Episodes
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For the first two decades of this century, as the West and her friends were distracted by small wars in Central Asia and the Middle East, the People's Republic of China slowly, deliberately, and steadily grew her economic, diplomatic, and economic power.
As we are in the last year closing out the first quarter of the 21st Century, the West distracted by an ongoing major conventional war in its third year in Europe, and still cannot extract itself from the Middle Eastern tar-pit. Haw is the PRC doing? Keeping on, moving on...and it's time for an update on their progress.
Returning to Midrats for the full hour will be Dean Cheng, Senior Fellow, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies; Senior Adviser, United States Institute of Peace; and Non-resident Fellow, George Washington University Space Policy Institute.Dean was recently appointed a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, a Senior Adviser with the US Institute of Peace, and a non-resident fellow with the George Washington University Space Policy Institute.
He retired as the Senior Research Fellow for Chinese Political and Military Affairs at the Heritage Foundation after 13 years. He is fluent in Chinese, and uses Chinese language materials regularly in his work.Prior to joining the Heritage Foundation, he worked at the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA), a Federally Funded Research and Development Center, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), and as an analyst with the US Congress’ Office of Technology Assessment.
He is the author of the volume Cyber Dragon: Inside China’s Information Warfare and Cyber Operations (Praeger Publishing, 2016), and has written extensively on Chinese views of deterrence, Chinese views of space power, and Chinese mobilization, and contributed to a number of volumes on the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. -
For navalists from Souda Bay to San Diego, April has started not with a whimper, not a grin - but with a scream.
For the full hour, we'll start in Baltimore, review the latest revelations about shipbuilding, and some enlightening developments on our allies from Australia to NATO…and end things up after a little spot of tech bother, with a discussion on how to tell our Navy story right - and why it matters.
Links:The shipbuilding grid.CANX ship brief.AUKUS and Japan.US, Japan, Australia, & The Philippines go to sea. -
Missing episodes?
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For our last podcast of March, come join us for and open-ended free-for-all format to look at the national security environment as we head in to April.
From the water cannons off the Philippines to the folly of keeping your naval bases in range of your enemies missiles ... and perhaps a dive in to the long winter for navalists that 2024 is lining up to be ... we'll cover it!
Links mentioned in the show:
Amphib USS Boxer Sidelined by "General Complacency" and BreakdownsThe Lost Opportunity: The Failure of the National Commission on the Future of the NavySal Mercogliano's What's Going on With ShippingWhy Houthi Attacks in the Red Sea Are Likely to Persist: They're PopularClaude Berube books -
If people are policy and policy shapes decisions, then that is the start in understanding why a nation like the USA wound up neglecting what should be a core sector of not just its economy, but its strategic advantage - its civilian maritime industry.
Using his recent article, The Urgent Need for U.S. Maritime Reform as a starting point, our guest for the full hour is William Cahill.
Will is president of Applied Maritime Sciences, a maritime technology and strategy consultancy. He served as Director for Strategic Planning on the National Security Council and Maritime Advisor on the Council of Economic Advisers where he helped develop and lead Interagency efforts to enhance American maritime competitiveness. During his 20 years as a Coast Guard officer, Will completed numerous operational tours both at sea as a Cutterman and at air stations as a Coast Guard aviator. Will holds degrees in Naval Architecture and Marine engineering from the USCGA and a Master of Public Policy from Princeton University. -
Especially for the Royal Navy, it was assumed the military leaders, politicians, and the general population understood that they were island nations and that their security and prosperity depended on a strong navy and civilian maritime commerce.
Even the greatest naval power of the last century, the United States of America seems to be unable to have people understand why it needs a strong navy. What happened?
Focused primarily on the core of the issue with the Royal Navy, our guest for the full hour to discuss the scourge of seablindness will be Dr James WE Smith, the Laughton-Corbett Research Fellow in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London.
He completed his PhD in ‘War and Strategic Studies’ that focused on studying the organization of defense and defense unification in the UK and US and how that impacts strategy and strategic thought. This has complemented a broader research effort which has taken nearly fifteen years about the devaluation of sea, navies and maritime strategy in nations and strategic thought from seabed to space.
