Welcome to mid Rats with Foal from Commander Salamander, an Eagle one from Eagle Speak at sea or shore your home for a discussion of national security issues in all things maritime. And good afternoon, everybody. I hope y'all are having a beautiful quasi spring day. We got a lot of rain yesterday and it was a little gloomy this morning, but goodness gracious, what a beautiful,
glorious day that we're having here. I hope it's the same for you, and we appreciate you joining us for another edition of mid Rats, especially those that are joining us live. We got Ron and Paul in the chat room and while we're here this afternoon, if you are with us live, go ahead and scroll down to the bottom of the show page. You can join Paul and Ron there. And if you have some observations you'd like to share during the course of the show, but especially today where we don't have a
guest, we have our free for all format. If you have some topics you'd like for us to address, or we want us to clarify something we may have talked about earlier, that is the perfect place to do it. And with that going on, we already cheated and talked ahead of time, so I think we know we're going to talk about Eagle one. Good to talk to you again today, Thy sal good afternoon. It's beautiful here where I am too, it's all glorious. Well, so far my bracket for
the NCAA is going just fine. But until you get through sweet sixteen, you never really know. Yeah, well, congratulations all the weird teams that have showed up there in c State has gone on a remarkable run, winning seven games twelve days. That's right. And at the NCAA tournament, I mean the the a SEC tournament, I think they got you know, five games and five days, and you look at all the it's almost back to the way it is in a just world. ACC really has a lot of
great teams in the tournament. It's it's nice to see. There have been a while where there were just a couple of ACC teams that were really something to talk about. But yeah, the folks in the ACC have a lot to entertain themselves. This march I almost I thought about it for a few years and maybe this is something we conspired with next year. But a lot of people do similar stuff. But I always thought it might be entertaining to
do a a march. We can't call it hack madness because that's already taken up by comfortably smug and the folks are ruthless. But we ought to do like a the Navalist march madness. I think we can find enough people, if people are interested up to vote on that, see who who would flesh out on That might cause a few a few bones of contingent, but that will always be I think we can find what you need to buy sixty four
people who write about navy terms. Yeah, that's probably about right. And you know, we can also try things like over an underzone, number of commanding officers, relief journeying, all profits to go to davy relief. Yes, yeah, there you go. I mean, so we justify all sorts of things. That's so so cruel. Oh, you know, talking about navy relief for the listeners. It was kind of fun when we do. Unless it's a situation where I, of course have my usual technical difficulties that
can only dial in thirty seconds before we go life. Sometimes that happens with guests. We're having our free for alls are our our melee format. I don't know if there's a difference between the two, it's just a different way of saying the same thing. Uh. We will try in the pre show to do what are you interested in and you know, find some overlap see
if there's a topic. And there there was a topic today that I know for our listeners here, unless you've been in Seer school for the last week, you've you've heard the story and it was at the top of both of our list And I guess that's a good thing to kick off on because for the majority of our listeners, you know what engineering is. You know how complicated and hard it can be, especially when you're deal with maybe don't deal
with the with the grown work and engineering. What they do know is our navy is at least a half dozen amp short and with our long deck, our large deck amphibs. We really seemed to have some challenges. We lost the bone Homer shard, and we lost the box We had the report come out about some significant problems with the Boxer, and I had a quote but
it show, yeah, well you're breaking up. But I think the short four is the quote that I said that the it's in the It's in one of the cover letters for the for the report, and I'll put the report location of for people in the chat room. But the quote is the these failures had a direct measurable impact on USS Boxer's upcoming deployment and impeded the overall
accomplishment of the strike group missions. The Navy specific fleet was less ready and less capable because of USS Boxers. That is, that's not that's just damning. That's that's it is all focus and if folks wanted to google it, and i'll when we put the podcast up, I'll have a link on the show page that I'll add to it. But overall Maritime Executive they have a link to the large report too, but also have some good commentary. It's
titled am fib USS Boxer Sidelined by general Complacency and Breakdowns. Now you mentioned the deployment and a lot of times when there's engineering problems, Yes, there are human factors, but there's also still kind of rightfully in many cases hedge things about certain material shortfalls. But they're pretty pretty straightforward here. If they said USS Boxer the flagship of the Boxer amphibious ready group or would have been
under normal circumstances. However, she has been in various stages of repair and preparation sin since twenty twenty two. She missed her latest scheduled deployment in the Pacific, all because of human factors. According to the recent command investigation. That's that's pretty damning, and they're pretty clear that it was. And as it is with usually with things such as this, it is senior leadership. What you allow, what you inspect, what you reward, what you punish
it. But they clearly say it's the senior leadership in the engineering department. Yeah, they really hammered them. And part of the problem I see it. I mean, in the report, it notes that a lot of the senior you know, the captain XO level, had no experience with steam powered ships. They all came from guests turban ships, and you know, they didn't receive I guess, any special training before I went to a ship that
was steam powered and and it's a different world. And if you're trying to supervise and figure out what's going on with those guys down in the hole, you you you really, I mean most of us cut training in the basic steam cycle when I was in midshipman. I'm not sure as they still do that because we don't have all that many steam power ships. But it's just it's just, uh, it's frustrating to have what would they say, a
general atmosphere of complacency or something that it's just it's just amazing. It's front I had a safe, fashional and deedrially complant work in the engine department. He felt he had direct measurable impact on USS Boxer's upcoming deployment and impeded the
overall accomplishment of the group's mission. Uh, it's you almost wonder because our CEO's of our air character are go to school to understand and the power plant is running their carrier with steam power plants no longer team what you deal with from your midshipman crews on. I wonder if there's been some conservation that just like we sent our large deck aircraft carriers to Neutral, maybe need to put our COXO through steam school wherever that is nowadays. Yeah, i'd recommend that.
