Welcome to mid Rats with Sal from Commander Salamander and Eagle One from Eagle Speak at Seer Shore your home for a discussion of national security issues in all things maritime. And welcome Lord everybody. This is Sal along with my evergenial co host Eagle one. Thank you very much for joining us today for another edition of mid Rats and hey lucky you. This is one of our world famous, ever popular, all desirable Melee format. We don't have any guests today,
is just the two of us and you. That means that we have our list of things want to talk about, but we always like to open up the open up the conversation more than even usual to our listeners who make the extra effort to join us live. So we do have the chat room up and running this week. We see Paul as always standing at parade rest ready to greet everybody there. Paul is If you always know that Paul, that something's not right in the world. If Paul isn't there chat room,
or the Moon's are a line or something like that. So it's great to see Paul there, bright, shiny and early. If you have some questions or topics you would like to address to either one of us during the course's show, that is a great way to do it. Also, if you follow follow me on on x or Twitter, whatever you want to call it, if you want to send me a DM or at me or anything like that. I always keep that open during the show because I always have a
couple of comments roll our way. And of course, if you're with us Live, that means you were staring at the show page with the chat room at the bottom, and at the upper right hand corner you have the studio
line. So if you want to call in on the studio line, and I know, like yesterday our good friend Jerry, he was listening to us live as he was driving from one part of the Free State of Florida to the other, you can call the guests phone and numbers area code three four seven, three zero eight eight three nine seven three four seven three zero eight eight three nine seven. But besides that, welcome co host. How you doing. I'm doing well, Thank you, sal How are you? I'm
doing all right. I'm doing my best not to monologue, so you know, everything's about self help and self improvement. But I think I'll pick off where we ended up about forty five seconds ago. For the listeners during the during the pre show, we have this really complicated and intricate method of finding out what we're going to talk about during this show. Not really, but we like to go through with what we think has broken above the ambient noise
at least for us to talk about. And one thing that was on both of our lists that I think it's going to cover quite a few topics and it is top of the news. We could all give an is little golf clap to the Hoopies. They finally sunk their first ship. It took a while, and I'm a simple man with simple thoughts, and because I grew up in a coastal area with a pirate history, when I saw a drifting ship with I don't know what ten thousands or hundreds of thousands of tons of
nitrate fertilizers worth nowadays. She was down by the stern. She had one anchor floating around. I think salamacagu Gliano on his It's Up with Shipping podcasts can really give people some details on it. She bounced around, scraped some cables here and there, but she did finally sink. And one thing that the pop two things actually popped into line one what are the salvage rights of anybody who wanted to go up there? Why was no salvage attempt ever done?
Why wasn't there even a tug available and an area like the Red Sea? And is that something or a capability that when the Huthi started popping things off at people, Uh, the Imperial we with our what is it prosperity guardian, one of our allies who didn't quite have the desire our capability to you know, put a wullship worship on the line, could have sent salvage
and recovery teams to help out should a merchant ship get hit. So those are the big three three things I was thinking about, was salvage, possible recovery, and why was she just allowed to go there? And now she's between her fuel oil and that fertilizer. For those that haven't been scuba diving or snarkling in the Red Sea, it's one of the most beautiful places in the world underwater. Now they're going to have that author coast. Yeah,
it's just one more exciting thing that the Hooties have managed to do. And I think your question about salage, I mean, anybody can try and salva the ship that's been abandoned by its crew. But the question is who wants to go after a ship that's dead in the water and containing fertilizer, which, as I'm you know, which can be pretty dangerous if mixed with other things. And I guess nobody did so. And again into this also these
issues of we've always we've talked about this before. The flags are convenience. It's a Belize flagship, British registered, Lebanese operated, So who really owns this thing? Who has any interest in getting a crook a tug out there to ocean going tug out there to try and retrieve it? Could it be retrieved? Where could you take it? It's leaking oil, you know, not too many places want that kind of vessel dragged into their fork. Yeah, so you know, it's it's just one of the situations that I guess
everybody decided just to leave it alone. And an emergency ship, unlike a warship, it doesn't have that many water type compartments that can help stop it from sinking. But she wasn't sinking fast. She was floating around for I think a week and a half. I know, give me a give me plus her mind is a week here, maybe a little bit more. But but you're right, who if everybody owns something, nobody owns anything. And
I don't care whether you're the Port of Los Angeles or Portsudea. If you have a bunch of guys with you know, eighteen warrants and forty two nations saying hey, I've got this half suck merchant ship. I want to bring up your channel. Can you give me some peer peer space? You know that's not going to happen. And the good news is it's leaking oil and it's full of fertilizers. So yeah, I mean, who wouldn't want that?
I mean years ago, but back in the early fifties or late forties, that shift loaded with the fertilizer blew up in the Port of Houston. It kind of scarred the industry for quite a while about the safety of some of these things, as they say, in that wonderful part of the world. But are you my friend's special special price not the same thing? Very good ammonium by to dight, very good? Yeah, that would not go
well in the soup, I don't think. But that I really wonder, you know, if that of all the international agreements of all the meetings that people come to and all the national teeth and rending of clothes that people talk about. Things that you can argue whether humans have much of effect, and I'm talking about global climate change. There are things you can see, you can measure, And this has been one of my hobby horses for a long time is we can measure, we can control, and we do know it's
human sourced, it's pollution. We can whether you're talking about the nightmarish plastic issues that we have in the Pacific and in parts of the Caribbean, or whether you have talking about boats full of toxic non natural fertilizer, though you know that much guanta wouldn't be too great for the environment either. And assume that that that ship is probably that will Bumble don't have plans to do things.
Even if that plan is, can't enough of the Red Sea get into the induce So she's got to sink letter sink and waters deep waters off Somdia that have good stimulation that can move the barbage around as opposed to a relatively closed water like the Red Sea. Uh, maybe it'll sink to the bottom and just some fertilizer, some flyer, it will solidify in water. However,
I don't think that's really what you're going to see here. For instance, you know, when I'm when I'm finding my food plots, my fertilizers, it melts, which is what it's supposed to do. So odds are that's what's going to happen in anything nearby. Well, uh, we'll take here. I guess we're waiting for the next ship to get hit. However, I don't know, have you noticed the last week. I just haven't. Maybe it's because that's reported it, because it's just not news anymore.
