Episode 716: Mid-March Melee

We'll be monitored during the course of the conversation, and usually we have guests here, people will make some observations or even suggest a question or two. But today we have our ever popular and ever famous Melee format for here in the middle of May. Perhaps not March, it's the other month. It's March, not May.

a guest today is just marking myself pontificating about things. And we cheated because in the pre show we pretty much know what we wanted to kick off with. And it's something that has momentum to go from one Congress to another. I wrote a bit about it right before the November election. It didn't get passed, but it's got even more enthusiasm behind it now and there'll be some changes made to it perhaps, But let's talk a little bit about what makes all navalists toes tingle the ships at.

he knows the story. And in the last Congress, the Democrats had the Senate and retired Navy Captain Mark Kellnedy now Senator, a Democrat at Arizona, he had the point on their end and it got a fair bit of sponsors, but not enough to really get a vote last Congress. And there was a couple of things when I wrote on in October that some staffers spot welded onto it that are probably unnecessary that I think will be cleaned

up if it looked at again. But I think what has me looking forward to it being regenerated and resubmitted for this Congress once people have a chance to take a deep breath and catch up to everything that's going on, is the fact that the executive branch and the President UH and his Secretary of Defense and pretty much most of the players in his national security operas have you know,

responded to to the bell. It's there's a lot of talk about pro seapower, bigger navy, better navy maintenance, shipyards, infrastructure, merchant marine. So we're having the right things being said. Again that has to have action behind it. However, you're not going to get action if you don't have the words in the top cover and you've got it from

the Commander in chief on down. So I think, uh, the details of what comes in the the hopefully the Resurrected and Resubmitted Ships Act, I think it will flow in real well with the President's priorities. We have bipartisan support in the House and the Senate. There's really no reason why some version of this can't see the light of day sooner more than later.

the the the Office of ship Building. And they've got a couple of people already there who has been pointed out by some other folks are not necessarily experts in shipbuilding. That concerns me less than that they're experts in moving money around and getting things done because we can always hire experts in shipbuilding. That's why there are shipbuilders, and so I think this is going to be really interesting. I'm excited about it. We're getting a new see it.

What's he called, Secretary of the Navy, John Phalen, who is He's another money guy, I think, and that's going to be helpful for the Navy because up to now, I'm not sure we've been managing the money very well. Has probably when we ever pass an audit, we'll find out what happened to a lot of it.

needs to be left behind. And the Navy needs a good wire brushing like that because I don't see a convincing argument that we have overperformed in the last quarter century and things have to get really bad before they get better. But I mean, we've talked about it a lot over the years, in the last few years especially. I love the argument. My answer is both. But people

argue submarines are our capital ships, aircraft carriers are capital ships. Well, when you have attack submarines literally spend years welded to the peer waiting for maintenance, and everybody just kind of shrugs, that's that's a sign that we have a system that's.

that's an important skill to have. I think it's also interesting that they've Originally it was thought that you're going to have another outside individual come in as the under, but again with different people breaking the mold of a different background. Retire another retired Navy captain Hung caw EOD guy coming in as he under. He will have a different view of the Navy than a lot of other folks. And I think, can you know, be the let me explain you what this act that means? Uh to fail

And I think that's an interesting pairing. They both kind of break the mold. But being that the mold we've been using has not been producing products fit for service, I think there's lots of opportunity here.