I mean, uh, it used to be that all our ships were steam power, so it wasn't that big a deal. Or you did get the basic training as I said that, you know, basic steam cycle and most of us did a tour rolling through the engineering department where we had to you know, play with the boilers and all that good stuff. But I don't think that's done much anymore. And with the gas turbines, I mean
don't. I've never been on a gas turbine ship except as a tourist, so but I understand a lot of I mean I used to take we have to our chief engineers, we have to going to light off the boilers, you know, hours before we got out of our way, and now they just go press a button, and I think pretty much or if you're moving, so it is a different world, and I'm I would guess that's one of the lessons learned out of this ought to be we've got to make sure
our the senior level people above the chief engineer and the uh the main propulsion assistant, have some some knowledge of what's supposed to be going on down there.
And we've also talked recently about some of the challenges in industry where even if we want to expand our shipbuilding and ship mat and our shipyards, that you know, we're going to build up the trained civilian artisans, for lack of a better phrase, that are going to do the welding and repair, and they kind of put the shipyards on report a bit where they said, but again it goes back to supervisor inspections, nasty call your office type of
things. Quote, numerous deficiencies in quote in parentheses, unconformed parts or quality controlled non OEM supervision end of purtecees have been noted in recent overhauls. The repetitive over repair of full draft blow on bar made indicator of court falls, cont experience necessary dot steam plant bears. Are you still there? I'm still here? Well, you were breaking up, so I couldn't tell whether you finish. I don't know what I don't know what's causing. That's weird.
Yeah, the the the some of the reports went off to on the on the on the m p A of the made propulsion assistant and quite experienced guy, apparently over twenty seven years in the Navy, but he was apparently standing by when a lot of these casualties are occurring and wasn't doing the you know, the proper training to make sure they didn't occur. And you know, that's where you get that either he didn't know how to be a supervisor or
he just wasn't interested. I have no idea. But you know, the the amount of people forget how the amount of training to do anything on a on a navy ship is ongoing. You're doing it all the time, you
know. You you get people trained and then you run drills to keep them up to stuff up to snuff and uh, you know, to have this level of of lack of interest in the main thing they looked at was this that the rotation of the of the main the they didn't they they ran the jacking gear and were turning the uh the reduction gear without proper lubrication for a couple of hours, you know, and that should never happen. You have checklists. It's not like this is something that comes out, you know,
falls out of the sky. Well, let's go down and uh and uh you know, run through the reduction here just for the heck of it. No, this is part of a routine maintenance and there's checklists for this stuff. And apparently they weren't following any guidance. So uh, you know, I see that the somebody has recommended the uh uh TFC had discharged for cause against the mp A. You know, that's that's down low in the bowels.
But You've really got to think that the senior leadership, uh you know, who's doing the who's doing the p QUS checking, who's signing off on this stuff? You know that they have to go up to the to the at least the old ADEA to go up to they've senior people in both the departments and above to get your p QUS signed off. And if if the people at the very top don't know what they're doing, it is a then you're signing off pqus they don't understand either, So that that, you know,
there's a level of problems here that that really troubles me. I guess in some ways we're lucky that they did not suffer a significant engineering casualty or another fire. I mean, how how many how many anthibs can we burn up in San Diego? I don't think we have any more fireboats than we did before. Yeah, I don't think. I'm not sure that there was that much danger burn it up that you could burn out, you know, lots of bearings and things like that if you're not lubricating stuff. So uh,
but you know, I mean it's been taken for action. It sounds like they've they've taken it very seriously, it's too bad that it comes to this, because the otherwise the ship, if you look at the the you know, the other aspects of what that ship is supposed to do. They
were, they were going through a lot of really good stuff. They had, you know, all kinds of awards for excellence in all the other areas except for engineering, which says a lot about you know, what happens when you don't know what the engineering plant and how the engineering plant is supposed to be operated, and who's supposed to be doing what down there is. Yeah, it was. One good thing about it, though, is to our benefit that as an aavy, when there is such substandard performance that we don't
just do an investigation that's clear eyed, but we make it public. It's kind of the same reason why I support returning to what the standard was before twenty ten, where we had our inserves on class and available. I think that the general public and the taxpayer have a right to see what its armed services is doing and its money, and you can do it in an unclassified
manner. If you need a classified adendum, you can do that. But you know, stepping back from the specific to the occasion, you're looking at where are some very good, positive cultural things that we have in our navy. The fact that we make these publics so you and I can Monday Morning quarterback it from a distance, I think is something everybody should in a way be proud of. Yeah. I agree. By the way, we should mention that Sal mccagliano, the other Style as we'd like to call him,
is celebrating the third anniversary of his What's going On with Shipping program? And I think that's that's really impressive. As we said, I think last month, last week, you know, he's provided such a valuable resource and insight into matters that most people would have no clue about. We're not for him and and guys like John Conrad and some others who are who understand a lot more about the shipping industry than the rest of us have probably ever learned.