But besides the German Navy shooting at everything that moves, including the us UA V, it appears that the the hoo Thies have slowed down a bit at least on their volume of strikes. Maybe that's indicative to the fact that their their supply might be a little limited. A little limited, Yeah, that
could be. Or every time, you know, if maybe with any luck, every time they pop up, somebody's shooting at them or dropping bombs on them or whatever we're doing from the with the aircraft from the carrier we have down there. I forgot to mention the other thing about this ship was it was chargered by the Saudis, So you know, it gets more complicated. You know, it's not just a a none of these things. Was shipping
are ever easy? Which is why I fell Carcleanos is so such a great asset to people who were following him on on X and and he's and his and his YouTube channel so good, good stuff. Yeah, I'm I'm really happy for him that it's taken off as well it has had. I remember the first time we had him on here as a guest, you and I were both like, man, he's good. So it's uh. And he really has filled a niche that in that unsexy but important uh sector of the
maritime arena that was not being served. Uh, you know, g captain and John Conrad you know, does a lot of the heavy lifting in that area, but it's mostly written. Uh. And I know he's done a couple of John Conrad has done a couple of spaces on X which have been informative and good, partially because he let me talk on one of them.
But if you had said five or six years ago, hey, you're going to have a professor who knows stuff about the merchant marine and shipping issues he's going to go up on YouTube and that's what he's going to talk about, and he's going to have well north of one hundred thousand subscribers to his channel. People have tilted their head at you, but he does. And a lot of it it's because of his personality and his knowledge and his presentation. But a lot of it is the fact that he's just giving out good,
reliable information that you cannot find anywhere else. I think there's a lesson there because there are some other underserved areas. I think you just need to find that Area's Salamar Cogliou to fill in that information space has really become valuable, and I know that a couple of significant decision makers have have tapped into the service that that sal has been able to provide in that area to everybody's benefit. It's really a great thing to say. Yeah, I think that.
You know it, those of us who have applied in the UH, in the waters of the shipping and as a maritime as a maritime attorney, I did occasionally do that. You know, it is a much more complex and fascinating world than than many people realize. But it is challenged by the fact that we have allowed all these flags of convenience and things, so nobody, you know, sometimes nobody is really responsible for whatever is uh is happening.
So it's just one of those and this is one of those instances. I mean, the Saudis don't don't want to send a dug out because they're one of the who just the Hooies are fighting everybody. So I would I would guess it's this. It's gonna sink, it's gonna sit there. You know, maybe this stuff is soluble. I think Paul is trying to tell me that it's soluble, but he was talking about a medium nitrate. We'll have
to look up a moonium phosphate and we'll see how that works out. If it's soluble, it just dissipates in the water becomes whatever its elements are. That'd be great, but we'll have to we'll have to find out. Now the oil, that's a whole different thing, and it's just gonna plute for a while. Yeah. Well, one thing about bunker fuel is right on the edge of livy memory. We uh, we filled the Atlantic floor full of merchant ships with bunker fuel, and during World War Two that we sunk.
Well, we as humans mostly the Germans. And I remember his little kid. You we still find him now and then we go to the beach. But when I was a little kid back in the early seventies, still find those oily balls all over the place on on the beach after certain storms and certain directions don't seem as much now. So yeah, there's uh.
I think the uh, the ability for the oceans to absorb one more one more ship at the bottom is probably going to be okay unless it gets if it's shallow enough, and gets localized and get on those absolutely beautiful reefs that at if they are off the coast of California, they would be a national treasure. Yeah. Well it's you know, all of us who have ever tried the beaches of Galvels to know that tar balls are are an issue, and their issue on the on the California coast too, actually so, and
it's an atternal someone's just a natural sea beach. And I don't I don't know about the Red Sea. It looks like from the pictures I've seen that the water is remarkably clear. I know people have been scuba diving in the northern part of the of the Red Sea. Really have enjoyed their trips. I just I've never heard of that, I know anybody who's gone diving down there in the in the Barbara Mandel straight. So no, not in a long time. They don't quite have the how can we say this polightly,
they don't have beach culture there. Uh. So it's uh, it's not not a big day, but I I know especially Uh you know after after desert storm, you could pull into port in Saudi Arabia and you could it was an amazing time. Uh. You're obviously an American and you could walk around town. You could do anything you wanted to do. You could hire somebody and you could go scuba diving if you were qualified, or snorkeling if
not. In the area. You know, like what is it on the Red Sea coast near uh right west of Mecca, whatever that place is called. Anyway, it's it's beautiful there. But that's that's for them to worry about. Uh. You know. One thing we also talked about in the in the pre show that it might be fun to talk about, mostly because we can we can think and laugh the laugh at the Germans at the same time. But there was news that broke last week about one of the German
frigates that has participated. They just went warning red weapons free. In addition to shooting, it appeared from what I read in the report, a couple of attack drones. They also took a shot at one of our predators or reapers that we was up at thirty thousand feet or so. I guess that that's something that the US Navy has a little more experience in than the Germans. But you can't fault them if you're that was not one of their newest
frigates with their best radar system. And I guess you have to be a little bit humble when you know we had the Vincent's down an airliner thinking it was a ship. But anti air warfare it's not it's not easy, which
you know, goes back to what we talked about our previous show. You've got to, you know, tip the hat to the US Surface Force the schoolhouse they've been given everybody else, and I'm sure they're going to be sharing the lessons with our allies about how to conduct anti air warfare against slow moving drones, anti ship cruise missiles, and the new kid on the block,
the anti ship ballistic missiles is just impressive. I think one of the things that's going to come out of this is you really need something capable to the latest builds of aegists to really do it right. I don't think that German it was quite at that level to be able to give the skipper the confidence he needed. And you know, you can't blame him if it looks bad.
