The Real Truth About the U.S.'s Nuclear Submarines | Thomas Shugart | Ep. 337

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Special Operations.

Cobert SB and I.

The Teamhouse with your hopes, Jack Murphy and David bark.

Hey, everyone, welcome to episode three hundred and thirty seven of The Teamhouse. I'm Jack, You're with Dave, and our guest on tonight's show is Thomas Sugart. Thomas served in the Navy as a officer on submarine, going all the way up to be the Captain of the USS Olympia. Correct, that's right, and then went on to positions at the Office of Net Assessment, essentially working in the think tank

That's a pleasure. Thanks very much, Jack and Dave.

So, to kick it off, tell us a little bit about like your upbringing and what sort of propelled you towards service in the Navy.

So, I mean, I grew up in Texas and went to the University of Texas and was working on mechanical engineering and the right around the time of the very first golf war.

And I'm dating myself here.

But right around the time of the first golf bur I was a bit inspired to join up somehow while I was in college, and so I went to their pretty station. I said, hey, you know, I'm interested in helping out. Is there a way I can be like a reserve officer or something? And the recruiter said, hey, what's your major? I said, in mechanical engineering, and how are your grades?

They're good? Okay, Well I've got a program for you.

So the Nuclear Navy's Nuclear Power Officer Candidate program, and that's a that's a program that still exists very much going strong, and it's basically a way that the Navy can get enough engineers to be the nuclear trained officers on its submarines and aircraft barriers. Because they basically can't produce enough engineers out of the Naval Academy and out

So I got signed up for that program.

It is a fantastic program back when.

I did it.

So basically what you do is you sign up and the day you sign up, and you can sign up up to two years before you graduate, maybe two and a half. At this point, you get a signing bonus and you become active to the enlisted in an eighty.

Your only job is to go to college.

Interesting you literally I don't know it works now, but I can say I got a letter that said that I was both exempt, I was exempted from grooming standards and that I was neither required nor authorized the where I give, but still could use space available air thinking for retirement to your leave while you're in school and you're it's full active to be paid benefits.

Back then it was E three.

I think it's like a six now six or E seven that you get paid and it's not scholarship, it's just hey, So you do that program up to two years and then when you graduate and go to Officer CAMPI school and then Nuclear Power school, and then you enter the training pipeline for submarines or surface ships, depending on where you're going. So that seemed like a good application of my technical background to really utilize that but still be able to serve. And I thought submarines sound exciting.

Now. I haven't changed a lot since then.

That doesn't really speak that much the way things are now, But so that's kind of that's kind of what got me into the Navy in the first place.

I had thought about going to the Naval Academy and.

Actually spent a week there in the summer before my senior year and ended up being kind of deciding how I kind of want the regular all the experience, and I'm sure the academy is great for a lot of folks able to you know, Austin's a fun place to live and any.

Gradesime in college and then what uh, you know, you go through this whole program, you go through college, you get into the Navy, and you mentioned all the officers are nuclear trained, but I mean, I guess that doesn't necessarily mean you are like the reactor guy per se. I'm just curious what was like kind of your first duty position when you showed up, So junior officers on board submarines, the first thing you do when you get there is you're you're going back to the endergrad.

You're learning how to operate uh, all the equipment back there.

Ultimately that there's a watch station you're trying to qualify, which is engineering officer to watch. So you're basically the watch officer that is in charge of the reactor plan. Okay, you're at the guy that's actually flipped in the switches on the panels and all that. There are those really smart and listed operators that have a lot more experience than you.

Do that are doing that.

So so like in the control room for the engineering space and you don't have you know, have a watch officer, and then you have two or three panel operators depending on the type of shift, the ones that are really operating the you know, reactor and or whatnot. And then you have a bunch of other watch standers that are out in the engineering spaces, you know, turning valves and pick some pumps and all that other stuff. I watched team of about ten or so ten or eleven people total

And then then.

You have your administrative jobs with your or your division officer, and you're notionally in charge of you know, ten or so enlisted personnel on the division. So it's and you start with engineering, so electrical division or reactor control division.

Or that kind of thing.

So so you start out in that job as a bit of a leadership and over now we all know if you spend time in a service that you've got some senior n c O.

And yes, you're nominally in charge.

But I mean you're the dumb and not take advice very carefully from you know, from your chief. And actually my first electrical divission chief recently passed away, so I'll send to see that. But in any case, that's so, yeah,

While the ship is belong And what was the first boat you were assigned to?

That was my first ship was USS Houston, which was in San Diego. All of you, all of you, I've seen USS Houston. So that was in the Hunt for October. There's the scene where USS Dallas comes flying out of the water and crashes back down.

That was actually USS Houston. That did that.

Wow, that did that. They were the they were the star of the show for that. So that was my first ship, Yeah, in San Diego, which was awesome.

Is the the NUKE program for officers and listed is it?

Is it the same?

Do they share classes when it comes to like the power plant stuff and things like that.

You don't really share, uh the initial well, so you don't share Nuclear power school.

So nuclearar schools with six.

Months classroom training and there's there is a it's all the same place, but it's separate classes for officers and for listed. But then you go to the training pipeline, so you go to nuclear power training units. So that's supposed we call prototype, and that is a it's an actual operating reactor, but it's a training plan, so it's a Some of them are an old submarine which has been you know, refitted to be a training submarine.

It doesn't go anywhere.

It just is tied up and and it just kind of churned river waters to be going anywhere. But it's a real reactor and really it's really operating. So that prototype. There are listed trainees and officer trainees and you're just you're each you're each trying to qualify your respective watch stations. So they're qualifying and listed junior listed watch stations. You're

Not I mean, you're a trainee, it's not for real.

So it's but you've experienced all the listed watch stations before you get to the point that you're supposed to be in charge of them.

And what's uh, you know, you get to your first boat, what's it like?

What's you know?

What is being on a submarine?

Like?

Well, I certainly remember when I showed up to my first ship.

So again I showed up to USS Houston and here and my service ress blues up top side and show up. I've got my then fuldberger and my white hat on a ready goat and they called down and this this young guy comes up top side. I won't say his name though that he says, who are you? I'm like Tom Streetberg, how you know? And I'm I'm John Doe. Welcome to Hell. It's like great. So my first ship was our commanding officer was largely kind of a terror, not not very well regarded along by a lot.

Of the crew. And this ship was it was, it was.

We spent a lot of time in the in the dryout, which is sounds great, but it's actually kind of awful and it was quite challenging. So everything gotten much better when I got my next commanding officer. And it's amazing how the character of the CEO can completely change the quality of life on board of ship. And you know, my secting commanding officer showed up and uh he came, got all the officers together and said, you know, I

It is you're on the ship for twenty four hours.

So if you're a three second for example, we'll say a week, your your work week starts.

On Monday, and you are on duty.

So you show up Monday at like six to take take the watch from the off going watch section. Can you get a tour of the ship. You got to renewal the logs, you got to reveal all the maintenance paper work that's happening, and you've got to turn over from the off going watch officer.

So you're there like six.

Okay, Now you're on duty for twenty four hours, you know, all the way until the next morning, until you get relieved, and then then your Tuesday workday starts, you know, and you might get maybe four or five hours of sleep, and then you're on duty all the next day Tuesday, and you got a workday and you go home tired, and then you know, Wednesday's kind of a normal work day,

Through Friday morning.

So you go home Friday from work dead tired because you've got you know, didn't get much sleep. And then Saturday you get to think about how you're gonna have duty on Sunday. So you know, you can't go really at prity on Friday if you're tired Saturday night, you can't really turn tied on because you've got to be

Uh.

And and that's why you're important, right, that's that doesn't when you're a c.

And yeah, and I'd be curious to know about that because that's one, that's a heavy workload. But two, when you guys do get underway, if you're doing a you know, a float, you're talking about a few hundred people, I imagine in a very confined space. And sometimes from what I've heard, like nukes will stay underwater for three to six months at a time. Like how how do you manage that? How how is all that managed? With personalities, with the workload, with everything else.

I think the most challenging part is, uh is just the workload and it's kind of sleep I mean, you know it is.

Depending what the ship's doing.

It can be quite busy with all the training and the drills and and watch standing.

You see.