Links:
'Seablindness' and the Royal Navy TodayThe US Navy versus Seablindness: par for the course for America?You can follow James on X, or his substack. -
Feel like the chaos from the Black Sea, Red Sea, South China Sea and various places ashore seems just too much to keep track of?
Well, if you need an hour to catch up and ponder as Sal & Eagle One will take you from the Houthi's sinking their first ship, Darwinism at war, to the US Navy heading in to Haiphong witih guns blazing ... for peace. -
From the February 12th guest post over at Sal's substack, our guest today opened with a firm point;"..the combat performance of U.S. Navy destroyers in the Red Sea against a variety of weapons employed by the Houthis from Yemen stands as a monument to decades of brilliance, hard work, and dedication across generations of naval officers, government civilians, industry executives, talented engineers and technologists, assembly line workers, and shipbuilders. THIS—is the military-industrial complex, and it works."
Returning for another visit to Midrats to dive into his arguments about where the Military Industrial Complex puts "Ws" on the board and related topics will be Bryan McGrath, CDR, USN (Ret.).
Bryan is the Managing Director of The FerryBridge Group LLC, a defense consultancy. The opinions expressed here are his. -
The vulnerability of aircraft carriers is nothing new. They are vulnerable not just because of how they are designed - really just a thin hulled ship full of fuel and explosives - but because of what they do.
At peace and at war, there is no other platform that can project power and national will on a global scale at sea than an aircraft carrier. As such, everyone either wants one, or wants to sink one - or both.While many people think of the Pacific wars of WWII, Korea, and Vietnam as places where the US Navy's aircraft carriers could operate at will and dominate everything, that really was not the case until late 1944.The reality was quite different before then. Proper use of carriers was mostly about husbanding carriers’s limited resources while still getting max value out of them.That will be the topic of today's show with returning guest Dr. John T. Kuehn.
John is Professor of Military History at the Army Command and General Staff College. He served in the US Navy as a naval flight officer flying in EP-3s and ES-3s, retiring in 2004.
He has authored or co-authored seven books and was awarded a Vandevort Prize from the Society for Military History in 2023 for his article “Zumwalt, Holloway, and the Soviet Navy Threat Leadership in a Time of Strategic, Social, and Cultural Change.”His latest book from is Strategy in Crisis (Naval Institute, 2023). -
Feel like there is too much going on in the national security world to keep up with?
Well, let your heart not be troubled. Mark & Sal will deliver a full hour of discussion of not just what's breaking in to the news in the last week of January 2024, but whatever else pops up.
Iranian proxies causing American military losses from Jordan to the Horn of Africa; Iranian drone carriers to America's need for some inventive ideas to bring more VLS cells forward sooner - with some ASBM pondering thrown in for good measure. -
If we are approaching the end of the almost century-long age of the aircraft carrier, for the United States Navy, what are some of the options we could have in fleet designed to execute the Navy's mission in its place?
Challenges, opportunities, and compromises - we'll dive into it all with guest Jeff Vandenengel, CDR USN.The reference point for our conversation will be his new book, Questioning the Carrier: Opportunities in Fleet Design for the U.S. Navy.
Jeff completed three tours on fast-attack submarines. Winner of the 2019 Admiral Willis Lent Award for tactical excellence at sea, he deployed to the Western Pacific three times and to the Atlantic at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. -
While everyone is focused on the Red Sea or the goings on in Ukraine, there are serious developments between The Philippines and the Peoples Republic of China that is not going to wait for the other world's problems to finish up their time in the sun.
If the main game is in the Western Pacific, then The Philippines are the center square.
Returning to Midrats to discuss this ongoing story will be Ray Powell.Ray is the Founder and Director of SeaLight, a maritime transparency project of the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford University, California.
Ray served 35 years in the U.S. Air Force, including posts in the Philippines, Japan, Germany, and Qatar, as well as combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He served as the U.S. Air Attaché to Vietnam and the U.S. Defense Attaché to Australia. -
From moving grain to the world markets from the Black Sea to global trade through the Red Sea, and the People’s Republic of China’s unabashed bullying of The Philippines and the nations surrounding the South China Sea – the US Navy is not large enough to carry the burden of maintaining the international order at sea.
