Episode 694: July Free For All!

to the chat room. We'll wannitor that during the course of the show. And if there are some questions that you would like for us to inquire about, ponder about, and maybe pontificate, that's a perfect place to put it because we will monitor any good inputs you have in there and maybe a little bit of the not so good. And also if you just have some commentary about some of the things that we say, that's a perfect place to do that. So hey, we're just going to dive right into it. Good afternoon.

going on there. And kind of the start things off is the Eisenhower and her strike Group and airwing came after nine months, and there was a few articles talking about how many Tomahawks and flight hours are expended during that nine month cruise, mostly but not exclusively focused on what was going on in the Red Sea. It did kind of beg the question about what exactly are we

doing there? What is the in stake we are trying to reach because when you look at ordnance time and manpower expended forward versus is the Red Sea shipping that significantly more safe. I don't know whether you can really make that argument.

there and Marines, and why are we doing this? And how much of what goes through there comes to the US? How much it assurrance problem? And if they don't care, why do we care?

courses of actions we could take. What are the expectations in theory. You've wor gained them both before, during, and after execution, and you have certain decision points if certain things aren't being accomplished, that you do other things. It's another one of those occasions that are we to the brief ye here telling them what they want to tell to hear. Are we being told that's nice, that what

you want to do, but you're not going to do this. You're going to do this instead, and you just need to do it anyway because we don't want to do what you said needs to be done. So you go forward and you do. I think I've mentioned a couple of times do a little less than the bare minimum, and those are the results that you get. It doesn't take anything away from what the folks on the ships and the air wings and the carrier and the staff's working it. You do the best you can given the

resources and the direction and guidance you've been given. But it's got to back up to again, the United States Navy and the Nation it serves. It's putting its and it's allies because we've talked some of our friends to come join us. It's putting their reputation on the line. And reputation isn't an ego things. A lot of times you don't have to go to war because your nation and its military has a certain reputation that would make pulling that card out of the deck not an attractive option.

And if you degrade that to a certain point, it invites, it invites aggression, It encourages aggression, it rewards it. And you have to look at what I ran in, our proxies are trying to do and are they succeeding or are we succeeding in our reactionary role and that of our allies. It's just not an attractive look, especially when you look at the track record of the last few years. The larger effects of this, I think is dangerous. Now. You know you mentioned the when the Red Sea was

closed when I was a little kid. My briefing of that, I don't know. Sometime in the nineteen seventies, the National Geographic had a nice article on it that had the pictures of all the ships that have been sunk after the I think it was a seventy three war and it was. It was for years the Suez Canal was blocked. So can the world economy survive without the Suez? Yeah, sure, It's just everything is going to be slower and more expensive,

and it's it's the decision people have to make. And somewhere along the line, people are making the decision that we're not going to go past a certain level of feet dry in Yemen and we're not going to do what needs to be done to stop equipment coming from Iran to Yemen. So it's going to be in a way at the the Egypt Shop is going to have a lot of unscheduled range time that they can improve their censors on.

note that I'm trying to get aid to them. And on the other hand, I want to support Israel because amas is the Hoothies are supporting AMAS by sending missiles into and rockets and stuff into into Israel. So we're gonna We're gonna do bare minimum stuff in in the Red Sea. We're going to pretend that we're going to get stuff over the shore and in in Gaza, and the world will be a better place and I won't lose any votes. I mean, I hate to be that cynical,

but I'm that cynical. And you know, at least we have a couple both senior officers Sentcom and I think some others who have said, uh, why are we not stopping the stuff coming from Iran? What? What kind of

what are we trying to do here? I think that question has been raised at at the four star level anyway, And so that makes me feel better as a as a as a civilian whose tax money is paying for some of this stuff that that you know, at least the least voices have expressed concern over what the in state desired instate is and and why we're not doing to take the steps depending what that instate is, We're not taking steps to make sure we get one that we can live with. So I mean, I'm kind of

with that right now. It's just I'm incredibly cynical about the approach we take to some of these things.