do we need to take a hard look at. I mean, the potential secretary that maybe failing has said he wants to do a complete overhaul of shipbuilding goals and processes, and you know, then you get this industry best practices stuff, you know, So I hate buzzwords like that, but in this case, I'm not as concerned because Lord knows, we're using the industry best practices now and a lot of our efforts and and you know when when you I think I referenced a few shows ago that that there

was a really nice presentation by one of the submarine

whoever the submarine PEO is, I think, and you know, they're talking about the need to get the parts availability and all that good stuff in line, because that's what's holding up a lot of these ship uh and submarine processes is you know, it's we need to have a solid pipeline of this, of the of the materials we

need to build the ships. We need to have this and this benefits everybody in the country because the economy will you know, it is driven by the processes of getting the materials and supplies you need to the place you need them, when you need them, and before you

need them. Because I think we're just about done with the just in time shipbuilding processes, and so I'm very hopeful, yeah, that this will work out and that the you know that there's enough Doge whoever's looking into the personnel people can take a hard look at NAVC and try and figure out what exactly some of those eighty three thousand

people do there. I know there are a lot of good folks there, but you know, we also see a lot of I think we talked about this recently with one of our guests, that there's a core of yeah, we've got these rules, we can't bend these rules. We have to do it exactly this way, and every since everybody that has a hand on some of these projects says that, then all of a sudden, your rule bound instead of mission driven.

when they disappear, you don't have that ability yet. And these are American jobs, good paying jobs, and it is really a national security asset because on Friday I did a post about I'm not even gonna try to pronounce it. It's the zaikaku. I can't pronounce Japanese words very well.

Where's my friend Brent sadlerk he knows Japanese fluently. But it was the last of the carriers that the Imperial Japanese Navy used to attack Pearl Harbor, and she was sunk the last of the sixth and she was sunk in October of forty four when she was part of the diversionary part in the Battle of Lata Golf that brought Halsey north.

and limited carriers that they were able to produce. That all had to do with industrial capacity and the ability to fight a long war, a vice what the Japanese were hoping for, that they would swat us so hard that we would back out. You know a lot of people get those briefs President Putin and it often doesn't work out that well.

our ships that we do have. Ideally as part of this, I would like to see US production because you can build ships for mara Ad and our Naval Reserve Force cargo ships auxiliaries to mostly a different standard than warship. But we just don't have the ability. And there was an interesting article that John Grady over US and I News put out what's the date on here back on March sixth. I'll just do a little quote from it, and it's good news, but it also tells a story

and I'm glad he acknowledges it. Okay, a little quote here, the head of US Transportation Command ask a key Senate panel for the authority to buy ten more used cargo vessels to support American forces overseas in combat. Air Force General Randall Reid said in a Thursday hearing. Unless moves are made quickly, by twenty thirty two to fifty four percent of government owned sea list ships will reach the

end of their service life. He added, eighty five percent of the Navy's combat powers in the United States, and we need to be delivered by sea for our air for operational operations overseas. Acknowledging President Donald Trump's call to overhaul American ship building to compete with China, the Maritime Administration and Command needs to quote, get ships in any way we can, Reid said, for speed, that means buying

used but newer vessels to support US C lift. We would like to buy four per year, but two it a minimum to maintain necessary sea lift capacity. Estimated to cost for two would be about two hundred and ten million unquote. Maybe we could repurpose some of the doze money that they're finding under the seat cushions. But it's it's it's sad because previous generations you could get on the phone and say, hey, we need to spit out two more auxiliaries a year out of our shipyards, and it could happen.

is why the Ships Act is so important. We are not building cargo vessels, container ships and all that in the US, uh, unless for very specific purposes, for for Jones Act reasons and you know, so we end up we're looking at ships made every place else Korea, kind I don't know where else they're doing it these days, Norway maybe, And you know, that's just that's just it's killing us. We don't have the and I remember doing

Desert Storm. It's some of the some of the ships that were that we hired to bring equipment over there were you know, I'm surprised they passed any kind of coast Guard inspection before they returned loose to to tote that equipment. And that's when we really geared up right after Desert Storm to get you know, all these marriages from Desert Storm. Was was a zillion years ago, it's relatively speaking, and you know, thirty thirty one years.

when it comes to gain about price inflation hit used cars too, So that's true here, Sure Dodge panel van is worth a lot more than you're paid for it. Probably, Well, if you take good care of a Dodge pedalvan, it becomes a classic.

the Mark seventy launcher forty foot container. You know, every one of those launchers has four uh missiles in it. So if you put four on a ship and they all have four, you just added sixteen missiles to your capacity when you go out to see with a with an unmanned ship. So that's I think that's a pretty significant thing. But what what Admiral Daily is saying. He says we need to stop going for the exquisite. Let

me let me give you a quote. Instead of different large and medium designs, we need one craft that is affordable, non exquisite, can come off multiple production lines in an identical manner and go towards one of two payloads, either the envisioned magazine payload at the large us V or the envisioned I s R Medium USB payloads. We can build this craft in numbers at many shipyards. Designs already exist.