So people say like, oh, you know, Arch, don't you get bored or you know, you think about being underwater not you're just you're just thinking about how am I going to get in the racks, or I can get decent sleep and not be dead tired, or when there's when's the next set of drills? Or you know, when do I have to get this paperwork done? When do I have to have this training plan ready? We don't have to prepare training for the for the guys.

What are we doing? You know?

And it just goes on from there. So I will say that only once or twice I bet on the submarine where it wasn't part of the crew you know what they call a writer, where you're just somebody that's on the work. And we'll say that if you do not have a if you don't have a job and you're on a submarine, it can be a very super boring place to be. And because there's nowhere to go, there's no in many cas on many occasions, the cruise mass which is the one big space being used.

For training or they're eating or whatever.

And if you can't get in the ward drone which will or the asters saying out because but again stuff's going on there.

There's really nowhere to go.

There's nothing, there's nothing to do so, so I will say that it was actually while I was longed to be a writer, when I was a part of Ship's company being one when it was like, okay, wow, there's really not much to do here if you're not if you're not working your stuff.

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So that that really it was a challenge just just to get it all done, to get all the work done, get sleep. We've got the summary force has gotten a lot smarter over the years. So when I first my first couple of ships, you were jet The closet of the crew is in a presecon look called three section rotation again.

So but it was six hour watches, so you're six on.

Twelve off, and so you ended up being all watch you know, different all different times of the day on a rotating basis.

So you'd be like pick the.

Twelve and off until midnight, and then you come on at midnight, you'd be until six, and you're off until eighteen hundred, and you'd be on at eighteen hundred and you'd be off until six. You know, you get the idea, six on twelve off. It was really not a smart way to do things because we all understand now, sir, kadian rhythm, you know, it is really important to not being dumb all the time, and we weren't doing that. So you basically were continually jet lighted because you're sleeping

Same time every day, and that made us a lot smarter.

I mean, it made it made the cruise a lot bit arrested, even if they were busy, even if you're being even if you only got five hours sleep, at least you're getting at the same time.

Area, right right, And is it true that because I've heard all kinds of like horror stories about you know, about nuke subs in particular in the sense of did did they enlisted have the hot rock generally or was there generally enough space for all of them?

Well, so it depends on the kind of ship you're on.

Okay, So our attack submarines, the smaller multipurpose you know, they can do sink surface ship stick sink submarines. They can launch tamahawk cruse mussiles, they can do intelligence collection and O. There's a multipurpose kind of boats. They generally will have some portion of the group high racking easily. It's usually it's your pretty junior guys. It's E two's, E three's maybe and some E fours.

They maybe a.

Few E fives, but not not not usually and oftentimes your torpedo room is is will have some space the sleeping the hull racks where they would have weapons and frees up smetter space but when you want to ployment, there's a lot of guys on racking because if you look at torpedo rooms full when you're on undeployment, you're over there for a reason, and and you sometimes will have extra riders on board. I'm sure folks that are that are being healthy with stuff you're doing undeployment, and

They are a humongous submarines.

They are you know, there are two or three times the size in the l A class and so they haven't there's no.

Hot righting on SSP and shinty.

They have enough bunks for everybody because there's all these bunk rooms in the missile apartment in between those huge missile tubes. Yeah, there's showing no high righting there. Now there's a whole nother rangele Now we have no egg cruise, so to speak. We have integrated cruise where you have, like on a Virginia class submarines, you have bunk rooms that are all female at own mail. I suppose all

While I was on board.

Right, interesting, and I'd like to, you know, ask a little bit more about you know, you were saying that there's a big difference on the culture of your first submarine where the captain was a bit of a terror where and then the second was kind of a very different leadership style. I wonder if you could expand on that, like, because you mentioned how big an impact that has on the entire life on the ship.

Yeah, I mean, you know, the CEO has a lot of authority on how things go on a ship, so there's a lot of different ways that they can make life that are worse.

A lot of it has to do.

With, you know, so they listen to the inputs that they're given by the crew, by their officers, and they treat them, I mean it already nice or you know, I mean always times that you have to be you may not need he pisan all the time, but like for example, this this guy, I mean he hes firm, is actually going to be the same.

There's screening sometimes in their shoulders.

Things weren't smart going away that he wanted them to start yelling at people. And I took away from that as a you know, as a young junior officer. Here is the captain yelling at me or the person next to me that just I couldn't really function when when he was doing that. So he's trying attempting to get better performance out of us. But all I could do is what do I need to do to make this guy stuff y'all give me? And and not so much

You know, in the control room while you're trying to operate a ship.

You know, if you're going to deploy emotion, do so in a very planned manner with the goal of achieving specific reholes. If you need to make an example or something, you know, and make clear you're how important something is, you know, do it on a thoughtful way. But that the kind of thing that you can do differently that

Yeah, you mentioned that, you know, the tremendous authority that a sub captain has, and I'd like to ask you a little bit more about that too, because look, I know nothing about this topic other than like the Hunt for Red October and Crimson Tied a few other moves. These they always they always show these subs are in isolation, they have no comma with big Navy. They're out there doing their own thing, and the captain kind of is like the god of the boat.

Is that true? Is that accurate?

It is screwed to some degree?

So I mean I would say that, I mean, probably compared to any other farms the military, you work as a see you know, your no files command, you're probably the most independent. I mean because there are times where you're out doing stuff and yeah, you're not communicating and you know, and you're conducting can be conducting pretty igh stakes operations and yeah, there's nobody to talk to it. And certainly when things go south, you're not gonna have anyone to talk.

To for a while, and you really are gonna be like grown.

So I will never forget when I was on my on my command tour, I will up to the middle of the night to the final army going off, and we're hearing a fire announcement, you know, a firefire, fire in the engine room, fire, and then this and that thing, and I just remember, you know, there I am standing in the control room and my pajamas and starting to think about well, while the guys are working on the end, the fires out very quickly and then they have very

That being said, you have a lot of GUIDs.

I mean, you know, the submariners are all about procedures and requirements and technical requirements, and so you you have beaten into you over years of experience exactly what the requirements are for most situations that you'd be in the most conceivable situations that you'd be in. There was a procedure for whatever the cagalty is. Your people should be executing that, you should be overseeing their execution of all that, and most of it should be happening, happening, unfolding in

It is in our absolute.

Marrow of our bones how to do relatively independent operations with very little guidance except for we've done before.

End No, it's incredible.

And so as you're going through your career here, you know, you mentioned that you're going to these different duty positions across the submarine and I take it they're sort of like grooming you as a naval officer to potentially be captain. They must be like looking at you like, you know, are you going to be the guy? Can you tell us a little bit about like kind of what your career progression was like going to these different stations?

Sure? I mean, so, one.

Thing that's kind of funny about Submarine Force and is that when you sign up for it, there's literally a art that shows your entire career.

It shows it's a timeline.

It's three years, three years the junior officer, two years on short duty, then you go to apartment at school for six months and then five months whatever.

It is.

Three years of the department head, two years of short duty, two years of the night sho, two years of short uty, three years in the.

C And that is what is going to happen.

As long as you don't fall off the wagon, you're going to be somewhere within plus or minus six months. Every one of those gates is going to happen on your on your on your career, are where which boats where? What kind of races are they doing? And then what are you doing on surety? So you know, are you going to be uh, you know, at a submarine head quarters or are you going to be we have warp collarge or you're going to be you know and gone.

For a couple of times. A couple of years, I went to Italy.

I was on the six fleet staff in Naples as the Submarines Operations officer. Fantastic job at the travel all over Europe. Can't talk about the boats are doing that I was involved with, but you know it was good stuff. And then then backed as an apartment head in this case that was on an SSPN, a blisting missile submarine, and I was the engineer, and then split tour and I was then I was the navigator.

I was sorry.

I started as the navigator and ended up as the ship's engineer for most of my tour. And I was in Banger, Washington on the West coast, and then after that then posted apartment head. I'm sorry, I totally missed the tour, so junior officer, and then I went to San Francisco.

I was a recruiter.

I was recruiting college students to be a new coauthor like Iowan's and then department head Washington and then then Italy at Post apartment head, and then I went to go be Xo on USS to peek it in San Diego, back to San Diego for another tour which was awesome. San Diego is incredible. And then after that I went to the Naval War College in a part Hode Island. Fantastic experience. Got into war gaming there.

That was a big thing.