Nobody can touch them. They can do or not do whatever they want to. The only check on that in our republic is Congress and congressional oversight. However, this is an election year, and it's midsummer of an election year where we're just a few short months of the November elections,

so everybody's distracted. Everybody has to run for office, and there is so much going on that congressional oversight I think is kind of tapped out, But it would seem what we've done in the Red Sea, and I think especially the quote godz appear unquote are ripe for congressional oversight, especially with the attempted assassination of former President Trump in the investigations they're going to be going there. There's just probably enough, not enough bandwidth up it in Congress to

really look at this. And then you look at Okay, well, what about the military press and reporters that are focused on the military press. And again these are owned by large companies that they have p and ls to meet metrics.

But the civilian press that was pretty well focused on things military, you know, the Military Times, Navy Times, Marine Corps Times, that all those people in those networks, they just had a whole bunch of layoffs some of their experienced reporters and there are other ones that are beginning in marching orders someplace else. I guess I don't think we have the national security people that we used to

have at the major institutions. And one of the best investigative reporters out there who does know security, well, well, oh, what's her name? She was just laid off from CBS. Catherine Heritage she's now unemployed, focused on other things. You know, Jennifer Griffin at Fox, she's she's really good, but she's

kind of tapped out. I don't know who's going to dig into and hold people to account for what is again to data points, same part of the world responding to the same events as seventh of October, poor, poorly executed, and the results kind of speak for themselves.

it's a nightmare. Now. I say all this, but there are a couple of good things, and they're probably political too. But let's just give the Navy credit for finally recognizing that the that the Chicago fifty, the sailors who were working at the Naval Weapons Station and near conquered California Port Chicago blew up. I mean the explosion was the left three hundred and twenty people dead to one hundred

and two of whom were African American. You know, there were another four hundred people injured, and fifty of them had the gumption to say, this was not caused by us, not by the sailors, but by the unsafe working conditions. You know, we would like to have that fixed. And then they got charged with mutinies. So these fifty went down. Has had been found guilty. I think maybe one of them didn't. I think maybe it's forty forty nine were actually found guilty of it. But the Navy finally said, no,

we were wrong. We're going to exonerate those men, and we'll try and make amends to the families because I think all of them, all of them are gone by now, but all those involved are gone by now. But it's sometimes it's not a little too late to do the right thing. And I think this is an instance where even if it was cynical to get another set of voters it was, it is still the right thing, and

I'm glad that they did it. And having served in the Port Chicago area at the Naval weapons station conquered. I can tell you that that is a not a great place to work. And if they were trying to really load ships in a hurry, you can see how an accident like this can happen, particularly with the kind of munitions they had in World War Two.

last week with the Chicago fifty. Yeah, I do not think any of those gentlemen are still alive, which is a shame because a few years later that they went back and they got rid of the dishonorable discharges and they commuted some of their sentences from fifteen years to what do I have here on this article from seventeen to twenty nine months, which you know that closed to you. That's quite the admission, But that wasn't willing to take the full step while people we were still alive, and

that's a shame. But you're right, you better. It's a good reference point for people when incidents take place that whether it's military or civilian. The judicial system's not perfect.

The law is not perfect. Tons Sometimes decisions were made and judgments were meted out with incomplete information, or we're done at the heat of the moment or the people who were there at the moment, and when the perspective that time gives you and evolution of thought that if you're going to move, you should go ahead and do the full move, as opposed to letting it take decades

and decades and decades to get there. You could you could be pedantic and say what you want to about what the fifty did, but watching hundreds of people blow up and then being expected to go again when you're not on the front lines. You're in Chicago, right in the middle of the US. But it's difficult to judge people because you weren't at their place and time. But in this situation, you're right. It was the right thing to do.

a new in maritime Industrial base program. Head it's a new program, but at least somebody's paying attention to in the Navy. That hey, one of the problems we don't have no shipyards and stuff like that. So that's those are good things. And the other last one I had for good things is the we've got an F eighteen that's been seen toting around at SM six, which would which is I mean, that really is good because they can take it out to the limit of the F

eighteen range. The F thirty five's can pick it up and direct them where they need to go, and that really adds to the legs of our sea going air aircraft and those units.

