Episode 718: March Free for All

the show, that's the perfect place to do it. You got to leave and run off. If you don't already, you can go over to Spotify, iTunes, Spreaker, wherever you are and pick up the show where you might have to have left us by subscribing to the podcast. It's free, don't cost you a penny, and it's the best way to keep up with you. And when I mentioned about the extra joy of the chat room, that's because today

is in our free for all format. Mark and I have some ideas that we want to chat about, and however, we are open to questions or topics that you might want for us to bring up during the Horse of the day, and I'll be watching the DMS on Twitter and we'll all be watching the chat room there on Riverside. So we're going to go ahead and dive into it. Because we cheated, we did a pre show. I think

we do want to talk about. So hey, Mark, good afternoon, and why don't we kick it off with what you and I both wanted to pick at, which is the topic that remember us being very skeptical about back in the previous decade when Maybus was second now and that is how exactly big is our fleet?

I said, it not that high. Basically, we have eleven carriers, sixty eight subs, nine cruisers, maybe seventy eight destroyer, seventy six destroyers, which I think includes the DDG one thousand, which I think is a three ship group that we don't know what to do with, twenty six lcs's, and then we have eight mine warfare ships and several lcs's are going to be going taking over that role with their new mine hunting system that's finally coming to effect,

what fifteen twenty years later than they should. And we have thirty four amphibs, and you can add all the numbers anyway, done at it, we don't have that many ships surface ships to fight. And then those sixty eight submarines I referenced, those include the the SSBNs and the ss gns. So how many of those are actually attacked submarines? You can do the math yourself, but the navy is not as big as many of us think, particularly if

you subtract the thirty four amphibs. You don't and you and as John pointed out, you don't count the auxiliaries which are operated by military Seal of Command and manned by siv mars. So you know, and it depends on how you want to count things. And the LCS accounting as a worship now we've they've been improved, but you know, there's a question there as to what we're actually doing with those ships.

navy with the People's Republic of China. Unlike China, we are, by requirement, a two ocean navy. The PRC can at their luxury stay east of Singapore and south of No Malaska and just focus on the Pacific. We don't have that luxury. Regardless whether we have a conflict to the west of US or conflict to the east of US.

We can't totally abandon one ocean or the other. So that rarely is a situation that I think I was going to say, that is a situation that you can't really appreciate unless you take out the map and look at that. And that impacts the amount of numbers of actual warships that you can take west to the International date Line if we have to, and if you want to break those down by those ships that actually carry

usable offensive weapons. That means you have a VLSSELL that fits something more larger than a hell fire missile that even necks it down further. It's not a gnashing of teeth or rending a closed things. But I think it's important that we, as in all things, that we're honest with ourselves and we're very upfront by what type of battle fleet we can actually put west to the international date line. Because those who play in the game, they can whisper sweet nothings to each other in a hushed voice,

but they understand what's between the lines. However, a lot of the civilian leadership in this country, they they don't have that nuanced understanding. And they see two eighty two eighty five preten whatever number you want to put up there. They think that's the actual number of warships that we could take west if we had to. And even if you're optimistic and use you it takes three to make one, or Brian McGrath says it's more like four or five

to make one. That's a very realistic number that I don't think that we are as open to each other about. And the PRC has similar limitations when it comes to maintenance but there are certain characteristics about our nation and our requirements that's distinctly different from our greatest challenger in

the Pacific.

someplace else. And so there was an article in Proceedings called crash Fleet Emergency ship Building Program by Lieutenant Commander Brian Adornato, US Navy Reserve, and he, you know, he makes some good points that there are a lot of ships in reserve. We don't these days. Platforms don't matter as much. There are a lot of ships off when you I've argued for years about these offshore platforms. Were used them to prototype the unmanned surface vessels. But you

know they can be manned. They can you can put weapons systems on them. Our weapon systems aren't like the old days where he had a sixteen inch gun mount that required you know, eight decks and the huge storage bind We have other things that can fit on these smaller units and would provide homeland security along with the coast guard units that are out there. You know, the the the whole effort the Navy itself is making to

do unmanned stuff is important. By x posts today on the number of ship boat builders in the United States are like forty three hundred of these of these companies making small craft. You know, if we really cranked the levers and every one of those produced ten craft that the Navy could use and convert to unmanned and arm up in some way. You know, that's that's that's a

forty three thousand unit size unmanned stuff. Then you can use these ampibs for something useful, which is to help tote those things across the ocean where they could be used. They're they're low cost snuffs since they're generally made out of fiberglass, and we're taking lessons here from the bog

ammers of the the Iranians. But you know, we could we can weaponize those things, use them, and they are as expendable as anything much more expendable than say the old pt Boat movie with John Wayne and Robert Montgomery, with.