Later so I was part of something that's called the Halls, the Alpha group, which in the war gaming group at the War College, they are a China or gaming group. We can now say that. And that was a fantastic experience. And then from there I went to the Joint Staff where I was on the I was the Nuclear Brand Nuclear Strike Branch chief, which is a fun job. We answered the phone nuclear strike and so we were the

So we took for in that.

We maintained that book and in the day and that was a really cool one. So yeah, no pressure, man, Yeah, it's funny. Uh yeah, it's it's a it's an important book, is Yeah, it's a humbly experience. So and and also training the military's the guys that carry the football with the President, so I will train them on nuclear nuclear command and control stuff.

So really fantastic job.

And then after that it's on that command tour and that was in Hawaii, and you know, people say it like, what's a great job, in my opinion, one of the best jobs on the planet. Rational past submarine community officer and wine. It doesn't get much better than that. You know, you get under way, there's way, and the weather's always great. You know, there's a lot of places where it's not very pleasant to stand on top of the submarine as as the captain does coming in and out of port.

But Hawaii is not one of them.

That was.

It was awesome. So that was kind of up through the command tour.

And so I've heard I've been told that being a submarine captain is maybe the most complex job in the military. I mean, would you agree with that, and could you tell us why or why not?

I mean problem maybe, I mean, it's certainly some of the most I mean objectively, objectively, I would say that it's some of the most training. I mean, you have before you can get to the jobs. So first of all, you have just been selected over the years. You know, you get to keep getting selected. Well, getting selected for an apartment that's pretty easy. XO is a pretty seat cut to go from three department heads to one XO.

And then XO C is another cut.

And what's funny about it is that, unlike a lot of other services, like as long as you're a fallen off the wagon, the selection boards are what eventually will decide to rank, and like the break the motion boards are kind of automatic. Like if so, if you get selected to go to Coe, you're going. And then if you don't get fired during your co tour, you're gonna make those six as they say, as they say, if the if there's a band of the change of command.

You ride multiple boats, so you'll ride a boat.

For several days and then you'll transfer to another boat and you and you do all every comp every combat or peacetime operation you can think of if you're doing all these ships, so you basically kind of get to be captain for a day and as they say, drive it like you stole it, because you know there's there's a real COEO that actually owns the boat, and you kind of get to take the reins for twenty four hours and practice practice doing it. So then there's the

As they say regular no no, no, no, please finish that up.

Yeah, finish your thoughts.

Yeah.

So that that thirty day Turner reperiod. You know, some might say that have been through it, like it's kind of the longest thirty days of your life for both you and the outgoing guy, because you know, after a couple of weeks, you know, you don't have any authority. You know, you have zero authority until the guy says, so you said, I really do he says, I stand relieved. So you're not actually in charge of anything. You're just

He's kind of had enough at that point.

So it is kind of a long PERI So when all that said and done, I mean I took commands.

Yeah, it was. It was like eleven months after I left my last job.

You mentioned the idea of going from five to six is pretty pretty sad as long as you don't like get fired when you're when you're a captain of a boat.

Right.

So one of the things that we've like been told from sort of the infantry minded is that five to six can be very political for them. You know that there's also a political game to be played a lot of times. Do you feel like in the in the submarine field that it's it's a bit more pure that because you are so isolated times and whatnot, that really it's more job based than them doing them playing the politics the right way.

Letting I'm not sure a photo politics, you know what I mean.

There are there are further selection boards, you know, like so there is a major command selection board after your commands or and so that's that's everybody who went who successfully completed command, who's going to make those sets. But they're not all going to do major commanders, right, So your ma, your major commanders are your subarate squadron commanders, so you own five or six spots in their CEOs or submarine based CEOs or spring tenders or the big training facilities.

So there's there's major commands.

So there may be you know, there's the selection stuff isn't over yet at that point, so there may I mean they's want to call politics.

I mean it is. I would say I would call it.

More like reputation and okay, and you know who if you oppressed or not. Now what what's interesting? I think about how things boil down.

For submariners on your finness of course, for.

Example, most of what matters is how are you ranked by your squadron? So so like there isn't much competition. Would you say you have like three department heads on the ship, There isn't that much competition between those three guys.

I mean, there's they have three different jobs.

They are kind of ranked against each other, but nobody's really paying attention to that. What they pay attention to, for example, is that like if you're a navigator, or are you ranked against the other navigators on.

The other ships right, okay, in the.

Squadron, and so the squadron staff and the squadron commodore.

They will issue they will issue a ranking.

Letter that ranks who are the top one two three navigators in this one, the top one two three xos, the top point two three CEOs. That is what goes into your fit reps. And that is what the COO XO Major Command Selection Board. See, that's how you get chosen whether you're going to go on or not.

Is that process? So is that process political? I mean maybe it depends.

I mean again people say political, but I mean it can also be called a reputation that can call a lot of things.

It's fascinating as far as being the sub captain, I know, like when we talk about like deployments and missions, that's very sensitive. Actually some of probably some of the deepest well kept secrets in the United States government is actually what you guys do at see.

But with that in mind, I mean.

Are you able to speak a little bit to sort of like the pressure that you're feeling as a captain on one of these submarines, Like the amount of different things you're having to think about at.

The same time. I mean, I must it must be wild.

Yeah, so I mean it obviously you do different things depending on what we're part of the world you're in, So we can't say much about what we do unemployment. I mean it's think they don't call it then calls a silence service for nothing, and so much of what you do and obviously you do stuff you can't talk about.

I will say that, you know, in terms of the pressure for example.

So what I can't say is, you know, I went I went undeployment, documented that my ship went undemployment in twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen. We were over there for about six months in Western Pacific, and it's just really busy water spaces. There's fishing boats everywhere and lots of merchant ships, and it's just super duper busy. And so for I felt like the entire time I was over there, you

As you're over there, because it's just so busy.

One of the one of the things that we do when you're doing operations and that like for example of that tractically challenging operations. Is you have basically the XO will kind of be the captain interstad you know, while you're sleeping, while you're sleeping, so it's you know, we have a term for the job that it takes, but it's basically your kind of duty captains, so to speak. So so you can get some sleep, the XO will

You're worried.

You know, there there's some piece of gear that's break down that you need to get fixed so you can get back out and do your job. And there's are the parts here. How's the repair going? You know, And even when you're.

Important, you never really get the really electric guard down. So I would tell you that. You know, when we threw the.

Lines over back in Pearl Harbor and we came back from the PLOYMT, it was just such a relief to be back to where, you know, my own home for and certainly I can tell you it. Actually it started before that when the Tungus hooked up to me. When they threw their lines over, I felt better because, you know, like in many cases and for imports, you never knew what you're going to get from tonguess. You didn't know if they spoke English very well or not. You know,

You know it is this it's.

About to drive multi drive like super powerful US English speaking you know pilot that those harbor lated back his hand. You know my ship well, and it's like, okay, we're all, I'm safe. We're all said, that was a.

Very nice skip.

And another one that I know this gets into some sensitivities too, but are you able to speak at all about the Russian or Chinese submarines and you know what their capabilities are, what the threat level is for like you guys as American submariners.

Yeah, I could talk to Sundary about that.

So we're fortunate and that there was a graph that the astome Abel telegonce put out in twenty fifteen. This showed the relative noise data noise characteristics of various adversary submarines, including Russian.

And Chinese ones at that point. And you can so I could.

Tell like a twenty bagraph and say, Chinese submarines are noisy at least they were in twenty fifteen, and the same basic classes or what they're still building to this day. Okay, I'm sure they may have been improvements to some degree, but the basic ninety three Shang class SSM that's what they're building. The type ninety four Gen class SSPN, that's what they've been building. So Chinese nuclear submarines make it point at as it would be in an a classific way.

Can you say why why theirs this are particularly noisy? Is it something with the propulsion technology that they just haven't developed?

Well, I can tell you that open source.

History is will tell you that the Chinese the nuclear power plant that is in Chinese submarines is a derivative of a Russian ice frig or nuclear car plant, okay, which you know those were not built for sous islence, right, and favorite power plant, So you can imagine that for reasons probably associated with that, the power plants just it's loud.

It's loud, I mean, it just makes a lot of noise. For that reason.

Now they are we keep hearing every year that they're about to build entirely and entirely new class in China, and so that next class can be radically different and could be much wider than the old ones were, which could make life much more difficult. Now as diesel submarines, some of them can be quite flat because they don't.