Can we brag that we had him on mid Rats for years before he brought his own podcast. Yes, I think it's like, you know, when Johnny Carson used to sponsor young comedians, not the salesman. Although although he is pretty funny, you know that that that he could take pride that he introduced the world to UH to Steve Martin or somebody, you know. I mean, it's it's uh, it's I think that we can we can say that, yeah, we got we gave him his start and show business.
We'll take We'll take at least one percent credit for that. And I just I just pulled up his page on YouTube and he has two hundred and five thousand subscribers. And you know, we talked about we had an episode on it last month about sea blindness. A lot of people talk about, well, nobody's really interested in this business. Well that's not accurate. Sal has got two hundred and five thousand followers on his niche of niche maritime podcasts.
One of it is he does a very good job informing and he does it in a good manner. So again, you have to have the right messenger in that regard. But between him and John Conrad, I think they are doing the majority of the public facing communication on one of the most critical parts and most underserved parts of our economy, and they deserve a lot of credit. And they've both been at it, especially John Conrad, for quite a while. Yeah, it's uh, I'm beginning to see somebody in Congress is
beginning to pay attention to some of this. If you if you look at the budget that just came out there, there are some things in there that's suggesting some somebody's been paying attention to some of the stuff that that John and Sal Fel the other cell have been saying for years, and even some things that we've been saying for years. So that's that's good. Yeah, it's good to see. And I do know for a fact that there are people up on the hill, both members of Congress, maybe a senator. I
don't know as much visibility there. I'm not fancy enough for the Senate, but there are some Senate staffers I know for sure, and quite a few staffers on the Hill that do listen to Sal and read John Conrad stuff. It does make it. And you and I have talked about this for years. Is there is a conversation going on out there, But are you part of it? Are you making an effort to get out there? And you don't even have to be one of the top ten twenty people out there.
If you're writing good content on a topic of interest, it will get attention, and it will get ears and get in front of the right ear in the right eyes, and there's plenty of room, not just in the maritime arena, but especially in the Air Force arena and the coast Guard arena. There are some good army sources out there, though they can be kind of limited. I don't know of many as marines. But there is plenty of room in this space for people who have the knowledge and the desire to join
that conversation about these topics that it's underserved. You know, here we are in twenty twenty four, I still say this sector of the information space is underserved. And Modern War Institute does a great job. There are other ones that do a great job as well, But there's still plenty of room out there. There are no walls, there's no finite been for you to fit stuff the the the bin will expand to match your bandwidth every time in this
information space. Uh So it's it's something everybody should go. This is good. We just need to have more good people that are willing to sustain the effort. Uh Sal and you know John Conrad and Sal and you know you and I as well. We didn't just start doing this six months ago. You know, we were we were content with with going with just a couple of people and it's it's grown over the years for for most of the folks
involved. As I always do, I encourage a lot of people if you've got something to say, uh, substact, don't cost anything, start typing away, type away uh, and just remember friends come and go, but enemies accumulate. Yeah, And I think that's another thing to play out.
If you take a position on something, uh, somebody's gonna you know, you can find that somebody's going to take the using view to what you said and it and in some cases, if they're in a position to do things you will, you will find that they will find a way to get to you somehow or issue somehow so that you might You have to be aware if you're gonna if you're going to tell the truth, they're out there. There
are some people out there who don't like that. And I would take, for example, the the saga of the l c SUH that the Big Navy has realized I don't know when when the light bulb exactly went off, that that they've uh acquired these things and that they're functionally useless. Somebody was talking about why are there no literal combat ships? Uh? In the literals fighting fighting, fighting, the hoofies. You know, we all know the answer.
