Midrats

Now that Summer is on the way and that there are more national security issues being produced from the South China Sea to the Dardanelles than can be consumed locally - that sounds like the perfect time for Sal from CDR Salamander and EagleOne from EagleSpeak to hold a Midrats "open house."A little bit of a potpourri of what we find of interest from the latest news,to a chance for you to call in or ask via the live chat room the questions and issues you'd like to to discuss.Join us this Sunday from 5-6pm.

This Memorial Day Weekend we are reaching back to a 2010 episode where we look back at the Vietnam War and then look forward to the next decade's Fleet options for our Navy. 50 years in 1 hour. Our guests will be retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel J.G. Zumwalt and journalist Greg Grant. Lt. Col. James Zumwalt is a retired Marine infantry officer who served in the Vietnam war, the 1989 intervention into Panama, and Desert Storm. He is an author, speaker and business executive, and currently heads a security consulting firm named after his father—Admiral Zumwalt & Consultants, Inc. His articles on Vietnam, North Korea, foreign policy and defense issues can be found in various newspapers and magazines, including USA Today, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Washington Times, The LA Times, The Chicago Tribune, The San Diego Union, Parade magazine and others. He is a member of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), and from 1991-92 was the Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of State f

Since WWII, have we developed an officer corps that has not only developed a record of defeat, but has become comfortable with it?Is our military leadership structurally unsound?In his recent article, An Officer Corps That Can’t Score, author William S. Lind makes a scathing inditement of the officer corp of the United States in from the structure is works in, to its cultural and intellectual habits. We will have the author with us for the full hour to discuss this and more about what problem he sees with our military's officers, and what recommendations he has to make it better.Mr Lind is Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation, with degrees from Dartmouth College in 1969 and Princeton University. He worked as a legislative aide for armed services for Senator Robert Taft, Jr. and Senator Gary Hart until joining the Free Congress Foundation in 1987. Mr. Lind is author of the Maneuver Warfare Handbook (Westview Press, 1985); co-author, with Gary Hart, of America Can Win

For the career minded Naval professional, to have a chance for the greatest advancement and promotion, you have to push and push hard. The reputation you build in your first 10 years sets the tone for the rest.Except for very rare exceptions, there are no second chances. There are no pauses, one iffy set of orders, one poorly timed FITREP, and you are on an off-ramp. You must work harder, you must sacrifice, and if you are to have a family young, you need a very strong support structure.For men - there is always the RADM Sestak, USN (Ret) option; wait until post O6, then start the family your peers did 20-yrs ago. For women though, there are some hard biological facts.The average American woman gets married at age 26. For college-educated women the average age at first birth is ~30. If you want to have more than 2 kids, you need to start earlier.  Mother Nature has her own schedule that doesn't often match yours.With women making up more of the military than ever, what are the challenges out there biological,

So far in 2014, the big lesson is what people have known for centuries; in Eurasia you cannot ignore Russia. The cliché is accurate, Russia is never as weak or as strong as she seems.What do the developments so far mean not just for Ukraine, but for all the former Soviet Republics, slumbering Western Europe and Russia's near abroad?To discuss this and more, for the full hour we will have returning guest Dr. Dmitry Gorenburg, Senior Analyst, CNA Strategic Studies, an Associate at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, an author, and host of the Russian Military Reform blog.Dr. Gorenburg focuses his research on security issues in the former Soviet Union, Russian military reform, Russian foreign policy, ethnic politics and identity, and Russian regional politics. He is also the editor of the journals Problems of Post-Communism and Russian Politics and Law and a Fellow of the Truman National Security Project. From 2005 through 2010, he was the Executive Director of the American Association for t

It hasn't gone anywhere, the Long War, that is.People may be suffering whiplash having to look back to Europe in the middle of a Pacific pivot, and the Arab spring wilted in to extremism and bloodshed - but the war against the West still goes on from lone wolf attacks at home, to drone strikes across the swath of southwest, south, and central Asia.Coming back to Midrats for the full hour to discuss this and more will be Bill Roggio, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Bill is also the President of Public Multimedia Inc, a non-profit news organization; and the founder and Editor of The Long War Journal, a news site devoted to covering the war on terror. He has embedded with the US and the Iraqi military six times from 2005-08, and with the Canadian Army in Afghanistan in 2006. Bill served in the US Army and New Jersey National Guard from 1991-97.