And of course you always have the bolt On anti ship cruise missiles for NSM and harpoon, and we have the portable which is pretty much what the piratee system is, is the Mark forty one VLS and a container, and

it melds up pretty well. With that innocent question I'll put up earlier, is just saw an a notice about the HCMS Sacksville, which is a Canadian Naval Museum ship, which was which is one of the surviving Flower class corvettes that before the Second World War was a type of whaler, and there was as we always find out when war takes place, we don't have enough ships to cover second and third tier missions. In this case, it was convoy escort and it wasn't a perfect solution, but

it was a ship that was already in production. Everything was done. They just need to modify it. And they did a good job in the core of the war. But every time the ship came in, the good idea fairy came down to the pier, not just with ideas, but with boatloads of stuff that they were going to improve on it. So they did nice iterative improvements during the course of the war. And so I put out a question, you know, what type of ships do we have that the engineering work is done. They can be

produced all over the place in number. Are not a perfect solution, but we'll displace water and you can slap some weapons on it. And our favorite yardbird Byron he mentioned what always is in the back of my head, and I think we've talked about it here before, and those are the platform supply vessels, offshore supply vessels osvs, things such as the people use for construction support. They use them a lot to the offshore hydrocarbon, oil and

gas wells. And they're they're interesting ships because they go from one hundred and fifty to three hundred and thirty feet long. They have the superstructure and the accommodations forward. But then because they bring a lot of equipment back and forth to the platforms, they have a huge flat area in the back that is easily customizable with a little bit of imagination and some weld qualified people. And

I think that is the right answer. If a balloon went up somewhere and all of a sudden, we had a big requirement that we didn't have time to have a five year development cycle and three years to build, and it had to be perfect, and it had to meet all of navisty seas exquisite requirements. We just needed holes in the water that can carry something forward. I

think that's the right answer. We probably also would give us an opportunity not just for building them, but there are a lot of them out there on the civilian market in the place of in case of a real national emergency, Uncle Sam can can take what it needs to execute. So I think that's probably what we would see. The modern version of the Flower class corvettes and similar vehicles would be those offshore supply vessels.

that would work. You know, an article that I talked about from proceedings I'll put a link up on our website or eventually says there are three hundred of those offshore vessels right now that are are sitting idol. You know, it wouldn't take a genius to say, you know, if they're sitting iidol, we'd probably buy them for or rent them for a song, harm them up, and then all you need to do is find the people to operate them.

And I suspect if we got that many sitting idol, there's some some offshore crew guys who would like to earn some extra money, being chiefs or first class petty officers or ensigns in the Navy, who you could organize into squadrons and have them operate to provide some assets. Do a lot of the jobs that we're now doing with DDGs and even nlcs.

And if you read back in my base of my thirties, I read every first hand account I could get hold of of the both US and German U boat and submarine skippers in World War Two, as when they are out there operating and doing what they did so well, if they had a submarine chaser, or the Japanese had a lot too, or one of those trawlers that they knew was equipped with depth depth charges, they reacted as if they did have a destroyer coming down on it, because yeah, it may only carry you know, a half

dozen to fifteen anti submarine depth charges, but it only takes one to knock out a sub And it's the same thing if you have a bunch of ships out there that aren't carrying you know, one hundred and twenty eight land attack cruise missiles, but they are carrying a half dozen of something that might be interesting, and you have twenty of them, that really complicates an enemy because now they no longer have this body of water. I don't have to worry about or this line of approach.