They're not capable of doing anything, and uh, you know it is it is when you look back at the original concept of what that what the l c S was supposed to be, or what was proposed by the admirals that we were pushing the street fire concepts and all that, it was completely different than what we ended up with because because I noted in a X post, you know, the the LCS became the horse designed by a committee and just you know, they got sold some real we'll have this module ready for
you kind of thing and uh no, that's not the way you do it. Yeah, And it's and part of it, a lot of it had to do with the culture that Burne Clark had in the early double zeros where you it was it was kind of merciless if anybody opposed it simply. I mean, I've heard some people make the excuse that, well, he didn't want Rumsfeld to yell at him. How old are you? You know you've got four stars? What did you get him for? But that that's water
under the bridge. But a lot of it also I think needs to go to Congress in congressional oversight and I said earlier this week in a private group setting when the floor was open, I said, in this question, this comment of mind is prompted by Paul in the chat room, and a question that Paul put in a chat room that kind of came into something I had
talked about earlier this week. But the last election cycle, we lost Representative Elaine Lauria, who, regardless of her political party and her political stances, which I really don't care about, what I cared about with her was the fact that she knew the Navy, she knew her business, her mind and her heart were in the right place, and she held people accountable in the committee room. We haven't replaced her on her side of the aisle, and
I find that very unfortunate. This cycle we're going to lose. Even though he's a marine. I won't hold it against him. Representative Mike Gallagher from the Republican side of the House up in the Green Bay area in Wisconsin. He is not going to be running for re election after eight years. He also has been very direct in the committee room. He's been very inquisitive. He's always had a very open mind. He had very good instincts. He's going to go on and do what he needs to do. But it leaves
a gap in Congress that we really need, not just the name. All the military services need congressional oversight. If we've seen anything over the last quarter
century, especially in acquisitions, that they cannot babysit themselves very well. But for congressional oversight to work, you not only need people who care and have an interest with people that have the knowledge in the background such that they know the right questions to ask and they're not intimidated by a bunch of big guys in fancy uniforms on the opposite side of the dais and who are there. There are a couple of people in Congress that will have to step into the
gap. But at the back to back punch for those that are concerned about the navy, Luria and now Gallagher, it's unfortunate, but here we are well. But then also the our friend Brian McGrath, a few of other folks were supposed to be on this navy. I don't know what the re member. They have a commission to study the Navy and Commission on the Future of the Navy. Here's for the Navy, and we got two or three appointments, and then that just disappeared. And as it's run out of out
of its period of potential operavidality. I mean, how does Congress do that? You know? And I you we're talking about acquisition. I think things like the F thirty five. One of the selling points of the F thirty five was that pieces of it were being made all over the country, so everybody got a piece of the pie. You know, this is not this is not the way to run things. I mean, you can't if you've got if the if the center of excellence for building aircraft is in I don't
know, southern California, then my gosh, build them there. Do we really need to have components coming from Upper East to Bikistan, Maine or whatever, you know, some remote hole in the wall in Vermont. I just I just get appalled and everybody, you know, there's something in for me. And I can tell people in my district that that I got a piece of the F thirty five that if we've got to change the way we do
business and make sense out of it. I mean, if we're going to build ships in Cleveland, Ohio, great, you know, let's build ships there. Let's make a center of excellence. UH, it would solve some problems. If the Gulf Coast is going to be a center of excellence, let's let's really work on getting people there. If if Norfolk, which has a lot of assets now facilities now UH is still looking for for workers, Let's let's let's spend the money and get the workers and get the training and
get people in there making decent money doing doing the nation's work. Let's not worry about whether or not the people in Bellevue, Nebraska are somehow impacted by not having a naval shipyard component in there there in their town. Of course they have off the Air Force base. Yeah, I'll add I'll add a link in the comment section to the podcast. But for those that are with us live, if you want to go over to UH Bri McGraths substack, it's you can find a link on my substack, but you can just do
conservative Wahoo dot substack dot com. He did a post, i think it was last week titled a Lost Opportunity where he talks about that because he was one of the members and let this name names for a second, and this is where and I've seen this a little bit and has really frustrated me. And I've mentioned this to people on both sides of the aisle. A strong navy is a non partisan issue. It should not be a partisan issue,
but for some reason, people want to make it that. I've seen people on both sides doing it, and it's unfortunate because the Seas don't have a political party. But the committee started off pretty strong, where the Senate Majority Leader Thomas Ross. Actually the Senate Majority leader is Senator Schumer. He appointed Thomas Ross in February of twenty twenty three, the House Armed Services Chairman, who's Republican. He's one that appointed Brian McGrath, the Senate Majority Leader,
who at the at the time was not It was not Schumer. It was the turtle from Kentucky. No, I can't believe I forget his name. Anyway, you know what I'm talking about. He appointed Mackenzie Eaglin, the Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member appointed also a Republican, appointed Mitchell Waltman, the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Republican nominated Scott O'Neill. That was June. That was the something happened in June where it was decided that they
were going to let this die. The Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat, didn't nominated nobody. The House Armed Services Committee member, which I think is Representative Smith, no nomination at all and very disappointing. The Senate Armed Services Chairman, which is Senator Reid, who's been very good on especially naval issues, he didn't nominate anybody. The only reason I could see is sometime in midsummers there is a political decision made that
I don't understand. Maybe somebody else can explain it to me. They decided they did not want this to take place, and as Brian points out, we've got a Middle Eastern contingency that required two carrier strike groups to go on there. We are in a shooting war with the Houthi rebels in a very interesting way that should be informing how we build our future fleet. We have embarrassingly bad problems with our submarine industrial base that is also jeopardizing it appears aucus
being able to properly get fleshed out. There's lots of issues that could have been helped by that committee, but for the reason I go understand, it's not going to happened. So so unfortunate. Yeah, and you know, let's take the issue of what we're what we should be learning from the Red Sea operations. I mean, first thing is one of the things we should learn and ask constantly is what is the in state we are trying to achieve.