A lot of people were surprised when Russia came back on stage this year - but not Midrats listeners.This Easter, let's go back 100 episodes to our interview with Midrats resident Russia go-to-guy, Dmitry Gorenburg.Here were the questions we were trying to answer two years ago; While the news seems to be all around Russia from the rise of China, the incredible success of the Baltic states, Afghanistan and Central Asian Republics, to the European edge of the "near abroad" - Russia continues to be a major player.Is it still feeding off the corpse of the USSR, or is there a new dynamism and potential? If not a democracy in the Western sense and not Communist either - what is it?Where does it see its role beyond a seller of weapons and energy? Is Putin just about Putin - or does he have a larger vision for Russia?Why has Russia taken the position it has from Syria to Iran in the face of world opinion?To discuss this and more, for the full hour we will have returning guest Dr. Dmitry Gorenburg, Senior Analyst, CNA

"Where are the carriers?" Regardless of the writing, talking, and pontificating about "Why the carriers?" - when there is a real world crisis - leaders still ask, "Where are the carriers." Since we waived the requirement for a floor of 11, we have drifted to the new normal of 10 without dedicated additional funding. 10 isn't even an accurate number. With one undergoing nuclear refueling - you really have 9. Knowing what it takes to deploy, train, maintenance and preparing to train for deployment - in normal times, it takes 9 to make three if you are lucky. If you have an emergency that requires multiple carriers onstation - you run out of options very fast, and the calendar gets very small.Surge? If as Rear Admiral Thomas Moore, USN said last year, “We’re an 11-carrier Navy in a 15-carrier world.” - what risk are we taking with 9 that can get underway?Our guest for the full hour to discuss this and more will be Bryan McGrath, CDR, USN (Ret.), Managing Director of The FerryBridge Group. We will use as a basis

As with most concepts and good ideas, you really don't know what you need and how you need to do it until you put Sailors to task and head to sea.The idea of an Afloat Forward Staging Base has, in a variety of forms, been a regular part of naval operations arguably for centuries under different names and with different equipment.What about the 21st Century?  More than just a story about the use and utility of the AFSB concept, the story of the USS PONCE is larger than that - it also has a lot to say about how one can quickly turn an old LPD around for a new mission, and how you can blend together the different but complementary cultures of the US Navy Sailors and the Military Sealift Command civilian mariners.Our guest for the full hour to discuss this and more will Captain Jon P. Rogers, USN, former Commanding Officer of the USS PONCE AFSB(I)-15.

This Sunday, join our guests Vice Admiral Bill Moran, USN, Navy Chief of Naval Personnel, and Commander Guy Snodgrass, USN, Prospective Executive Officer of Strike Fighter Squadron ONE NINE FIVE, in a discussion of the challenges in officer retention that is facing our Navy.As over a decade of major combat operations ashore winds down, economic & budgetary stresses grow on defense spending, a strategic re-alignment combined with a generational change are coming together in a perfect storm of challenges to keep the intellectual and leadership capital our Navy needs.What are those challenges? What lessons can be drawn from past retention problems, and what is different this time? What steps can be made in the short term to address this, and what longer term policies may be put in place to mitigate the systemic problems that are being looked at? Are their opportunities to be found inside these challenges?Our guests will be with us for the full hour, and the foundation of our discussion will be CDR Snodgrass'

The Chief of Naval Operation's Rapid Innovation Cell (CRIC) was established in 2012 in order to provide junior leaders with venue to identify and rapidly field emerging technologies that they see needed in the Fleet.Who is in the CRIC, how do they get there, and what are some of the projects they have been working on?Join us this Sunday for the full hour with Commander Ben Salazar, USN, Director of Innovation (N93) with CRIC, along with other members of his team.

With the new defense budget out, new QDR out, the withdraw of maneuver forces from Afghanistan, rising interest in INDO-PAC operations, and a resurgent Russia: after over a decade of COIN and land wars in Southwest and Central Asia - what is the status of the United States Marine Corps? Materially, intellectually, and culturally - is the USMC set up to move best towards the expected challenges and missions?Our guest for the full hour will be Dakota L. Wood, Lt Col, USMC (Ret.), Senior Research Fellow, Defense Programs at the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy at The Heritage Foundation.Following retirement, Mr. Wood served as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.Most recently, Mr. Wood served as the Strategist for the U.S. Marine Corps’ Special Operations Command.Mr. Wood holds a Bachelor of Science in Oceanography from the U.S. Naval Academy; a Master’s degree in National Security and Strategic Studies from the College of Naval Command a

In concept, execution, and ability to effectively provide its part of the national defense infrastructure, has a separate Air Force served this nation well, and does it make sense to keep it a separate service.Our guest this week makes the case that the experiment in a separate US Air Force is over, and it has failed. Though we need airpower, we don't need a separate service to provide it.With us for the full hour will be Professor Robert M. Farley, PhD, author of the book being released 11 March, Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force.Rob teaches defense and security courses at the Patterson School of Diplomacy at the University of Kentucky. He blogs at InformationDissemination and LawyersGunsAndMoney.