I don't have to worry about it. It makes their job much more difficult. Numbers matter, even if it's not a first tier ship. Think the love the teenth and nineteenth century definitions of I guess it hurt people's feelings that we don't use them anymore. First class, second clap class, third class, fourth class ship. And then you had your brigs and your sloops, and they had a very diverse, worse set of tools to choose from. And those empires pretty much cover the globe with them.

decks and can support and sustain helicopter operations. Know, those helicopters can drop SOUNA buys you can you can, and they can drop torpedoes and depth charges and things, so you can you can escort vessels using that most of the way across the Pacific. And that's probably most of the way is good enough because the range of the current Chinese submarines is such that they're probably not going to to be bothering us too far east of the International Dayline.

carriers that carried a squadron to two and they would get west of the Midway and Wake Island until they got in range of the fleet carriers and then the air wings would fly off to their to replace combat losses. You had, I forget the technical term, maybe you know it the tanker relay system where the tankers would come off the West coast and would meet the fleet tankers somewhere in the Pacific and transfer their loads, and that

made it much more efficient fight forward. So if we have a low density threat east of the International Dateline or east of Guam, wherever you want to draw that line, that requires an escort, John Conrad, your concern, as we've talked about for years, Yeah, maybe you can't afford to have a DDG out there, But what if you had a good enough former all shore supply vessel that had

enough service to air missiles to handle. If the Chinese were lucky enough to get a unit or two out there, or had the ability should a submarine show up or something they think as a submarine, can go out there and at least make it go away, just like our subchasers, hence the name chased away submarines. They sunk a few, but they got mission kills on a lot more. It's an idea that has been used before with great success.

Technology has changed, the challenge has changed, but I think the logic remains sound.

But I'm not sure whether medical other medical issues. We want people who know how to operate the boats are and are good enough sailors. They can they can do the job, and are motivated to do the job. You know, it's one of those things. And you know, we also have to be aware. And John, there's an article that John had in this Marine Corps thing that I can't Marine Corps University publication. I'm going to put the link

up here a minute. I'll called carriers and amphibs and he's talking about that, you know when and you you mentioned it earlier. When civilian leadership of the Navy they think of carriers and amphibious ships, and that is a problem for us because he also points out in this article, as many others Sampton Greedy Tan Greedy for another name. You know, we've got a problem. They going after the

Chinese in their backyard is a hard, hard problem. And our carrier aircraft don't have range, and we don't want to put our carriers and arms away because they're expensive and have a lot of people on them. So and when're amphibs, they're slow, they're not well equipped defensively, and we're going to put thousands of marines and equipment on these things and send them east or west in this case, that is that's a problem. And he's pointing out that

maybe we don't. That's not the navy we currently need. So we really need to think. But we need to think fast, because we don't have enough time to be messing around with the waiting for the perfect solution to our shipbuilding problems. When we have solutions that will be would present a challenge to any enemy. As I said, if you put forty three thousand small boats out there that are armed and we can control them, and I believe we could do that, then that that creates incredible

issues for anybody on the other side. And they don't even have to be I mean, they could just carry they could go out and sink on purpose and be and lay minds that way if you had nothing else to do, you know, let's let's let's make things hard on the on the other folks.

we don't have a huge emergant fleet roger that acknowledged. However, one thing we do have in the Navy is actually what we don't have is the Army and Air Force do a great job of repurposing the experience they have when people leave active duty to take them into the National Guard, the reserves, and the Air National Guard doing pretty much what they did on active duty, but on a part time basis. The Navy Reserve, we don't re

don't recapture a lot of our experience at all. So a little bit of imagination and uh, maybe a funding line you could you could fill a lot of that gap, or at least do some experiments out of a couple of coasts. Nor iFolk would be a great place San Diego, where you have a lot of people who leave active duty and stay who might actually enjoy a reserve gig that has a ship attached to it.

it's the same same SONA. If I'm not too far wrong, it was in your p threes and you know that may not be the current technology, but it wouldn't be hard to bang together some of those things again and use those to make the undersea aspect, the ASW aspect of using commercial type vessels viable.

way we operated. But you know, the reserves, the reserves are really small right now, and they're very dependent on the number of people who leave. There's a I don't know what the exact I'm sure there's some formula that says we can only have this many reserves, you have this many people on active duty. But that's got to change too, because there are people out there that would be happy to be available if called on to do the jobs that they were trained to do a while ago.

And yeah, they may take a cut and pay, but you know, how long is this Are you going to call them up for it? And what is the interest if it's the safety of our country? That appeals to a lot of people who served the Navy and then got out for various reasons.

