Midrats

A special time this week, 2pm Eastern, in order to have a reasonable time for our guest on the other side of the world.

This week we are going to visit an AOR that may have dropped of a lot of people's scan, but in the Long War - it is still the front lines; the Horn of Africa.

Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, and the waters around the Arabian Peninsular - from terrorism to piracy - America and her allies and partners are at work every day to keep the beast over there, and not here.

Our guest for the full hour will be Rear Adm. Alexander L. Krongard, USN, Deputy Commander, Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa at Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti, Africa. In this position, he supports the CJTF-HOA Commander to counter violent extremism in East Africa, foster regional security cooperation, strengthen partner nation security capability, and build and maintain U.S. strategic access in the region. Krongard is also responsible for developing relations with senior military leaders in African partner nations and directing CJTF staff and subordinate commanders’ support to deployed personnel and units of all Services across the Horn of Africa. DCJTF-HOA.

A Navy SEAL by training, RDML Krongard is a graduate of Princeton University and the National War College.

When it comes to all things maritime, sometimes one Sal is not enough.

Whatever confession of maritime strategy you adhere to, there is one linchpin that all will survive or fail on - the Military Sealift Command. Our guest for the full hour to discuss the entire spectrum of issues with the MSC will be Salvatore R. Mercogliano, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of History at Campbell University.

Sal is a 1989 graduate of SUNY Maritime College, with a BS in Marine Transportation.  He sailed on the USNS Neosho (T-AO 143), Mohawk (T-ATF 170), Glover (T-AGFF 1), Comfort (T-AH 20) during the Persian Gulf War, and John Lenthall (T-AO 189).  Ashore, he was assigned to the N3 shop for the Afloat Prepositioning Force and focused initially on Marine Corps MPF vessels, but later working on the new Army program, including the construction and conversion of the LMSRs.  

In 1996, he transitioned to his my academic career.  Receiving a MA in Maritime History and Nautical Archeology from East Carolina University, focused on the merchant marine in the Vietnam War.  He later then went to the University of Alabama and graduated with a Ph.D. in Military and Naval History with his dissertation on entitled Sealift: T

He has taught at Methodist University, East Carolina, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and the U.S. Military Academy, prior to being an Assistant Professor of History with Campbell University since 2010,  In addition, since 2008, I have been an Adjunct Professor at the US Merchant Marine Academy teaching a graduate level on-line course on Maritime Industry Policy.  

He has been published in the Northern Mariner, Sea History, Naval History, and Proceedings.

"Where are the Carriers?"

Whenever the expected unexpected happens on the globe, that is the question that is often asked first.  As our nation also faces one of its greatest budget crisis - it is also one that the budget cutters are asking as well.

What is the status of our carrier force as we approach 2012 and what possible directions are we heading?  Is the carrier more important in supporting our national strategy than it used to be, or less?  Are we buying the right kind of systems to go on and in our carriers?  Are we buying enough? How are we assessing our technology risk as we bring in new tools?

Our guest for the full hour will be J. Talbot Manvel, CAPT, USN (Ret.), presently teaching at the U.S. Naval Academy and is a frequent writer on issues of carrier issues and larger Navy policy issues.  In the course of his career he served on three carriers and led development o f the maintenance plan for the Nimitz class and design of the Ford class carriers.

Louis Zamperini passes away earlier this week, so I can see of no better best of show for the July 4th weekend.

This nation has been served by those who come home, and those who never make it back.

Some have had their stories preserved and celebrated within living memory, some are almost unknown.

This weeks episode will cover both sides of our military experience.

For the first half hour our guest will be best selling author Laura Hillenbrand to talk about her latest book Unbroken; an incredible story of survival of Louie Zamperini - olympic athlete, B-24 Liberator bombardier, survivor of being adrift at sea for months and the as a POW under the Japanese.

Our guest for the second half of the hour will Michael R. Caputo of  The Intrepid Project. He is here to talk about 12 Sailors who have been abandoned in a mass grave in a mass grave in Libya.

After dying at sea after a failed mission, when their bodies washed up on the shores of Tripoli on 04 SEP 1804, the bashaw had dogs to devour them as other American prisoners of war looked on. These 13 heroes are buried in two mass graves in Libya. One of those graves is unmarked and underfoot on the Tripoli plaza where Gaddafy held anti-America rallies for decades. They want to bring them home.

Is the profession of arms, as the Navy believes it is, primarily a technical job for officers - or is it something else?

To create the cadre of leaders one needs, do you train them as empty vessels that one only needs to fill up with what you want or an empty checklist to complete - or do you train them by helping them bring out their ability to lead and make decisions through informed critical thinking?

Our guest for the full hour to discuss this and more will be Major Matt Cavanaugh, USA. Matt is currently assigned as an Assistant Professor in military strategy at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

 

Prior to this assignment, Matt was a Strategic Planner at the Pentagon, after service with the with Second Squadron, Third Armored Cavalry Regiment with multiple deployments to Iraq from Fallujah, Ramadi, and Tal’Afar.

Matt earned his Master’s in Strategic Studies at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand and is currently at work on a PhD dissertation on generalship at the University of Reading (UK). He is a Fellow at the Center for the Study of Civil Military Operations, has been published with several peer-reviewed military and academic journals, and is the Editor at WarCouncil.org, a site dedicated to the study of the use of force. Matt has represented the United States in an official capacity in ten countries, including: Iraq, Kuwait, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Latvia, and Great Britain.

From the USA, Europe, Russia, to the South China Sea, nations continue to signal where their priories are by what type of fleet they are building. 

What capabilities are they expanding, and what capabilities are they letting drift away?

To discuss this and more for the full hour will be returning guest Eric Wertheim.

Eric is a defense consultant, columnist and author specializing in naval and maritime issues. He was named to the helm of the internationally acknowledged, one volume Naval Institute reference Combat Fleets of the World in 2002.

In case you missed it the first time, especially for those whose fathers served in uniform, you owe it to yourself to listen to our interview with Stephen Rodrick about his book, The Magical Stranger: A Son's Journey into His Father's Life.

You will really enjoy the interview, and I cannot recommend the book any greater. Buy it.

Rodrick is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and a contributing editor for Men's Journal. He has also written for New York, Rolling Stone, GQ, The New Republic, and others. 

Before becoming a journalist, Rodrick worked as a deputy press secretary for United States 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.

From November of 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.

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 for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs. Greg Grant is a national security and defense writer and edits the Defense Tech blog and is an associate editor with Military.com. His writing on military technology and international security have appeared in Foreign Policy, Slate, The Washington Post, The Los Angles Times, Defense Technology International, The Washington Quarterly, Survival, Government Executive Magazine and National Journal. He arrived in Baghdad in April 2003 with the Third Infantry Division and returned a number of times to cover the war there. He reported for Jane’s Defense Weekly and from Iraq, and Afghanistan for the Military Times newspapers. Before taking an interest in journalism, he worked as a military analyst the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. He holds an M.A. in Strategic Studies from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.