you know, the am rams no slouch. When you absolutely positively got to get there real fast at far distance. The phoenix was a nice little creature to have, and it's all behind the skiff where it belongs. But being able to strap an SM six on the wing. Also knowing the multi mission capability of the SM six, it would be interesting to know how many different modes they

can use that at. That's a nice asset that makes your potential enemies worry a little bit more and gives a strike group commander a lot more flexibility on how

and when he wants to approach things. And it's also kind of in the in the finer traditions in the Naval service that in Vietnam back when you were a kitty kitty, we got into the anti radiation missile business by taking SM one standard missile, slapping that puppy underneath the or an A seven or an F four whatever we were using on it, and saying, go out there, and do great things and it did so. Yeah, that

that was the great bass. One thing that I was thinking of when you're talking about the uniforms, and you have detected that still much more work to do, but that is a positive trend some people are doing. Also, credit where credit is due. Also, I want to tap my hat to Dave Lader and Chris Kavis because they, along with us, were some of the folks that were beating the drum really hard. Is there has been I started noticing about a year ago, so let's pack that

up six months. So let's say eighteen months ago that in general, the physical condition and corrosion efforts on board of our ships is getting better. They do not seem to have as many as bad ships out there. I don't know if we've got new equipment, new procedures, a few more sailors on board to be able to do it, some more money, but whatever change has come up in the last eighteen months. And I've asked a couple of people and people are like, I don't know, but that's

a good news story. If we have got a way to do better maintenance on our ships, even when they've been on a long deployment. We should tell that story, because that was a black eye for over half a decade, how bad our ship forgets. But the last eighteen months it's been a noticeable change, you know, getting back to where they should be.

it's it's that's a good thing. The other good thing is is Chowd to Hall, Chowd to Hill. Yeah, the CEO of the of theft lost the care and right, so he has done more to let people know about what our sailors are doing and how much the command and his command appreciates what they're up to. And you know, so he's had uh, you know, the the nukes from his his engineering department up there. He's had. I can't remember radium and radio people, people who climb the mast

to fix antennas. I think he's I hope he's had some haltechs up there, but I'm not sure. On a carrier, your hall techs are pretty they're the people for who don't know. They're kind of like the plumbers of a ship, and they're the ones to keep all the stuff flowing, so to put it gently. And there are important people, so you know, that's great, and I think more CEOs. I know this the CEO. There's another ce out there who's doing a similar thing. He's he's on a DDG.

But that's great. That's that's what we need more of and use social media for for good purposes like that. Also, it allowed him to respond when the who he say that paid added something on you know somehow, and were able to get a missile to hit the the deck of the of the I. His responses were, I don't think so, I mean, and it was immediate. You know, there was no there was no buddy in the Pentagon went well, we we can either confirm or deny that's

such a thing has happened. I mean, you don't need that, you need somebody out there on the ship scent didn't happen, won't happen and blow it out your your ear. So you know, I like that. I'm very happy with that.

we talk about sea blindness. That I saw a lot of great conversations, Like he had one of his nuke

machinists mate up top side and people were kind of making friendly. You could tell who had served or not. We're kind of making jokes about her. It's like, that's enough daylight for you. You need to go back down to the reactor spaces. Good stuff like that. We like jackass at each other eighty year old people. Kid jackass a twenty three year old, but that eighty year old person was a nuke machinist. May too it's okay, it's good.

But I think what it did is it demonstrated without all this flash and glitter, the fact that here's an organization that will take a young lady twenty three twenty five and she's down there running none running a nuclear power plant with her watch team. She's got lots of responsibility. She's doing something extremely important. There was also a pullets or quality photo of the ike. I don't know whether

child to put it up. There are one of the folks of aviation bosom mates standing there backlit with looking like looking like some Greek god of the underworld with the big chains over his shoulders, getting ready to chalk and secure aircraft. That should be on a poster on Times Square or something like that, because that will appeal to a certain people who want to do certain things, and the Navy is the place to do it. Uh. There there was a lot to be learned about the

attractiveness and again all biases aside. There was lots of non Navy people who gave this feedback. If you're looking at it, sailors doing sailor things unfiltered out there, it's a positive. It's a sales point. Gets what we're doing out there. This isn't just a ship. This is ANWKE machinist. Mate is aviation Bosn's mate. This is an F eighteen pilot. This is the merchant marine mariners next door sending stuff

