Midrats

Open mic and open topic for this week's Midrats as we cover the maritime spectrum from Chinese fisherman and their "strange" catches, to new carriers, to 1,001 things you can do with a DDG-1000.We'll be live as always and are taking questions and topic requests ... so come join us!

We just stress tested our Strategic Sealift. We'll discuss what we can learn from it this Sunday with returning guest, Salvatore Mercogliano.Sal sailed with MSC from 1989 to 1992, and worked MSC HQ as Operations Officer for the Afloat Prepositioning Force 1992-1996.He has a BS Marine Transportation from SUNY Maritime College, a MA Maritime History and Nautical Archaeology from East Carolina University, and received his Ph.D. in Military and Naval History from University of Alabama.He's taught at East Carolina University, Methodist University, UNC-Chapel Hill, & the U.S. Military Academy.Currently an adjunct professor at the US Merchant Marine Academy and an Associate Professor of History at Campbell University in Buies Creek, NC.Recently published “We Built Her to Bring Them Over There: The Cruiser and Transport Force in the Great War,” in the Winter 2017-18 issue of Sea History; author of Fourth Arm of Defense: Sealift and Maritime Logistics in the Vietnam War, published by the Naval History and Heritage

Happy New Year to everyone and you know what 2020 means? It means that Midrats is having its 10th Anniversary.Come join us this Sunday as we look back at the previous decade and do our best to see what is coming over the horizon for the next.Who knows, we might have a surprise guest or two.

Going back three years, today's best of we look back to a forgotten corner of the Cold War.If you define the Cold War as lasting 44 years from 1947 to 1991, then for over half the Cold War there was a simmering proxy war in southern Africa that involved, to one extent or another, the present day nations of Angola, Namibia, Zambia, and South Africa.Over the course of time, it would involve nations from other hemispheres such as Cuba, and brought in to conflict two political philosophies of the 20th Century now held in disrepute in the 21st Century; Communism and Apartheid. The last decade of the Cold War brought the conflict in fresh relief as part of the Reagan administration's push back against Communist aggression in South Africa, Central America, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Acronyms such as UNITA, and SWAPO were as well known then as AQAP and Boko Haram are now.What does that relatively unknown conflict have to teach us about the nature of war today? Our guest for the full hour to explore that answer will

Let's go back to October of 2010 for a great pair of guests. First, since the end of US involvement The Vietnam War almost 40 years ago, there are just a few USN Commanding Officers who know what it is like for a warship under attack; one of the handful will be our first guest, CDR Kirk Lippold, USN (Ret.). He was the Commanding Officer of the USS Cole (DDG-67) when it was attacked while in port Aden, Yemen 12 October 2000 - the 16th anniversary will in a few weeks. We will discuss his experiences then as well as the work he has done since his retirement with senior military fellow with Military Families United, & any other topics that fold their way in to our conversation. (since his first guest on Midrats, he published his book, Front Burner) Our second guest will be from the shadows of the Navy EOD world, Steve Phillips. After graduating from Annapolis in '92, Steve found honest work as a SWO, but then transferred into EOD where he served as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician at EOD Mobile Units

In the 5-years since the publication of his book, Why We Lost, each passing day more and more people are starting to look at what, 18-yrs on, we have brought in to being with our long running land wars in Central Asia and the Middle East.Using his book as a starting point, this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern, our guest will be Daniel P. Bolger, Lieutenant General, US Army, (Ret.) to discuss these two conflicts and larger implications of our Long War.Bolger served 35 years in the U.S. Army, retiring in 2013. He commanded troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan. His military awards include five Bronze Stars (one for valor) and the Combat Action Badge. He earned a bachelor's degree at The Citadel and a master's degree and doctorate from the University of Chicago. The author of nine books and numerous articles, he teaches history at North Carolina State State University in Raleigh, North Carolina.

How do you report history as you live it? When, why, and how do you write about it?When even the most experienced DC watchers are having trouble tracking what is going on in the Trump Administration, what can people expect to learn from first hand accounts?If you haven't already heard about our next guest and his book - and you count yourself as someone interested in national security - then welcome back on the grid.Returning to Midrats, our guest for the full hour this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern to discuss his new book, Holding the Line: Inside Trump's Pentagon with Secretary Mattis, will be Guy Snodgress, CDR USN (Ret.)Guy is a retired American naval aviator, Topgun instructor, and former commanding officer who served as Jim Mattis's chief speechwriter and communications director during his time as Secretary of Defense. Snodgrass owns and manages a strategic advisory firm in Northern Virginia, serving government and tech industry clients.

