Midrats

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Episode 489: US Merchant Marine - Not Ready for War, with gCaptain's John Konrad May 20, 2019

Show notes

What if they gave a war in WESTPAC and we couldn't come?
It is easy to talk tactics, weapons, and warship numbers - but on balance, that is not what ensures victory in any major war.
For a maritime nation, nothing can last very long without a large, sustained, scalable, and resilient merchant marine.
When you look at our numbers, we are not ready.
Our guest for the full hour will be John Konrad, using his recent editorial at gCaptain, Admiral, I'm not Ready for War, as a starting point for our talk.
Captain John Konrad is the founder and CEO of gCaptain and author of the book Fire On The Horizon. John is a USCG licensed Master of Unlimited Tonnage, has sailed a variety of ships from ports around the world and is a distinguished alumnus of SUNY Maritime College.

Episode 488: Best of The Outlaw Ocean with Ian Urbina May 20, 2019

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Stowaways, poaching, piracy, smuggling, and murder - the global commons of the open ocean is as wild of a place as it is vast.
Using as a baseline his series on lawlessness on the high seas in the New York Times, The Outlaw Ocean, our guest for the full hour to discuss the anarchy of crime and violence on the high seas in the 21st Century will be Ian Ubina.
Ian is a reporter for The New York Times, based in the paper’s Washington bureau. He has degrees in history from Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and his writings, which range from domestic and foreign policy to commentary on everyday life, have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Harper’s, and elsewhere.

Episode 487: Taiwan and the Challenge of Modern Strategic Defensive Posture May 06, 2019

Show notes

What is a good strategy and posture for Taiwan to take for her defense? Are there things she can learn from Japan?
What is Taiwan’s posture today towards mainland China, and where are trends taking her?
To discuss these and related questions today is our guest Grant Newsham.
We will use his recent article in the Global Taiwan Institute, Rethinking Taiwan’s Defense: Looking at the Japanese Experience, as the starting point for our talk.
Grant Newsham is a retired US Marine Corps Officer and a Senior Fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies. He served as Marine Attaché in Tokyo and was later the first USMC liaison officer to the Japanese Self-Defense Force (JSDF), and was instrumental in developing Japan’s new amphibious force. For 2019, he will live in Taiwan as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Taiwan Fellowship Scholar.

Episode 486: Waiting on a National Strategy with Dr. David Gioe May 02, 2019

Show notes

Do we have the means, capabilities, national will - and more important - the support of the American people to meet the demands from the global entanglements we are obligated by?
What is the grand strategy?
To discuss these and related questions this Sunday will be Dr. David Gioe. We will use his recent article in The National Interest, Make America Strategic Again, as the starting point for our talk.
Dr. David Gioe is Assistant Professor of History at the US Military Academy at West Point, where he also serves as History Fellow for the Army Cyber Institute. He earned a BA in History and Social Science from Wheaton College, an MA from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, and a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Cambridge.
He retains his commission as a senior officer in the Navy Reserve and is assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Defense Attaché Service.

Episode 485: Best of the American Military in WWI May 02, 2019

Show notes

Well inside an officer's career arch, we saw the American Navy move from the Great White Fleet, The Spanish American War to the age of the Dreadnought. Our Army, from ad-hoc volunteer units to a professional army going head-to-head with the finest professional army on the planet.
How did our military and our Navy build up to WWI, and how did that experience inform the evolution of our national defense infrastructure.
Our guest for the full hour will be Dr. John T. Kuehn , the General William Stofft Chair for Historical Research at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College CGSC). He retired from the U.S. Navy 2004 at the rank of commander after 23 years of service as a naval flight officer flying both land-based and carrier-based aircraft. He has taught a variety of subjects, including military history, at CGSC since 2000. He authored Agents of Innovation (2008), A Military History of Japan: From the Age of the Samurai to the 21st Century (2014), and co-authored Eyewitness Pacific Theater (2008) with D.M. Giangreco as well as numerous articles and editorials and was awarded a Moncado Prize from the Society for Military History in 2011. His latest book, due out from Praeger just in time for the 200th Anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo is Napoleonic Warfare: The Operational Art of the Great Campaigns.

Episode 484: Best of Strategic Discipline & the Building of a New National Strategy Apr 28, 2019

Show notes

Time to look back at an episode at the dawn of the Trump Administration. Our guest back in March of 2017 was Frank Hoffman.
At the second month of a new President is building a new national security team, we looked at what direction they might take our nation. What role should realism, alliances, and the requirement to anchor all to a strategic discipline focused on the long term interests of our nation have on the decisions they make?
What do his initial steps and the people so far on his team tell us about where we are going? How may we may have to rethink the basic organizing concepts for America’s role in the world?
Frank is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University.
He formerly directed the NDU Press operations which includes the journals Joint Force Quarterly and PRISM. From August of 2009 to June 2011, he served in the Department of the Navy as a senior executive as the Senior Director, Naval Capabilities and Readiness. He started at National Defense University in 2011 and became a Distinguished Research Fellow in December 2016.
He retired from the Marine Corps Reserve in the summer of 2001 at the grade of Lieutenant Colonel. He has authored one book (Decisive Force; The New American Way of War, Praeger, 1996), over 100 essays and articles, and frequently contributes to Orbis, Joint Force Quarterly, the Journal of Strategic Studies, Parameters, the Naval Institute Proceedings and Marine Corps Gazette.