over for beans and bullets. You don't have to do much of it, just give people the ability to tell a story. And I'm sure that he would say, hey, this is really risky. But it was like ten years ago or so they had a documentary film crew going board one of our carrier deployments and ninety five percent of it was outstanding, five percent of it was yeah. But that also that yeah is what gave it the human element overall positive experience. But those are the exceptions,

not the rule. So I'm hoping that the right people are seeing that example and we can do something more besides just the carriers, and I think they're on two occasions they had sixty minutes out on the carrier as well. Maybe it was the ike in one other carrier that was again they were mostly flag officers and O sixes that were in front of the camera, but we did have some everyday sailors there as well. I don't think

the sixty minutes. Crew was intentionally out there just picking the best people, but they all just did really outstanding work, especially when you look at a nine month deployment. Six months deployments are tough enough, but halfway through a deployment where you all of a sudden you say that we're extending ninety days, it's tough, not just on sailors and ships,

but also in families. I don't know what the turnaround cycle is of the carriers, but you also see it saw people who were using this as an opportunity to strangely argue how obsolete aircraft carriers were. I know, we could spend our money doing other things with it, which I can make that argument, but whenever something beyond the normal happens, carriers get extended, and sometimes multiple times. I think, I think what primograph says, we're eleven carrier and Navy

and a fifteen carrier world. The math kind of works.

out there. They're professionals. And if these eighteen ninety year old twenty year old kids are good enough to go drag chains around and do all the stuff they do in a flight deck or to work in the engine rooms and the the c c s and all that stuff on the destroyers and other ships, then they're good enough to be on TV that they don't want to look like fools either, you know. I mean, they want

to go out and tell the truth. And I don't have any I can't see any downside having them say, yeah, I could have been a soda jerk back in Flat Rock, Kansas, but instead I'm out here doing something that's that's meaningful to the country and meaningful to the world. And it's hard work and probably don't get paid as much as

we should. But you know, where else at my age am I going to have this kind of responsibility and this kind of interesting work to do, Even though it's endless when you're out there for six months on station or nine months on station, I mean, it's just but

you know, I just this is not. I think the Army it did this when they embedded a lot of reporters during the First Gulf War and it worked for them, I think, And we know since we've gone to army centric a lot lately, we really need to get these kids that are doing a great job out there on so they get to see it at home. And you know, when des Moine TV wants somebody to talk to and we had to be thrusting a kid from that area in front of a camera and saying to ask him any question you want.

an f boem because he just got off watch. It's okay, it'll be just fine, because especially in an all volunteer military, most people are going to find that personalization very helpful as opposed to the other ring that can be especially in the Navy, I think because it's an aircraft and you really don't see the pilot, it's a ship, you really don't see the sailors. It's a submarine. Usually don't

even see the submarine. So we have this huge entity doing nobody really knows what, and there aren't people involved in it. And even though for some reason I was talking to somebody the other day that in my service I always found myself working with people from Ohio and Vermont. I don't know why those aren't. Those aren't nautical places to be, but especially post Brac are naval bass where you have a significant Navy family presence, it's pretty minimal.

So people may not run into if they don't have a family member, they may not run into somebody in the navy. But when you are one touch of your phone away seeing a twenty three year old petty officer on the USS ike that looks like the person you went to high school with, that that personalizes it real f I don't know what the other services have done

that's been similar to that. It's kind of hard, and it's almost like we're not taking advantage of our comparative advantage because, let's face it, warships and aircraft are pretty darn cool, the ocean is pretty pretty neat, and our uniforms when we wear them, aren't distinctive. The Army and to a lesser extent the Marines. It doesn't afford itself

to the theatrical landscapes that the Navy does. It's definitely a comparative advantage that I would hope that we would leverage the experience in the last nine months and do some more with that to help with the scene blindness issue. That it's not that everybody. We want everybody to see sailors, but when you're trying to emphasize the importance of why our republic needs the Navy, it has If that's the first time people have thought about it when you mentioned it, then we've kind of failed.