First aired in November of 2012."If we cannot have the navy estimates of our policy, then let's have the policy of our navy estimates."---- Lieutenant Ambroise Baudry, French NavyAs our guest this week noted in his book Fleet Tactics: Theory and Practice, "These are the watchwords for the twenty-first-century American navy."As we leave our land wars in Asia and look forward to the future maritime challenges of our nation, what size and kind of Fleet should the US Navy have?How will budgets impact the size and nature of our Fleet, and how will that impact the ability of the Navy to meet what it will be asked to do?What are the major schools of thought on what should drive our Fleet design, and what does history have to tell us about where we should head, and what we should be cautious of?Our guest for the full hour to discuss this and a lot more will be Wayne P. Hughes, Jr., Captain, USN (Ret), who in addition to being the author of innumerable books and articles, is a Professor, Department of Operations Resea

Keeping a fleet ready for war is a process of years of careful, consistent, and sustained stewardship of both personnel and material.The easiest parts are the buying of equipment and recruiting new people.The hard parts, maintenance, training, and retention – mostly because they are hard – rarely break in to the open.For our fleet, the structure we live in is the Optimized Fleet Response Plan (OFRP). It is a system few understand well, but is one designed around a peace time “efficiency” with only a passing interest in wartime “effectiveness.”Decades of dominance at sea has provided the US Navy the luxury of such, but as China expands her fleet at an alarming rate – do we need a new construct?Our guest for the full hour to discuss this and related topics will be Bryan McGrath, CDR USN (Ret.).Bryan McGrath grew up in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, and graduated from the University of Virginia in 1987. He was commissioned upon graduation in the United States Navy, and served as a Surface Warfare Officer until his re

A byproduct of the April 2018 memo from Undersecretary of the Navy Thomas Modly, the newly created position of CLO is described as, “A senior civilian with educational leadership experience headquartered in the Pentagon, with a small supporting staff transferred from extant Navy and Marine education management billets, responsible to the President, Naval University for all matters related to education in policy, budgets, promotion board precepts. Congressional interaction, future requirements, and assessments.”The Navy's first Chief Learning Officer (CLO) John Kroger will join us for the full hour to describe his mandate, the path ahead, and the opportunities and challenges of building a position from scratch.John served as an enlisted Marine between 1983 and 1986. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Yale University and a law degree from Harvard University. After college, he spent a significant part of his career in the public sector, as a U.S. Department of Justice prosecutor and Attorney General

Episode first aired in July of 2013.We have heard from industry, military leaders, Marines, and private security providers, this Sunday we are going to look at piracy at a more personal level with director Thymaya Payne of the documentary, Stolen Seas; Tales of Somali Piracy. He will be our guest for the full hour.From the show promo:The filmmakers have spent the past three years traveling to some of the world's most violent locales in order to make this documentary on Somali piracy, Stolen Seas. Utilizing exclusive interviews and unparalleled access to real pirates, hostages, hostages' relatives, ship-owners, pirate negotiators and experts on piracy and international policy, Stolen Seas presents a chilling exploration of the Somali pirate phenomenon.The film throws the viewer, through audio recordings and found video, right into the middle of the real-life hostage negotiation of a Danish shipping vessel, the CEC Future. As the haggling between the ship's stoic owner Per Gullestrup, and the pirate's loquaciou

With the sequel to "Top Gun" coming up, if you ever wore the uniform of the US Navy, you're going to get asked a lot of questions.For this week's show we are going to talk about today's Naval Aviation experience with author Kevin Miller, CAPT, USN (Ret.)Kevin is a third generation naval officer. He graduated from the University of Mississippi and was designated a Naval Aviator in August 1983. In his career he flew the A-7E Corsair II and FA-18C Hornet, deploying overseas six times throughout the 1980’s and 90’s aboard the aircraft carriers Nimitz, Dwight D. Eisenhower, George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt and Enterprise. He finished his career in the Pentagon serving on the staff of the Secretary of the Navy, retiring in 2005.After leaving the service Kevin was employed as an associate at two Washington DC defense consulting firms, and it was during this time he drafted his first novel Raven One. In 2010 he joined the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. T

The War Between the States, the American Civil War - whichever description you prefer - this crucible on which our nation was re-formed has legion of books, movies, and rhetoric dedicated to it. Most of the history that people know involves the war on land, but what of the war at sea?What are details behind some of the major Naval leaders of both sides that are the least known, but are the most interesting? What challenges and accomplishments were made by the belligerents in their navies, and how do they inform and influence our Navy today?Our guest for the full hour to discuss this and more will be James M. McPherson, the George Henry Davis '86 Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University. He has published numerous volumes on the Civil War, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom, Crossroads of Freedom (which was a New York Times bestseller), Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution, and For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War, which won the Lincoln Priz

From Finland to Denmark, Sweden to Poland - from small Latvia to the Continental power of Germany - the return of Russia has brought a renewed focus the last half decade to the Baltic.Not just a SLOC, there are important economic and cultural ties that predate written history that continue to be important today.Our guest for the full hour in a wide ranging discussion will be Dr. Sebastian Bruns. Sebastian heads the Center for Maritime Strategy & Security (CMSS) at the Institute for Security Policy, University of Kiel (ISPK). He is the author/editor of six books, including "Routledge Handbook of Naval Strategy and Security" (edited with Joachim Krause, London 2016), and his latest, "US Naval Strategy and National Security. The Evolution of American Maritime Power" (London, 2018).