Revisiting a show from NOV 2011, They share the hazards, smell the smells; all that is needed so that those at home may understand what their countrymen are doing in the far reaches of the world on their behalf.The best know that to tell a story, you have to be in it. Sometimes, the story catches up with them.Our guest for the full hour will be Kimberly Dozier,  foreign correspondent for CBS News Radio specializing in the Middle East from the disputed territories of Israel to the war in Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden.She reported on the war in Iraq from 2003 until she was injured by a car bomb in 2006. She recently returned to Afghanistan and Pakistan as an Intelligence/Counterterrorism correspondent for the Associated Press.She is also the author of Breathing the Fire, the story of her recovery from her injuries in 2006. 

What direction do we need to go for our next maritime strategy? Using he recent article, Control of the Seas, as our starting point, our guest for the full hour will be Seth Cropsey, Senior Fellow and director of Hudson Institute's Center for American Seapower.  He served in government at the Defense Department as Assistant to the SECDEF Caspar Weinberger and then as Deputy Undersecretary of the Navy in the Reagan & Bush administrations, where he was responsible for the Navy’s position on efforts to reorganize DoD, development of the maritime strategy, the Navy’s academic institutions, naval special operations, and burden-sharing with NATO allies. In the Bush administration, Cropsey moved to OSD to become acting assistant secretary, and then principal deputy assistant SECDEF for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict.During the period that preceded the collapse of the USSR—from 1982 to 1984—Cropsey directed the editorial policy of the Voice of America on the Solidarity movement in Poland, Soviet tr

Nothing like some time snowed in to focus the mind.Join us this Sunday from 5-6pm as we cover the maritime angle from China to shipbuilding to Cyber with a Midrats free for all.Have a topic you wished we would cover? Well, the phone lines are open.

When you send your elected representative to Washington DC, you are not just sending one person. For each Congressman and Senator - there is a cadre of staffers that makes it happen. Bills do not sprout out of the heads of politicians - no - they are carefully crafted, often over years, by the people you see in the background on C-Span. Politicians cannot and do not read source documentation all that much, they are too busy - others do that for them and give them the Executive Summary. Who are these people, how do they work, and how what role do they play in keeping the machinery of government and policy moving? Our guest for the full hour to discuss this, the influence of milblogging upon legislation, how HR 5729 was written partially because of blogger activism, the think tank community and the relationship between the Executive Branch and the Hill and how that prevents some great ideas becoming law. And how the 501(c)(3) status's ban on non-profit's lobbying activities hurts national security decision-maki

For those who don't care about Football or get all grumpy if they don't get enough of their Midrats, we're heading back to early in our second year and visit our old friend. In the small world of the Navy blogosphere, when you think of Japan, one name should immediately come to mind; Skippy-san of the blog FarEastCynic. Though most know Skippy by his "interesting" perspective on some of the "interesting" parts of life - what he also has is a good feel for the Japanese. Join EagleOne and Sal as they tap into the serious side of the Navy blogosphere's famously infamous Skippy-san to talk about the very Japenese reaction to their earthquake-tsunami-nuclear meltdown national nightmare, and how the Navy and its relationship with the Japanese people is working through this challenge. Staying in the 13XX side of the Navy, but with a slight pivot, for the second half of the hour we will be remembering the funnier side of Naval Aviation with Bob Taylor’s to talk about his new book, "Getting Our Wings — Tales from Nava

Lost to many whose news sources in the USA consists of the major newspapers and the standard networks, for most of the last dozen+ years, the conflict in Afghanistan has not been a USA-Centric battle; it has been a NATO run operation.When the Commander of the International Security Assistance Force has been an American 4-star, the visuals can be misleading.For most of the last decade, American forces were dominate in only one region of Afghanistan, the east. Other NATO nations from Italy/Spain in the west, Germany in the North, and Commonwealth nations and the Dutch in the south.More important than the actual numbers involved, it was the Rules of Engagement, caveats, and the fickle nature of national politics that drove what effects those forces had on the ground.The good, the bad, and the ugly of modern coalition warfare was all in view for all in Afghanistan, but outside small circles, has yet to be fully discussed.Our guest for the full hour will be Stephen Saideman.Stephen holds the Paterson Chair in Inte

That's right ... Midrats has been on the air four years. This week we aren't having guests, just the two hosts and any listeners who want to take the opportunity to call in or throw a question or topic to us in the chat room. Breaking news, regular topics, or whatever you pull out of your seabag - we're going to cove itGreen range, as it were.