the gunners mates do stuff on board ship. I mean it's and going into c IC and watching these young people, you know, monitoring all the centers. We have. I mean, it's you know, it doesn't lend itself to great drama unless you're showing hunt for Red October kind of stuff. But it's important work. And I don't care if you're

a if you're a cook or a storekeeper. You know, there's nobody on a ship who's not important. And you know, if one person fails to do their job, the consequences can be catastrophic, as we all know from various episodes that have happened. And so you know, I think the emphasis on responsibility for an eighteen nine year old kid

is something that we really should should talk about. Speaking of responsibility, did you see that the Coastguard has had a zillion years to get their act together for Icebreakers has now announced that they are still a few years away from doing anything because they don't have their design complete yet. I mean, what on earth?

get from the point we need an icebreaker. We've built these before, how do we make a better one? Okay, then let's do it. It's a combination of bureaucratic interference, analysis paralysis. But at the end of the day, it goes to the coast Guard leadership that they are letting these organizations, just like the Navy does, that are supposed to be supporting, the larger organization become the supported organization. And we've seen

something very similar happening to the Constellation frigate. I can get the timing worked out right, we might actually had a guest on to talk about in detail here in the next few weeks. There is no reason why this is taking place unless it is the fact that our

system has been allowed to exist for so long that, like the old joke, the process is the punishment, the process is the program. Be damned what the actual requirements are. Again, the only thing that's going to fix us is congressional oversight. I don't know how much of this has to do with the fact that the Coastguard is now part of the Department of Homeland Security. I believe all right there.

their comment on this was what they say here. Oh yeah, they said, until the design for the Icebreaker is mature, I mean at least the functional design is complete, including routing to major distributing systems that affect multiple zones of the ship, prior to authorizing lead cutter construction beyond the previous approved eight prototypes. That is, they want them to ensure they have a mature design. The Navy bought a

maturer design for the Constellation. But you know, every bell and whistle that you add on ahead of time, it's just oh, you know, if you put that left reciprocated pump here, then that means we have to remove you know, the this thing over here, and that means this thing

down here. You know, just build one the way it was designed by Finnican terry or wherever did it, and and then as you use it you could say, you know, it would be nice if we had I mean, that's the way that when you look at the destroyers for Ward two, you know, they build the A class. They found problems, they build the fletchers. Okay, the fletchers were pretty good, heavily gone, but they weren't quite long in us, so they build the gearing class. You know, how long

did the gearings last? Thirty years after? You know, all total, they were good design, well designed ships, but was because

of the iterative process. And you've talked about this before, the inereve process of build one, you know, or two or three, beat it to death and find out where things should be different, and then you know, improve as you go along, rather than you know, we're going to build eight of these exactly the same, but we got to get the design right first and then take then you take it out like the lcs's and find out that you've got these designs that just don't work for

what whatever the intended purpose was.

ten years, so twenty three years. In the distance of time between World War One and World War Two, we keep delaying in having one single platform, whether it's a ship or an aircraft, that has to be perfect and that does not work. Instead of doing the iterative process where you have multiple platforms under production staggered. That minimizes your technology risk, your production risk. It also is better for your industry. Now, is that the most efficient on paper?

especially to the engine room. However, we will be correcting that on flight two. And because we need the holes in the water, we need the ships forward. That would also give them some an opportunity to upgrade from that fifty seven milimeter. Again, what we've seen in the Red Sea is the five inch and at least the seventy

six millimeter. That multi use gun is pretty pretty darn good at some of these lower speed attack drones that we're going to see more and more of because smart militaries are going to have a mixed force where they have your really neat anti ship ballistic missile, but they're

also going to have cruise missiles, and then they're going to flood your zone with these low cost, low tech, but very multiple attack drones that uh can cause you to go Winchester pretty fast at being thrown out at you.

there are some issues. You know, if you're a helicopter pilot, you don't always like how the flight deck sits so low in the water. But you know there are other other there are other things. I mean that that iteration that the problem is as and you already we've just discussed this too. When you decide that a single airplane is going to do everything on your character and everything except the the uh stuff that the C two's and the Hawkeyes do, you know, you end up with the

