Midrats

Latest Episodes:

Episode 420: Surface Readiness; History, Causes, & Cures with Kevin Eyer Jan 21, 2018

Show notes

After the events of the last year in WESTPAC, there is general agreement that there is something wrong with our surface force. There have always been "incidents" involving warships - including tremendous loss of life. This time, things seem different - and we are still only in the beginning of a general reassessment of what needs to be done to make our surface navy better.
Our guest this week to explore these and related issues will be Kevin Eyer, CAPT USN (Ret.). As a starting off point, we will review his JAN 2018 article in the US Naval Institute, Proceedings, What Happened To Our Surface Forces?
Kevin is a retired Surface Warfare Captain and the son of a Surface Warfare Captain. He graduated from Penn State, after which he served in seven cruisers, ultimately commanding three; Thomas S. Gates, Shiloh and Chancellorsville. He has served on the Navy Staff, the Joint Staff, and he attained his masters degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, at Tufts University. Captain Eyer is a frequent contributor to Proceedings Magazine, and a regular commentator on Navy issues.

Episode 416: The Carrier as Capital Ship with RADM Thomas Moore, USN - Best of Dec 24, 2017

Show notes

First aired in Sept. 2014
How are we keeping out legacy Aircraft Carrier's in shape for the regular demands for extended deployments while at the same time bringing the new FORD Class CVN online?
What are some of the lessons we have learned in our decades of operating nuclear powered aircraft carriers that we are bring forward to serve the Fleet in the coming decades so we always have an answer to the question, "Where are the aircraft carriers?"
To discuss this and more, our guest for the full hour will be Rear Admiral Thomas J. Moore, USN, Program Executive Officer for Aircraft Carriers and is responsible for life cycle management for In-Service Carriers as well as the design and construction of the Future Class Carriers.

Episode 415: 2017 Review ... and 2018 Preview Dec 17, 2017

Show notes

Join CDR Salamander and EagleOne as they wrap up Year-7 of Midrats with an end of the year review.
From WestPac to the former Caliphate; South China Sea to Sub-Saharan Africa; from LCS to our new SSN - we’re cover it.
As always, our listeners are welcome to call in or ask us questions from the chatroom as look back at the year - and give a few ideas for what we see coming in 2018.

Episode 414: Best of Anti-Access Area-Denial (A2AD) with Sam Tangredi Dec 10, 2017

Show notes

Power projection, sea control, access denial, and the ability to impose your will on the enemy from the sea; or depending on your perspective, prevent them from doing the same.
If the comparative advantage of American military power includes the use of the world's oceans as a basing area from projecting power and national will, how can other nations design systems and tactics to trump that advantage? What are in place now, and what can we expect to see in the near future?
Our guest for the full hour will be Sam J. Tangredi, a defense strategist whose studies of future warfare prompted Defense Department officials to label him “the Navy’s futurist.” His thirty-year naval career included command at sea, service in key strategic planning positions in the Pentagon and overseas, earning a PhD in international relations, and research fellowships at two think tanks.
His over one hundred publications—which include four books--have won awards, including the U.S. Naval Institute’s Arleigh Burke Prize and the U.S. Navy League’s Alfred Thayer Mahan Award. He is currently the director of San Diego operations for the planning/consulting firm Strategic Insight.
First aired OCT 2014.

Episode 413: Global Naval Power at the End of the 2nd Decade of the 21st Century Dec 03, 2017

Show notes

Take a moment to get away from your shock that it is already December, and let it soak in that it will be 2018 in less than a month.
That means that we are officially well in to the end of the second decade of the 21st Century. It is time to look at the latest global feet developments breaking this year, and to what should shape discussions next.
From Argentina's missing submarine, submarine proliferation around the world, Asias growing naval powers, Russian naval capabilities, European naval trends, and US naval systems/vessels capabilities - we are going to touch on them all with returning guest Eric Wertheim.
Eric is a defense consultant, columnist and author specializing in naval and aviation issues. He was named to the helm of the internationally acknowledged, one volume Naval Institute reference Combat Fleets of the World in 2002.
He has served as an advisor or contributor on dozens of studies and reports conducted by the Department of Defense and North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and from 1994 through 2004 Mr. Wertheim wrote the bimonthly "Lest We Forget" column on historic U.S. warships for the Naval Institute's Proceedings magazine. He is a graduate of American University in Washington, D.C.
Since 2004, Eric Wertheim has written the monthly "Combat Fleets" column for Proceedings, and his annual review of world navies runs in the March issue of the magazine. He is the coauthor with Norman Polmar of the books,Chronology of the Cold War at Sea and Dictionary of Military Abbreviations, both published by the Naval Institute Press.

Episode 411: Making a Better War College Nov 19, 2017

Show notes

What is the best way to hone the intellectual edge of the officers who will lead our Navy? How do we gather our best minds and ideas together to best prepare our Navy for the next war?
How is our constellation of war colleges structured, how did it get to where it is today, and how do we modernize it to meet todays challenges?
We've put together a small panel for today's show to address this and related issues with returning guests Dr. James Holmes, Dr. John Kuehn, and Dr. Terry Beckenbaugh.
Dr. Holmes is a professor of strategy and former visiting professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College. A former U.S. Navy surface-warfare officer and combat veteran of the first Gulf War, he served as a weapons and engineering officer in the battleship Wisconsin, engineering and firefighting instructor at the Surface Warfare Officers School Command, and military professor of strategy at the Naval War College. He was the last gunnery officer to fire a battleship’s big guns in anger.
Dr. Kuehn is the past General William Stofft Chair for Historical Research at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. He retired from the U.S. Navy 2004 at the rank of commander after 23 years of service as a naval flight officer in EP-3s and ES-3s. He authored Agents of Innovation (2008) 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.
Dr. Beckenbaugh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Joint Warfare at Air University’s Air Command and Staff College (ACSC) at Maxwell Air Force Base. He came to ACSC from the US Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he taught for nine years in the Department of Military History.