Know that the power plant. You know, they could they have a battery.

In some cases they are independent profulsions, so they can be very as it is known to be true for diesel submarines worldwide. They can't be very quiet for that reason.

Well, how do you see? You know, we there was recently that issue with crew members on a naval vessel using starlink, an unauthorized starlink. Obviously when you guys are are at depth, like you're fine, but how do you see you know, modern technology off the shelf in the hands of you know, anybody can go purchase it being a threat to you know, the sign service for instance.

I think mostly it would be a matter of something when you pulled into port that the guys on the top side and turn our cell phones go on, you know, because you can tell you can tell everybody, hey, don't turn it.

Like let's say you're doing something.

Where you don't want somebody to notice that you pull in somewhere and you're just going in to get parts or whatever some brief stop and you're not nobody's getting off. You might want to not have anybody turn their cell phones on, for example, just in case somebody's tracking cell phones that would let them know, let somebody know that you'd pull them into the support.

So you can tell your through that. You just never know when somebody's.

Gonna you know, sort of preciously turn on their thought anyways because they think they know better, right. But the kind of thing we saw to the starling, there's nothing we don't have to worry about that because as a submarine, so from starlink on top of the thing and all all the antennas that use it at periscope that they're all Navy antennants, they're all you know. Now, obviously you have to be concerned about you know, somebody told their girlfriend where they're going.

You know, you're not supposed to do that.

But humans are givens, and so there's always a possibility to pop sick. Maybe maybe it's always it's obviously not one hundred percent always gonna be perfect. So so that's the kind of that, that's the kind of thing I'd probably worry about more.

Yeah, And the other thing you had mentioned to us, I think before we started the interview was how easy it is to get fired as a submarine.

Captain.

Tell us a little bit about that, like, and I mean, we see with the uh, you know, surface fleet. You know, the Navy seems to fire those captains like it's going out of style. I mean they don't. They don't really hesitate. And it sounds like it's even worse on submarines. I shouldn't say worse. I mean, I guess it's important to have accountability. But what are your thoughts?

Yeah, I mean so, so command is a privilege. You know, you're there's no not everybody gets to do it. You don't do it forever. And so you know when you go to command, like if if you swap paint, or if you touch the bottom, or if win shutters dies to maintenance, do they get electrocuted or whatever, you were going to get fired.

Like, it doesn't.

It doesn't really matter what the reasons are, you know, it doesn't like it's the ship. It's the ship is a collision with somebody and you're in the rack, you're asleep, it doesn't matter.

You're still going to get fired. Ye.

That is the way that Navy us accountability. That you were the senior officer in charge, so it doesn't. Now while while you're more junior, listened, people might also be held accountable for if they didn't do their jobs. You're you're you know that you're done something like that, And that's just kind of where it is. Like, you know, you just as part of your calculous you understand that if you if you have a collision, you're done. You're

That I have so.

Okay on a on a surface ship.

But I think I think that they had a sea daddy that that took care of it.

It was crazy.

Yeah, at least at least I can say the years of my career, I don't know.

I don't know if any submarine CEO in my career that touched the bottom or a swap paint that didn't get fired. Sometimes it took a little bit, you know,

Would that be like if that happened, would that be the end of their career? Is there a way for them to redeem themselves in future assignments or is that pretty much they've fallen off the wagon in terms of like the promotion, the timeline and that's it.

Yeah, if you're a really from command, you're you're you're you're made, you your final rank.

Yeah, I mean you're not like fired fired like I get it.

So Like one thing I respect is that when civilians say, like you say something like you got fired. Being fired in pavilion means like you lost your paycheck, right, And when you're fired and you know, lose your paycheck, you're still in oh five, right, You're still You're just gonna go. Who like to say, you're going hand out basketballs at the gimate til you're retire or whatever you're you're going

It wasn't your day.

And doesn't mean they're not in great people, they're not really can't do good things. And and quite frankly, I've seen I've seen guys that I know got fired from command that have then gone on to really successful civilian careers right on the outside. So it doesn't mean you're a bad person and doesn't mean you won't try your best, but it is that's just the way it is, is why it navy works.

Yeah, And so presumably you survived your time as sub captain, what was the next stop for you career wise after that command?

So after that command tour, I signed up for the Uh. So I applied for the Navy's fellowship program, so that that's like a think tank fellows program. And I actually didn't get in. Initially, I was on an alternate list. Uh.

And I actually was going to retire and go be an airline pilot.

Really yes, And I had got my police license and uh and my instant rating and really enjoyed it. And I put in my retirement papers. I was gonna my change a command. I was going to retire at my change of command. It was going to get a combined ceremony, and then I was gonna follow my also activity wife.

A different service.

But I was you know, OLIVERR and airline pilots and a good good job if you want to commute, like you can live one place and and your job can be somewhere else.

So that seemed like a good thing to do.

And then after a couple of weeks of they turned down for the fellows program, I got selected off the alternate list to go be an a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, which is a really qual, really good quality excuse me, DC foreign policy and defense related think tank. And so I said, all right, that sounds great. I can maybe I can do something with that. And I pulled my retirement papers and went to CNAs as an Avy fellow.

Wow.

And before I got there, I knew I wanted to focus on China because I had seen again for my time at that Halsey Alpha Group at the Naval War College, I had what I think was a little bit of the head of the curve understanding of the military threat that China was going to pose. Also from me, my ship was a specific fleet ship, so I'd been thoroughly briefed on all the things that PLAEA was doing and

China at that point.

And so I mean, there's a whole bunch of like subtopics under that we can talk to. But at what point did the Office of Net Assessment come up on their radar?

So that was a couple of years later.

So I did my thing at CNAs for a year and I wrote I wrote some reports there I first wrote a report about China. South China, see the South China see islands, the big artificial islands they were building, so that one was at that point the kind of the party line was that those were not militarily significant facilities, at least for Squether's back to the United States.

So they didn't. They were just an airstrip and a reef.

And I'll never forget when I was there, I started looking at Google Earth and looking at those things, and because I thought too, like, it's just just a reef with the with an airstrip on it, you know, I wonder, I wonder.

What's up of these things?

And at that time csis the Center for Strategic and International Studies. I've been doing some great stuff with imagery, and it showed what they were building on these islands, and you could see these huge towers on each corner of the island with multiple like places that looked like turrets would go on them. And so I'm starting to think, maybe these things are a big deal. And then I measured one of them. I've been mischief brief and I

Lot about them while I was there. I wrote about them. I wrote about the threat that they post to our faces in the Asia.

What the uh so our during World War two? Like our war in the Pacific? Moving across to Japan, it seemed like it was for a lot of the tolls, a lot of inconsequential islands. Is that at all like remnant reflective on like these these artificial islands that China's building, I know, it's in.

Some ways, it's kind of similar. In some ways, it's pretty different. I mean, uh, they're definitely definitely they are mostly for peacetime. I mean, like, so, let's say you've got lots of viewerselves said, well, we'll have seen on the news these giants Chinese postcard ships water you know water canyoning is Philippine boats.

Uh, and you know the aisles of.

Those post wardships were all operating out of those island bases. The not all a lot of them. That's one of the places they operate from. All these Chinese maritime militia fish fishing boats. They're not actually fishing obviously, they're based out of those island bases.

So they are crucial in peace time.

They are a crucial facility that supports long term operation in those in those water those contested waters, whereas we just kind of the US will kind of make these episodic trips down there, show the flag dofone OPS, their navigation operations whatever. But then we then we leave, right and so then the locals they're kind of on their own again, where the Chinese are there all the time. They are able to do that because of those bases.

Those control the approaches.

To those ports, which really matters, and their ability to maintain the their you know, their supplies of oil and national resources and all that open. So it's a little more of a static thing war time. Can we roll them up and move across that part of the world. I mean, maybe it's going to be very different challenge than the Japanese were.

We have to remember with Japan.

Was even the Japanese knew that when they launched the attack on Pearl Harbor, that we had this salute tsunami of naval ship building that had already started in nineteen thirty eight nineteen forty a huge ship building program, and those ships of ours were going to come online nineteen forty two, forty three, forty four. They saw that company that our ship building industry was way larger than theirs was, and that they were all they could do ope was to

What can you tell us a little bit, because I've read bits and pieces of this that our like, our shipbuilding.

