Group there now has been working with these autonomous UH vessels and Ranger and whatever the other one is. You know, they've begun to arm those things. They put some this is I know, so does sound like I'm talking to the same thing you're talking

about. But they've they're putting U s M six's and some of these army long range missiles on those autonomous boats. And you're thinking, well, okay, that's great because the you know, it is a way to get more missiles on seen create more targets for the bad guys to deal with. And if you if you do enough of that, if you put enough of those out there, then then you can use a vessel like the like the you

know, what are your concerns that are protecting that kind of fleet? And this is where the maybe the maybe the Aussies are right, well, we have to worry about the submarine threat, somebody spying on where your command ship is, and then the other threat would be somebody from the air. So maybe maybe there's a there's a method to their madness, but I can't guarantee it. I want to channel my ener Jerry Hendrix here when you're you're mentioning that, well, may he clicked in mind. Is is two things.

And again I remain an opt optimistic skeptic when it comes to unmanned systems,

mostly because of getting we have to get the engineering right. But I could definitely see when you marry the air side of the house is what do they call it, the loyal wingman concept where you have the man platform and then you have some unmanned ones that are with them with This is where Vy Jerry Hendrick come out the I think he's a big fan of the Honor Harrington series where it was a science fiction where they actually have you know, space missile

barges that if you had you two you're a big fan as well. If you have your Hunter class asw frigate, who's going to be going into a hostile environment. Or let's say you know you've already got your first three holes in the wire in the water eight years from now, and instead of everybody having generation zero or Generation one anti ship palllistic missiles, there's now generation three

and four out there. You need more anti ballistic missile capability. Well, we've already demonstrated the fact that we've mastered the quad packed missiles and the armored box launchers. You can have your hunter out there with their laurel wingman on either side of them that have a dozen each dedicated anti aircraft anti blist missile missiles that they have the right. I think the issue is they can have

the right radars, just not have enough BLS tubes. So there's your augment, there's your use of as long as you can stop it from being a leaky electronic warparor target. That's something that in the unmanned systems, I think at least in the near or the medium term. That's what I would really like to see is everybody, including you know, Brian McGrath, has been on here yelling about we just have enough blsls. We can only build arly

Burke so fast. But let's go back to our Iranian not so much friends, where they've converted a couple of mership merchant ships into drone and helicopter carriers. Okay, how many connex boxes full of uh S M three's and s M six is. Can you strap onto one of those that's been automated.

They can hang out with your frigates to give VLS sels. I know some people have been talking about that, but I would not think that would be too hard of a concept inside the next Palm cycle or two for us with our allies to go out and uh, give it, give it to third Fleet and said go play with it. Tell us, tell us what's good and bad about it. That that I think is a is a capability gap

filler. That isn't pie in the sky, It isn't science fiction. It's if you can get the engineering right and you can work the comms issue correctly, which we may have already had is just classified. That's that's that can give us a comparative advantage because I doubt the Chinese can move that. Yeah, well I'm not. You know, anybody can develop drone technology for the unmanned aircraft, unmanned vessels. I think you know they can. It can

be developed pretty quickly. The the back in two thousand and nine, Wayne Hughes said, you know, there was a discussion about the new He wrote a piece for the the Naval work at the Naval Postgraduate School on on the the what is it the new the new the new oh Man, the new min It was a new Navy, the new Navy fighting machine. Thank you? Yeah. Basically you know it was based that was a riff on on

an older piece of the navy fighting machine. And and he proposed that that we should have land attack missileships, each sharing fifty missiles and numbering about twenty inexpensive vessels that can be deployed in pairs or tasks forth. The mean is, we just just had this discussion last week with our guests about about the what he called the well, he called a missile missile. But his idea was you'd cycle these things in. You load up these a ship that'd have

to be heavily armed, inexpensive, You load it up with missiles. It comes and sits farther away from the from where the action is, but can fire a whole bunch of stuff. And when it's empty, you send an empty now useless vessel back to be re armed, and you roll in a new missile missile ship. And and you just keep doing that, and you've got I mean, if if you had fifty missiles on a ship, you've