We must not overspect this man. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I when I when I heard him say that, and it's it's uh, he's talking about the large USB And I think you've got a piece kind of on this about the DARPA. What is that thing called the us X one.

him to stop. But you know, let's let's let's suppose you put I mean and these are these are they're based on the mirror and the was the other two there were two offshore oil field the marri and Ranger Ranger demonstration vessels. To suppose you buy and they don't cost much. I mean, you can buy a used US one of those used oil oil field boats for I don't know, a couple of million.

in this. You know, these things whatever the whatever the

complications are by how they're going to be run and who runs these things and all that stuff, you could you could you can drive these things if you have to. You can tow them across the ocean where you can where you can put them to use, and then turn them loose with the you know, four for each destroyer, give some to the AMFIB people to play with that they have. They have an offensive weapons system that can

do some damage. You know, I I envisioned you could put a lot of these things in the water and it would be a real nightmare for whoever's on the other side. So I am really with this program, and I'm really impressed with the with that Mark sevent well, the Mark seventy launcher too. That that's pretty neat. They've already tried it out on the lcs But you can also put these things on lcs is so they can become useful too.

they're flying next to, because they've been over it. They're too exquisite, they're too nice, and you're just in that point about not being able to make it to the fleet. I would be really interested to see and hear a little hint about something I'm writing about tomorrow, if he has a background or watched in detail what happened to CGX. The reason why we don't have a replacement for our Takonder Roger cruisers is because their design went quote towards exquisite, expensive, palatable,

and it just won't make it to the fleet. When you start quoting a price to Congress and they say, well we're waiting for this technology, we're waiting for that technology, they're going to go no reason to wait, because we're going to cancel the program. You know, it's that whole I don't know if you remember who that quote was. Give me, give me the third best option to the first. The first option will never work, the second best option

won't show up in time. I need the third best option. Now, I think that's kind of the mindset and the correct mindset that daily is looking at it. Let's get it out there, and you may appreciate this again, I'm gonna take that this hobby horse. I've always been frustrated that our Navy has always underutilized the intellectual and human capital that it has that leaves active duty and goes into

the reserves. The Army and the Air Force with National Garden reserves is really good at recapturing that we don't with the Naval Reserve. And you know, these unmanned vessels, they'll need humans here and there to help out. And I'm sure they have a manned option that you can get underway with a handful of people and then you know, hit the hit the green button switch and the locket and uh, get the get the skiff out the back

and leave it on its own. That'd be a great responsibility for USNR units to be attached to these commands that are responsible for them, because it's not going to be something that you're going to want to have, you know, rotating on deployment on a regular basis just now and then, because you need them as war reserves and they're not going to be as robust and demanding. Because I think

it would be a real shame. I do want to have these go into the fleet, play with them, tell us what's good, bad or ugly, and adjust it, you know, learn some of the things. And we've made great progress in this, you know, the engineering and electrical autonomous robustness, computer computer coding, and the full spectrum autonomy that can take place. How you're going to replenish these things underway,

which they've made good progress on. Communications reach back, redundancy and bandwidth issues in a wartime environment, and of course m CON security and local control like I just talked about. But a lot of those answers are in the skiff

and it's none of my business. But I am confident, and I've had people nod their head at me in certain ways such that I think we've we've gotten this at a point that we would do everybody a lot of good if we built them and don't make the mistake we made with the X forty seven Bravo back in twenty thirteen, where we proved that we could land one on a carrier and launch it off, and then we let the tack Air people rip them apart, get them in the fleet, figure out what needs to be done.

