Midrats

For our Father's Day Best of we will replay an interview with Stephen Roderick, author of, The Magical Stranger: A Son's Journey into His Father's Life. Rodrick is a contributing writer for The NYT Magazine and a contributing editor for Men's Journal. He has also written for New York, Rolling Stone, GQ, The New Republic, Men's Journal, and others. Before becoming a journalist, Rodrick worked as a deputy press secretary for US Senator Alan J. Dixon. He hold a bachelors and masters in political science from Loyola University of Chicago and a masters in journalism from Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism.

There is a long and successful record of fiction, especially science fiction, being instructive about history, human nature, and the eternal course of events.

Fiction, of course, gets its inspiration from reality - a two way road.

What do the Star Wars movies have to tell us about some of the comfortable myths we may see in American military and strategic thought?

Using his latest article at the Modern War Institute, Star Wars and American Strategic Myths as a starting point, our guest for the full hour returning to Midrats will be Major Matt Cavanaugh, USA an active duty Army Strategist and nonresident fellow with the Modern War Institute at West Point. He’s been the youngest recipient of the Army Strategist Association’s highest professional award (in 2015), and was named the US Army’s Athlete of the Year (in 2009). He’s currently finishing a PhD on supreme command under Professor Colin Gray at the University of Reading (UK), and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, among other publications. His book, co-edited and co-written with Max Brooks (of World War Z) is Strategy Strikes Back: How Star Wars Explains Modern Military Conflict, from Potomac Books has been available since May 1st from Potomac Books.

As we approach the 100th Anniversary of the end of the First World War, it is good to reflect back on the impact of WWI on the growth of our modern navy, and the echoes it has to the present day.

For the full hour our guest to discuss this and related issues will be Dr. Norman Friedman. As a starting point of our discussion will be some of the perspective brought out in his 2014 book from Naval Institute Press, Fighting the Great War at Sea: Strategy, Tactics and Technology. 

As described in the review at Amazon, “While the overriding image of the First World War is of the bloody stalemate on the Western Front, the overall shape of the war arose out of its maritime character. It was essentially a struggle about access to worldwide resources, most clearly seen in Germany's desperate attempts to counter the American industrial threat, which ultimately drew the United States into the war.”

Dr. Friedman has had a long career in weapon and system analysis for the U.S. Navy, DOD, and industry.  He has authored numerous histories of naval weapons and platforms with a concentration on the connection between policy, strategy, and technology. With over 40 published books, he also has lectured extensively and served as an adviser at the highest levels of government and think tanks.

His Fighting the Great War at Sea won the Lyman prize awarded by the North American Society of Oceanic Historians. He recently published a history of fleet air defense, Fighters Over The Fleet, and is about to publish a history of the British battle fleet during the Victorian era.

He received a Ph.D. in solid-state theoretical physics from Columbia University.

The majority of our officers come from two sources, NROTC and the United States Naval Academy. The Navy has a policy a bias towards STEM majors (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) to the point where 65 percent of USNA Midshipmen major in STEM.

Is this in the best interest of educating future officers of our modern Navy and Marine Corps so they can effectively lead Sailors and Marines at war and peace?

To discuss this and related issues for the full hour will be USNA Midshipman First Class Kirk Wolff. We will use his recent Proceedings Today article, Rethinking the Naval Academy Curriculum as a starting off point.

Kirk is originally from Morristown, Tennessee. He majored in Political Science at USNA and will serve as a surface warfare officer upon commissioning on May 25, 2018.

How is our Navy making progress in adjusting how we man, train, and operate our forces following the series of lessons identified in the wake of 2017's series of mishaps that left ships damaged, reputations destroyed, and 17 Sailors dead?

For the full hour to discuss where we are and the way forward will be returning guest Dr. James Holmes. We will use his recent comments from Asia Times and The National Interest as starting points for a broad ranging conversation.

Dr. Holmes is a professor of strategy and former visiting professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College, where he is the inaugural holder of the J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy. 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. 

The book he co-authored with Toshi Yoshihara, Red Star over the Pacific, is out in its second edition this fall.

As the Islamic State Caliphate's territory in Syria is shrinking to just a few isolated pockets, rebel force opposing Assad lose more an more ground, and Kurdish led forces solidify lines, another chapter in the Syrian civil war is about to begin. 

Time will tell, but the Turkish move in to Afrin may have been the opening.

What is Turkey trying to accomplish, and how does this complicate the interest of the Kurds and their American, French and other partners, Russians, Iranians, and the Syrians supporting Assad?

For the full hour our guest to examine this question and related issues will be Michael Goodyear.

Michael is a law student at the University of Michigan Law School and holds degrees in History and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago. His research focuses on the history, culture, and politics of the Balkans and the northern Middle East.

As a starting point for our conversation, we will reference his recent article in Small Wars Journal, Paradigm Shift in Syria After Afrin.

Captain Thomas J. Hudner, Jr. USN will be interred at Arlington National Cemetery this week. In his honor we will again run an interview we did early in Midrats' run. 

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.

If you've lost lock during the news-cycle Imbroglio on what is important in the national security arena, then you need to take an hour out and spend an hour with us for a few from the eye of the storm.

Our guest for the full hour will be Phil Ewing.

Phil is NPR's national security editor. He helps direct coverage of the military, the intelligence community, counterterrorism, veterans and other topics for the radio and online. Ewing joined the network in 2015 from Politico, where he was a Pentagon correspondent and defense editor. Previously he served as managing editor of Military.com and before that he covered the U.S. Navy for the Military Times newspapers.

From the budget battles on the Hill, the Navy's fight for its future fleet, to Russia's freezing of the cherry blossoms (hey, it could happen) - we'll cover it.

Put yourself in the shoes of a museum curator. You have the funds to conduct some much needed preservation on battleflags captured by the US Navy from the War of 1812. To do that, you have to remove them from their home for almost a century.

What happens when you all of a sudden find they are not alone? They are covering something else?

No, this isn't another "National Treasure" sequel, but things that actually unfolded last year at the US Naval Academy. For naval history buffs, this was an exciting time and an opportunity to explore some relatively unknown chapters from our history.

For almost all Americans, when you mention American forces coming ashore to do battle on the Korean peninsula, they think of Inchon and 1950.

Well, we came ashore earlier and fought another battle, in 1871.

When you hear about the American navy vs. pirates, you think about the waters off the Horn of Africa in this century. What about off China in the 1850s?

Join us Sunday to discuss the history and the battleflags of pirates and forgotten kingdoms with returning guests, BJ Armstrong, CDR USN and Claude Berube, LCDR USNR.

BJ Armstrong, PhD is an Assistant Professor of War Studies and Naval History with the History Department of the U.S. Naval Academy. He holds a PhD in War Studies from King's College, London.

Claude Berube is the director of the Naval Academy Museum and recently completed his doctoral dissertation through the University of Leeds on Andrew Jackson’s Navy.

Now that we're near the end of 2QFY18, it's time for another Midrats Frer-For-All!

Just Sal from the blog CDR Salamander and Eagle1 of EagleSpeak covering the latest developments on the maritime and national security front.

If you have topics you would like us to address, send them to us on twitter at @cdrsalamder or @lawofsea, join the chatroom while the show is live ... or even call in.