How does Australia best position itself in today's security climate? How does her history shape how she sees her place relative to new and possible future alliances? Our guest for the next hour to discuss this and more will be Doctor Peter Dean. Peter is a Professor & Chair, Defence Studies Director, at the University of Western Australia’s Defence and Security Program, and their Public Policy Institute.
Jul 19, 2020•1 hr 2 min
Do policy makers and those who design our grand national strategy really understand what a Navy is? How does the planet's premier naval power seem to have trouble explaining why it needs a navy, what a navy does, and how to get it ready for war? How do navalists set the table when it is time to define, invest, and assign roles, responsibilities, missions and who get what percentage of the DOD pie? Our returning guest this Sunday to discuss this and related topics will be Sam Tangredi, and we wil...
Jul 13, 2020•1 hr 5 min
When does the Long War go feet wet? Given the track record of the preceding couple of decades, it was expected shortly after the start of this phase of the war after 911, that terrorists would take the war to sea. There was an incident now and then, but the threat never really played out to the extent we thought early on. Recent events point to the possibility that this may be changing, in perhaps ways not originally thought. What is the threat? Where is it coming from, and how do you deter and ...
Jul 13, 2020•1 hr 3 min
From the alpine lakes on the Indo-Tibetan frontier to the sweltering tropics of the South China Sea, China is on the offensive in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Aggressive and persistent in her pursuit of expanding her control and influence in her near-abroad and globally, she is challenging the distracted and slothish West to keep up with her. What are the latest moves on the global chess board? Our guest for the full hour covering the full range of China related challenges will be D...
Jun 29, 2020•1 hr 3 min
First airing in DEC 2016, For the full hour this Sunday our guest will be then Lieutenant Colonel Seth W. B. Folsom, USMC the author of Where Youth and Laughter Go. Described by USNI Books: It is the culminating chapter of a trilogy that began with The Highway War: A Marine Company Commander in Iraq in 2006 and continued with In the Gray Area: A Marine Advisor Team at War in 2010. "Where Youth and Laughter Go completes LtCol Seth Folsom’s recounting of his personal experiences in command over a ...
Jun 28, 2020•1 hr 3 min
Long deployments, new SECNAV, civ/mil stew bubbling, and everyone who left the USN to the USNR because they couldn't stand being in the yards, are being activated to spend a year ... in the yards. These are just a few of the topics that we'll be covering in this month's LIVE Melee. No guests this week, just us and you. As with all melees, we'll take questions in the chat room or on the phone.
Jun 15, 2020•1 hr 9 min
Most people think they know about the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940 … or at least they do … but it is an incredibly complicated and enthralling story that was just one part of an almost unimaginable year that was 1940. Our guest Dr. Phil Weir here to discuss his upcoming book on the topic, “Dunkirk and the Little Ships." Phil is a naval historian specializing in the Royal Navy in the first half of the twentieth Century. He gained a PhD from the University of Exeter in 2007 looking at the develop...
Jun 08, 2020•1 hr 17 min
The relentless advance of knowledge and technology has always been with us. The speed and impact of the advance can vary, but the key - especially when it comes to those advances related to warfare - is to at least pace the advance, and if possible, be at the front. There can be box canyons, false trails, mirages and other dead ends you may follow, but mixed in with the wrong is "what's next." Are the USA and its allies ready for the changes in artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and ot...
Jun 01, 2020•1 hr 4 min
He is quoted often, correctly and incorrectly, but few have actually read his works in full - and even fewer know much about the man himself, Major General Carl von Clausewitz, Kingdom of Prussia. Out guest for the full hour will be Donald Stoker, author of the new book, Clausewitz: His Life and Work. Stoker is a Professor of Strategy and Policy for the U.S. Naval War College's program at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. His previous book, The Grand Design: Strategy and the...
Jun 01, 2020•1 hr 1 min
From international relations to trade to almost every aspect of modern society, the outbreak of COVID-19 has altered the global landscape in ways we are only now getting a grasp on. As the world's largest nation and the source of the pandemic, how China responds and how it impacts her growth will be the top-line story of this change. This Sunday we are going to look at China's response and reaction to COVID-19, in conjunction with cyber, human right abuses, Hong Kong unrest, military power, econ...