And speaking of, you know, we got the quick. One thing I was also looking at kind of related to the numbers was and we've had people arguing on both sides of this equation. And as I have grown to be more comfortable saying the because I was pretty much brought into it for a while. This theory sounds good, sounds logical, but facts in reality always seem to kick

it in the teeth. Kind of along the same lines as if in the nineteen twenties, if we decide that General Mitchell was right and Nimitz was right, so we don't need anything but heavy bombers and submarines, and we can get rid of surface ships, we wouldn't have won World War Two. It's very seductive to look at some things and not try to take a bigger picture. And one I'm speaking about specifically, this is a number of aircraft carriers we have is everybody wants to get rid

of the aircraft carriers. And there was a little little bit of funky stuff that went on. I'm convinced it wasn't by accident because I remember former Secretary Defense Gates says that we need to in order to maintain what he said at that point, twelve carriers, we need to be decommissioning one every four years. Well, the last of the Nimics class carriers and Nimmet's Hole one left a few weeks ago for their theoretically final deployment fifty years old.

But when you look at the last of the Niemens class, which was the George Herbert Walker Bush to the first of the Ford Class from commissioning date to commissioning date, that was about eight years. And you also had the first Hole one of the Ford Class, Whole two is the Kennedy. We're looking about eight years there. So in sixteen years when we should have used the Gates formula,

should have commission four carriers, well commissioned two. Now right now, when you look at it, it says, from the Kennedy to hold three, the Enterprise looking about four years, and the Enterprise to a hole four, which is the Miller about three years, so close to four years, so kind

of getting back on step to every four years. But there was a huge gap that we're going to see just to be able to keep eleven carriers out there, and it's going to drop unless they're going to find some way to extend some of the Nemetzes beyond fifty years. Because when we started going after the Houthies aggressively, the sect f Hegseth ordered the let me make sure I

got my carriers right. The Vincent and her strike group, which is one cruiser in three DDGs to head out of into a pay coom to where the Truman is. And they've extended the Truman, and every time something comes up, it's like, we don't have enough carriers. We need to have more carriers. We need to give them out there. Maybe the Knimits is going to nuke it's way across so the Truman can go home. I don't know, but one thing I would really like to see is an

acknowledgment of this. If we're optimistically from a couple of sources. I saw three years from Enterprise to Miller. Now the other two CVN eighty two and eighty three theoretically are going to be the Clinton and the George W. Bush. We don't need two carriers named Bush. Maybe the new SECT now will fix what Del Toro wasn't authorized to

do but did anyway. But anyway, if we can get CVN eighty two and eighty three closer to three years between commissioning Vice four or more, that might help relieve what we're going to see here in the next ten years, which is going to be even more short of carriers than we actually need.

going to keep moving these things further offshore. The advantage we have with the hoo Thies is that I don't know where they're getting their guidance information, but it's not exactly current because the carriers have been pointed out by people before the carrier moves. The carrier operates in such a way that it moves. So if you have a fifteen minute delay and guessing where the carrier is, you're

not going to know where the carrier is. It's going to be someplace else because they travel at high speed or can travel high speed, and you have to know which direction they're going and whether they're God forbid zigzagging speaking is a guy used to follow carriers around under

spur That could be fun anyway. You know that targeting, the targeting problem is hard, but it's it's not as hard if you're a country like China that has satellites and all kinds of ways of surveilling where our assets are.

different than the German Army. We just need to be careful that we respect the fact that those anti shiplistic missiles that the HOUTHI are lobbing at our carriers are the moleivalent of a single shot forty five seventy rifle versus a modern mauser of the row and from the mid eighteen hundreds of late eighteen hundreds of technology. And I'm concerned about that a little bit. But smart people I think are very aware of that is just finding the ability to get the holes in the proper sensors

and weapons forward. So, like you said, if we have to take our carrier strike routs west, but we keep moving them east because the threat's too big, then we've pretty much seated a large part of the battle space to whoever wants to take it, who has that modern capability.

Evidently the prototype has been flying for a few years, so they know what they're getting in theory, and we should be able to produce those in numbers. It's designed to take the place of the F twenty two that was produced and relatively, I think it was like one hundred and sixty seven, of which a couple of dozen of those aren't even combat capable. That'll be nice if we can get that in production sooner more than later. The Navy version of that is the FA x X, which,

now that Boeing has gotten in GAD. I would find it exceptionally unlikely that they're also going to get the FA xx because they have very different requirements. Thank goodness, we're not trying to do an F one eleven or an F thirty five where all services have the same platform ands that we compromise into suboptimal systems. But I read a few months ago that Lockey Martin has backed out of the competition group for the FA xx for

the Navy, which left Boeing and Grumming. But if Boeing is going to be taken in get my guess is this decision has already been made, they just haven't finalized it. An announcement that means that whatever no that Grumman is developing will be the Navy's new aircraft. I think the last aircraft that had a Grumming flavor on it was the Aborted eight program back thirty some odd years ago.