Is really.

It's kind of a travesty at this point, and it hasn't been addressed at all until recently.

Yeah, it's not going well, Midge put it bluntly. So there's a lot of different reasons for why that's the case. I mean, in general, in general, the United States, the defense industrial base in general is having lots of issues because we have turned into mostly a service economy, so we're necessarily the best anymore at building things. More specifically the submarines worst. You know, at the end of the

In a submarine and industrial base. It's still taking time for us to do that.

And what we have is happening right now is we have this at the same time that we're trying to build more attack submarines to be able to deal with China because they are one of the few survival platforms that can operate within range of China's and missile forces on a regular basis in wartime. We're also replacing all of our ballistic missile submarines bioclass, so they're being replaced with the Columbia class.

So the blistic missile submarine that is.

That is the nation's number one highest priority building program, so it can it crowds out the attack submarines for no reason because it has to be the priority because if you don't have nuclear deterrence on the other side, if you don't have a nuclear deturne youth rely on, then you're out of schwits at that point. So that's and and the submarines are the survivable part of our

No we're not.

We're replacing fourteen boats with twelve. Each boat only has sixteen tubes instead of twenty four the previous class. It's not an expansion. It's alike for like with fewer numbers, replacement of ships that just happen to be replaced as at forty plus years old.

And are we do we have the manufacturing ability to do this? Are we outsourcing a lot of this? What is our government like, what's our capability and our plan?

I mean, so there's lots.

Lot there's really very complex plans for making this happen. There's not really much outsourcing in the sense of going overseas for any of this work. But they are building new factories like I think hostiles shipbuilding. This starting to open our new factory down on the Gulf coast that is going to start to build modules like those that go into submarines. So they aren't There is a huge amount of investment in the US industrial days to try to make to get these programs, keep trying to get

So we're going to have this transformation. We're going to have these lightly crude.

Highly automated multi purpose ships, and it was it was a master I mean lcs. We built two different classes in the ships, totally different classes, which made no sense. I think we made a lot of sacrifice is that they can go really fast even though they don't actually need to go faster their missions. And then the zoom wall classes, you know, we built three of them instead

What's uh?

You know, while we're on this topic of ships and shipbuilding, get a little bit deeper into the rocket issue that you you talked about how the rocket program is kind of the crown jewel of the Chinese military and that would be the you know, primary threat that I presume our navy would be facing in a potential war in the South China Sea, it would be one of them.

I mean, so what the PLA Rocket Force does is so first of all, it wasn't its own service until twenty fifteen and twenty fifteen season paying elevated. The play Rocket Force would be equal to the other branches of the Chinese military.

So it's equal now to the.

Air Force, it's equal to the aren't to the ground force in the Navy. And what they've done, it's remarkable, is you know, twenty thirty years ago, all they had was nuclear weapons. So the Peli Rocket Force was kind of equivalent to our you know, we have ICBMs too, we have submarine blistic missile.

They're all nuclear tipped. They're just for nuclear deterrence. Right, that was what they had.

Then they also had a few very inaccurate conventional missiles, kind of like the scuds that we saw in the you know, in the Desert Storm.

Right.

They they're not really useful against military targets. Maybe you get luck every once in a while and hits some pit, a barracks or something, but they're not they're conventional weapons.

They're not if they're not accurate then' not nuclear then they can't really do that much.

What China brought from the table over the last twenty years is apparent ballisticness like you're a single digit number of meters because we can see the impact points on their impact britages where they can punch a hole in the top of a building or aircraft shelter or whatever using a ballistic missile. That is a unique combination of a new combination of the capabilities because now it means it can reach out one thousand, two thousand and three

China is far more capable of that.

Uh and appeally rocket forces is that's what they own and there's no there is no equivalent service in the US military that does that.

We have.

We see bms in the hand with the Air Force, but they're all nuclear tips the Army, the Army is now starting to have some long range conventional ballistic missiles, the jazz Tiphon system.

You know, not people. The numbers are very small, so they've been in development.

I think there's a few devloid operationally because the are very small numbers as opposed to the Elie Rocket Force five hundred intermediate range ballistic missiles that can reach law that are almost all conventional and they also have ANNI ship gave aboise.

They also can be swapped for an A shipboard heads.

They have thirteen hundred medium range ballistic missiles now, according to the DoD the last China Military Power Report, I can strikes all of Japan essentially and the Philippines.

I mean, you know, it's like, what else are these things? Former than a record basis an Asian right. I think we fired a couple of jazzm's that Uncle Asad just to proof that they work. But the number of them, yeah, aren't the numbers we have that are published. It's like in the hundreds of which ones the JAZZM.

Well, Jasmin is an air launch uh christmastle, I believe in yourself airplanes, So they got those two?

Trust me. The PLA Air Force has too.

So out of curiosity, And something we've talked about on the show before is the level of Chinese espionage and our inability to stop it in the States and how really the Chinese don't have to They don't really have to have a strong development program because anything that's developed in the US is immediately in the hands of the Chinese. Is that something that you've seen, Is that something that you've spoken to, Is that something you believe?

Can you give us like basically your take on that.

So espionage certainly is a very real thing.

We have seen in the last couple of years, We've seen multiple instances of in some cases service.

Numbers that have been caught spine of the Chinese.

Certainly there's been penetration of in particular of the US Department Fits contractors have been penetrated by by the Chinese, sort of a full typhoons thing that's happened more recently. And so for sure, Chinese faber penetration out.

Of US organizations, and it's a huge problem.

What I would say is becoming less of a problem is for many years we had this impression that they were mostly copying our stuff, right, so they have the the twenty helicopter looks kind of like a black cop They're CHANGE thirty five, which is kind of like F thirty five, although it's not the same.

There are some major difference. It's not a copy, but it is similar looking. So they're adv cases.

Where they were, and I'm quite frankly a lot of their weapons systems are at brushing derived where copies are Brushian weapons. That's becoming less true now, so China is now they're now innovating. They're doing their own things. You have the J thirty six, the new Delta Wing, huge long range strike fighter that doesn't look like anything we have. You have the the new invasion barges that make the guys that floating pier right like a bunch of tinker toys. Right.

So there's there's a lot of things.

And that's not of course, that's not to mention the again, hundreds of hundreds of anti ship ballistic missiles, which these have a few of those that they've they've lost in our ships that they were way behind the Chinese, I'm sure nowhere near sophisticated. So the Chinese invented that weapon system, nobody else on the planet that anti ship holistic missiles or they did.

So the days of them just copying what we have that was true for a while, but it is very much less true now. And how do you think the us.

UH can keep up or match because we used to be known for our innovation, right like we used to be on the cutting edge of military tech?

Are we still have we fallen behind? Like what's your what's your sort of assessment of that?

Would like to think that things are turning around some I mean we have.

There's certainly tremendous effort that do do you try to innovate faster, to develop reformed acquisition processes, to prome ute. It's kind of incubators for new technologies, to try to to try to embrace uncrewed systems and smaller systems and more disperged and disperse operating forces, to try to get away from those small numbers of large bases and large platforms. So I think there is an effort a foot for sure. Is it as urgent as I think it needs to be.

That's that's that's for sure too.

One of the topics that you mentioned that I'd like to make sure we hit up is that you had written an article where you found an impact range that's modeled off of an American naval facility. Can you tell us sort of what that what that was, and what it means strategically, like what the conclusion was from this?

So yeah, this was again, this was during my time at CNIS the first time, and it's better. I'm back at CNAs.

I'm trying to retired and now jumped sheer fellow at CNIS. So I have affiliation with them to this day. I re established after I retired from an eighty. But so what I found there was I was looking at Google Earth and I knew I was interested in the PLA Rocket Force and seeing what they were doing.

And I found on the Internet the coordinates.

To one of their impact ranges in Western China's where they this is, this is where they test the missiles on targets like that, theyically shoot them from eastern China. They go all over China and the impact in the

So here they are practicing.

Essentially, I'm just saying what looks like surprise attacks against US, specifically a US base. So that I've got a favorite of attention now and a couple of years after that, I also found that the same impact range mock up of an E three ax in aircraft. So it's a spitting image at an E three AX Uni stakeably that that airframe. We're the only country in the Western Pacific

You tell me?