We have a series of alliances with most of the top-10 maritime powers on the globe, but are they being effectively harnessed toward maintaining this order? Are we an ally that instills confidence in our friends and respect from our challengers?
Returning to Midrats to discuss these and related topics in a wide-ranging conversation will be Kori Schake.Kori leads the foreign and defense policy team at the American Enterprise Institute. She is the author of Safe Passage: the Transition from British to American Hegemony, and a contributing writer at the Atlantic, War on the Rocks, and Bloomberg. -
With a few exceptions on the sidelines by Japan and France, what has been clearly apparent in the last two months has been the absence of the International Community's presence in the Red Sea to enforce the International Order everyone seems to consider of utmost importance to the economic system that gives us the standard of living the globe is accustomed to?
Once again, it is the U.S. Navy that seems to be the force of choice, or the only real option to do the bare minimum to keep lawlessness at sea at bay.
Is this sustainable when we have allies closer to the threat with equally deployable assets? The U.S. and her Navy have larger concerns much closer to its core national interests that are already under resourced.
Our guest today to dive in to this and related issues is Elbridge Colby, Principal at the Marathon Initiative. Former Pentagon, 2018 National Defense Strategy player and author of Strategy of Denial.
Recorded December 8th. -
With Thanksgiving behind us and another month of the Holiday Season to go, it's time to catch up on the goings on at the waterfront with a special guest calling in who we decided to hijack and keep for the rest of the show - returning listener favorite Mark Vandroff.
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How is a maritime power like the United States going to be able to sustain a fight against a land power with four times its population, a larger Navy, and is located on the other side of the Pacific?
The only reliable way you can get the fuel, weapons, and supplies is with a robust force of combat logistics ships.Do we have that force? Do our budgets and plans match realistic requirements?
We're going to dive in deep on the topic today with returning guest, Dr. James Holmes, the inaugural J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the US Naval War College. We will pin our discussion today on his recent article, More Combat Logistics Force Ships? Yes Please! at the Center for Maritime Strategy. -
You're heard people talk - and on occasion argue - about "presence" as a naval mission, but what exactly is it? What does that actually mean for our nation and what role does it have in promoting its national security requirements?
What does our nation need to do to properly resource it?
We're going to dive in deep on the topic today with returning guest, Jerry Hendrix, using as a foundation a report he authored recently for the Sagamore Institute, Measuring & Modeling Naval Presence.
Dr. Henry J. “Jerry” Hendrix, PhD is a retired Navy Captain, having served 26 years on active duty following his commissioning through the Navy ROTC program at Purdue University. During his career Hendrix served in a variety of maritime patrol aviation squadrons as well as on supercarriers and light amphibious assault ships. His shore duty assignments were as a strategist on the staffs of the Chief of Naval Operations, the Secretary of the Navy, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and within the Office of Net Assessment. Through these tours Dr. Hendrix established a reputation for using history to illuminate current strategic challenges. Following his retirement from the Navy following a standout tour as the Director of the Navy History and Heritage Command, he has worked as a senior fellow the Center for a New American Security and as a vice president at a Washington, DC defense consultancy.
Dr. Hendrix holds a bachelor’s degree from Purdue University in political science, a masters in national security affairs from the Naval Postgraduate School, a masters in history from Harvard University, and a PhD in war studies from Kings College, London. -
There are few naval leaders who had a legendary reputation and such a long running - and not uncontroversial - record of service as Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, USN.
Talk to any submarine officer or surface nuclear power officer over the age of 60 and they will have a personal story directly or indirectly about the man who is generally seen as the "Father of the Nuclear Navy."Was the man as he lived really in line with his reputation? We now have a broad collection of Rickover in his own word is the just published collection of his papers, Rickover Uncensored, edited by Claude Berube, Samuel Limneos.