It was canceled by then Secretary Defense Cheney. But it would be nice to have something with some Grumman blood coming back in. I was really curious when that announcement's going to go and what in those final requirements concerned range. I'd be very interested to see what that aircraft's range

is compared to the super Hornets that it will replace, and eventually it'll fly with the F thirty five, which doesn't have the best range in the world because in the Pacific fight for the Navy and for the air Force too. But they've got their own issues with these new engines, the ability to do supercrews, a long ranged

carrier based aircraft carrying long range standoff weapons. Again going back to what we were talking about with what a lot of militarized afshore supply vessels can do for you, that complicates the enemies scheme of maneuver when they don't know what vector or what body of water is or is not safe for them to assume there's no enemy.

The question is are they going to be the management are able to manage these these unmanned aircraft to make them do what they want to do. What kind of way you get into the communications aspect of this and how we're going to tile this stuff together. My mind just goes all fuzzy on app. It's a complicated problem.

going to have manned fighter aircraft anymore. Technology and computing and AI and sensors will enable expanded use of unmanned system but there are some missions that you're not going to give to an unmanned aircraft, for instance, interceptions unknown aircraft coming in from point X. You need a human being that is physically there that you can rely on

and who is accountable. You're not going to rely on a video stream or a data stream coming from a remote platform that can be blocked, spoofed, or otherwise bothered. You need a human in that loop. And that's just just one example. So people can theorize, but I think the first nation to decide to have all their aviation be unmanned on a tactical point of view will regret that decision sooner more than later. So I would let somebody else make that mistake while we continue to develop

proven systems, manned and unmanned that meet our requirements. When you get your theory ahead of your practical experience, that's when you get things like the original manning concept for LCA. That's where you get the list of ah, let's produce a hundred navalized one hundred and fifty five millimeter gun that you can't use all the other one hundred and fifty five millimeter ammunition and you can only use special

bespoke weapons. And that I believe would have been related to the have some commonality with the ex caliber round, which is useless now and Ukraine because the Russians have found a way to mess up with its guidance system. So yeah, I listen and I'll entertain that. But I'm very suspect of those that look at me straight in the eye and with confidence tell me that no new aircraft should be unmanned. I don't think they're they're fully briefed.

you're the intuitive ability to understand what's going on. The ability is that some people have to get the big picture as they're doing things that they can see more than just what's right in front of them. They get

the whole bottle wax, so to speak. Uh, you know, I think that's would be mentally difficult if you're a drone pilot sitting on the beach somewhere, or if you're trying to use AI to operate these things, because unless they're very good at sorting out all kinds of oddities that are out there, I think a lot of mistakes could happen rather quickly using those concepts.

to explain it. I think a little bit of excuses in cope. I have my own very no shock here, my own little cynical response to it. But we now in response to the border security, we have two DDGs, which as we empty VLS cells in the Red Sea, I don't think we have a surplus of DDGs to do border security in the Gulf of America and off of I believe we have one in one of the

to the east and one to the west. I don't know if what we're going after in Mexico with the cartels really requires a DDG or is that really the only thing that is available because we've under resourced our coast guard.

If you're using Customs aircraft, I think it's still in operation, and there's no reason we can't use air force assets to provide the same kind of picture, or even a shore base all those things. The shore based aircraft with the rate omes, I mean, it's the carrier based aircraft with the rate homes. You know, we got a base right there Corpus Christian you could fly out of. It's unlike it you have to go far to do the job. So I'm confused. I don't unless we expect I mean,

that's that's I don't even know what that is. It's like using a a one oh five howitzer to squish ants or something. It doesn't make any sense to me.

out of Bahrain. Okay, I mean maybe maybe we should have three of those in the based out of pasco Gooula, Mississippi, and three out of San Diego to help help with the mission. We have our DDGs and then we can send our DDGs east, UH or West. I That arrangement has been around for decades and I don't really think that's the best use of the US Coast Guard. And there was a real interesting I.

that the and deliver the law enforcement detachments. But the Coast Guard guys had to do all the legal side of it.

to do. But she could with her radar and it weren't even as she could cover the Caribbean pretty darn well, So you had that capability. But yeah, we've done that before. I just don't think with a lukewarm fight taking place right now and the Red Sea that maybe there's a very good excuse in the skiff that they could explain to it. But the optics of having DDGs off of Mexico while we have our Coastguard cutters defending the coast of Bahrain and Cutter and Kuwait, it's not a good visual.