Who recognize it? And so I look at this and again it's an AX airplane, you know, with a big radar on top, big round rado. This only has two engines, which I thought, that's weird and ax Rix three.

And I look at it and sure out through like one airplane. Only one airport warning aircraft.

On the planet that has those, and that's the Japanese. Since the East seven to sixty seven, it's only operated by the Japanese. This kid was like a finance supporter for for Nicky Asia and he's just just interested in this stuff. And I said, oh, my friend, you've got a story at Grands here the Chinese are testing against the specifically Japanese target at their impact ranges, so you can see some interesting things checking those out.

I know that you you know, your specialty is sort of the military side of it.

So I don't want to, you know, kind of put you on the spot talking about economics or anything like that. But like some of the arguments we've heard against China utilizing some sort of forst strike or actually wanting to engage in near pure warfare, is there economic investment and

Well, so I would say that, I mean, I agree that I think if trying to get what it wanted and out fighting a war with the United States, they would want to do so for sure, I mean, I agree with this that ideally would be what they would want to do to accomplish their goals, you know, reunification with Taiwan or not that, not that Taiwan has ever been part of the people Republic of China.

Mind you they wouldn't say that, but.

Whether it's so, whether it's seizing Taiwan or whatever, they would they would prefer to do that without finding the United States. I think that, you know, one of the things they may hope by building up this really oodent and the goal to being intimidating force, is that I think they would probably hope that the US would choose not to get involved and we would decide to costs for too high.

But I wouldn't take too much.

Comfort from the idea that there could be an economic cost for them for a couple of reasons.

One is that she didn't paying.

As a leader, has made crystal clear that he's willing to take economic hits or China on China's behalf for the security interests of the CCP of the Chinese Communist Party. You have seen him cut down Chinese billionaires to size. He refuses. They're apparently willing to just watch TikTok and go just disappear rather than sell it.

There's a number of different signals.

That we can see from now that he's not he's not he is a Marxist. He really is, like he's a believer, and if you give him the choice of well, I can unify with Taiwan actually if it works, and maybe I'd take a ten percent economic hit that I could gain back in a few years. He's going to take that hit. He doesn't care if it costs funds of dollars. It's he doesn't look at things. I think the same way as democratic leaders do. You have to

To some degree likewise, we've seen the kind of seen this before.

There were people in nineteen fourteen who wrote quite confidently that there was no possibility that the English and the Germans would go to war because the markets are too intertwined, right, everybody will lose too much money. And what happened anyways, I mean, so the Kaiser again I'm authoritary leader with a rising militaristic power, makes the decision to get involved in a war that's going to cost us people. But

And then you know, we talked a little bit before the show about the Belton Road project and things like that. Can you speak to that and how that aids their economic military expansion.

So the thing you have to remember about China is that.

The key underpinning, one of the key underpinnings for China's growth in military capabilities is what they call military simil fusion so MCS. So this is their idea that they're gonna they're going to leverage their civilian, industrial and scientific UH and infrastructure investments to also support military purposes.

And were in the roads part of that.

So people will say, for example, oh, look, the US has eight hundred bases around the world, which, by the way, that number is complete nonsense. So if you just go look on Twitter, look for me and bases and you'll see there that number the guy who did the study like counted like so for example, there was a dog cemetery that was kind of as a base. You actually go into the screensheet and think, I used to create that list like naval based blobbing like twelve bases. It's

They have one in Jibouty, they just built one into the Cambodians and Reincambodia.

What they do have is probably dozens of these built and road facilities where they built a port, they built an airfield, they built a highway, and so you've got all these key facilities all around the world that are built by Chinese companies two Chinese standards. Who knows what else they baked into the to these facilities that are maybe monitoring surveillance and maybe they can shut trains down if they want to, maybe they can see what we're doing.

See this that I always find interesting, the bigger ones also have an actual you know, PRC representative Communist Party representative, like in the corporationsone's.

Gonna explain to seeing there are there was many times I filled different Chinese state ow and enterprises where if you go look at the English language version of the company website and this is like not a communication construction company, it's the construct company that's going to contract all over the world. They also are the guys that built the South China Sea Islands. You've got a costco shipping which has you know shipping. There are are ports all the time.

An entire sections that aren't an named is like the.

Party building section where it talks about the company news now is shooting and paining thought and party members did this, and party members did that. And the org chart they used to say chairman and vice chairman now shows party secretary,

And Thomas that to add to that, because this is something I think that it can be alarmist or at toro realist.

And I don't know what the answer is.

But Chinese company control of some of our ports, Chinese companies buying up, you know, land around military bases, are those innocuous? Are those just people participating in capitalism or are those things that we should be worried about?

I'd say at both, I mean so there, I'm not I would never say like that every investment, every Chinese investment in the United States is is some threttning thing.

It's not.

I mean, there, let's face it, I mean, we we run a huge trade deficit with them. They get they have a lot of dollars in their hands, more.

Than the flow the flows the other way.

So those dollars have to come back, and so they use them to buy names over here, whether it's cheggery, bills or property or whatever. And I'm sure in many cases it may be innocent, but I think there's surely been plenty of cases where it doesn't seem, like I said, in a set like why did this happen? To buy property these these locations, you know, they can can get quite fishy.

And for borts, I really do.

I do think that there is a strategic plan on the part of China to dominate the port sector, to dominate shipbuilding. It's I mean, it's good for economically, but I think it's also it helps them in the long run on a very much a you know, we're going.

To run the world someday. I mean, people have to understand, like.

China is, by every measure but one, they are the premier maritime power in the history of humanity. They are by far the largest shipbuilders, They have the largest merchant marine, they have by far the world's largest fishing fleet by far the world's orangest coast guard. Now they now have a navy that has the most ships in the world,

But they are catching up there.

So I've done the mass and over the last decade on a tonnage basis, China has also helped the US Navy. You buy it off fifty so they're they're catching out there soon.

So they're the.

World's largest trading nation. They have the most ships. We should expect they'd have all most of the ports too. It's just it's all connected.

One of the things that you mentioned before we started the interview is that, you know, kind of the topic or a topic you're focused on, is, you know, the things we've been talking about, but leading into how do we avoid going to war with China? And so I'd like to kind of specifically put our finger on that topic and ask, you know, how do we deter war with China. I'd like to avoid World War three. I'm sure many other people would too, And how do you

So yeah, so So what I had mentioned earlier was like, since I retired from the Navy, it's not like my number one goal is to do whatever I can to help avoid help us to avoid a war with giant because I think it would be, you know, one of the greatest disaster in the history of humanity. Probably maybe the Second World War might still be. Who knows, it'll be close super bad. So different people have a lot of different ways they that they might want to go

You know, we'll let you have a sphere of influence.

Panda huggers your words, What did you say, Panda Huggers.

I mean, I'm gonna take a face by that the Americans that represent recommend those kinds of measures, or that they're honest people that they will best.

With the method.

I don't think that's the way that I would prefer not to do that, in part because you don't know where they're going to stop. I mean, you've got to understand. And I don't mean like China's going to invade the United States. I'm not saying anything like that. I'm not worried about invade in the United States but the Chinese.

They don't want.

Anyone in any other country to tell them. It's to tell them that it's wrong for them to not let their people vote, to tell them that it's wrong to suppress human rights.

And then that's not the world I want to live in. Where we're not able to say those sorts of things.

We don't have to guess that that's how they would be about it, because they already did it to Australia a few years ago. They inflicted trade restrictions in Australia because strength.

Think tanks were saying nasking things. They basically have a list of demands that you need.

Your politicians need to get their mouth shut and their think tanks to not speak up about this and that stop talking about the leaguers. I mean, Australia would have to not be a frequent ry wharf to be able to make the Chinese happy. We should expect to see that kind of thing continue at a greater scale.

So that's not a world that I want to I want to live in.

So I don't think that's the answer to avoid wars, to give them what they want, because we have to also remember that if China really does gain naval superiority, they will have the ability to coerce our allies. So we've got to remember all of our allies in the Western Pacific were all island nations. South Korea might as well be. They've got ocean on three sides and Kim Jong.

Un on the north. They're all dependent upon maritime trade.

So if China has naval superiority and cut off that trade, then their economies but the pleasure of the CCP, and that's.

Not a well they want to be a part of. So how do I think we deter China.