Seventy five percent solution. Make it an eighty five percent solution after having some sailors mess around with it, but do it now. And I think that's what Daily is looking at, is that type of mindset. So you're right having an N ninety six with that attitude towards this,

you know, right man, right time, right motivation. And I think it's a pretty good political environment in the executive and legislative branch to hopefully in the twenty six defense budget to get some money in the pipeline that we can we can do some serious things with these to figure out what we might want to have in place in twenty third.

other things to do. With those ships, we didn't have to wear them out. Uh, moving around the Indian Ocean. I mean this made no sense to me. We could have put could have put gunboats out there, and should have used our PCs and other things down there. It's anyway, you know, there is no reason not to do this. It's not that expensive, as you said, you could pay for I don't know, one hundred of these things, probably with the with the money they saved from from not funding.

Not interested in them, U. That would be very very interesting to see because we really can't look for that two hundred and ten million dollars to buy two ships

that we could probably find reallocate it from other areas. But you can't do that unless you have the ability to go into your accounting side of the house and identify line items and where they're going, and you know, recon stack your priorities. If you can't rack, if you can't find, I don't know, I'll use a figure off

tell me. If you can't find twenty percent, ten percent, fifteen percent of your overall expenditures to rack and stack, then you have the probability of taking some things that you don't have to take because of that ten to fifteen percent. If that's the number, maybe two thirds of

that is stuff you don't want to touch either. But there's probably there's probably a reason why you can't find where that line number is that took that money, because it's going someplace that probably isn't as high priorities, Maybe that they need to go on the unfunded priorities list as having newer ships I think is on the on the top of the hopefully funded priorities list.

the merchant ships. And you know, the difference is on a lot of the from what I've observed, is that on a merchant ship you may have one guy on watching the bridge at a time, maybe one or two people, and the rest of it is, you know, handled you've got the functional equivalent of modern iron mic and and and stuff like that, and you know they don't man

the same level. But there's no reason a guy who spent ten years or twenty years as an O D or a CEO of a of a Navy ship can't get on the bridge of a large military seat of command ship and drive it just as well as any anybody who went to a maritime academy. He's already been to see understands. Red Ryriy attorney understands, you know, looking

at the radar and looking you know, doing CPAs and all that stuff, and all of that's done electronically now anyway.

to quote get healthy unquote and they go, you know what like flying planes, But I don't think I want to take these hard feel orders to diable. I'm gonna I'm gonna get out and go fly for American and I'll they go.

unders priorities are. But it's been pretty clear. I think for the whoever the new or, we pretty much know. I think Phalans did a really good job at his confirmation. He should be the next Secon NAB and I'll see any reason why hunk Cow should not be the under But they'll they'll rack and stack their priorities, and if

they align with what we've already heard from the sect Deaf and from the President and you know, even the Vice President, then there there's an opportunity here to make some progress. After a lot of years of people appreciating the problem but not making some changes in getting things moved in the right direction. So I'm a little bit of a of a closet optimist for us right now.

Over the course of the next twenty months, and I think by the end of summer we're going to see we'll be able to grade whether it's going in the direction that we would like or if it goes off track. But I think it would take an unexpected event. Are a very misjudging of the situation to think that it's going to be heading in a direction that we won't like. I think it's the timing and the fruit I think is right for some some nice progress in this area that we've all been looking for.

How can we get this faster? And again, you know, while we're wait for all the other wheels to spin up and get rid of the dead wood and the ridiculous restrictions on building ships and all that, and and then then we can you know, we at least do something with these smaller unmanned vessels that have great deal of promise it.