It is bad. Yeah, it's it's uh, you know, everybody makes mistakes, and I guess they didn't really do any harm due to our our equipment, and they actually downed a couple of or several of the Hoothy things, So that's good. I mean, this whole th you know, the Hoothies are now claiming, you know, we've we've got this latest thing, the unmanned guided undersea weapon. I think we're all going to a torpedo. Yeah, copedo with a snorkel from the looks of it. Yeah,
So you know they're there. They've learned some lessons from from the from the Ukrainians, and they also you know, they're one of their leaders went on I don't know he was quoted in the Hindu Times or something saying that they're going to have some surprises for the West coming up, and you know,
you never know. But one of the one of the things that did happen though, is if these are that that sunken ship which dragged anchor across some of the international cables that carry uh Internet and telephone lines and all that other stuff and caused a disruption, and I know you just had a peace on
that in your substack area. Talk a little bit about that, because that's pretty major area of concern, it is, and I think it's one of those things that if you are a sub fourth rate power at sea, like the Huthi, and I don't mean to insult them, I mean they're they They took the best the Saudi's and the Immordis could throw out them and they're still standing. We've we've spanked them a few times and they're still standing, like, you know, give me your best. I've got plenty of cots
to chew on, so let go at it. The Mearanians will keep supplying them. But a lot of these cables were laid for commercial reasons. They're not worried about security, worried about costs per an autophile to lay your cable, and they're just laying there on the floor. They're not defended, and you can't defending, you know, lift circles defendant like that, and you don't need anything fancy or even that complicated. When you know pipelines differnt the
cables, but they're both on the bottom. It looks like quote whoever unquote it took out the the Russian gas pipelines and the Baltic did it with a small team on a small boat relatively speaking. But if you have a rough idea where those cables are. And not to humble brag here, but I'm upgrading the electronics on my fishing boat and the side scan and forward scan radar not radar sonar that you can put on a fishing boat. Now I can look at the leaves on a tree and the bottom it's I can watch fish
swim. It's amazing the technology you can get just commercial off the shelf. If you can localize them. You don't need a fancy diver. All you need is a long enough line in a grappling hook and a sea anchor to control your drift and you just drift and snag and pull. Now people can be watching you do that, which you know, Hello to our friends in
the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance vam's community. What is it the up nineteen the Navy version of the Global Hawk that can stay and watch people for days on it. That's a great mission for that. You know, you can watch people who are engaged in that and then you can have some visitors come say hello to them. But in that part of the world also you have all
these small ships by the hundreds that all look the same. Some of them smuggle, some of them fish, some of them are just merchants going from point A to point B. All you got to do is use one of those and a few people who know what they're doing. Be hard to find that needle in the haystack that are digging up those cables. So you pull those cables up. Is it going to affect the military situation? No, But if you get the right cable or group of cables, the economic impact
is huge. You're talking financial data coming from Asia to Europe especially. You're looking at data, you're looking at voice communications, and if you take those out, there is a fair bit of flex and redundancy in the system. They have to go find secondary ways to get their ones and zeros and point
A to point B. Which is other cables are via satellite. But that's all supply and demand situation, so that when you have more of a demand for a finite number of products, you're going to have the owners of those products ask a higher price. So that's going to inject inflation, and especially in the financial arena, a lot of these profits and the ability for these people to have functioning businesses is basically incredibly narrow margins that are so carefully scoped
about their infrastructure. You start tearing up that infrastructure. It's no different and a little less hostile looking than if you had some guy with a truck full of explosives pull up to a power plant outside of Manchester and knocking out a power plant. You can do it a lot more low key by just ripping up some cables. So are they going to go after cables more? Did
add that capability? If I was them, I would If my higher direction and guidance is make the West feel our pains, so to speak, that's what I would look at. Because it's not too expensive to find and train people to try to get a grappling hook drug over some cables. Then all you need to have is a large enough wench to pull it up shallow enough that you can cut it. Yeah, some of these cables are buried,
you know, and they're so a little harder to get to. The concern I always saw for these undersea cable things was the connector points where they come ashore, and you know, those those are would be pretty vulnerable to some kind of attack. I think that was a concern for right after nine to eleven, and it is a you know, it's one of those things that you have to worry about. But you know, I don't know, I
can't remember. I think I read somewhere that that cable comes ashore somewhere in Yemen or in or maybe Saudi Arabia, and you know, I think that's a vulnerability where that would be probably easier to go after than we would like to think. The you know, the under undersea cables are are fairly large,
but as you know, they're not the only things down there. You can had a heavy anchor dragging along them could probably you know, especially if the funny about the bottom looks like and probably dig its way down and yank
those things. So, I mean, I don't know if we know exactly what caused that outage, but It is a very It is one of those great concerns, as you said, for economic if you want to screw up the economics for a while, well, let's interrupt the flow of traffic through the Red Sea, and we're going to impact Saudi's uh ability to get oil to the to Europe. We're going to impact Europe getting you know the stuff the Amazon packages through that, through that, through the Suez Canal. We're
going to hurt the Egyptians. Well you know all ball because of whatever. So it is, uh, it is an issue. Yeah. So well we got that, we got well else we get other things there of the new players have got the other new players. The Italians have been out there. They shot down some some hoofy things with the with their seventy six millimeter gun. We have Italic also malaria getting getting her workout. Because you talk about a gun that has been involved and improved of in an iterative manner.
Uh. Those if people really want to geek out, I would go look at what the modern not just the radar interface and weapons control for the old seventy six millimeters auto malaria, but some of their they had just a whole slew of different warheads the Italian Navy. I think the Italians spend one point
four percent of their GDP maybe one point five on defense. They're one of those people I would love that if they, if and when they reach two percent, if they could just invest that in their navy, because they just build some really capable warships and they could just hey, you know, it's been a few thousand years, why don't you just take head for just be
nice to the Greeks. I mean, yeah, the seventy six millimeter gun, for those who want to compute it, to compare it to some of the US or they're about the same as the old US maybe three inch three inch guns, except they're much more automatic. And but I'm many times more capable than the ones that I remember being on the on the US Navy ships,
especially on the auxiliaries a long long time ago. Yeah, I mean even when I was a midshipman, some of our our our auxiliaries, I believe some of our anthids as well, still had those dual three inches that you would see on World War two ships that were they were still out there.
