Midrats

Ships, aircraft, personnel numbers, and programs are interesting - but without context they are just expenditures.

The foundation question should always be; what are our national security requirements, and what is our strategy to meet them?

From Political to Strategic to Operational to Tactical - today's Midrats will focus on the top two.

The Pacific Pivot, Air-Sea Battle, AFPAK, the "Arab Spring" and in an election year, various squabbles on the Potomac - the large pixels are moving.

Our guest for the full hour will be Dr. Robert Farley,  assistant professor at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky.  He blogs about security and maritime issues at Information Dissemination and Lawyers, Guns and Money.

When it comes to appreciating the importance of our Founders emphasis on a free press - in few areas is that as apparent than in national security.

A free people in a Representative Republic need the best information in order to be an informed people - and it is the media who is at the point in that struggle for facts, knowledge, and keeping the powerful in check.

If you've been focused on the Navy - what a fertile ground to invest your talents if you are a media professional.

Our guest for the full hour will be one of the regular names in defense reporting for a long time, Chris Cavas, Naval Affairs Correspondent & Journalist at Defense News.

From the politicians, think tanks, senior uniformed leadership, civilian policy makers, media, and the general busy bodies that keep the pot stirred, we'll discuss it all and how it impacts present and future programs and strategy.

In times of peace, no other service has a more sustained presence overseas, and a requirement for a deeper understanding of the parts of the world we sail in, than the Navy. In wartime, double it.

Military officers see the world differently than diplomats. Working with their counterparts in other nations, they also gain an understanding of a nation's culture that is distinctly different than those of a civilian. You cannot truly understand a nation until you live in it and study it, and the time to start is when you are young.

Join Sal from "CDR Salamander" and EagleOne of "EagleSpeak" to discuss one of the most underrated intellectually strategic resources we have in the Navy is our Olmsted Scholars program, and our show today will be a broad ranging panel discussion not only about the Olmsted program, but the role of the Naval Officer in a broader sense in our dealings with other nations on the personal level. 

We will also talk about their impressions of the nations they served in, and what it informs us about the Pacific in the second decade of the 21st Century and beyond.

Our panel will be:

- Lieutenant Joshua Kristenson, USN; Olmsted Class Of 2009--Beijing, China;

- Lieutenant Matthew D. Myers, USN; Olmsted Class Of 2009--New Delhi, India;

- Lieutenant Olivia K. Degenkolb, USN; Olmsted Class Of 2013--Hanoi, Vietnam;

- Captain Gary J. Sampson, USMC; Olmsted Class Of 2009—Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

What makes a class of warship a success, a failure, or a missed opportunity? What fundamentals consistently result in a success, and what common threads need to be avoided in order to not repeat the mistakes of the past?

What decision and results we have seen in previous classes of warships are we seeing repeated now, and what are some options for the Navy going forward?

For warship classes from right before WWII to the present, to discuss this and more will be returning guest, Dr. Norman Friedman.

In addition to numeral articles through the years, Dr. Friedman writes a monthly column, "World Naval Developments" in the US Naval Institute's magazine, Proceedings and is the author of many books including U.S. Destroyers: An Illustrated Design History; Unmanned Combat Air Systems; and Naval Weapons of World War One.

As a starting point for our discussion we will be using Dr. Friedman's article in the latest edition of the US Naval Institute's magazine,Naval History,Judging the Good from the Bad.

They're back; ICBM, IRBM, SRBM. Strategic forces. Long range strike and long range counter-air.

Some real old ones are coming back in to the lexicon: ABM.

Some new ones have joined the party as well - ASBM and super sonic ASCM.

Of course, they never really left us.

After the post-Soviet softness of the 1990s and the decade plus of COIN and small wars - the big toys are coming back. Old and new.

From Russia, China, Iran, & India - technology is reaching back out and spreading out.

Where does that leave the US military in 2012? Few leaders under the age of 45 even remember operating in the Cold War disciplines that peer technology required; range, EMCON, defense in depth.

Global reach will require more and better AAW, deep strike, I&W - it will also require a renewed understanding that for a Fleet at sea - the enemy gets a vote, and a shot.

