Midrats

The show we had in July of 2011 was one of our better, as it showed two sides of "leave no one behind" from two very different wars.
Especially the second half of the show, you'll shake your head a bit. History does echo, often in the same countries.
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.
Unbroken at the time of the airing of this show was #9 on Amazon in general, and #2 in Military History.  Laura's previous works include Seabiscuit.
Our guest for the second half of the hour will Michael R. Caputo of  The Intrepid Project - people doing all they can to bring some shipmates home.  He is here to talk about 12 Sailors who have been abandoned in a mass grave in a mass grave in Libya.

How did the US Marine Corps and local tribal leaders turn the corner in Fallujah?  Who were the people on the ground, Iraqi and American, who were the catalyst for the change that brought about a sea change in the tactical, operational, and strategic direction in Iraq?
Our guest for the full hour to discuss that and more will be author Bill Ardolino. We will use as a base of our discussion his new book, Fallujah Awakens: Marines, Sheikhs, and the Battle Against al Qaeda.
Bill is the associate editor of The Long War Journal. He was embedded with the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Army, the Iraqi Army, and the Iraqi Police in Fallujah, Habbaniyah, and Baghdad in 2006, 2007, and 2008, and later with U.S. and Afghan forces in Kabul, Helmand and Khost provinces in Afghanistan. His reports, columns, and photographs have received wide media exposure and have been cited in a number of academic publications. He lives in Washington, DC.

There could be only one show from last year for this year's Mothers Day:
For the career minded Naval professional, to have a chance for the greatest advancement and promotion, you have to push and push hard. The reputation you build in your first 10 years sets the tone for the rest.
Except for very rare exceptions, there are no second chances. There are no pauses, one iffy set of orders, one poorly timed FITREP, and you are on an off-ramp. You must work harder, you must sacrifice, and if you are to have a family young, you need a very strong support structure.
For men - there is always the RADM Sestak, USN (Ret) option; wait until post O6, then start. For women though, there are some hard biological facts.
The average American woman gets married at age 26. For college-educated women the average age at first birth is ~30. If you want to have more than 2 kids, you need to start earlier. You need to time it right - and Mother Nature has her own schedule that doesn't often match yours.
With women making up more of the military than ever, what are the challenges out there biological, cultural, psychological, and relationship wise to "making it happen?"
You can't have it all - but how do you get the best mix you can?
We will have two guests on to discuss. For the first half hour we will have Major Jeannette Haynie, USMCR, a 1998 graduate from the US Naval Academy, AH-1W Cobra pilot, and  currently a Reservist flying a desk at the Pentagon and working through graduate school - and fellow blogger over at USNIBlog.
The second half of the hour, our guest will be Robyn Roche-Paull, US Navy Veteran, wife of a Chief, ICBLC, and author of the book Breastfeeding in Combat Boots.

Last month saw the newest shipbuilding plan hit the streets.
Is this good news, more of the same, or are there some systemic issues that are being painted over?
What can the Navy expect over the next few years as the defense cuts bite deeper and the battle for wedges of the defense budget pie heats up.
Using their latest article in RealClearDefense as a starting point, our guests will be Mackenzie Eaglen, Resident Fellow at the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and Bryan McGrath, Director, Delex Consulting, Studies and Analysis.

If the requirement is to be able to operate, fight, and win in the Littorals - is the Littoral Combat Ship the answer?
Other nations have the same requirement - yet have come up with different answers.
Are we defining our requirements properly in face of larger Fleet needs and the threats we expect?
What platforms and systems need to be looked at closer if we are to have the best mix of capabilities to meet our requirements?
Using his article in Armed Forces Journal, Go smaller: Time for the Navy to get serious about the littorals, as a stepping off place, our guest for the full hour will be Milan Vego, PhD, Professor of Joint Military Operations at the US Naval War College.

The events of the last week in Boston has brought back to the front of the national conscience what, for the lack of a better description, is known as The Long War.
The threats we face are both domestic, foreign, and increasingly a mixture of both. Communication and transportation has created a breed of transnational threats that are not new, and whose causes, resources, and threat vectors are not as opaque as some may try to make them.
Starting out and working in, what are the lessons we should emphasize to mitigate the ongoing threat? As we continue in the second decade after 9/11/2013, what are we doing correctly, what still needs to be done - and what things are we wasting time and money on for little gain?
To discuss, our guest for the full hour will be Steven Bucci, Director, Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

It is all around us; from poor program decisions to significant budgetary stresses that are only recently starting to bite - the large US Navy Fleet straddling the globe is contracting.
What are the initial, second & third order effects of the decreasing presence of the US Navy. Is it permanent, relative, or can fewer numbers be made up in other ways?
Join Sal from CDR Salamander and EagleOne of EagleSpeak in a wide ranging discussion along with their guest Seth Cropsey, Senior Fellow from The Hudson Institute and author of the new book, Mayday: The Decline of American Naval Supremacy..

We have heard from industry, military leaders, Marines, and private security providers, this Sunday we are going to look at piracy at a more personal level with director Thymaya Payne of the documentary, Stolen Seas; Tales of Somali Piracy. He will be our guest for the full hour.
From the show promo:
The filmmakers have spent the past three years traveling to some of the world's most violent locales in order to make this documentary on Somali piracy, Stolen Seas. Utilizing exclusive interviews and unparalleled access to real pirates, hostages, hostages' relatives, ship-owners, pirate negotiators and experts on piracy and international policy, Stolen Seas presents a chilling exploration of the Somali pirate phenomenon.
The film throws the viewer, through audio recordings and found video, right into the middle of the real-life hostage negotiation of a Danish shipping vessel, the CEC Future. As the haggling between the ship's stoic owner Per Gullestrup, and the pirate's loquacious negotiator, Ishmael Ali, drags on for 70 days, these two adversaries' relationship takes an unexpected turn and an unlikely friendship is born.
Stolen Seas is an eye opening refutation of preconceived ideas on how or why piracy has become the world's most frightening multi-million dollar growth industry.

This Easter, let's go back to October of 2010 for a great duo 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 10th anniversary will be this Tuesday. 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, and 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 Six, Eight, and Ten. 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" and "A Remembrance of 9/11"

There is a fair bit of talk about the rush for the arctic for economic and strategic reasons - and where there is international interest on the seas, the nations involved need to think about what is the best way to secure their interests.
While the initial thought might be Navy - is the natural answer really the Coast Guard? If the USCG is the right answer, is it trained, manned and equipped for the job?
What does it need to do in order to fulfill its role - and why may it be the best answer to the question - who will show the flag up north?
Our guest this Sunday for the full hour from 5-6pm EST will be U.S. Naval War College Professor James R. Holmes. As a starting point for our conversation, we will use his latest article in Foreign Policy: America Needs a Coast Guard That Can Fight: As the Arctic becomes an arena for conflict, the United States’ forgotten naval force will need to cowboy up.