May 18, 2020•1 hr 5 min
This first aired in June of 2015. 18 June 2015 was the 200th Anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, fought in present-day Belgium. Just in time, regular guest to Midrats, John Kuehn has his latest book out, Napoleonic Warfare: The Operational Art of the Great Campaigns where he covers the operational level analysis of European warfare from 1792 to 1815, including the tactics, operations, and strategy of major conflicts of the time. More than just a description of set piece battle, there is a dis...
May 18, 2020•1 hr 5 min
If it hasn't hit you yet, it will soon. Everyone's assumptions about what the defense budget will look like - what it will buy and who gets what part of the pie - are gone. The larger impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is unknown, but we do know this; at no time has so much debt been piled so high on top of an incredible spike in unemployment and economic collapse - in so little time - in the lifetime of any living American. What can we expect? Our guest for the full hour this Sunday from 5-6pm Eas...
May 04, 2020•1 hr 3 min
Last week, we could have gone another hour, so we thought the easy thing would be to bring it forward to this Sunday. We will cover the waterfront as the Navy continues to struggle to get past COVID-19's dominating Navy news, not just with the TR, but now the USS Kidd and everything from boot camp to the Naval Academy. Throw in a pick up game presence missions in the South China Sea, and the Russians ditching their future surface fleet ... and there is more than enough to make a fast hour. Open ...
Apr 27, 2020•1 hr 6 min
Take a break from trying to find a way to socially distance yourself from the people you are non-self-isolating with this week by joining us LIVE for a free for all Midrats. We have a lot in the maritime domain to discuss from the response to the outbreaks on the carries Theodore Roosevelt and Charles de Gaulle, PCS, the budget, upcoming FFG(X) selection, Iran, China and more. As we always do, we will keep the phone and chat room open if you have questions or a topic you would like us to discuss...
Apr 20, 2020•1 hr 5 min
This first aired in Feb. 2017. Since his election in November 2016, the administration and several articles have suggested Donald Trump is a new Andrew Jackson whose portrait now hangs in the Oval Office. What might that mean for the Navy? How did Andrew Jackson approach his Navy and what lessons can we draw from that? Our guest for the full hour for a discussion of an understudied part of our naval history and what it could mean for the current administration is returning guest Dr. Claude Berub...
Apr 19, 2020•1 hr 2 min
The Jones Act is hailed by many in the maritime community as an essential lifeline to keep the domestic merchant marine viable. There is an equally vocal argument that it is not just unnecessary, but counterproductive. Are the assumptions being make by the pro-Jones Act faction wrong? To discuss the Jones Act from the skeptical school this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern will be Colin Grabow, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies....
Apr 07, 2020•59 min
First aired in November 2016, in this episode we have returning guest Bryan McGrath, CDR USN (Ret.) discuss, why a Navy? Why a strong Navy? Why is a strong Navy an essential requirement for the United States Navy? From its ability to project national will, to it hidden hand in the economics of every citizen's life, why is it so critical that we have a Navy second to none. Bryan McGrath grew up in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, and graduated from the University of Virginia in 1987. He was commissioned...
Apr 07, 2020•1 hr 2 min
What is the nature of obedience for those in the the profession or arms and the civilian political community? With a review of classical studies, philosophy, history, international relations, literature and military studies, can you get a firm grounding on what it is, what it means, and how it should shape decisions and behavior? Returning to Midrats to talk about this and more based around her new book, On Obedience: Contrasting Philosophies for the Military, Citizenry, and Community, will be D...
Mar 23, 2020•1 hr 6 min
Where will unmanned technology take us in the maritime security arena? We already have more than a toe in the water, and with each year unmanned systems at sea are taking a larger role. Our guests Sunday, March 15th from 5-6pm Eastern to discuss these and related topics will be Dr. William Burnett and Dr. Todd Holland. We will use their recent article, Unmanned and Unafraid: The Transformation of Naval Oceanography, as our starting off point. Dr. William Burnett is the Technical Director to the ...
Mar 16, 2020•1 hr 2 min
First aired in March, 2016. In the mid-1930s, Leni Riefenstahl showed the power of the latest communication technology of her time to move opinion, bring support, and intimidate potential opponents. The last quarter century's work of Moore's Law in the ability to distribute visual data world wide in an instant has completely change the ability of even the smallest groups with the most threadbare budgets to create significant influence effects well inside traditional nation states' OODA loop. How...