F eighteen. Not a bad aircraft. That's your only aircraft. You're gonna have to live with all limitations that that has because you didn't. You decided that was the easiest way to do it. You know, it's the model T. We're gonna we're gonna build one thing. We're gonna make it, you know, to make them this way. Well, we'll adapt them as they go along, which is good, that's a

good thing. But you're you're you've limited yourself to what the maximum that that aircraft can do, rather than have is back in the old days when I was as you say, when I was young, we had the A six's and we had the S three's, We had a whole bunch of other aircraft out there could do. You could do a lot of different things that the F eighteen can't do. And it just you know that why we went through this single aircraft approach to carrier aviation is beyond me.

about a lot here. We're all looking at the Davidson window, you know, big combat Western Pacific. Well, we're not really good at predicting the next war. Maybe that'll be it, maybe it won't. I mean, there's a non zero chance that in twenty thirty two we're fighting alongside the Russians in Siberia against the Chinese. Who knows. You don't know what's going to take place. But a complicated world requires a diverse set of tools, which means you need a

diverse airwing. And you know, you look coming out of Vietnam, some of the carrier decks had a much more robust park, I think, but you had and the F four teams are just a couple of years behind it, But you had your F fours, A six's, a sevens EA six's, A couple of them had an A three slapped on

the deck. You've got the A fours. Lots of different tools. Yes, your supply issues and your your maintenance nightmares were just that because you had all these different platforms, all these different aircraft, which we also had stability to do a lot of different missions because you had a very diverse toolbox, flight deck full of light strike fighters with an occasional helo here and there and a.

International Dateline. That when you have short legs and you rely on the air force tanker aircraft's bases or underneath your enemy's artillery, it makes for an interesting decades after

you've made those decisions. That's really what we're dealing with now. We're dealing with the decisions that were made decades ago, which is why the decisions we make now are so important. We shouldn't assume that this is one reason. While I appreciate and agree with some of his arguments, a former mid Rats guest Bridge Colby, he's really been beating the drum hard about China, China, China, China, China, versus what we're doing to help Ukraine and to a lesser extent,

Israel and the Europeans. Yes, yes, yes, that's true. However, we need to be very careful in twenty twenty four, assuming we know exactly what the child in twenty thirty two, twenty thirty seven or twenty forty is going to be twenty forty seems like a long way, but it's really not. It's only sixteen years from now.

I'm gonna. I'm gonna. I'm gonna draw this circle. This is This is all the area I have to protect because I mean, I don't have I can deal with the stuff in here because he can't get here unless he can get here, and he can't get here because his aircraft don't have the range. I mean, somebody must have been thinking about this, and I know Jerry and Bran and a bunch of other people have been saying this too. You know, it is it is, It is foolish.

I mean, actually F thirty five has some additional range, but it's a single engine aircraft that always from mind navy perspective that that's troubling, but you know, more range is good more but you know, we gave up a lot of stuff, and we got rid of the A six and some of the other attack aircraft that we're capable of going a lot further than the.

this week yet anywhere. F eighteen line and the F thirty five line should not go cold until the new jet is under production full stop. And I would make the argument we need to be looking for a different design as well. But it's okay, and part of it is and it's a common thing like, well, I don't want to invest all this money when all these people are telling me that by you know, twenty thirty five, twenty forty, everything is going to be unmanned and drones.

It's no again, twenty forty. It's only sixteen years from now. I don't know about you, but two thousand and eight does not seem too long ago. That was sixteen years ago. You and I listene. I started blogging in two thousand and four. You started in two thousand and four, didn't you as well?

the same. And if you're saying we're not going to do the next iteration of improvement because the magic beings from Tomorrowland are going to make all of our problems easier, you are setting yourselves up for failure, which is why, in part the only warship we have under construction of any meaning is a late Cold War DDG that we will be building until the crack of doom because I don't know when we start getting the the DDGX displacing water. The initial stuff i've seen it looks like a nice

iterative improvement over the early Birk design. It's just a shame that and maybe smart people are have this hidden in a drawer somewhere, But I know CGX was a failure that never left the PowerPoint. But we need we need more than just one new service ship design because what we're doing right now I think we talked about on one of our more recent mid rats is we have accepted the fact that our Arley Burks we're just going to make them cruisers because we don't have any

cruises anymore. It's our Taikos are just are falling apart and are going away. Well, my understanding is all of the Arley Burke flight Flight three are all going to be captain commands. Upgraded prior flights of DDGs are also going to be captain commands. So I don't know where our commanders are going to get the command experience. Maybe on the lcs that never deploy, I don't know.