Episode 410: Encore Interview with Captain Thomas J. Hudner, Jr., USN (Ret) Nov 12, 2017

Show notes

In the early years of the show, we had the opportunity to inverview Captain Hudner, who just passed.
His is a holder of the Medal of Honor from the Korean War. With him is the author of Such Men as These: The Story of the Navy Pilots Who Flew the Deadly Skies over Korea, David Sears as they talk about the role of Naval Aviation in the Korean War.
Stuck between the Greatest Generation's high-water mark of World War II and the Baby Boomer's Vietnam War - the Korean War often gets lost in the shuffle despite its critical role is setting the foundation for the Cold War and our ultimate victory with the fall of the Berlin Wall.
When the average person thinks of the role of Navy Air in the Korean War, they think of James Mitchner's novel and movie The Bridges of Toki-Ri. As usual, the real story is better than fiction. We will talk to CAPT Hudner about his and his shipmates experiences - and will finish up with David Sears exploring what he discovered in researching his book on what happened in the skies over Korea in the early 1950's.

Episode 409: USS FITZGERALD & MCCAIN Collisions; Observations with Bryan McGrath Nov 05, 2017

Show notes

This week saw the release of the reports on the collision reports and Comprehensive Review of the incidents this summer between merchant ships in WESTPAC and the destroyers USS FITZGERALD and USS MCCAIN.
The totally avoidable collisions resulted in the death of 17 Sailors and removal from our most important theater two of our most critical assets.
Our guest for the full hour will be Bryan McGrath, CDR, USN (Ret.).
Bryan 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 retirement in 2008. At sea, he served primarily in cruisers and destroyers, rising to command of the Destroyer USS BULKELEY (DDG 84).
During his command tour, he won the Surface Navy Association’s Admiral Elmo Zumwalt Award for Inspirational Leadership, and the BULKELEY was awarded the USS ARIZONA Memorial Trophy signifying the fleet’s most combat ready unit. Ashore, Bryan enjoyed four tours in Washington DC, including his final tour in which he acted as Team Leader and primary author of our nation’s 2007 maritime strategy entitled “A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower.”
Since retirement, Bryan has become active in presidential politics, serving first as the Navy Policy Team lead for the Romney Campaign in 2012, and then as the Navy and Marine Corps Policy lead for the Rubio Campaign in 2016.
He is the Assistant Director of Hudson Institute’s Center for American Seapower, and he is the Managing Director of The FerryBridge Group LLC, a small defense consulting firm.

Episode 408: NavyCon: Science Fiction's Important Role in National Security Oct 29, 2017

Show notes

This Sunday we're going to convince you to make plans to be in Annapolis next month.
Coming up Saturday, Nov. 18, from 12 - 5 p.m. Eastern, our friend Claude Berube is husbanding the Naval Academy Museum's latest effort in what promises to be a very original and entertaining conference, NavyCon.
NavyCon has a great line up to discuss how fleet forces have been portrayed in science fiction, in comparison to our Navy today.
It kicks off with former NASA astronaut and Naval Academy Class of 1981 graduate, Capt. Kay Hire, on “NASA Today and Tomorrow.” Other speakers include the current Director of the Defense Strategies and Assessments Program at the Center for a New American Security, Dr. Jerry Hendrix, the former Program Manager of the U.S. Navy’s DDG-51 program, Captain Mark Vandroff, and “Service, Citizenship and ‘Starship Troopers,’” will be delivered by Congressman Mike Gallagher, who served as a Marine in Iraq. The concluding address will be given by the author of the best-selling “Honor Harrington” science fiction series, David Weber.
We will have Midrats regulars USNA Museum Director Claude Berube, LCDR USNR - Senior Fellow at CNAS Jerry Hendrix, CAPT USN (Ret) - and Mark Vandroff, CAPT USN, CO of NSWC Carderock and former DDG51 Program Manager to come on to discuss their part, do a little geek’n on Midrats time, and generally get you ready for NavyCon. ...and not, that isn't too much Navy for you. You can never have too much Navy.
We’ve got them for the full hour, don’t miss it!

Episode 406: America's First General Staff, with John Kuehn. Oct 15, 2017

Show notes

The General Board of the Navy existed for the first half of the 20th Century. In his latest book, America's First General Staff: A Short History of the Rise and Fall of the General Board of the U.S. Navy, 1900-1950, our guest Dr. John T. Kuehn describes how the Board, a creature of its time born from a defined need following the "last war," became the organization that drove the growth of a world class navy and brought together the best in naval thought and strategic thinking.
For the full hour we'll examine its rise and fall, successes and failures, as well as the lessons it may teach us today.
Dr. Kuehn is the General William Stofft Chair for Historical Research at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. He retired from the U.S. Navy 2004 at the rank of commander after 23 years of service as a naval flight officer in EP-3s and ES-3s. He authored Agents of Innovation (2008) 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 previous books include Napoleonic Warfare: The Operational Art of the Great Campaigns & A military History of Japan: From the Age of the Samurai to the 21st Century as well as numerous articles and editorials. He was awarded a Moncado Prize from the Society for Military History in 2011.

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