Our guest for the full hour to discuss in detail will be Will Dossel, CAPT USN (Ret), a former E-2C NFO with over 3500 hours and 525 traps in the E-2C and other TACAIR. Retiring after 26 years, he held a number of Navy and Joint operational and staff positions afloat and ashore including VAW squadron command, CVN navigator, Deputy Director for Strategy and Policy, Navy Planner, and Reconnaissance Systems Officer. Currently employed as a senior analyst with a top 5 defense firm, he has been heavily involved in the policy and operational side of ballistic and cruise missile defense the past seven years.

The naval experience is fertile ground for an author of both fiction and non-fiction. How does real world experience inform that author, and how does fiction and non-fiction writing inform those serving today?

Our guest for the full hour will be author R. L. Crossland, Captain, USN (Retired).  A SEAL, Captain Crossland served 35 years service, active and reserve, from Vietnam to Afghanistan.

Widely published on maritime unconventional warfare and naval history, he holds a merchant marine captain’s license and is a practicing trial lawyer. He resides in New England.

A graduate of Columbia College with a degree in history, and the Naval War College Command and Staff Course, Crossland has written internationally on the subject of maritime unconventional warfare and includes U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings and the New York Times among his credits.  His articles “Rusty Hand of Steel” (Proceedings, December 1979) and “Unconventional Warfare Afloat” (Proceedings, November 1981) were required reading at the Naval War College for several years after their publication. His most recent article (Proceedings August 2009), "Sometimes the Insignificant is Significant," analyzes aspects of the rescue of the Maersk Alabama from Somali pirates.

His recent second novel, Jade Rooster, a mystery set in the 1913 Asiatic Fleet, allows him to apply his experience to the elements of intrigue that grow when  the daily life of a sailor of an emerging navy in the age of coal-driven ships crosses courses with the then growing cross-tensions in the Far East.

We have the war with us in Afghanistan that is winding down one phase, and the global security environment in front of us. What is going on now, and what are the options in the near and medium term that the national security decision makers need to make on budget priorities and strategic direction.

Our guest for the full hour will be retired US Army Colonel, Dr. Joseph J. Collins, Professor of National Security Strategy at National War College. He also served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he did research on economic sanctions, military culture, and national security policy.

Dr. Collins's many publications include books and articles on the Soviet war in Afghanistan, Operation Desert Storm, contemporary U.S. military culture, defense transformation, and homeland defense. including his book, Understanding War in Afghanistan.  He writes frequently for Armed Forces Journal and the national security experts' blog of the National Journal.

Time to look back to this time last year for our best of from July 2011.

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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.

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.

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 has held anti-America rallies for decades. They want to bring them home. The Navy doesn't.

As a growing maritime power, when China looks east, southeast, and south - how does it see its neighbors?

Even more importantly - how do its neighbors see it?

Is Russia even a top-tier concern?

Our guest for the full hour will be Wendell Minnick, author, commentator, journalist and speaker who has spent two decades covering military and security issues in Asia, including one book on intelligence and over 900 articles.

 

Since 2006, Minnick has served as the Asia Bureau Chief for Defense News, a Washington-based defense weekly newspaper.

From 2000-2006, he served as the Taiwan Correspondent for UK-based Jane's Defence Weekly.

Of course it is returning ... in the form of a Best of Midrats for this Father's Day Weekend.

Going back to Episode 79, let's ponder.

If you look to the performance of the US Navy in World War II - those ships came in the shipbuilding programs of the 1920s and 1930s. At a time with no computers or modern communication equipment - and working through the naval treaty limitations as well as the Great Depression - we saw incredible innovation and steadily improving ship designs. Why?

A lot of the credit is given to something the Navy had then, but does not have now; The General Board.

What was The General Board, what did it do, and is the Navy today suffering for the lack of one?

Our guest is John T. Kuehn, PhD. Dr Kuehn, a former naval aviator who has completed cruises aboard four different aircraft carriers. He flew reconnaissance missions during the last decade of the Cold War, the First Gulf War and the Balkans.

CDR Kuehn has served on the faculty of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College since July 2000, retiring from the naval service in 2004. He earned a Ph.D. in History from Kansas State University in 2007. He is the author of the Agents of Innovation: The General Board and the Design of the Fleet that Defeated the Japanese Navy, and Eyewitness Pacific Theater with Dennis Giangreco.

He is currently an associate professor of military history at the US Army command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.