That that emphasis coming from Bridge for DoD policy, it goes and it can only go in one direction, that's maritime and aerospace power, because if you have to make the fight in the Pacific from from Taiwan to Japan out to the small island nations in the Southwest Pacific and the Great Circle route to Australia New Zealand, that's where it's going, it's going to be. But we've only the new administration has only been a powerful what six

weeks now, six weeks in change. They don't have all the players in so uh, it's uh, we've gotta gotta let the players get in place, let the aspect gel a little bit, and I think by again, by this summer, we'll really start to see some interesting things coming into open source and probably very interesting things happening, uh, you know behind closed doors.

And that's great, and they're gonna have to work with Congress do that and the people, you know, Congress has to see how this is gonna work if you if you reap as I've said earlier, when you rebuild ship

building and start working these assets. I mean we've got little shipyards and and all along our coasts, all along our in the waterways, it can be making these these unmanned vessels. And that means money in Ohio means money up in the Great Lakes, means money in Washington State. You know, it means money in Oregon. Other places where these ships in Louisiana and Texas and Virginia, lord knows, or even shipyards or used to be shipyards in North Carolina.

But you know there are places where these ships can be built. I think I saw one place up in Rhode Island, Warren, Rhode Island. Anyway, you know that they can be built, and it spreads the money around the country, and that, as you said, it pays well. You get you start training people to be good welders because all these all these outfits need good welders. They may already have someone who aren't working in for the major shipyards.

But you know it is, it is, and as long as you can keep the money flowing, so you're not doing this stop start, stop start stuff that kills that kills every business.

What we just have to keep an eye on is, unfortunately the rest of the world, the legacy, the legacy, national security concerns continue drawing attention away. You know, the news has just been dominated by by Ukraine the last month really, and now we see Syria devolving into what all ethnic and religious based civil wars devolved into, which is an ugly, ugly blood bath. I don't see any interest in this administration or the American people of America

getting involved. But you know, sometimes you don't History delivers, you delivers a different requirement for you than you ask it to deliver to you.

stuffs as a collective. I don't know how that's gonna work. The polls are talking uh sternly about how, you know, and they should because they're the front line. I mean, if if Ukraine fails. I don't think Ukraine is going to fail because I think things are going to go their way, but it's gonna be they're gonna have to give up something. And apparently, you know, uh Zileisky is willing to talk. We'll see how that works out. Uh Syria.

You know, anybody who didn't see what was going to happen when they when a bunch of former what was it good that I Islamic state people take over a country? UH wasn't paying attention. I think you know that that they're committing what what what's the word sectarians to sectarian side?

of Syria are going to want to leave. And the entire Western European political system, decades in the making, was always fragile, but it's been knock sideways by the migration that's already taking place, and so there is going to be a knock on effect in Europe, and we've got a lot of elections coming here in the next year. Western Europe might be looked very, very different Central Europe.

point them northwest as well. That's something in the back of my head from Syria that I'm more worried about than anything else.

And then the US I hate to do this because we don't really need to be there all the time, but you know, then then the UN US protecting forces could come in there and help Israelis protect the Drews in Syria in their own chunk of Syria, the Drews homeland.

a history of being persecuted. Right now, it looks like most of the hate is going towards Assad's religious minority, the Ala White Shias. But from what I've seen, and there's a lot of iffy reporting out there, but there's not much good reporting coming out either.

I don't want US military to be there because it will be another one of those things at twenty five thirty years from now. Are we still going to be there? Are we going to carve out a I think we have a course of precedence that if we wanted to carve out a Druze state, say okay, we're going to

build up your military. You got to defend your The Druids proved in the Lebanese Civil War that they can hold their own with the gun in their hands, So I don't it's just you just hate to see this kind of medieval barbarism taking place in the twenty first century.

chunk of curse and Russian territory. But that pocket seems to be, if not collapsing, deflating. This might be a better way of putting it. So if the Russians can in the North Koreans that are also they have I think the northwest corner of that front. If the North Korean and the Russians can push the Ukrainians out of Russian territory, then that makes the Ukrainian table a little sparse.