I think we have to when I said in testimony several times, is that we have to create uncertainty in the minds and that these China's leaders that their military action will succeed.

That's the only way to insure them.

You can't just inflict costs, like if you if you say, hey, we're gonna inflict costs and create off rames, so we're gonna yeah, then take those costs if you if you hang a price tag on Taiwan, you will probably pay it. Yeah, if he thinks it's it's gonna cost a trillion dollars with two trillion dollars or whatever, Hey, I don't think he would. If he knew that we were gonna stand aside,

So how do we do that?

I think there's a lot of things you could do. I mean the good news for US is then invading Taiwan would be really hard. I mean, if the these assaults are very challenging, you have to have complete air enable superior ority to do it. You can't have anybody shooting at sure for these assault ships on their way in, and you can't have fighters coming in, so they have to have a lead securior ARDEA.

To do it. So it's high bar to do that.

So you know, I think it takes lots of survivable anti ship weapons, So inner ship cruise, missiles, minds and those things have to be survivable on a day to day basis, because kinda is obsessed with structing by surprise, and it's not talking just here about what I saw on Google Earth. If you read Chinese doctrine, go read the two thousand and six Sciences of Campaigns and just go control f and search for things like surprise suddenness. They mentioned it dozens of times and the documents. They

I did some enough. China has.

More enough concrete, building hardened shelters, adding grand aria at the air bases, adding runways that you could you could pave a four lane interstate highway from Washington, d C.

To Chicago as over the last ten years that same webs they've done.

So. So those are the kinds of things we need to do to be ready to prevent this conflict from breaking out.

The So in addition to just the.

Hard aspects of a warfare, when you look at the soft at the propaganda at China, is I think really successful sort of propaganda efforts within the United States and whatnot, whether it's through social media or whatever, and a lot of people who are lining up in support of China and support of fifteen minutes cities and things like that.

Well, I mean you can start, well, for example, you can start with the enforcement of TikTok Dan, so not having a Chinese Chinese company with directions from Beijing and controlling the algorithm that decides what people are going to see and their social media feed.

That because to me, that's what this is all about.

Like, I don't care about China getting I mean, it's bad, but I'm not worried about China getting personal information about Americans from TikTok Like they don't they don't really care about And I'm not that worried about them knowing your you know, where.

You live or whatever.

What I care about is what is if China is the one deciding what it is that you're going to see and what you know. So so if you have a crisis breakout that China, you know, China being the one to decide what messaging entire the American public is getting. That is the last thing we want to have happening. And that's why it TikTok cannot be controlled from China. We cannot let that happen like one of the major sources of information for our people. That's step one. So

So we'll see what happens with that point.

So that's that's one thing we can do. We need to to force you know, foreign agent registration requirements. You know that some of that was starting to happen.

People shouting to get in trouble for that. That's good. We can't we can't shut down forwarders coming.

There a thing I don't that's not I don't think that's a good idea for a future for you know, almost so much of our best innovators and the people to drive the industry that allow it gives us the income we need to buy you know, to fund our defense a lot of these immigrants.

So I don't want to someone to do that. But it is a real challenge. And but we faced the challenge for form right.

I mean during the Cold War, we had a we had an open society relatively compared to the Soviets, and we sold one.

Right, So it is it is possible.

What do you how do you feel about like, for instance, you know American you know, high power American lawyers representing like DGI drones against the government and.

Things like that.

Is that part of the American process? Is this something that needs to be looked at more as a national security issue?

I never tell me if the playership is everything, I mean, every every entity.

In the United States, you know, that's the way it's system is supposed to work.

And no matter what you did or that, you deserve the right to a lawyer.

I mean ever since John since John Adams, you know, defended the guys, the three the British soldiers that that in the Boston massacre. That's a key part of who we are as Americans. And so I don't and there's Manussary. I want to go out to dinner with the guys that do that right, and I think they have they have a legal right to pay people to defend them

That fair enough.

But Thomas, thank you very much for this interview and sharing your your expertise with us. Is there anything that I didn't ask? Do we and do we have questions for Thomas from Marcello?

Are there any differences in the data day and culture from attack versus missile subs?

Yeah?

Uh yeah, I mean that's it's a very different mission. I mean, so you know, as posting muscle subs had to say fie with pride, right, So your your your job is to remain undetected, to be so that you're available and survivable to be able to launch missiles. So that's a bit different than attack submarines, which are you know, forward leaning, forward deployed in many cases multipurpose and sometimes

That allows the shift to be at sea more of the time.

So basically come in and swap out the cruise, do some mainta men, swap out the cruise, and so one crew gets the wave goodbye to the boat. It goes out to sea with the other crew on board. That's a big quality of life difference, I'll tell you that much.

Then riding that was long to this is to ben because I've been I've been a.

Road hard and put away wet on my first tour and I wanted that in a little bit more relaxed lifestyle.

Yeah, I bet another one from m Corbon. What were the best and worst meals on the boats?

Let's see.

So there's kind of a routine to get in.

So you have uh, Friday after Friday lunch of sliders, you know, so burgers and fries and chocolate chip cookies and ice cream. Saturday nights generally pizza night, and so you'll sometimes like the beefs will make the pizza.

Sometimes the officers will make the pizza.

You know. Sometimes we'll have different folks make the pizzas and it's generally quite good. Oftentimes Saturday night's poker night. You know, some guys will play poker in the wardrobe. Sundays sometimes surf and turf, so you know, grab legs and and steak generally generally staked dinner. Sunday night and then talk for Tuesday. You know, you got faidas and then tacos and went on Tuesday. It's very easy to get fat on the Submary.

Yeah, sure.

You know.

One of the things that we had always because I was a hard hat diver when we dove on some of the subs, and one of the things that they had said is it like the chow on subs was always top notch and they brought in the best like cooks that the Navy had to offer, just because it was a.

Major morale point. Would you agree or disagree with that?

I do think the food is my understanding, is quite a bit better, but you think the reasons might be a little different.

One is you just get more money per person.

So because you get a certain amount of food money that the supply offser can spend on ingredients for a person, and it's more on some breeds. So is this considered be a hard chip duty so you're supply out there is a little more money to spend on the ingredients.

That's part of it.

But I would say probably one of the biggest reasons why the food is better is because it's all the same food for everyone. So on a surface ship, for example, right the crew could you know, you have like an officer's mess, and you have a chiefe mess, and you have a listed mess, and so it's different cooks looking different food for the different groups. You know, submarine, it's the same food. So if if the food sucks, the captain eats the food.

That sucks and that forgets to hear about it.

Yeah, a sub there's no officers mess.

There is an officer's mess, but it's the same food. So it's literally so it's the it's it's coming off the same line.

It's all that's happening is that it goes into a little soilber dish, you know, and you've got a good guy that brings it into the wardroom and you pass it around.

See.

The only difference is that's probably tolder is the officer food as opposed to coming hot off the line.

But it is the same food.

So it's that what the E three is eating is bad than what the captain's eating is bad too, and then correct corrective action will be taken.

Fascinating.

That's probably the biggest deck, right thing.

We got a couple more from sim which is more realistic quote unquot portrayal of life on a submarine Crimson Tide or the Hunt for Red October or Boot.

So you know, they're kind of all a little different. I mean, I don't think I mean, how far Otilbrain doesn't really portray life that much on a submarine. Well, you do have a John b who is an E three I think mounting off to the chief of the boat, which is probably not very accurate in that sense. Crimson Tide, I mean, there was a lot of there's some realism there some of them obviously, some of them wasn't not all realistic, I mean, and things have changed.

In Stiff Yeah, Like like Denzel is jogging in the submarine for PT at one point, isn't he?

Yeah, like you can't.

You can't run around them. There's a there's a tread they have a treadmill. So and actually that rewinded that that's one of the benefits to the SSPM.

There's a lot more.

Exercise equipment because says the end way roomy or there's so much larger ship, so you have like a little gym in the thisipal part where you have like a treadmill. Eleptical on a blist on attack submarine you know, your treadmill is outboard. Their reduction tears in your room and there's like a pipe right in front of your face, and you know you run in trying that it's it's it's a much more pramped spaces.

But I don't know, I'm not sure that answers the question. I mean, my.

Understanding of probably the most realistic submary movie is probably dust Boot. Now I wasn't on a on a World War II submarine, so I know, but my impression is that's probably the most accurate.