so a lot of the problems we see with commanders being uh found we've lost confidence in Joe X. I think could have been identified a lot much sooner had they had a previous at sea command. But that's just me, you know. The other thing that I wanted to throw out there is there's an article in the current issue

of Julyishaw Proceedings by Lieutenant Commander Michael Ackman. Now that I've mentioned his name on our broadcast, will probably be sent to to Adak or someplace, and it's it's our in for amphibious aircraft and we were talking about extending the range of of our of our strike forces. He points out on the end of this article says, you know what would be the problem with having your setting up. Your amphibious aircraft has a has a tanker to extend.

They will fly along with a lot slower than but fly along with the strike force, and you've got a much larger aircraft capable of carrying a lot more fuel for these guys and send them along.

And it's kind of funny the amount of the difference between those that would like to bring seaplanes back, like the Chinese and the Japanese have under production right now, and the amount of reaction you get for people who absolutely do not want them at all. It's a very interesting hostility towards the seaplane that I don't quite understand, but it's interesting to watch.

That seems to be too complicated a thought for us. US know, if we buy one, then we've got to buy the whole food chain.

But whether you're looking at special Forces, my take has always been, if we're really serious about the Pacific fight, everybody has seen the video from World War Two of former President George Bush forty one being pulled out of the drink by a submarine. If we wind up in war in Western Pacific, our submarines are not going to be doing that. We don't have enough of them. They

have other missions to do. We don't have land based search and rescue that besides helicopters that have an EAT that for range, and with the very limited service ships we have, if you think that we're going to go station destroyers and picket lines to be able to pick maybe maybe that's submission we could do for the lcs that can't fight in the latorals any I gotta think about that some more. Because they do carry helicopters.

If you know your shark history, we've got to have a better answer than Okay, hang out there. We'll have somebody to get you in five or six days. It needs to be five or six hours.

I get done pontificating. UH. Salmacarglen had a really good tweet today about I'm sorry X whatever we're gonna call those things, about the the AoE that was accompanying the UH the task group in the Red Sea and how many unreps it conducted and how much fuel it transferred and it has you know, those things have a huge fuel capacity. But I think his thing said it was

over twenty times. The it would go back and refuel itself more than twenty times to get the fuel the the aircraft, not the not the carrier aircraft and the other ships accompanying the aircraft carrier in that area needed. And there was also an oiler USNS oiler out there who also you know more than eight times. It's smacked

of capacity of fuel to keep the fleet going. Now, if based on my recollections of the old days off the coast of Vietnam, I mean we in one eleventh month deployment, we did three hundred and sixty four unreps. You know that's just munitions. I mean we did also you know ever now that we put a freezer box on and get people food. Occasionally some idiot would take fuel from us. But you know, just think about that.

That was one ship for an extended period time. It really got busy in April seventy two when the Easter Offensive occurred, until we left the area in November of seventy two. But think about what that's going to do. Uh, if we get into a hot fight somewhere, how many of these ships aes AOS that aren't going to be decommissioned because I think these things are the Arctic or whoever was out there with them was there. They're long

in the tooth. So uh, you know, logistics, logistics, logistics, you all, we got to start there and and and work from there. That's why we asked that are I mean you've talked about it. World War two, we had

those long range subs, which was a huge advantage for us for the US and uh uh, you know we have to be thinking that way again because the Pacific is all a big ocean.

them replenishment. You know, that's something else that we have not faced. Even wher World War Two, the Japanese never really succeeded in hitting that too hard besides the Neosho, but that was a side game. That's something nowadays when we have just so few assets like that, what if you really want to put your red hat on and be difficult play that game out for a few turns.

And people talk about one of my least favorite words in the conversation, asymmetric there's more than one way to fight a carrier.