Everyone has half-baked ideas ... some quarter-baked and some three-quarters-baked ... that in a just world of their making would have a funding line.Are there some ideas so far "out of the box" that they really should be "in the box?"Find yourself saying, "If I were CNO/emperor/Chairman of the HASC for a day, I would..."?Have some ideas that you are convinced our Navy needs to win, but everyone else thinks is impossible/stupid/insane?Well, that is the Navy we're going to ponder today.With our guests Blake Herzinger and His Exalted Saltiness Jimmy Drennan, EagleOne and I the Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern will talk about our pet "half-baked ideas" that ... in all seriousness ... we'd like someone to at leave give a serious thought to for a few seconds. Blake graduated from OCS in 2010 and affiliated with the USNR in 2017, having spent time in the Navy’s anti-submarine warfare and intelligence collection communities. As a civilian he supports planning and execution of Indo-Pacific Security Cooperation and he works

As the USN continues its slow goodbye to 355 ships, what are some other measures it can use to expand maritime power, presence and influence?Would better and expanded integration, support, and interoperability with the USCG be part of the answer?Our guest this Sunday for the full hour to discuss this and all thing USCG will be Chuck Hill, and we’ll used his recent post, Navy, this is Coast Guard, we need to talk (https://chuckhillscgblog.net/2019/09/29/navy-this-is-coast-guard-we-need-to-talk/ ) as a starting off point for our discussion.Chuck graduated from the USCG Academy in 1969, and retired in 1991, Assignments included four ships, Rescue Coordination Center New Orleans, CG HQ, Four years in HQ in the Military Readiness branch, Fleet Training Group San Diego, Naval War College (Command and Staff Course), and Pacific Area/Maritime Defense Zone Pacific Ops/Readiness/Plans/Exercises. Afloat, he served on the McCulloch (a 311′ WAVP/WHEC), Confidence when it was homeported in Kodiak, Duane (a 327′ WPG/WHEC a

First aired in October 2015:One man's chore is another man's hobby. Another man's dread, is the other's fantasy. Such, in a fashion, is Program Management in the Navy.To be a good one, step one is to be self-aware. From his latest article in USNI's Proceedings, Confessions of a Major Program Manager, Captain Mark Vandroff, USN just lays it out; "Face it: Everyone hates MPMs. For the budget-conscious officials in the Pentagon, our products are never cheap enough. For technologists both inside and outside the Department of Defense who want military progress to be state of the art, our products are never fielded fast enough. For the fleet users and their advocates, products could always be more capable, usable, or maintainable. Industry gets upset when we treat the taxpayers’ money like it is worth saving rather than help Wall Street with its next earnings report. Our uniformed brothers and sisters, support scientists, contractors, and comptrollers all loathe us—and if you aren’t in one of those groups, you prob

From the week before the 2016 election, in this episode of Midrats we discuss the systems that trains, mans, and equips our military - and provides guidance and support to their civilian masters is broadly shaped by Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986. There is much discussion that in the middle of the second decade of the 21st Century, is there a better system to serve our national security requirements than one designed at the height of the 20th Century's Cold War?Using his article in War on the Rocks, Don't Rush to "Fix" Goldwater-Nichols as a starting point, our guest for the full hour to discuss this and other related issues will be Justin Johnson of The Heritage Foundation.Johnson spent over a decade working on defense and foreign policy issues on Capitol Hill before coming to the Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense were I am now a defense and foreign policy analyst at Allison Center for National Security and Foreign Policy.Johnson received a master’s degree from the Naval War College with a par

Almost to the day, our direct military involvement in Afghanistan has reached its 18th year. Those Afghans, American, British, and others who were had yet to reach their first birthday when the attacks of September 2001 led us to move in to direct military action in Afghanistan, those children of 2001 are now on their way to that Central Asian country to pick up the conflict other generations have yet to put an end to is.Nation building, counter-terrorism, training, capability building, infrastructure development and even agricultural assistance, we’ve had the better part of two decades to find a path, or combination of paths, to help the Afghan people stand in the modern age. The programs and names change, but in the distance was that common goal.Today’s guest Lieutenant Jack McCain, USNR returns to Midrats after recently completing a tour helping train the Afghan armed forces to fly and use the ubiquitous Blackhawk helicopter. We’ll cover his experience there to talk about that stage of our involvement in A

Even developed nations have difficulty effectively managing marine resources, enforce pollution controls, and maintain the rule of law in their territorial seas. With most of the world's coastal nations struggling to maintain authority ashore, the sea is left lawless.From fisheries to waste disposal, bad actors are taking advantage of these localized challenges with negative impacts not just on the coastal nations, but on the global environment and integrated ecosystems. For over four decades, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has grown to the world’s most passionate and powerful protector of ocean life. They've expanded their expertise to include partnering with nations from Africa to Central American in a maritime public-private partnerships to bring order and proper stewardship to the already endangered maritime domain.Our guest for the full hour was supposed to be Captain Paul Watson, the Founder, President, and Executive Director of what is commonly known as just, Sea Shepherd. Unfortunately, technol