But you remember the nineteen seventies. You were in the military in the nineteen seventies, and you know the struggles that we had after the Vietnam War, and it seemed, I don't know if you want to draw the line at Grenada or whatever, but there was a certain impression of the military of the nineteen seventies, and the baby boomers were never going to be able to military people. Well,

that actually worked out. Okay, everything worked fine. And there was an interesting article in the Financial Times as Germany looks at trying to get above two percent and get their army going. And I wanted to ask you about what you saw in person as we turned from what was generally saw as the problematic US military of the early mid to end of the nineteen seventies. A lot

to be proud of afterwards. Is it was titled that's kind of funny German army struggles to get gen Z recruits ready for war and I remember a gen X guy. People say, oh, these gen X slackers will never make good military people. I think we did okay. But here's a little quote from the article. I just wanted to get your take. What advice you would give to the Germans. I'll try at the laugh of it is kind of funny to read quote from the Financial Times, and I'll

link this over on the show page. As a podcaster and a freelance journalist, journalist Ole Nymann Nimoyn, I think maybe I'm bad with German names anyway, admits he enjoys freedom of expression and other democratic rights in his home country. Of Germany, but he would not fight or die for it.

In a book published this week titled Why I Would Never Fight for My Country, the twenty seven year old argues ordinary people should not be sent into battle on behalf of nation states and their rulers, even to fend off an invasion. Occupation to a foreign power might lead to a quote shitty unquote life, he told the Financial Times.

Quote but I'd rather be occupied than dead unquote. Neumann, a self described Marxist, does not to be representative of gen Z in Germany, but his stance and his striking honesty about it tapped into a wider questions facing Europe as it re arms on the scale and has seen since the Cold War. And they have actually have a

picture of this guy. I don't know. I won't say what he looks like anyway, So that's that's the take of the article, is they're going to have a problem because the new generation doesn't want to rise to the occasion. Blah blah blah. What I was told and what I saw from a distance, in what I saw in middle school and then saw the change in high school. It really had to do with, yeah, changing policy and procedures. But it was also about leadership and messaging that helped

bring around a problem. How long how long was that period of time that you saw where things were quote challenging or bad to when you had the turnaround, because it looks like it was only seven eight years.

cutting people because they were they were too large. But yeah, morale was not real high in the services population, many of whom only had heard the anti war slogans from well, I don't know, nineteen sick whenever we first got involved in Vietnam until he finally left, but that was what they were brought up on. So you had a bunch of people who were anti military, anti war, anti establishment, many of whom now occupy government offices by the way, and so yeah, it was an unpleasant period of time

to be in the service. And but you know, underneath all that, there was still a core of people who wanted to serve their country and who you know, when we went to the all volunteer force, you could then do things, you could weed out. It was really hard getting rid of people for a while. I mean, you know,

you had all these programs. So if you got somebody got caught using drugs, they'd go through a screening process that could either put back in the service or they'd get uh you know, some kind of uh you know, eventually you could have I guess in some ways you could discharge it. But it was it was a complicated process and was made more difficult by the by the

Carter administration's approach to things. When Reagan took over and the and the system became if you got caught using drug it was a zero tolerance policy suddenly kicked in.

drug use and other things. You know that that brought a whole different group of people in who were proud to serve. And it kind of kicked back up when we when we went to Greata and you ended up with movies like Heartbreak Ridge, where you know, the military was actually portrayed a fairly positive light and and all of a sudden things kind of kind of turned around. And then it didn't hurt that that with the as we got along the Gulf War and other things. Gosh,

when did the first stop gun movie come out? Eight four eighty five? Were there? Remember? Yeah, I don't go anyway that that that played a big role in changing a lot of people's minds because everybody I knew then

wanted to be fire pilots. Yeah, I think that. I think, I mean, you could you could probably stick it right at the biggest change came with the the all Volunteer Force and the end of the the Carter administration moving into because you know, everybody's down after the disaster and Iran and try to rescue the hostages, you know, a great, a great, very challenging operation and just happened to run

into Murphy's Law. But you know, there was a lot of stuff and then it just kind of changed around because Reagan brought that kind of optimism that was missing before that. The long, the long hangover from Vietnam, I think was kind of over there.