Episode 483: Quō Vādis, USNR? Apr 09, 2019

Show notes

Almost everyone who follows military issues can clearly point to what the Army Reserve, National Guard, USAFR, ANG, and USMC Reserves do – their individual and unit deployments have been highly visible so far in the Long War … but what about the Naval Reserve?
What are they doing? Are they being best utilized to purpose? As we re-look at the challenge of a maritime power facing emerging powers on the high seas, do we need to reassess the last few decades of policy, practice, and procedures in utilizing the available manpower and expertise that is and could reside in the US Navy Reserve?
Our guests this Sunday, April 7th from 5-6pm Eastern will be Chris Rawley, CAPT USNR and Claude Berube, LCDR USNR.
Chris Rawley is the CEO of Harvest Returns, a platform for investing in agriculture, and is Reserve Chief of Staff for Commander, Naval Surface Forces, helping to oversee 3,800 reserve sailors supporting fleet units around the world. During his 26 year military career, Rawley has filled a variety of leadership positions in naval, expeditionary, and joint special operations units afloat and ashore. He has deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq, throughout Africa, the Persian Gulf, and Western Pacific. Rawley has a degree from Texas A&M University, earned an MBA at George Washington University, and is a graduate of the U.S. Naval War College and Joint Forces Staff College.
Dr. Claude Berube teaches at the US Naval Academy and has published several books. He recently returned from his third deployment as an officer in the USNR. He has worked as a defense contractor, as a civilian with the Office of Naval Intelligence, and a staffer to two US Senators.

Episode 482: Who Will Run the Navy of the 2020s? Apr 01, 2019

Show notes

The generation that will lead Sailors forward over what is shaping up to be the most challenging environment at sea for the USN since the 1980s is just now rolling in to their first shore duty or out of it.
What culture and experiences marked their formative junior officer years? How will they change the fluid culture of our navy? Will their habits in writing, discussing, and experimenting differ than previous generations of officers, or just blend in with long running trends?
Do their view of priorities differ from the mid-level and senior level leadership.
Our guest for the full hour to address these topics and whatever else pops out of the rabbit hole will be Jimmy Drennan.
When he's not masquerading as The Salty Millennial, Jimmy Drennan is a Surface Warfare Officer assigned to U.S. Central Command, and is President of the Center for International Maritime Security.

Episode 481: Best of USS Neosho (AO-23),USS Sims (DD-409), & the Battle of the Coral Sea Apr 01, 2019

Show notes

Wars are full of accidental battles, unexpected horror, and the valor of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.
Often lost in the sweeping stories of the Pacific in WWII, there is a story that - if not for one man's inability to properly recognize one ship from another - should have never have happened. Because of that one man's mistake, and a leader's stubborn enthusiasm to double down on that mistake, the lived of hundreds of men were lost - and possibly the course of a pivotal early battle changed.
Our guest for the full hour will be author Don Keith to discuss the tale of the USS Neosho (AO-23) and USS Sims (DD-409) at the Battle of the Coral Sea in his latest book, The Ship That Wouldn't Die: The Saga of the USS Neosho- A World War II Story of Courage and Survival at Sea.
Don is an award-winning and best-selling author of books on a wide range of topics. In addition to being a prolific writer, he also has a background in broadcast journalism from on-the-air personality to ownership.
Don’s web site is www.donkeith.com

Episode 480: Best of The Battle of Jutland & the Time of the Battleship with Rob Farley Apr 01, 2019

Show notes

When this show first aired in May of 2016, we were coming up on the 100-year anniversary of the Battle of Jutland. Stop for a moment, close your eyes, and then tell me what image comes to mind.
If your image is of a huge mass of steel coming at you out from the mist at 25-knots belching out sun-blocking clouds of coal-smoke and burned black powder and searing fingers of flame pushing tons of armor-piercing explosives, then this is the show for you.
For the full hour our guest is great friend of the show, Robert Farley. We will not only be discussing the Battle of Jutland, but battleships in general in the context of his most recent book titled for clarity, The Battleship Book.
Rob teaches defense and security courses at the Patterson School of Diplomacy at the University of Kentucky. He blogs at InformationDissemination and LawyersGunsAndMoney. In addition to The Battleship Book, he is also the author of, Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force.

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