Yeah, it was. It was interesting if there were some decisions made during Vietnam War about about warnings about aircraft potential aircraft attacks against some of those amphibs and auxiliary ships, and a lot of the people said, well, what are we going to do about it? We got three inch, got a three inch fifty. It's not going to do a lot of a lot of good. So I don't think anybody lost any sleep thinking that that was going to you know, if it happens, it happens kind of thing.
We're going to man that thing twenty four to seven and blow these things out of the sky. Yeah, it's a very it's one of those things. Well, we can try. But many years ago I read an account of during the unpleasantness between Israel and our neighbors back in nineteen seventy three, when we almost came to blows against the Soviets and the Mediterranean, that a couple of staff officers asked a real I don't they ask a questions. I made
a couple of observations. There were two things. It's like, we really don't have any anti ship weapons out here to speak of. The Soviets have a whole bunch of them, and I'm not sure that we have the ability to shoot down any of the whistles that might shoots. What do we do because they, you know, a lot of the systems that they had were still you know, based on what they might have faced twenty five years earlier.
They just didn't keep up with the ties with That gave a nice impetus to advance our missile development a little bit better, because we had a few missile firing ships, but most of them were one armed bandits that can for those that remember the what was it, the California class, they called it
a cruiser, had two one armed bandits on it. Yeah, the Mark thirteen launcher that the author hazard Perry Frigates used to have, you just you know, you would hope that they would just send you one at a time in a polite manner. The things a modern ag ship could do was what people in their minds said we needed back in nineteen seventy three. It took a while for us to get there, but we eventually got there. Yeah. Well, you know, pretty soon we're going to have these laser beams
and we'll be able to attach them to sharks. No, that's a different thing. We'll be able to zap things out of the sky with those. You know, it's going to happen. We don't know when, but it takes you know, things take time. I haven't look at the USS Bois is finally going to the going of the yard after what nine years and and and uh it'll it'll eventually come out too, I think in another five years
or something. I know that I know they don't do submarine work. And you know, we've we've talked about the quote problem appreciation unquote problem about shipyards, but the if are compared to the advantage in a lot of scenarios and hope and our screenforce, it's amazing how undercap lives it's been. And this has been known for a long time. The Boys one example. And I know they don't do nuclear submarines, so it's not going to help that.
But I also we didn't talk about this in the pre show, but I'm sure it came into your scan the talking to Hyundai Heavy Industries with the second nab about maybe what they could be interested in doing for shipyards here in the US. That just really kind of said, Hey, as long as this attitude not substitutive, if we've got to call the Koreans in to at least on the surface side of the house, help us with our shipyards. Then that's what we got to do. But the Koreans really look interested in getting
in the game. Well, I wouldn't blame them. I mean, we've got the Australians involved in the the austral yards, you know, nominally us we've got the who owns who owns the yard that are our good friend up in Wisconsin has got and that's been a gas Italians. I mean, why not? Why not get the Koreans? So you know they're building great ships. If you go to the Hyundai Heavy Industry site and go to their worship section, there's some impressing ships they've got going there. So they do.
And I was and you know this, you know this generation better than I do because you're you're closer to him. But old no, no, no, no, no, no, experienced and wise. When I read that, I put this in a d M to somebody. First thing that came to mind that the thought of my father's generation, who were of draft age. My dad did not fight in Korea. He was he was in college. Sometime I'll tell everybody his story of the power of a Navy flight surgeon
versus the US Air Force. Anyway, but I grew up with his friends who did. And uh, a lot of them who served in Korea also served in Vietnam. And so when I was growing up, the USIA would would would talk what they did, talk about about Vietnam and occasional about Korea. But you can anybody has access to old national geographics. You know, look at Korea in the nineteen fifties. South Korea was in you know,
pre war Korea, before it was divided. You know, the North was a rich part of Korea and the South was the poor, rural, backwards part of Korea. It was poor rule, ravaged by war. You know, infrastructure just you know, talk about somebody something broken, a nation broken down to parade rest that was her and over I believe about thirty thousand Americans died during the Korean conflict, a lot more wounded, of course, and
we're still having you know, plenty of forces over there. If you look at what they fought for, if you told them when the armor Siste decided in fifty three, I believe what that you know here they be in twenty twenty three that we would be looking for the South Koreans to bring us modern and effective shipyards. They might be a little surprised, little shocked, but
they've got to be a little bit proud too. Is there's a great test case North Korea versus South Korea, and they should be really proud that that that that that war that they fought for the South Koreans especially, it worked. It worked. Yeah, that's a it's a great story. My dad did fight in that war. He was flying Air Force A twenty six's I think, Uh, of course, well they were the they were the attack version with the machine guns and those you know by twenty six whatever whatever they
were. He was flying those. He has lots of pictures that he had a lot of pictures that I've got the slides of around here. And Korea was torn up. I went there a few times for various Navy things that I got to do. And you know, they're very proud country and they deserve to be proud. I mean, if you've ever been to Soul, Korea, it is it is amazing that it was once a completely destroyed city. Uh. You know, they've got all these great industries, uh the
uh and they've and they've their technology is is first rate. It's it's a it is not a it is not a third you know, third world country is not a second world country. It's it is a first world country. And many many, many respects, and they deserve the pride. And and if Hyundai with they're building ships merchant ships there, you know, they have great they have great stuff, and they're they're they're always you know, they're living on the edge too, because they never know what that lunatic or the
lunatic society north of them is going to do. So they they take it all very seriously and they're they're they're their troops are some of the finest in the world, or they were at least, uh, I know during Vietnam and and I think we did some participate in the Desert storm and and some
of the other things. So good, good people and very strongly committed to the to the freedoms that they've they have as compared to especially as compared to their northern brethren, and I think also Korean Americans and are just like Chinese Americans, you know, one war, draw want to win, won a loss, I mean, but they've also been just tremendous uh immigrants and the families they've raised here, I know, you know, we're we've both grown up and served with them. It's uh, yeah, it's good. I
mean. One of the tragic things about South Korea though, is uh if you look at their demographics, they're there nation is going to disappear by the end of the century if if they don't decide some generation uh soon doesn't decide to have any kids. They have some of the lowest birth rates in the world. So they've built this huge economy and vibrants isiety just in time for them as the people to pretty much disappear. Their demographics are worse than the
mainland China, which is real common in East Asia. But they're they're very resilient societies. They've they've survived worse. They'll figure it out. They're smart people. Yeah, they they'll they'll sort of know. Japanese are facing the same issue that Chinese got the same issue, and you know they their other other populous countries that don't seem to be having that problem. Uh. But speaking of the of that far east, the Philippines seem to be upgunning.
