Midrats

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Episode 529: Russia's 2020, with Dr. Dmitry Gorenburg Feb 24, 2020

Show notes

As Russia's navy starts to transition away from the last of her legacy ships, to her approaching endgame in Syria, join us for the full hour to investigate the latest developments with Russia's national security posture, including the domestic power politics and relationships with its near abroad that influences the same.
Our guest returning again to Midrats will be Dr. Dmitry Gorenburg.
Dmitry Gorenburg is an expert on security issues in the former Soviet Union, Russian military reform, Russian foreign policy, and ethnic politics and identity. His recent research topics include decision-making processes in the senior Russian leadership, Russian naval strategy in the Pacific and the Black Sea, and Russian maritime defense doctrine.
Gorenburg is author of "Nationalism for the Masses: Minority Ethnic Mobilization in the Russian Federation" (Cambridge University Press, 2003), and has been published in journals such as World Politics and Post-Soviet Affairs. In addition to his role at CNA, he currently serves as editor of Problems of Post-Communism and is an Associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. From 2009 to 2016, he edited the journal Russian Politics and Law.
Gorenburg previously served as Executive Director of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES). He received a B.A. in international relations from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University. He blogs on issues related to the Russian military at Russian Military Reform. He is a native Russian speaker.

Episode 528: Kido Butai at Pearl Harbor Feb 24, 2020

Show notes

A lot has been written about what went wrong at Pearl Harbor - a very American perspective.
If you look at it from a neutral tactical view, or look at things from a Japanese perspective - there was a lot that went right at Pearl Harbor at the Tactical and Operational Level.
Join Sal from CDR Salamander and EagleOne of EagleSpeak as they discuss for the full hour many of the less understood aspects fo the attack on Pearl Harbor and the development in the Imperial Japanese Navy's tactical innovations with one of the co-authors of the article in December's Naval History magazine, Pearl Harbor's Overlooked Answer - Jonathan Parshall.
First aired DEC 2011.

Episode 526: Best of Undersea Lawfare with RADM Johnson, USN (Ret) and CAPT Palmer, USN Feb 19, 2020

Show notes

Since its ascendency to the premier maritime power, the US Navy - especially in the area of undersea warfare - has been at the leading edge of using technology to get a military edge.
During the Cold War, significant and steady progress in the first two steps of the kill chain against submarines, location and tracking, made the prospect of engaging superior numbers of Soviet submarine forces manageable.
We continue that tradition today, but to keep ahead of growing challenges, we have test. Build a little, test a little, learn a lot will stop dead in its tracks without testing in the real world. Computer simulation is only so good.
When it comes to submarines especially, you have to get in the water with them.
Knowing our technological track record an operating a generation or two ahead of some potential adversaries - are there ways they can negate our edge - or at least buy time while they catch up?
Are we vulnerable to potential challengers using national and international law against us? Undersea Lawfare?
Our guests for the full hour to discuss will be Rear Admiral J. Michael "Carlos" Johnson, USN (Ret.) and Captain Michael T. Palmer, USN.
As a stepping off point, we will be using their article in the latest Naval War College Review; UNDERSEA LAWFARE - Can the US Navy Fall Victim to This Asymmetrical Warfare Threat?
RADM Johnson retired after 33 years of service as a naval aviator that included combat in Vietnam, Libya, the Balkans, and the Persian Gulf. He commanded the John F. Kennedy Battle Group, CVW-8, and VFA-86. Ashore he served on the staffs of the CNO as Director of Aviation Plans and Requirements) and the J3 of EUCOM.
Captain Palmer is an active-duty JAG and an adjunct assistant professor at ODU. Her has served as environmental counsel to the CNO; U.S. Fleet Forces Command; and Commander, Navy Region Mid-Atlantic.
First broadcast, April 2016

Episode 527: Pre-Valentine's Day Melee Feb 10, 2020

Show notes

Come join EagleOne and CDR Salamander for an hour of all the things maritime and national security that broke above the ambient noise the last couple of weeks.
From the national security implications of the latest disease out break in China to our Navy's ongoing challenge of finding out what she wants to be, and how she wants to get there.
Open topic, open phones - so if there is a topic you would like us to address, join the chatroom, give us a call, or drop us an email or DM on twitter.

Episode 525: Watching the Surface Force with David Larter Jan 27, 2020

Show notes

Put on your black leather jacket, get your SM-6 plush toy, pour a glass of your finest Chianti in honor of the epic Fincantieri after party, and join us this Sunday to discuss the latest news about the USN surface force.
Using his reporting earlier this month from the Surface Navy Association Symposium as a starting off point, our guest for the full hour will be David Larter, Naval Warfare Reporter for Defense News. He's a graduate of the University of Richmond and a former Operations Specialist Second Class, still DNQ in his ESWS qual.
From new uniform items to future unmanned system, we will be talking about it.

Episode 524: Mid-January Melee Jan 20, 2020

Show notes

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!

Episode 523: Stress Tested a Sealift Surge? How'd it go? Jan 13, 2020

Show notes

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 Command in 2017, and 2nd Prize winner in the 2015 US Naval Institute Naval History Contest with Semper Sealift: The U.S. Marine Corps, Merchant Marine, and Maritime Prepositioning.

Episode 522: 10th Anniversary Show: Decade Review and Looking Forward Jan 06, 2020

Show notes

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.

Episode 521: Best of the South African Border War and its Lessons, with LT Jack McCain Jan 05, 2020

Show notes

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 be Lieutenant Jack McCain, USN.
LT McCain is a helicopter pilot with operational experience in Guam, Japan, Brunei, the Persian Gulf, and the Western Pacific and is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He is currently assigned as an instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy.
The opinions he expresses in this article are his own and represent no U.S. government or Department of Defense positions.

Episode 520: Best of Kirk Lippold & Steve Phillips Jan 05, 2020

Show notes

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 6, 8, and 10. He is the author of Proximity: A Novel of the Navy's Elite Bomb Squad which received a Gold Medal from the Military Writers Society of America in 2008. Some of the proceeds from Proximity support the EOD Memorial Foundation which provides scholarship to the children of EOD Technicians who made the ultimate sacrifice. If you like his work, Steve is currently working on a non-fiction account of EOD Technicians in our current conflict with a working title of Improvised: EOD Techs in the War on Terrorism. The first two of the chapters for the non-fiction work are available at: "The Birth of the Combined Explosives Exploitation Cell" & "A Remembrance of 9/11"

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