Mar 07, 2020•1 hr 2 min
This podcast first aired in December of 2016. Even before the election, President-elect Trump mentioned he wanted to get to a 350 ship Navy. The outgoing Secretary of the Navy has put us on a path to 308, and in his waning months is fighting a holding action on the shipbuilding budget giving as good of a turnover in this area to his relief. What are the viable paths to 350 we could see in the opening years of a Trump Presidency? How long could it realistically take? What would a fleet look like ...
Mar 06, 2020•58 min
As Russia's navy starts to transition away from the last of her legacy ships, to her approaching endgame in Syria, join us for the full hour to investigate the latest developments with Russia's national security posture, including the domestic power politics and relationships with its near abroad that influences the same. Our guest returning again to Midrats will be Dr. Dmitry Gorenburg. Dmitry Gorenburg is an expert on security issues in the former Soviet Union, Russian military reform, Russian...
Feb 24, 2020•1 hr 4 min
A lot has been written about what went wrong at Pearl Harbor - a very American perspective. If you look at it from a neutral tactical view, or look at things from a Japanese perspective - there was a lot that went right at Pearl Harbor at the Tactical and Operational Level. Join Sal from CDR Salamander and EagleOne of EagleSpeak as they discuss for the full hour many of the less understood aspects fo the attack on Pearl Harbor and the development in the Imperial Japanese Navy's tactical innovati...
Feb 24, 2020•1 hr 2 min
Since its ascendency to the premier maritime power, the US Navy - especially in the area of undersea warfare - has been at the leading edge of using technology to get a military edge. During the Cold War, significant and steady progress in the first two steps of the kill chain against submarines, location and tracking, made the prospect of engaging superior numbers of Soviet submarine forces manageable. We continue that tradition today, but to keep ahead of growing challenges, we have test. Buil...
Feb 19, 2020•1 hr 3 min
Come join EagleOne and CDR Salamander for an hour of all the things maritime and national security that broke above the ambient noise the last couple of weeks. From the national security implications of the latest disease out break in China to our Navy's ongoing challenge of finding out what she wants to be, and how she wants to get there. Open topic, open phones - so if there is a topic you would like us to address, join the chatroom, give us a call, or drop us an email or DM on twitter....
Feb 10, 2020•1 hr 8 min
Put on your black leather jacket, get your SM-6 plush toy, pour a glass of your finest Chianti in honor of the epic Fincantieri after party, and join us this Sunday to discuss the latest news about the USN surface force. Using his reporting earlier this month from the Surface Navy Association Symposium as a starting off point, our guest for the full hour will be David Larter, Naval Warfare Reporter for Defense News. He's a graduate of the University of Richmond and a former Operations Specialist...
Jan 27, 2020•1 hr 6 min
Open mic and open topic for this week's Midrats as we cover the maritime spectrum from Chinese fisherman and their "strange" catches, to new carriers, to 1,001 things you can do with a DDG-1000. We'll be live as always and are taking questions and topic requests ... so come join us!
Jan 20, 2020•1 hr 10 min
We just stress tested our Strategic Sealift. We'll discuss what we can learn from it this Sunday with returning guest, Salvatore Mercogliano. Sal sailed with MSC from 1989 to 1992, and worked MSC HQ as Operations Officer for the Afloat Prepositioning Force 1992-1996. He has a BS Marine Transportation from SUNY Maritime College, a MA Maritime History and Nautical Archaeology from East Carolina University, and received his Ph.D. in Military and Naval History from University of Alabama. He's taught...
Jan 13, 2020•1 hr 7 min
Happy New Year to everyone and you know what 2020 means? It means that Midrats is having its 10th Anniversary. Come join us this Sunday as we look back at the previous decade and do our best to see what is coming over the horizon for the next. Who knows, we might have a surprise guest or two.
Jan 06, 2020•1 hr 16 min
Going back three years, today's best of we look back to a forgotten corner of the Cold War. If you define the Cold War as lasting 44 years from 1947 to 1991, then for over half the Cold War there was a simmering proxy war in southern Africa that involved, to one extent or another, the present day nations of Angola, Namibia, Zambia, and South Africa. Over the course of time, it would involve nations from other hemispheres such as Cuba, and brought in to conflict two political philosophies of the ...
Jan 05, 2020•1 hr 3 min