They're looking at they're looking at buying more yeah, and from from from Hondai heavy industry. As a matter of fact, some warships uh they've been doing joint ops with the US, both air and sea, which is of course irritating the heck out of the Chinese, which I would like to I love being a bird under their saddle, So extra bonus, extra bonus. Yeah, so that's that's good. But the Arks now Yorks now have it. North Koreans now a new anti ship cruise missile that they're they're playing with.
So one more irritating facts about the North Koreans. They can do some things, Yeah, there are. When you basically have slave state, which they have, you can you can do a lot as long as you keep the mass of your people very much uh suppressed. They're not even a communist nation anymore. There's some dystopian feudal reboot. Yeah, what a mess that's going to be. If I've read a couple of things where the South Koreans like, we don't want unification. We don't, we don't want to have to
try to fix that. We saw what happened to the Germans. We're not We're not up for it. They may not get a choice, but uh, history will figure that out one way or another. Yeah, yep, speaking of his, are we allowed if we use the word Shodenfreud. Can we have fun at the at the misery of our our a German brethren, because really, what are they any Anybody who's served on a senior staff knows exactly how this happened. But what I'm talking about it's something that I feel
sorry for the players. I'm not happy that the Russians got an easy win, but I'm laughing because I know exactly how stuff like this could happen. I'm talking about that came out and when I when it first came out, I agreed that, you know, there's a non zero chance that this could just be Russia being Russia and making crap up like they do. But it came out today Chancellor Schultz said, yeah, no, actually this is this
really happened. The inspector of the Luftwaffe, which is their equivalent to the US Air Force chiefest Staff, I either senior general for their air force. He was on a WebEx, which is kind of a old, busted and scratchety version of for those that have used it know what I'm talking about. Compared to like Zoom are even Microsoft teams, WebEx is a much more quantier version of that. They evidently they did a non secure meeting with him.
It was another general officer, I think it was a two star, three lieutenant colonels a major and a captain, and they talked about everything from the readiness of their air force to whether their Taurus is going to be delivered, how it's going to be delivered. They talked about the presence of NATO nationals in Ukraine, and the Russians found a way And this is a warning to everybody, and it makes you wonder, wow, I wonder what else they
have. The Russians found a way to tap into it and they got a recording and the Russians joyfully played it on one of their programs, And it's just a reminder to everybody, but especially if you're The Russian penetration of the German military and the German government is well documented. It's just this is worm
ridden with Russian access. But that's true with everybody. If you are on a senior staff doing interesting things and you're overseas and you really really really have to have a meeting, but you can't find a secure means just having a meeting anyway and saying, well, what are the odds that they're going to tap into our WebEx probably is not a real smart idea. And everybody who's had classic classified discussions on VIAT non secure means probably there's probably recorded of you
somewhere in Beijing or Moscow or both. It's just reading for an opportune time for them to bring it out. It's a funny story, but it also is an eye opener. I think about, you know, technology, and how addicted do we've come to being able to have conversations along those lines. The President United States has appeared on TikTok now, and after all of us know that TikTok is a Chinese information gathering system. I am stunned that and
obviously probably not discussing classified information. But you know, opening that door is an extremely problematic and I cannot believe he did that. Yeah, I agree in the fact that this has been in the news for a long time. Help me help up. I'm going to pop off in a second. Might anybody they'd like to ask h I'll just put them here before before I run off for a second. I don't even know if the ship is manned right now, if they just have a skeleton crew or what. Yeah, I
think the TikTok thing as well is and Representative Gallagher. It's has pretty much put all the cards on the table there. We know it's a Chinese Communist party controlled Oregon, and I don't care if it was President of Biden or for what happened is it sounds gone off to another room to talk to a caller to see if he wants him to say anything. So that's that's where it is. The Other thing we need to talk about, I think as
we go along, are the the Chinese crane. Chinese infiltrating various things, the Chinese cranes that we're now going to spend a bunch of of big as of dollars to make sure that we can replace them with US cranes and stuff, because those things are also technologically apparently capable of doing all kinds of harm for the Western way of life. And let's see. Oh yeah, there's
a new guide that just came out on the Navy. It's one of the Congressional Research Service things in the Navy four Structure and Shipbuilding plans that just came out March first. You can get it by going to the Congressional Research Service website and looking for their register releases him back, so I'll give you that. I'll give you that website here in a second. You go on, can you hear me? Okay? Did anybody else hear me in the chat
room? I seem to have lost everything was connected? Is everything connected? Does sound like I'm not here? You can you hear me? Break one? Two? Three? Can you hear me? Now? Okay? They can hear me, but you can't evidently, huh hello. Okay, Well I'll go ahead of monologue both of us because I can't hear. So I'm gonna do my own reboot here. If I can get I can get him back on. Okay, Well, as he's recycling circuit breakers. I think we I think we picked on the Germans enough today, and I know we
kind of jump on each other with TikTok Uh. The call that came in he wanted to ask a question that really wasn't germane to uh to the subjects on mid Rats. So the thing about TikTok in case y'all miss it when we were talking past each other is the reason this we're not acting on it. It's pure politics. We know what TikTok is, we know what it's being used for and we know, especially when it comes to shaping perceptions by
those that use it that are mostly young, that it's destructive. But the reason why nothing's being done about it is because it has become so popular. It's the same thing as if somebody in your family is addicted to a drug and if you try to take them to detoks or if they're an alcoholic or whatever, they're going to get mad at you. It's the same thing. But it's not good for them, it's not good for the family. TikTok is not good for the country. And it's beneficial though if you want to
access a lot of people. And I do not think that history is going to smile on the remaining in action on our part to do something about TikTok. And are politicians whoever they are, who are willingly using this for domestic political gain. I think it's it's not illegal and it's not inethical, but at least in my structure, it is immoral. There's not much as we can do about that, but it's it's it's sad to see uh egal one.