Set that side for a second, and the issue becomes, what if if ships are so vulnerable, vulnerable to these cheap, inexpensive, relatively speaking, missiles and and unmanned aircraft and unmanned surface ships and unmanned subsurface things, we need to really rethink how we're going to You know, it's kind of like when the Russians, I think it was the Russians whoever vented the first torpedo attack boats and took everybody by surprise. We're at that stage we know
this isn't a surprise. Captain Wayne Hughes warn't for years about we have to worry about the missile threat from the beach. That the Navy is no longer ships at sea. The Navy includes all these assets ashore that can have an impact on your navy. And you know that was learned driven upon it before the Napoleonic Wars. But you know, a ship's a fool to fight a fort, and a big enough fort with enough supply of weaponry can cause them
real problems. And if the bad guys are looking at the way we're responding, you got to figure the bad guys are going, well, we see how they do this, what's our response to the way they do this, so that they can't do that if we decide to shoot the same stuff or better stuff at the next time. And it's a cycle. We need to be really concerned about how this works. And I think it's not just the
Red Sea. I think the Russians should be learning a lesson and we should learn from them too about where you base your military assets, including your ships. Yeah, the yesterday was a dark day for the Polish built old cold warrior lse the Rapusha, if I'm pronouncing it correctly. Looks like the Ukrainians using their British storm shadows, took out two more and they they are specifically
targeting those ships. Where people wonder why they're doing it, is they're using that to transport weapons because they're like I all amphibious ships that you and I have been talking about, I'm i afgeot I linked to somebody else. The amid Rats We did episode five back in twenty ten about the lessons that we learned from the Haiti operations back then. Yes, some nations always come up.
The few things are more flexible than an amphibious ship, and they're using these these rapushas to move equipment around, weapons around, and in addition to taking out the bridges and road networks, if the Ukrainians can take out what the Russians are using to move mini material around by ship, it makes the logistics problem much harder and funnels it into fewer avenues to deliver that logistical support,
and that's why they're being targeted. But in the larger contact you brought it right up another maximum next to not attacking forts if you can help it, though I think Nelson actually attacked a few forts in his day. But you do what you gotta do sometimes, is you do not have your air fields, are your pure side facilities inside range of your enemies artillery. That
has been true since the first flaming arrow came out of somebody's bow. But you have to look at your missile forces and even your air launched cruise missiles as an extension of an aircraft. We're originally seen as just a different type of artillery. And the Ukrainians are able to reach out and touch the piers and Sevestopol, which is why they've moved some of their naval stuff further east to a place I can't pronounce, near the Kersh Bridge and east of there.
Even that, when we look at the Western Pacific and we look at the Chinese missile force that they have and are continuing to build, and then you overlay where our fixed air bases, supply depots and naval facilities are, you have a really really interesting challenge on your hand. And you know, going back to what we've talked about with the Red Sea and there are a
little comment about the oral combat ship. One thing the literal combat ship can't do is it's still got a hangover from the old Boghammer threat, which it could barely take care of even if it wanted to. It cannot defend itself from any type of aerial threat of any measure, much less some of the modern stuff, in spite of the fact they're not small ships, they're large ships. They're just poorly designed by bad theory, and they're they're too vulnerable.
There are the French and even the Italian FRIM frigates have been able to put on a good show, as have the German large frigates, which are really destroyers, but they don't have much of a number there to work with. I think the Dutch frigates have done a good job. What are they They're large frigates. You could say the FRIM is a regular sized frigate on
your own lines, but they're multi mission capable. They were designed to have a lot of tactical flexibility for whatever threat they happen to be put in front of, which is really smart for a small navy. He can't have a bunch of specialized ships. The Burk is the same way when you actually especially some of the different flights of the Arly Burks varsity football level anti submarine warfare capability, but they also have varsity level anti air capability. That's one of
the big takeaways. And I want to send a note to a couple of
our friends here. I really hope somewhere somebody is already putting forth the requirements for the flight to Constellation, which is our version of the FRIM based upon what we've seen the last twenty four to thirty six months with Red Sea and also in Ukraine because I think the Flight one it was designed to get the funding to get across the finish line, not unlike Arley Burke Flight ones, but I think we clearly need a flight too, if for no other reason
than even though that that design can take a five inch gun. The seventy six milimeter gun Auto Malara has actually been doing a very good job in the Red Sea when used by our allies to take the lower tier level drones out, and also has a pretty good capability against subsonic cruise missiles that would be nice to have as opposed to the LCAF fifty seven millimeter up front. So yeah, there are lessons that I hope are being taken on board right now
that seem pretty obvious, at least to me. Yeah, I mean some some The Royal Navy was for a while pretty good about having I mean, they developed these anti air frigates I guess there were destroyers. I mean they were they were specifically designed to take on the defense of carrier group or whatever. As far as anti aircraft stuff, you know, they were not so big on ASW because ASW was hard from the surface a lot easier from from
submarines. And so if you're going to operate an area where you've got submarines, you really need to worry about protecting your surface ships. You know, I'm not sure that's a bad idea. We just need to if we're going to make that. You know, is it is it good to have general purpose ships or is it good to have a whole bunch of ships to do one thing? You know, other dips do one thing really well and and then you go from there. I mean, it's that is always the challenge