Cool from Big Tuna, which is hilarious.

What dynamic of subsurface nuclear warfare has grown significantly in the last decade.

What's fallen off?

Well?

And I think I think as in if you and many other parts of the military imprud systems are becoming much bigger deal. You know, those aren't nuclear, they're well at least not of ours is a record one that's a very nuclear power. But are u these are all they're all electronic form deep all electric. So the the growing part of undercive warfare is is those and also UAVs that could be launched by submarties. So the ability to send you a these up to get targeting.

Information or whatever that being said.

In some ways there's not quite as much change as in other parts of the of the military. So for example, if you read about quad coppers in Ukraine, you red an arcle what those and ninety nine percent of them only go about twenty kilometers. You know that they can reach that far because they're limited by linus and communication. So most of what you see isn't very long range. If you look at the ocean, twenty kilometers is not very far. It's not much of the Pacific Ocean quite

Systems, all right, we have one more from a tax squirrel.

What role do autonomy autonomous platforms from companies like an Agil General Dynamics play. Are they a danger to our own forces or allies? Examples such as Darbu's thing right.

Uh so, if so in terms of the danger, I mean, so the Chinese are definitely working on crew systems in a big way, dance some pretty advanced platforms that they're working on. Longer jaircrafts us have been spotted on the pier. There's not a lot of details at this point, but China has a very robust well, I mean, they are the world's more more drum insact first by far, I mean like far in a way they build most of the world's drones.

So in that sense, they're.

Going to be a superpower in the in in that kind of that kind of drone warfare. How much of a threat are they? So if we're talking about the undersea in particular, I think sometimes the threat from you these two submarines can be a little can be a little overblown, maybe because it's just physics. I mean, so unless you have a nuclear power plant, so if you submerge, you're on a battery or you're running a diesel engine.

Open ocean not really a threat, Thomas, what do you think would be you know, sort of in a a sci fi corner kind of futuristic idea, What do you think would be an interesting and beneficial way for the US Navy to move, whether it's subject can go deeper, subs that can go longer, weapon you know, ideas that maybe that aren't practical or or haven't been experimented on yet, but ideas that would be beneficial to us.

Well, and I'll tell you I wrote a whole artful about this in twenty seventeen. So I proposed and I still think it's a good idea. And all you av aircraft carrier, So this is and what I mean by all I don't mean to carry itself is unprude. I just mean that all that carries is on fruit aircraft because I think that I don't think that drone, you know, UAVs at C are ever going to get where they

So like imagine that's a good way to pay.

Imagine ship this kind of you know, much smaller twenty thirty, forty thousand times. It's kind of stealthy looking, and all the drones are inside of it, and instead of having a regular flight deck, like you're hurling these things out off of catapult, you know, with g forces that no human pilot could ever withstand.

Let's say they come in and they land. You know, they can land tail.

First because they were computer controlled and can land in ways that human pilots couldn't really do. It's like they land tail first, then they kind of go onto like an assembly line inside the ship. You could send them on one way missions, you know, double the range if you had to. You could keep them aloft up in the air for far longer than human pilots could could

The Chinese? Difficult, less complete, not not not quite what I propose.

It looks like they're mostly for exercise support, but they have built all u AV carriers.

Interesting and when it comes to submersibles, if we got rid of the human uh you know, vulnerability to pressure, if we could flood compartments with you know, with water whatnot?

Are are there electronics?

Are there systems that could survive at deeper depths and we can imagine and sort of create the same sort of capabilities.

They're definitely advantages to be had with you use these, one of them being like, you don't have to have a pressure ball, it's right, I mean generally you of these do you still have a pressure ball, you know, to heavy electronics and stuff like that inside it, but it's much smaller.

Most of the boat could be free flood.

It doesn't have to the same safety requirements the same you know, you don't have to spend as much money to do the same thing. Which is why if you know, there are some reasons they're very good. They can be very good for it. They'd go deeper than an advanced submarine can go. They could be used for mining missions that you would never send a human you know, a man submarine in for and shallow water, you can get into riskier places.

So to be clear, there are lots of advantages to use these.

I just think that I think there are some people that have these ideas that they're going to be joined on a submarine warfare the shoot torpedoes and all that kind of stuff, And I think that's a long long way to do that kind of thing, because submarine, like just just facifying what you're listening to can be really really hard, even with lots of humans with experience and

Let's say it's got tomawoks on board.

You know, you send it a message, shoot at this target, this time, this target package. You know.

I don't think there's any engineering miracles required to do that.

That sounds like something that could be do with HORB go to this place, drop minds in this location, or you know, hang out here and if somebody drives by, come up and send a message. You know, I could see a lot of things that could be very useful.

It's fascinating.

And so.

You know, I don't want to make this political, and I'm not like here to promote must but I'm going to say that, you know, a private company was able to do something that a long standing government contractor was not able to do with the rescue is And you know, when we've talked, like Alex Holng's about these small companies creating these you know, hypersonics and things like that, is the government willing to look at these companies that are

Firm at this point that it's tough for them to do that.

Well.

I mean, there we certainly have seen some new entrants.

I mean, you know, nobody ever heard of angerill before, you know, not that long ago, so there's a lot about it.

I think there are a fair number of other smaller startups that are.

Working on some pretty interesting stuff, and I mean it's it's a challenge for sure, and the trime.

I mean at their place, I mean, this is part of thee.

Yet again, one of those post cod War things is if you look at there used to be like thirty or forty major defense contractors and now there's five. So if we can get those numbers back cups on them and get and get some more new blood, I think that would be a good thing.

You know, is there a model in SpaceX.

Let's be clear, space X is part of it too, right, I mean there's death the military applications for a lot of that kind of lash stuff that SpaceX brings to the table, and it's very much a defense contractor. Yeah, so you know, good good. You know Tesla bring new capabilities to military vehicles.

I can I can. I can imagine they really could. I mean, they're amazing vehicles.

So again I say again that I think that necessity will be the mother invention in many ways. I think we're I think we're now facing such a severe rent from China and hopefully hopefully it will drive us forward to make some progress and these sorts of things.

Are you seeing that in the government side, Republican Democrat regardless that that military, like, are people starting to wake up to this threat?

Yeah?

I mean I think Congress, we have a pretty solid by by partisan understanding.

Of the threat. You know, different people have different ideas about how to deal with it, obviously, sure, and.

But I mean I certainly in every every testimony that I've ever given, you should Senate Formulations Committee or the US China Commission.

I mean, I get generally the same. It doesn't feel any different what's coming from both sides, right, And there's.

There's seems certainly certainly with the like folks like in the SASK and the and the Intel committees, like they're getting too details and there is no ignoring the details once you understand them. You know, there there are people who are not aware of the China threat because they're just not aware of it. Once you understand the scale, once you understand the numbers, it's no denying.

I mean like that, that's like I.

Tell people, like sometimes some people may think I'm alarmist. I give facts, provide facts. If the facts are alarming, then they are they are what they are.

Right, tom Where can people go to find you and find your work?

So?

As I said, I'm a junk c or fellow the CNA S so my my work is so of it's on their website. You know for the various articles I've been quoted in or whatnot. You'll see me some from time to time in various media. Let's be my interview for this and that you can lead about the Chinese military. I on Twitter, T shirt gret three. That's where I do most of my talking, and that's where I part fampions, where I do a lot of my what to find

So that's probably my my number one outlet.

I also most often when I do write articles, you'll find them in a War on the Rocks. If you get to war the Rocks dot com and look under my name, you'll see all the articles that are written for them, which are.

Were most of my articles have been. Tom.

Thanks, thank you so much for spending your evening with us and walking us through a whole bunch of stuff. I didn't really know anything about before. Yes, fascinating. We really appreciate your expertise.

Oh, thank you, Jim. I appreciate your interest. I mean I watched I watched some of your videos and I know, just in frame different content than you you typically have.

And I hope, I'm I hope I've kept your kept your viewers interested in something that's pretty different than than than really really quite frankly exciting and exotic things you guys usually easily talked about.

This is pretty exciting and exotic.

I mean, I think too.

It's all new to me too.

I learned so much when I talk to guys like you that are kind of outside that you know framework. So yeah, again, thank you Tom and everyone else. We will see you again next week. Okay, thanks Jelen, appreciate it.

Let me get you care.

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