One interesting take on this whole thing that sounds right to me is what the US might be trying to do is to entice the Russians who don't want to come to the table to come to the table. Is to try to create the conditions where they feel welcome

and supported to get to the table. But if the Russians, and there's been some statements that back this up in the last seventy two hours, but if the Russians absolutely positively refuse to come to the table, then and if anybody is negotiated with real estate developers, they'll know that they'll get friendly, and then they won't get very friendly.

That it might be a situation where we could find the Trump administration giving Ukraine the weapons and support that would be far beyond what anybody would have thought even the bite of administration had been. Because I don't think that the Trump administration wants to be seen as responsible for the falla Kiev. Time will prove me right or wrong, but that would be a big mark in the l column.

The Europeans, they've had their meetings, but I don't see how you get that group of people to respond in a timely manner to what really is a now crisis. Now defined is the next six months to try to get the Russians to the table, because we're gonna have our muddy season, and then when summertime comes and the ground hardens up again. I think in most years it's by mid May if the Russians feel like they've got the wind their back, they may decide, okay, we'll come

to the table. But it's when you beg for me to come to the table because I'm want to take more land. We'll just have to see. But the Russians, as we've talked about here for the very long time, the decade and a half we've been doing mid rats. The Russians don't think like Western Europeans or North Americans. They have their own history and their own own habits, and it usually leads more towards a robustness and a toughness.

But yeah, that's interesting. I'm sure it's probably on parcause I think they're a ballistic missile testing vessel as an old golf class diesel, it's probably, let me see, I can pull this out of my brain as a JO type one Soviet nuclear vessels where they were the hens Hotel Echo in November, So they're probably as functional as a echo class SSGN and they're what was it Yankee one was at their first ballistic missile submarines as we would define it. So yeah, maybe North Korea has joined

nineteen sixty five. I don't know, but I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised at all that North Korea would take that step. It's not just a hermit kingdom. It's a military that has a nation to go with it, so they can expend what little money they have on that capability.

to a first strike. I don't think in twenty first century a submarine as loud as a as a Yankee one or an echo would do that for them. But I could definitely see the brief for them trying. But you know, a few things in life I think are more frightening than a North Korean submarine going sink or that being said, they did blow a South Korean corvette out of the water, so they know how to shoot a torpedo.

to miniaturize it enough for the submarine program. And I just I just have to think their sub safe program and their nuclear power program is it has to be relative to the old Soviet program, what the old Soviet program was to the American program when it comes to

safety and reliability. Just the idea of a nuclear power North Korean submarine going getting underway in some of the world's most delicate fishing grounds, especially the Japanese, that they can't be happy with it, But uh, North Korea, child of the Korean War, it is what it is.

fought by the Chinese. They tend to be very as you would expect from that type of culture, not very flexible, very static, very archaic, and I think that they will probably continue with that habit at sea should war come. But in nuclear weapons, especially in that small peninsula, they don't have to be that accurate or that sophisticated. If for some reason that the Hermit Kingdom decides they wanted to go master armed arm and turn the keys it,

it could be kind of scary. And war has a tendency to focus the mind, so to speak, and everybody likes to.

electronic warfare in the Russia Ukrainian war. I really hope our electronic warfare community here is absorbing every bit of lessons learned. You can that there was a recent discussion about starlink that and how dependent the Ukrainians are on it because the Russians have pretty much jammed most of the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum in the Ukrainians also have gotten very good at it, which is why we've started to see the growth of these fiber optic run

first person video drones. And there was a really neat video of a Ukrainian soldier crossing a field picking these things up like so many pieces of fishing line that were just crisscrossed all over the field. What a big mess that is. But to be to have to go

to why are guided? That just tells you how much the electromatic magnetic spectrum is becoming compromised, which for military like hours that is very dependent on C two reach back data and even more than voice, that could be very humbling if those lessons and techniques are put opposite our lines at some point that the Ukrainians and the Russians are really refining in a Darwinian manner to the east.