Can you hear me out? Yeah, I can hear you. I have my mute normal mute motion but yeah, d to reboot Skype for some reason. So okay, we'll blame the collar. How about that? There you go. I just gave my monologu going on because I when I came back from from talking to our caller there you and I talked over each other on TikTok, so I did my little monologue on the ascence part of it. One thing, you know, we're talking about history and stuff like that.
Another thing I noticed, for those that are tracking there what's going on in the Red Sea is the Russians a few days ago had one of their Uduloi Pacific fleet. Uduloi ones come out of Cutter is now in the Arabian Sea. From what I've read in a couple of sources, it's there for counter piracy reasons. I don't know whether it's getting involved in the Red Sea or not. An interesting note about it, though, is it's not your dad's Ouduloi. The youngest Uduloi, the left Utuloid two, I believe,
is thirty three years old or so. But this is the Marshall Shapa. I can't out Russian very well, Shota shinakoft which I apology to my Russian speakers, but It's a thirty nine year old ship that three or four years ago it had a fire, so it was converted into a frigate, so normal Utuloi. You know, it has those two four packs on either side of those SSN fourteen anti submarine warfare rockets. Those are gone. They've been
replaced with. They also pulled off one of the two hundred millimeters guns that the Uduloi ones had had one hundred and thirty milimeter extra pepper guns, so it just has one hundred milimeter now. They've replaced it instead with bls sels for caliber cruise missiles, and it also carries some other anti ship cruise missiles. Call it frigate began to some other modernanizations. But it's thirty nine years
old. And you know, we looked at the Rapushta that the Ukraine and sunk recently, the one who sunk thirty three years old, the Subba Bruser a whole one now called Mosca, she was over forty years old. It's like this is the swan song of the big run Navy because if you look what the buildings are right now, as we talked before in the show, it is a small corvette frigate based and asked coastal to regional navy. But
they will will out their old ships as long as they do. It is nice to see the UTUOI getting underway because still there were the Soviet designers. They had a a good eye for drawing attractive ships. She is a beautiful ship. Yeah. I think you can can make a mistake though that if you assume the Russians are I mean, yeah, they recognize that they're never going to be able to compete on the high seeds with the US and European
navies. But except in the submarine force, they're still building subs, and some of the subs and some of the weapons they're putting on those subs are pretty uh impressive. So you know, it's not really a time to relax about them, but it is time to really start working on ASW stuff again. Yeah, there ASW is, it's no joke. And like ASW is kind of like electronic warfare. There's so much we don't rightfully know out in open source, not just about capabilities of the subservice unit, but the ability
to try to smoke, track and attack it. But the the Soviets are not slowing down on their modernization of their their units. They don't have as many, but there's nobody else out there besides our friends that build a quality boat like they do. Yeah, and it's it's you know, you're you're talking about their electronic warfare that you know, they're they're they're they like the Chinese have been watching what we do. They you know, they're they're designing
system to interfere with our systems two, which makes perfect sense. We'll do the same thing. So you're you know that the the you develop a system, they develop a counter. You develop the counter to the counter, or you move the next level. I mean, it's kind of like when the days when when the people were intercepting radio signals and and uh the Hollywood Star and started dealing with the ability to to ship you know, uh frequency change
kind of automatic frequency change. Well that's you know, that's kind of where we are with this stage of some of the technology. So if you're gonna if you're gonna uh interfere with GPS, that's going to have an effect. And so now they've got to have a counter to their interference with GPS, and you know how that goes. We're we're we're all over the map on this stuff. But you know, it's an interesting, interesting question, and I think the the experience in Ukraine now going on it's third year, I
think highlights your point perfectly. UH. And it even you know, ties in the technology which you mentioned lasers earlier. The Kida lasers is power and the Ponts you know when she experimented with with with her laser last decade, what we have now, it's even greater. And the more kilowatts you can have, which warships especially can generate as that technology continues to grow. We
look at our layered defenses. Uh. You know, we we talked last week with Brian McGrath that you know, we're using our five inch guns, our s s sims, our phalanxes, our standard missile two three and six. You know, there's no one tool that's going to answer all your problems. But we get the point that we have a large enough killowatt laser on board our ships as another tool, UH, that that is going to be
a renaissance in ways that until you get a counter to it. Because there's always a game accounter, as we've seen in UH Ukraine for instance, one of the big UH game changers to use that word, kind of pejoratively in this regard. Uh, everybody said, you know these very accurate weapons where you can just for you fire one as opposed to one hundred, and it did work, Like the ex calibers for the GPS guided rockets coming from Hei
Mars had a huge impact, huge impact. Well, for every action, there's going to be a reaction, and we haven't heard as much about the recently, probably because there's a lumited supply, but also probably and again I have no knowledge of this, and frankly I don't want to because I don't have the clearance anymore. Odds are the Russians, which have a very good electronic warfare tradition. They have found ways to counter those, to blunt those.