got twenty ships. That's a thousand more missiles. And and I think that when when Captain Hughes wrote the piece, that that was probably the high you know, the heyday of high tech that you could get twenty twenty of these things carrying fifty missles eat. I mean, we could probably do a lot more than that, but your your risk is that you don't want to overburden this either. And have you know this thing turned into a ship the size

of one of these Uh what's what's the new cruise ship? That's just huge? But as well not even leave forward it's so big. Uh yeah, you know, it's almost like you could get an a I fake Yeah, I mean, I'm just thinking of the of the radar pictures that that thing paints and going, well, I don't think we didn't quite that big. You know, I would go a little smaller than that, but I want

a whole bunch of VLS cells on the thing. And you know, if it has to be some is submersible or something, that'd be great too. I'm sure John Conrad has some thoughts on that. I mean, I don't I don't know what you give up for some I submersible, but but you know, something to keep your make it low profile, and make it have a whole bunch of vls's and and make it returnable. So it's like you know when we used to take coke bottles back to the storing in our two

cents, we could buy and use and these things could be unmanned. I mean, they don't have to have people on them, and that's always are optionally manned. You've heard, yeah, exactly a lot of these merchant ships, which I think would be the ideal interim step as opposed that we're going to take ten years to develop something very minimally manned, and they don't have if we're going to be using them. As you know, Hey, we would really like for this frigate to have an extra three dozen blsls, but

you know what, you just can't do that in the tonnage. Okay, Well, we have these auxiliaries that can come in optionally manned in case you, for whatever reason, you can't make that happen. They can get they can tuck in behind your your destroyers for air defense. But they're not there to hang out forever. They're there to hang out for a certain period of time, and like you said, they go Winchester, they turn around and

head east to wherever they need to rendezvous to pick up their crew. If they have a crew and somebody else comes across the horizon ready to check in with the strike Group and there's your extra three dozen of the vls els. Yeah, it's not something that has to be manned twenty four to seven three sixty five. We could There's all sorts of ways you could have them in a high readin es State because you don't need them. Yeah, they can have them go out on a COMP two X, or go off on a

JTFX, or maybe do an exercise with fourth Fleet now and then. But there's no reason why you couldn't have a few of them in Mayport, Norfolk, San Diego. There's plenty of places around Ford Island you could drop anchor on those puppies. They don't have to have a underway schedule. They just need to be available, kind of like the maritime prepositioning ships. But they're

they're your place. Your connex boxes of missiles stations ALPHA through India by in the next ninety six hours, get underway in one hundred and twenty eight hours type of thing. That is something that we actually I think could have done ten years ago and just waited for the engineering problem and the other issues involving communications and control of these things if we really need to gettional BLS. But I can also your people say, Okay, you've got all these vls is.

Do we have enough weapons in the magazines to put in them. Yes, if you build it, we fill them three or four times. Maybe not, but you built If you build it, they will come. I think was Admiral Green who who talked about payloads not platforms and also talked about yeah uh and I think he kind of was behind this sort of thinking. You know that right now we spend are going to spend a whole bunch of

money on s S, g N S and that that's great. You know, they are they are pretty much I mean, obviously there's a state of the art, but we can spend a whole lot less money and get a whole lot more uh vls is out there, and and and and we have the technology obviously. The fact that the the Ranger and the uh the other shipper able to carry these things, and we've even put these things on l c s is maybe there's a use for those things after all, you know,

turn them into missile boats. But the l S is not vls is, but the boxes on there. I don't you know that the Russians have these club missiles that come in a box and I'm pretty sure they you know, they're willing to sell those to a lot of people, so it's not something that's totally unique. And yeah, there's no reason for us to always

have to go high end. And and if it's a matter of well, you know, we don't want to risk the crew, then you know, as you say, minimal man, minimally manned, and make sure that they have uh, some kind of really nice escape capsule should something happen to them, you know, so they you're you're, you're if if the fear is we're going to lose people, because it's an expendable type system, and I think we need to say, okay, well, the unmanned ones we can

we can deal with. The minimally man we can deal with by providing some kind of I remember the old B fifty eight Hustler that had a it had a capsule that the crew ejected in as a as a whole. I don't know if it worked or not, but yeah, yeah, maybe that too. Oh did they okay? Good? Yeah, the whole whole capsule went went with you. And you know, you mentioned the LCS and most people know my opinion of it. No reason to rehash that but you're right,