that's one thing. The great things that were done during the Reagan era of the nineteen eight It was that was led by the officer and enlisted personnel who worked through the nineteen seventies, and they were that cores that built such an impressive structure that won the Cold War. It's not like the people who joined the Navy and from nineteen eighty one can really claim the fact that we fought one, not fought, but positioned in one the

Cold War, though they did in ways. It was really those group of people that served in Vietnam and served through the nineteen seventies. Then when they were given the right direction and guidance and the right leadership, they were able to write the force and do some impressive things. And I would offer to the Germans if they're feeling MOPy like that that they're interviewing the wrong people, they absolutely can turned to.

to take over countries. I mean, if you look at the death toll, just look at Mao's China, you know, the death toll that his various efforts to control the population took the you know, I mean millions of people dead for no good reason, the Cambodians and the you know, the killing fields, all that stuff. Anybody was keeping their eyes open and knew what was going on. You didn't

get You didn't get less concerned about communism. You've got more concerned about it because you could see that these just like with the Islamist terrorists, you know, they don't care. Life means nothing to them. And unless you get that, and you see where the threats are, the China's again, it's the Chinese, you know. I mean Mao told Nixon or Kissinger that guys want nucas. We've got a lot more people, you do. We can we can withstand a

you know, nuclear attack. And you're going, well that that is not that is one of those really bizarre I just you know, we've got so many people we don't care. That's an amazing attitude.

nineteen eighty. You mentioned it, and it just came to mind as you were talking about the Cultural Revolution, the Vietnam War, the killing fields of Cambodia, and you can kind of bookend it at the other at the end of the nineteen seventies with the Iranian Revolution and all the secondary effects. We're still dealing with. Things are actually, yeah, they're there are some challenges things to be concerned with right now. But those who live be from nineteen sixty

five to nineteen eighty, that's a benchmark. I don't think we've really looked at or talked about much about the not only the rapid change and the shocking change, but it's just some of the unmitigated horror of that time period that we really don't haven't seen the last fifteen years. It should keep people humble, also be a little bit worried because the nightmar Is fifteen years like that could absolutely show up again.

these fanatics. Don't here what brand of fanaticism they have with islamis their you know, beliefs or communism, they you know, they don't they don't ever stop. And you know there has to be some forces that that and some group of people will stand up against it. And you know, so far, for the most part it's been the United States. Now you can look back on our history in the last few years and go, well, you know, we tried to do the right thing in Afghanistan. We tried to

do the right thing interact. But the underestimation of how large the problems were and what they were trying to do, I think really cut deeply into the souls, the people that went over there and fought and came back and got and got sent back and back and back. And you knew that, you know, we were it was the Battle of Sisyphus. You were pushing it rock up hill, but it was rolling right back down. We were trying

to do something that couldn't be done. That is the other side of it is we need a much more realistic approach. And this is what I thought we were gonna get with Colin Powell, and we did get at first was you know, they if you're going to go in, do it, go do it big, and then get out. You don't have to you know, the whole nation building thing we weren't going to do. Then we ended up doing every place. You know that his original tenants, which

he took from somebody else. I can't remember who the original originator of those things was, but you know, those those were great ideas that we should still listen to, even though we didn't always didn't listen. He didn't even listened to himself after a while.

could use a little bit more of that. That's why I'm willing to give a lot of grace and leeway to Bridge Colby. I'm not aligned with everything Bridge said, but I'm not fully aligned with anybody. That's okay, But having a realistic view of things, I think that helps making the hard and correct decision. Whereas yeah, we can, we can do this in Afghanistan, that was the soft and easy decision that actually didn't accomplish anything but what

it accomplished in the end. So that is the sad reality next to the fact that we're already over so we got.

It's it is. If you want an example of how mob terror gets started and how it can ratchet up so quickly, that is that is a great example.

So I hope that Secretary of Hexith and whoever our Secretary of the maybe is going to be, and all those forces and DD get moving on this stuff.