From the book's Amazon page;
"Nearly 250 archival boxes full of his personal papers were bequeathed to the U.S. Naval Academy Museum. Outside of his official biographer, no historian had access to these documents. In "Rickover Uncensored," the editors present a broad section of Rickover's life from love letters in the 1930s to his first wife, his speeches, transcripts of telephone conversations, and memoranda through his retirement."
Joining us for the full hour will be one of the editors of this collection - returning and founding guest of Midrats, Claude Berube.
Claude is the author or editor of five non-fiction books, three novels and more than eighty articles. He earned his doctorate from the University of Leeds, and is a retired CDR in the USNR. He has worked as a navy contractor for NAVSEA and ONR, as a civil servant with the ONI, and as a staffer to two US Senators and a House member. He has taught in the Political Science and History Departments at the US Naval Academy since 2005. -
Fall is in the air ... so Sal and EagleOne return to the podcast to get you caught up now that FY24 is behind us.
We'll cover the waterfront.
Links mentioned during the show:
SECNAV Del Toro Calls for a New, Bold Maritime Statecraft.What’s Keeping the USS Ronald Reagan in Yokosuka?Taiwan launches its first homemade submarine.What is a DASH?What is this quad-copter son of DASH?Ukraine's repurposed agricultural drones made in to bombers.USN’s unmanned ships get a workout near Japan.USMC’s autogyro in 1930s Nicaragua.Role of the U.S. Merchant Marine in National Security; Project Walrus Report.Sine Qua Non of U. S. Sea Power: the Merchant Ship, By Rear Admiral John D. Hayes, U. S. Navy (Retired), Proceedings, March 1965.America Needs a Cabinet-Level Maritime Department, by Jimmy Drennan -
Since its first formation in 2007, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or "Quad" of the Australia, India, Japan and the United States of America has continued to evolve in to something that isn't a fully formed alliance, but is a bit more than just a talking shop as well.
Encouraged by the changing nature of the People's Republic of China, it is evolving in to something with great potential for enhancing security and international norms at sea to the benefit of not just the Quad, but the other nations in the area.
For the full hour today to discuss the Quad will be returning guest Blake Herzinger.
The foundation for our discussion will be via the Unites States Study Centre, Bolstering the Quad: The case for a collective approach to maritime security.
Blake is a Research Fellow in the Foreign Policy and Defence Program at the United States Studies Centre. His work is broadly focused on Indo-Pacific defence policy and US security cooperation, with emphasis on maritime security and sea power.
Previously a Non-resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Blake also directed global security policy for Twitter, and was a Non-resident WSD-Handa Fellow and Young Leader at Pacific Forum. Prior to that, Blake was a civilian adviser to the US Pacific Fleet, focusing on maritime security cooperation in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the South Pacific. During that time, he and his team developed the Indo-Pacific Maritime Security Initiative program, delivering assistance ranging from coursework to coast guard cutters to regional maritime law enforcement organisations. He is a serving US Navy Reserve foreign area officer and spent ten years in active service.
His work can be found in Foreign Policy, War on the Rocks, The Diplomat, The Straits Times and Nikkei Asia, among other publications. His book, Carrier Killer, focuses on China’s anti-ship ballistic missile program and its influence on the regional military balance. Blake holds an MSc in Strategic Studies from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University, and completed his BA in Political Science at Brigham Young University. -
While almost all the intellectual energy in the American military establishment is focused on the end of the FY potlatch of spending before fiscal year 2024 kicks off in under three weeks, it's time for EagleOne and Sal to take a deep breath and take a look around the national security waterfront.
For the first third of the show we discuss DEPSECDEF Hick's "Replicator" project and some of the issues around it, and then regular guest Mark Vandroff calls in the show and we take the conversation on from there, eventually winding up what is more valuable than all the technology you can buy - the supply chains that enable it and the people who put it together.
Showlinks:
Sal’s overview of “Replicator.”Navy’s “Disruptive Capabilities Office.”Tom Clancy’s “Red Storm Rising” Dance of the Vampires video.BuildSubmarines.com commercial.BuildSubmarines.com job list.Fincantieri careers. - Show more