in trying to figure out what the Navy should look like. I guess you know, the threatned ajure, especially since these unmanned capabilities now are they're They're everywhere. It's not just the air air, it's it you know, these these under sea things, the the stealth boats that are i mean kind of
mimic the the drug runners off South America. It is it's a challenge, and we've got we've really got to think hard about what we should be doing and where we should be doing it, how how close to if we're going to get that close to shore? Uh, you know, what what is the what is the gain? And that that's the other question. What are
we what are we doing there? Are we waiting for to uh you know, we don't want to do anything too uh too dramatic in Yemen and by taking on taking out the hoo theies with troops because we don't really want to invade yet another country and we don't want to, so we're just trying to
keep get them to keep their head down. I guess until Israel can claim that Hamas is no longer a problem, and then we get these piers, these floating pier, fixed peer whatever we're building going to send when everybody finally shows up, what we're going to have off there to get supplies across the shore for the for the innocent civilians of Gaza, and hopefully a mass will be toast by them. But I'm sure that like many things like Isis,
they keep rearing their uglyhead. Yeah well yeah, ices cage Is reminded the Russians they're not going anywhere yesterday as well. I also think that you know that planning assumption you just outlined that once Israel gets through mobbing up in Gaza, that the Houthis are going to go back in their box. And what if that planning assumption is not valid? One thing I don't understand. I know, I feel like I understand why they're doing it, but there's no
there's no logic to it. Is why we are allowing all this money to still go to Iran, and in many ways we are protecting Iran Iran. The Houthis are just an a different branch of the Iran Iran Revolutionary Guard. Uh, it's the there are parallel efforts in the executive branch, which I think is they think they're playing four dimensional chess, but they're they're playing hopscotch with their their shoes tied together. I don't see how this works out well
as all. And if I was Iran, I wouldn't. I would tell the Houthis do We'll do everything we can to ship stuff to you, but you you just keep at it. There's there's no downside. We even saw today where uh this morning I saw where they actually hit a Chinese ship. I think some people assume that the the Huthis have perfect, perfect knowledge of everything that's underway. I got news for everybody. We don't either. I
don't think they intentionally hit a Chinese ship. I think they've probably thought it was something else. They don't have the best maritime surveillance organization out there in the world. But I wouldn't read too much in the fact that they hit a Chinese ship. Those things will happen, but that's the exception of the rule. Yeah, they did promise Russia and China free access through the through
the Red Sea. So yeah, either either somebody told gave them the wrong information for the Chinese ship was as sometimes happens, We're I had an alterary a I s so who knows. I mean, that's that's and then the maybe the Iranian ship that's just off there and helps the houthis target made a mistake themselves. Things things happened. Yeah, I agree with you. We seem to be very supportive of of if you know, we're just dumping money on on Iran and everybody was, well, no, they can't. They
have to use that for humanitarian stuff. Money is fungible. If you give them eighteen billion here, then there's eighteen billion that they didn't have to use for some purpose before that can be used for some other, you know, some nefarious purpose. And it's not like they like us. They got they they're they're pretty secure. They got ninety percent of their oil outflow right now goes to China, So China has a vested interest in keeping the stray of
her moves open. But China doesn't really you know, they're giving them money for this oil, and they're providing them with models for some of their weapons. It's it's a it's a very bad axis that I see with China and Iran and Russia and uh, North Korea now, which seems to be a new arms pool for all these places. Yeah, they they they're The Hermit
Kingdom is also just completely militarized. So if you need a one hundred and twenty two one hundred and fifty two millimeters artillery shells, Lord knows how much stuff they have stored away. There was an interesting YouTube spot a few months ago where the Ukrainians actually captured some of the they were grad rockets that had come from North Korea and they cracked them open and they were pointing out all this all this shoddy workmanship where they're they're not quite I think they would be
the dent, the dent in blemish selection if you're value shopping. They're not quite the quality control you would expect. But that's okay, that's that's not their their method of war, I should get expected. I think that that that bringing of North Korea back into the Russian fold. I don't know what type of deals they're making to get weapons out of there, but it can't
be good in the long run. The onely thing positive is the fact that South Korea is stronger now than she's ever been before, and she's getting stronger so North Korea. I don't even the experts in North Korea really don't know what they're up to, but they are getting some good money out of the Russians. The Russians are getting money from India that buys their oil and they're turning that money around and probably giving it to North Korea to are given North
Korean food to get the weapons. So they all had their own little side economy that they're running to keep that war sustained. In Ukraine. Yeah, let me go back to something you talked about earlier, which was the why the hookies are doing what they're doing. There was a pretty good article in Maritime Executive about why they do it. Here's just give you the headline, why hoot these attack in the Red Sea? Why who the attacks? The
Redseer likely to persist? They're popular and that you know, every time it seems that that somebody attacks the West, there's a whole group of people who've got all excited and that's that they think that's great news. And so as long as it doesn't really affect the majority of the population around them, because we're not. We're driving very hard not to take out moss and schools and
all that stuff as we always do. Then you know, it's it is a game of cat and mouse, and sometimes they like being the mice. They can scurry around and you know, we're not really impacting anything, and they're getting free stuff from mirand to harass the West. Yeah, we are. We are really playing two different games. And eventually this this has got to come to a head because we continued to hold account to global international order.