especially the independence class variant. She has that huge deck if we can't do anything else with it, and it's clear that she really can't defend herself an environment like the Huthis are providing, but she could tuck in pretty close behind in Arley Burke. They could give her that extra extended coverage that she would

need, and there would be extra capabilities for that Arley Burke. And especially if you're going to be hunting dows or something, or at least doing some your LCS is allowed to go X distance from your Arley Burke, given her the top cover to do what needs to be done besides your point defense. So having those vlsls filled with whatever toys you want to definitely would be a

multiplier and would get additional ships out there. But I don't think we're ready to do that anytime in the next two Palm cycles, but it would be an interesting concept to do again. We used to experiment a lot, even when deployed. Get some get enough duct tape, belling wire spot well, those puppies to the to the deck, give some well caffeinated, over ambitious coo and say hey, head west, young man, go deploy with this strike roof and then you're going to debrief if when you get back, tell

us what you learned. Why not? Yeah, sam La grown Grown had a piece on the USNI news. You know, Army long range missile launcher spotted on Navy elatoral combat ship for littoral combat ship. And you know, yeah, okay, there's somebody's playing with it. Somebody's out there playing with this concept. But just just just move along faster. We don't have time to to uh. Sometimes you know it will work. And what you do is you you sometimes you have to move forward and then and and discover the

glitches later, I think. And that is what I'm trying to say, you know, because this this is this is something needs to be played with and if you're going to train like you're going to fight, this is the time to start playing with it hard and make it, make it work, because it gives the bad guys something else to think about. You're right, and people should be allowed to fail to. Yeah, you go out there and when you debrief, like, don't come up and feed the folks of

happy talk. Tell them what you learned, good bad. If it's a great concept, wonderful, let's do more of it. If it's if it doesn't make it past the PowerPoint you had all these problems, Well, at least we figured it out. If it's a combination of the two, then we can fix it. We've we've done this, done this before. But uh, some of it's analysis paralysis. There is also you know, this

isn't my idea, This doesn't have a program. But again that's that's all self imposed constraints on our own action, which which is fixable if we if we wanted to. But it's what we've been joking about recently, problem appreciation. It's fun to appreciate the problems. This some variation of what we've been talking about in that regard, it would solve not all, but more of the problem that we have than what our plans are right now. We just

saw a note from our good friend's Southern Air pirate. He brought up a picture of the old battle cruiser of two thousand, which was the Arsenal ship, which had eight million, three hundred and fifty two thousand val itself. Oh yeah, I remember that Arsenol ship. Yeah yeah, that was a you know, I think I think Greenard called the thing a missile. A missile had a second, A missile truck. You know, sure, missile truck. Good idea, let's do it. It wasn't hurt too much.

But hey, I just realized we've already gone past an hour. I don't know. Usually people are gonna people are gonna miss the NFL playoff games if they haven't they missed the first one, probably yeah, they pretty much have. But just thought i'd let the listeners know that we're taking next week off,

but we're come back in a couple of weeks. I believe we're going to have doctor doctor John kuhn uh or cune I can't ever pronounce his name right Uh from the Army War College has been on a few times before. We're still broadly looking at what we're going to talk about. Uh. But we had our prior guests, Jeff Bendenegele that was with us last week talking about the carrier. There's been a bunch of talk back and forth with how

the carriers have been working off of A Yemen recently as well. But there's a track record here that is interesting. Everybody talks about carriers being vulnerable.

That's not new, and he's actually done a lot of research and part of his recent book actually looks at the period in the first half of the Second World War in the Pacific that a lot of people forget about is the fact that, yeah, we were at one point we had one carrier in some way zero carriers, and we were fighting in the Pacific anyway, But we figured that would be an interesting time to talk about some of the realities of

contested space in the Pacific. So hopefully two weeks from now we'll be back with John. Yeah, look forward to it. And I hope everybody has good luck with their NFL playoffs and then the rest of their lives. Yep. And I hope everybody is having a great Navy day. Until next time. Cheers wants to marry me and a friend because really for you being to blame for love telling on me said, folding your the same. It's a

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