You can look at some of the then you had the UAVs and the small little UAVs that they've used to substitute for their lack of air power to go after armor and to go after bunkers and things like that. You look at some of the recent A lot of them were made into somebody's backyard. But if they work, they weren't jammers. Did the Russians are now put on their vehicles From what I've been able to hear those are having an effect, so you've got to find work around to that. So you have this
Darwinian battlefield that's being accelerated. A lot of these changes would have already taken place, but their need would either not have been realized or funded until twenty twenty eight, twenty thirty, twenty thirty two. But you're now seeing it at that improvement cycle. That action reaction taking place in four to six month intervals really fascinating to see where you know, we've had to go back to cluster munitions that you use the best traditional artillery methods that you can, but
you got that dip them. How do you pronounce that I'm not an army The little cluster warhead one hundred and two piles over here. You launched that puppy and that hopefully will get the job done with all the problems that come with it. So it's it plays into that that battle of the technology is great, but two things can be true at one time. You have the
iterative battlefield where you have measure countermeasure, but also mass matters. How many artillery tubes you have, how many armored vehicles you have, how much infantry that you have the whole body. It really is. It's reinforcing a lot of the traditional universals, but also you see some of these interesting technologies developing that in a few other iterations at sea, like you mentioned the lasers is
going to be incredible. The semi autonomous when you go from these first persians view UAVs to semi autonomous, when you have the sensor heads and the coating, we find enough that they can be fire and forget as opposed to I have to fly it right into the target. That's going to be interesting to watch evolve, but it will evolve, and I believe in a very accelerated manner if this war continues to go on, as they're running out of people. So if you run out of people, if you want to keep fighting,
you've got to try to lean on technology. Yeah, you know, I think we're just hitting in the getting into a lot of this stuff that it's going to be important. But you know, again, the I think one of the arguments against lasers used to be well, are just going to cover their their vessel with or their aircraft with mirrors and the stuff's going to bounce right off. I don't know, I just you know, I know that, like we're we're doing stuff now with the with the x Q fifty
eight Valkyrie that the Marine Corps is playing with. You know, they're they're looking at using this is has a sensor, you know, have an extra sensors on this thing. That means your aircraft can go the the manned aircraft can go quiet and use the center reads from the I guess the the unmanned aircraft, and they're also going to use them. You know. Again, we've got all these ideas of you know, we're gonna have missile trucks.
Well, these things can also be you know, weapons platforms under the control of F thirty five or something. So you know, these things are exciting, they're great, but you always have to keep in mind that if you know, the minute you say you've got this, somebody somewhere else is going, ah, well, let's see you now if I can make a jamming mechanism. And we do this too, I mean we we when we look at you UAVs and stuff, we have already fielded the Marines and the Army
all kinds of devices to stop those things from overflying. Are our compounds and stuff. The one exception was where you got these guys killed in Syria or Jordan, where ever exactly they were, was it it? As I think you said that the the the bad guy drone followed in the good guy drone and that you know that is a problem. You've got to be able to
sort out who's doing what when. I'm glad you brought that up because I believe earlier on in the show in the chat room, Paul, you know, had had mentioned as Paul or Lee, one of the two, had mentioned about all these attacks that we have seen on our basis in Iraq and Syria. Yes, American public, we still have bases in Iraq and Syria, a lot of which are full of reservist and National guardsmen. But that's a pet peeve I can talk about some other day. We've been successful in
the fact that we've had a lot of injuries. We have lost three soldiers, but considering the amount of incoming fire we've taken, and we don't know why we've been as successful, and frankly, we shouldn't know why in an unclassified, open source level, because you don't want to tell your enemy while you'll be able to succeed. But if people are looking for confidence and good
news. One thing the US is good about is though we may not advertise it, it might be hard to find, we don't suppress information on our casualties. We know who's being killed and who's being injured, and those numbers from the Red Sea, Iraq and Syria and in the Mediterranean, where we've had a couple of interesting things too, it's been it's been pretty impressive. So we've we've we're doing some some things right. And I know from a
couple of people, I'm sure you've you've heard it as well. We are trying to soak up as many lessons as we can from from both events, because it's when everybody focuses back on what is the big game, which is in the Western I don't know how good the p RC is of soaking in the lessons that they can soak in as well, but usually in free societies we had a faster decision loop. It's if it's properly led and funded to be able to respond to things. So hopefully we're going to be a little
bit ahead of them in that regard. Going again to that technology versus mass uh, there are potential adversary and the Western Pacific has a billion people more than we do. They've got the mass, they've got a larger navy than we do. So are smart guys thinking about ways to better use what we have and to take those lessons we're learning and finding a way in a relatively quick manner to get that in the hands of soldier, sailors, airmen,
and marines. That's what's going to make the difference for us. Yeah, here's the risk though. Amazing interrupted here because you know, February twenty first is a report that a Japan based chief pety officer charged with espionage. Oh, he has a fire control chief signed to the USS Higgins d G seventy six, and he's going to foreign court martially's apparently selling secret information to a
foreign power, to foreign citizen. So you know, it does You got to remember that, you know, everybody, all all nations have spies. Some people are gonna gonna, for whatever reason, decide that they need to give this information to somebody, and you never know what the you know why
they decided that, whether it was for for love or money. Because we you know, we were always warned about honey honey pots and all that, all that good stuff, and you know it's just it's just so irksome to have the technology we have and then have some guy and of course he's just accused right now, but uh, some guy who apparently allegedly has transferred information that was classified to this foreign national and you know why, love money,
But that I was not a good thing. I was trying to be optimistic for a chase. There you go, bring me back to reality. But here's here's the thing. Yeah, I just it makes you want to Yeah, I have some I have something optimistic for you. Okay, this is this is this is this. We're going to go to a low This. This is Appendix D to the Navy ship Building Latest Navy ship Building thing from the Congressional Research Service. All right, summary of some acquisition lesson learned for
Navy ship building at the outset. Get the operational requirements for the program right, properly identify the programs operational requirements at the outset managements by not trying to do too much in terms of the program's operational requirements. You know, well,
uh got it. Let them use mature technologies, use land based protect typing and testing to bring new technologies to a high state of maturity before incorporating them into ship designs, and limit the number of major new technologies to be incorporated into a new ship design. Implos cost composed costs, discipline, up front use realistic price estimates, employee competition were possible, use contract there's a
prop amount of risk involved. Minimize design construction concurrency by developing design to high level completion before starting construction and resisting changes and requirements. Properly supervised construction work. Provides stability for industry in part by using every possible multi year procurement programs. Maintain a capable government acquisition workforce that understands what it is buying. As well as the above points. I'm a good lord. That was stuff they've
taken. They've taken from your blog, my blog, and our program and put in here. I mean that is we get somewhere gets would you tell me that? So glad to see that they've decided to take the bold face items of building and building a navy from roughly fifteen hundred to two thousand, five hundred years and have decided after twenty, after two decades, and changed that. You know what, maybe five hundred years of experienced actually was onto
something I agree better late than never. But good God, ALMIGHTI this is a shame that here we are right now only having to hear that stuff. Look, I'm pleased that you know, somebody said, hey, dummies, guess what this is how you do things and do it right? Well, And I'll just add though it goes to the fact that I'll put on plug in. I just just realized that we have we've run over amazing But that's okay. I love our technical Navy, I love our engineers and everything,
but how we ill train I'll teach an ill nurse our history. It's detrimental. Like one thing I've done the last two Fridays, I'm gonna do two more. I reached into my archives on my full full bowl of Friday because five Admiral Cooper, who I like fives Admiral Cooper. He's a great professional. I think we're all blessed to have him, Amen and et cetera. But he's done as a service when he made that comment about what's happening in the Red Sea. The first combat of our davies is World War Two.