Everybody keeps talking about we keep giving a pass to other people. Well, that whole two tiers of justice on the internationals, I think. Fast example, that is six hundred nautical miles from Hainan Island, which is properly part of the People's Republic of China, you have some really incredible not trying to hide its seams of the Chinese Coast Guard and some of their maritime militias well, being really aggressive with the fire hoses against the Philippines trying to resupply
their sovereign territory that's only disputed by the People's Republic of China. It was really kind of sad to see. It seems that each passing week too, that Malaysia gets closer and closer into the Chinese orbit, where they just kind of shrugged at what is obviously international bullying by the People's Republic of China. What worries me is where how do you escalate past the fire hoses. I
guess shouldering are ramming and then there's fire. So we're kind of running out the clock here on Chinese aggressive versus at least at this point Philippine steadfastness. And I don't know how that's going to work out, but I do not see China deciding to de escalate because they have no reason to right now.
Well, it was it was the project to cast light on this that we had Brent Frett Sadler on recently talk about, and you know that embarrassed the Chinese, but then they now they're they're showing the same uh images that makes them look bad. They don't care. They don't really you know, they they are not swayed by uh international opinion. The first thing is they don't really care because they're the they're the Middle Kingdom and everybody knows them. Obedience
and cow towing and all that good stuff. And it's just the way they operate. I mean, it's not that they're they're not there for people who have a reputation for being subtle. They're the least subtle people we've ever dealt with, I think, in so many ways. I mean, when they cracked down on people, let's take Tianam and Square. When they crack down, they don't they don't do it subtlely. They do it, you know, in a in a bold and bloody way. And they and then when
people mentioned Square, oh you know you can't. You can't talk to us about that. Look at your own you know, blah blah. It's uh, it is just the way they work. And you know, somebody proposed using the lcs's to assist the Philippines. You know, I don't. The Philippines have their own coast guard gets surrounded by these these Chinese Coast Guard ships. Don't. If you've seen the the videos on that where they weren't allow
them to go. And then the other day I saw that the the memory old uh anti submarine nets and used to string across our fort entries in San Francisco and place like that keep subs out. You know, now they're there. There was a boat out there pulling along some kind of net or barrier to seal off access to that, to that shoal where those Philippines sailors are
living on that rusted out LSC. I mean, you know, they're they're relentless in their pursuit of claiming that that they are right and everybody else is wrong, and that the international decisions against them and and it was wrong, and and they didn't even get a chance to participate because they refused to.
They then this is in perfect harmony with the with the United Nations conventional law of the sea, because you know, this nine dash line existed from the time immemorial, and they've always fished these waters, you know, And I'm just you just get that's and that's I think a lot of these countries are they get worn out by this nonsense. You know, you can't challenge every every stupid line, every Global Times report, uh it just you know,
it'll wear you down. And that's that's where we really do have to support the Philippines and the Vietnamese and h and the Malaysians and and the other countries impacted by this stuff. Uh, you know, we have to keep showing the flag, keep doing our It's not freedom of navigation. We have the right to navigate through those waters. It isn't a matter of us, you
know, uh, tiptoeing through there. We should, you know, we need to be even bolder in our efforts to say no, you know, we're not going to let you get away with claiming the entire South China Sea. You have no right to it. But we'll see how this goes, you know. And I'm not I'm not enamored of the way we approach China. And I'm not sure any recent administration has been where I would like them to be with it. You know, it's it's just pathetic in anyways.
I think that's that's the big question is. And we've made lots of mistakes west of the International Dateline in the last decade of neglecting people, But we have a long standing historical relationship with the Philippines that's pretty unique in the area, and they're not a rich country, they're not in South Korea, they're
not Japan. There's a tremendous and we've talked about this when mid Rats before Philippine, the diaspora, everybody's got a relative or two in the US that we really at this moment in time when it appears probably not unrelated to this fact that the PRC has decided that they're going to pick on America's little cousin neighbor, the Philippine and almost dare us to do more to support them. And we should take them up on the dare, because if we let them
bully the Philippines, that's a message one we lose face. But it also sends a message that if America won't help out and support the Philippines, who will they support. They're not going to support you, Vietnam. They still can't get over when you kick their butt. You know, Japan, what are you going to do when we, you know, can control your lifeline to the rest of the world. It just it the second and third order
effects by not giving great support to the Philippinos. I don't think they want us to do things for them, but we can help fill some of their capability and material gaps and aurrounding error from what we find in the Pentagon couches on a Saturday afternoon that I hope smart people and hard jobs an important place is are working on that. I haven't seen that in any of the budget
documents, but we have an opportunity here. It's not too late. But I thought was red If I was wearing my red hat on this and I was red hatting for the PRC, I absolutely would do all that I can to weaken and subdue the Philippines to my will. I just hope that we're going to do more because you look at the ships at the Philippines. Philippinos are sending out there. They could do better. Yeah, it is a it's difficult for people to remember this. We have a treaty with the Philippines
that provides that we will come to their defense. And you know, I've asked this question signed. I think now for a couple of years. When you begin to get these water hoses, you know injuring people, when you get these boats, you know, coming either smashing into or or attacking assets of the of the Philippine nation, not just their privately owned fishing boats, but I mean things like these boats that they're sending out to get supplies to
