Midrats

This first aired in Feb. 2017. Since his election in November 2016, the administration and several articles have suggested Donald Trump is a new Andrew Jackson whose portrait now hangs in the Oval Office. What might that mean for the Navy? How did Andrew Jackson approach his Navy and what lessons can we draw from that? Our guest for the full hour for a discussion of an understudied part of our nav...

The Jones Act is hailed by many in the maritime community as an essential lifeline to keep the domestic merchant marine viable. There is an equally vocal argument that it is not just unnecessary, but counterproductive. Are the assumptions being make by the pro-Jones Act faction wrong? To discuss the Jones Act from the skeptical school this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern will be Colin Grabow, a policy a...

First aired in November 2016, in this episode we have returning guest Bryan McGrath, CDR USN (Ret.) discuss, why a Navy? Why a strong Navy? Why is a strong Navy an essential requirement for the United States Navy? From its ability to project national will, to it hidden hand in the economics of every citizen's life, why is it so critical that we have a Navy second to none. Bryan McGrath grew up in...

What is the nature of obedience for those in the the profession or arms and the civilian political community? With a review of classical studies, philosophy, history, international relations, literature and military studies, can you get a firm grounding on what it is, what it means, and how it should shape decisions and behavior? Returning to Midrats to talk about this and more based around her ne...

Where will unmanned technology take us in the maritime security arena? We already have more than a toe in the water, and with each year unmanned systems at sea are taking a larger role. Our guests Sunday, March 15th from 5-6pm Eastern to discuss these and related topics will be Dr. William Burnett and Dr. Todd Holland. We will use their recent article, Unmanned and Unafraid: The Transformation of...

First aired in March, 2016. In the mid-1930s, Leni Riefenstahl showed the power of the latest communication technology of her time to move opinion, bring support, and intimidate potential opponents. The last quarter century's work of Moore's Law in the ability to distribute visual data world wide in an instant has completely change the ability of even the smallest groups with the most threadbare b...

This podcast first aired in December of 2016. Even before the election, President-elect Trump mentioned he wanted to get to a 350 ship Navy. The outgoing Secretary of the Navy has put us on a path to 308, and in his waning months is fighting a holding action on the shipbuilding budget giving as good of a turnover in this area to his relief. What are the viable paths to 350 we could see in the open...

As Russia's navy starts to transition away from the last of her legacy ships, to her approaching endgame in Syria, join us for the full hour to investigate the latest developments with Russia's national security posture, including the domestic power politics and relationships with its near abroad that influences the same. Our guest returning again to Midrats will be Dr. Dmitry Gorenburg. Dmitry Go...

A lot has been written about what went wrong at Pearl Harbor - a very American perspective. If you look at it from a neutral tactical view, or look at things from a Japanese perspective - there was a lot that went right at Pearl Harbor at the Tactical and Operational Level. Join Sal from CDR Salamander and EagleOne of EagleSpeak as they discuss for the full hour many of the less understood aspects...

Since its ascendency to the premier maritime power, the US Navy - especially in the area of undersea warfare - has been at the leading edge of using technology to get a military edge. During the Cold War, significant and steady progress in the first two steps of the kill chain against submarines, location and tracking, made the prospect of engaging superior numbers of Soviet submarine forces manag...

Come join EagleOne and CDR Salamander for an hour of all the things maritime and national security that broke above the ambient noise the last couple of weeks. From the national security implications of the latest disease out break in China to our Navy's ongoing challenge of finding out what she wants to be, and how she wants to get there. Open topic, open phones - so if there is a topic you would...

Put on your black leather jacket, get your SM-6 plush toy, pour a glass of your finest Chianti in honor of the epic Fincantieri after party, and join us this Sunday to discuss the latest news about the USN surface force. Using his reporting earlier this month from the Surface Navy Association Symposium as a starting off point, our guest for the full hour will be David Larter, Naval Warfare Reporte...

Open mic and open topic for this week's Midrats as we cover the maritime spectrum from Chinese fisherman and their "strange" catches, to new carriers, to 1,001 things you can do with a DDG-1000. We'll be live as always and are taking questions and topic requests ... so come join us!

We just stress tested our Strategic Sealift. We'll discuss what we can learn from it this Sunday with returning guest, Salvatore Mercogliano. Sal sailed with MSC from 1989 to 1992, and worked MSC HQ as Operations Officer for the Afloat Prepositioning Force 1992-1996. He has a BS Marine Transportation from SUNY Maritime College, a MA Maritime History and Nautical Archaeology from East Carolina Univ...

Happy New Year to everyone and you know what 2020 means? It means that Midrats is having its 10th Anniversary. Come join us this Sunday as we look back at the previous decade and do our best to see what is coming over the horizon for the next. Who knows, we might have a surprise guest or two.

Going back three years, today's best of we look back to a forgotten corner of the Cold War. If you define the Cold War as lasting 44 years from 1947 to 1991, then for over half the Cold War there was a simmering proxy war in southern Africa that involved, to one extent or another, the present day nations of Angola, Namibia, Zambia, and South Africa. Over the course of time, it would involve nation...

Let's go back to October of 2010 for a great pair 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 A...

In the 5-years since the publication of his book, Why We Lost, each passing day more and more people are starting to look at what, 18-yrs on, we have brought in to being with our long running land wars in Central Asia and the Middle East. Using his book as a starting point, this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern, our guest will be Daniel P. Bolger, Lieutenant General, US Army, (Ret.) to discuss these two...

How do you report history as you live it? When, why, and how do you write about it? When even the most experienced DC watchers are having trouble tracking what is going on in the Trump Administration, what can people expect to learn from first hand accounts? If you haven't already heard about our next guest and his book - and you count yourself as someone interested in national security - then wel...

First aired in November of 2012. "If we cannot have the navy estimates of our policy, then let's have the policy of our navy estimates." ---- Lieutenant Ambroise Baudry, French Navy As our guest this week noted in his book Fleet Tactics: Theory and Practice, "These are the watchwords for the twenty-first-century American navy." As we leave our land wars in Asia and look forward to the future marit...

Keeping a fleet ready for war is a process of years of careful, consistent, and sustained stewardship of both personnel and material. The easiest parts are the buying of equipment and recruiting new people. The hard parts, maintenance, training, and retention – mostly because they are hard – rarely break in to the open. For our fleet, the structure we live in is the Optimized Fleet Response Plan (...

A byproduct of the April 2018 memo from Undersecretary of the Navy Thomas Modly, the newly created position of CLO is described as, “A senior civilian with educational leadership experience headquartered in the Pentagon, with a small supporting staff transferred from extant Navy and Marine education management billets, responsible to the President, Naval University for all matters related to educa...

Episode first aired in July of 2013. 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 s...

With the sequel to "Top Gun" coming up, if you ever wore the uniform of the US Navy, you're going to get asked a lot of questions. For this week's show we are going to talk about today's Naval Aviation experience with author Kevin Miller, CAPT, USN (Ret.) Kevin is a third generation naval officer. He graduated from the University of Mississippi and was designated a Naval Aviator in August 1983. In...

The War Between the States, the American Civil War - whichever description you prefer - this crucible on which our nation was re-formed has legion of books, movies, and rhetoric dedicated to it. Most of the history that people know involves the war on land, but what of the war at sea? What are details behind some of the major Naval leaders of both sides that are the least known, but are the most i...