I've out popped a circuit breaker, and what I've done is given the topping my hat to young junior officer one butter bar one, i e. Your generation of junior officers and the between sixty eight and seventy two, the US Navy off of Vietnam did did some incredible combat operation, receiving three hundred rounds of one hundred and twenty two and one hundred and fifty two millimeter shore batteries, cruise missiles, fighter aircraft, dropping bombs on your deck, fast patrol
boats coming in. And a lot of people don't remember that because people want to forget about Vietnam, especially anything to happen at sea for some reason. Are people just well, yeah, the Navy was like an apocalypse. Now it's like a little more than that. No, it wasn't all aircraft carriers. So I've brought that back as the fact that, No, we have a very good history and a lot of people have demonstrated a lot of things
that are still applicable for today. Whether it's proper program management, are things that you need to be able to fight an opponent who shoots back into the latoral and I know that we've taken a pot shot here and there in the
Arabian Gulf over the year. Whether it's an EXO set our mind, but no in in living memory, the guys at the exchange, they might have been one of the guys on one of those destroyers or cruisers who came up within mooning range of the North Korean coast and went gun to gun with their shore batteries. We have a tremendous history in our navy. That amazing that so many people just it's not even in the back of their mind. Well yeah, well, and yet the history involves getting hitting mines, which we
seem to always put in the back of the area. I mean, they've hit mines off for during desert storm, we hit mines off Korea. We hit mines we in our own minds apparently off off Vietnam. When the Warrington ran into a mine, the Higby got Higby got bombed, and you know, fortunately the crew had gone to lunch from the after after gun mountain thing dropped into that mouth, so nobody was killed, but it did do some damage to that mount you know. I mean, it's just it just uh,
I can't believe memories are that short. And given the fact that we were flying so many sorties aircraft sorties off the carriers and had three and sometimes more carriers. They're doing things. I mean with that, those were combat operations. We lost a lot of people. I don't I'm I don't know where I'm I don't. I don't know where Admiral Cooper got his history. But if he's talking about surface stuff we were using, that, we were
using at some point. We're even using the UH, the DASH helicopter to drone anti summary helicopters, the DASH units to UH to spot gunfire for some of the ships. So you know, nothing is new, and uh, it's a little disappointed to hear that the people who served Vietnam or or in country Vietnam were not really in combat. I guess, so, yeah, that was really I don't know about you, but if I was having three hundred rounds popping off around me, I might take a little personal should I
tell you did it happened? But we'll be the first time that folks have forgotten. Oh you know, when I was over there, we had ships come alongside who had you know, they they'd been had a round go through there, not the superstructure, but at least of their their masks and stuff, you know, and do some damage. And yeah, I mean it wasn't uh and and and also the ships that went charging into Hannoi or Haiphong
Harbor. I mean there was a there's a great story there about how the cruiser I think maybe's the Oklahoma City and destroyers went charging in there to do some damage. I don't I know there's a book on it, and I'll have to dig that out because that's a good reference to uh to talk about how how we you know they they went head to head with the and it wasn't that the North Medias had a big navy, but they did have torpedo boats and stuff like that. So yeah, and they had lots of uh
coastal batteries and stuff like that. Yeah, like, uh, the this might have been what's one of the occasions if anybody want to hear a skipper up with the one MC years ago, I found the audio of the Captain Lindsay mccanney the Newport News, UH when they and the McCormick went in against shore batteries on the seventeenth of December of nineteen sixty seven, and his is after action wash up. Somebody recorded on the one MC, and so I
turned it into a YouTube video. But if anybody what goes over to my substackle on Friday. They can they can listen to that there. It's it's funny, it's you know, most one MC calls are kind of want wah wah wah wah wah, and it sounds like that, except it's a hell of a combat experience. So I always wonder, you know, how many skippers out there could get up and give a give a recap like he did. It was really impressive. Yeah, Operation Sea Dragon. Well, hey,
on that note, I guess we should call it to day. Uh. Dinners are cooking downstairs. We do have guests for the next two weeks, but I only got through half of my questions, so I guess we'll have to do a free for all again at some point. All right, anytime it gives us a chance to demonstrate our full ignorance. Well, we appreciate everybody. Join us for another edition of mid Rats, and until next
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