the Philippine Marines that are on that lst. What point, at what point does war begin which will require us to come to their defense? And what point is this is just bullying and not and not war yet? You know that, that to me is the And you know, I'm sure that we're trying to put the best face on it here. Well we're not. They're not really doing anything of war like yet, and I'm I'm not. I'm
not convinced. I'm I think there is. They're going to push it as close as they can until and you know, see how far that edge goes before we do anything to really respond, I have to come in right now. Uh one thing that I absolutely am humbled and greatly appreciate that. And it just tickles me because a lot of our and former guests do listen to the show live. They won't wait into the chat room, but now then
they get messages and you have to respect the entrepreneurial spirit. I just got a note from from Claude Barrabe. Uh let me let me quote him directly, because I read all this stuff. There was only quotes, if only there was a novel about China interfere with the Philippines. And he's right, and we'll have to add a link in the show page. We did that, Uh, the Philippine Pact by Claude Barrabe. It came out in uh almost a year ago. Uh that yep, and there's a a great picture
on the front. Now we tease Claude. He was he was talking about the problems around uh Boba Mandrel, Barbara Mandrel, Bob no anyway, right, Worth mccaddell, part of our brain, Bob l mandrab anyway where the Huthies are making trouble right now in his first novel. And by the way, Claude, with a new publisher, has just put out the second edition of his books under slightly different names. So I'll embarrass him more, but
he'll take the embarrassment because I've given him a free plug. So just go over to Amazon and enter Claude Barrabee and you'll see the second edition of some of his books that have come out recently. But yeah, you know that another example where after we talked about this once or twice, I hope is going on again. If it's not right now, maybe the next administration will do it. Is after nine to eleven, the Pentagon got a group of
fiction writers together and had them brainstorm where things could go. That is a great thing to do, and Claude would always be on my short list of people. Plus he has a naval background and he's got a preach and history from Leeds. I think I got it right. If not, he's going
to send me a nasty note. But educated, smart people and authors who write fiction or study history, they can help us interpret what requirements are going down the road in coordination with those you usually would suspect because inside the uniform military and especially inside the military bureaucracy of the civilian side, there's a lot of rice bowls, there's a lot of parochialism, there's a lot of stale
thought. But yeah, you know, Claude is one of those authors who's is kind of looked through his prison into the future and has been able to locate some of those spots. And the Philippines is clearly one. And you have to give a nod to the decision makers in Beijing. They're not dumb, they're smart. They're picking the right spots, So good on them.
But it's us up to us if we can't at least stay half a step in front of them, at least robustly respond when they do find a little a little soft spot when they're poking their band at well, they've been poking us too, I mean, uh, And but in light when you just said about gathering, the author John Ringo and and one of his science fiction books called him before Battle, talked about a gathering of science fiction writers to deal with a with a an alien threat. So it's it. Uh,
it is a good it is a good way to approach things. Sometimes fiction writers have a better insight into the minds of other people than than the guys are writing off orders. Yeah, I mean they pushed us. Remember the stuff they did with some of our uh us n S ships out there, and you know, we would capture and also they would capture one of our unmanned uh uh undersea operation things and they would fish it up and look at
it. And we'll never forget the EP three episode, right, I mean, the guy crashes into our aircraft, they land, and then they go through the aircraft and discover all the whatever'sented EP three So uh, they and they make us take it take it apart to get it out of there. And again, if I was working with the PRC, I would have done the same thing. That was a gift. Yeah, well we did do
the same thing. You know, every time we got somebody's uh got somebody to fly the aircraft to freedom, and we would get that somehow they would always end up in Nevadas. Oh you flew your Make twenty five and in Japan. Well, the Japanese need to do a customs inspection of it. They should be through with the customs inspection a couple of weeks. We'll give it back to you, I promise. Yep, Well, think of a free guess we have gifted our listeners and extra extra few minutes of time,
so I guess we should wind it up. We got through most of my lift. Did you have any saved rounds you wanted to push down? Let's see. Uh No, we're good, We're good. Well, unless you want to mention isis in Russia? Because it is interesting to me that Putin really is trying to blame that all on the Ukrainians when it's clear of it that the Ukrainians had nothing to do with it. But it also points out
we need to be concerned about similar things likely happening in our country. In both Russia and here, politicians know the old Ram and Manuel phrase never let a crisis go to waste. Just I think it should be obvious to everybody. It's not if, but when we have the next large scale terrorist attack and the last thing we need to do is to let politicians take the easiest short route and respond to external terror threats by cracking down on the liberties and
freedoms of American citizens as opposed to going after the actual perpetrators. I still look at what we did with the Patriot Act back after the nine to eleven attacks, and that's a classic example of overreach that still hasn't been corrected in a lot of areas. But everybody should gird their loins. What happened in Moscow will happen here. We just don't know when, we just don't know where, and we make it even I guess call it a night, Just
call it a night. Next weekend, of course, is Easter for everybody to celebrate. Happy Sure, howe of my Orthodox friends tell me that it's happening in the summer. I don't know, And we do have guests lined up in April, and we appreciate everybody join us and everybody in the chat room. We also appreciate you coming in and sharing. And next time, I hope everybody has a great Navy Day. Cheers Paddy. Mike Mooney wants to marry me and leave a friend of condily for you being to blame for
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