Midrats

Do we have the means, capabilities, national will - and more important - the support of the American people to meet the demands from the global entanglements we are obligated by? What is the grand strategy? To discuss these and related questions this Sunday will be Dr. David Gioe. We will use his recent article in The National Interest, Make America Strategic Again, as the starting point for our t...

Well inside an officer's career arch, we saw the American Navy move from the Great White Fleet, The Spanish American War to the age of the Dreadnought. Our Army, from ad-hoc volunteer units to a professional army going head-to-head with the finest professional army on the planet. How did our military and our Navy build up to WWI, and how did that experience inform the evolution of our national def...

Time to look back at an episode at the dawn of the Trump Administration. Our guest back in March of 2017 was Frank Hoffman. At the second month of a new President is building a new national security team, we looked at what direction they might take our nation. What role should realism, alliances, and the requirement to anchor all to a strategic discipline focused on the long term interests of our...

Almost everyone who follows military issues can clearly point to what the Army Reserve, National Guard, USAFR, ANG, and USMC Reserves do – their individual and unit deployments have been highly visible so far in the Long War … but what about the Naval Reserve? What are they doing? Are they being best utilized to purpose? As we re-look at the challenge of a maritime power facing emerging powers on...

The generation that will lead Sailors forward over what is shaping up to be the most challenging environment at sea for the USN since the 1980s is just now rolling in to their first shore duty or out of it. What culture and experiences marked their formative junior officer years? How will they change the fluid culture of our navy? Will their habits in writing, discussing, and experimenting differ...

Wars are full of accidental battles, unexpected horror, and the valor of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Often lost in the sweeping stories of the Pacific in WWII, there is a story that - if not for one man's inability to properly recognize one ship from another - should have never have happened. Because of that one man's mistake, and a leader's stubborn enthusiasm to double down o...

When this show first aired in May of 2016, we were coming up on the 100-year anniversary of the Battle of Jutland. Stop for a moment, close your eyes, and then tell me what image comes to mind. If your image is of a huge mass of steel coming at you out from the mist at 25-knots belching out sun-blocking clouds of coal-smoke and burned black powder and searing fingers of flame pushing tons of armor...

How are unmanned systems and the increasing use of robots from the kitchen to the battlefield impacting how our personal, professional, and national lives are being run? What are the obvious and not so obvious places they are already a dominate presence today, and where are trends leading us? Our guest for the full hour to discuss the issues he raises in his book, "One Nation Under Drones" will be...

During the 2016 election, then candidate Donald Trump ran on building a 350 ship Navy. That number soon moved up to 355. Two years after his inauguration, the path to get there is hard to see. There is a movement of navalists who are not just looking for the path to 355, but looking to the challenge of China at the end of the next decade, want our Navy to move north of 400 ships. To that end, in F...

We are going to take a clear, cold, and unsparing look at the status of the conflict in Afghanistan and the Long War in general with our returning guest, Bill Roggio. In a far-reaching discussion, we will touch on the rather unpleasant reality of where we have put ourselves through our own action, and what people should expect going forward. Bill is a senior fellow at FDD and editor of FDD’s Long...

The best fiction doesn't just entertain, it informs and causes the reader to think. Our guest for the full hour this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern is August Cole, the co-author with P.W. Singer of one of the best received military fiction novels on the last year, Ghost Fleet: An Novel of the Next World War. August is an author and analyst specializing in national security issues. He is a nonresident s...

From showing the flag in the Mediterranean in the first decades of our republic's history, through Teddy's Great White Fleet, to FONOPS in today's South China Sea - "being there" is a little understood strategic mission. What is its history and utility in the 21st Century? Our guest for the full hour will be Dr. James Holmes, returning to Midrats to discuss this and related issues. Dr. Holmes is a...

Stowaways, poaching, piracy, smuggling, and murder - the global commons of the open ocean is as wild of a place as it is vast. Using as a baseline his series on lawlessness on the high seas in the New York Times, The Outlaw Ocean, our guest for the full hour to discuss the anarchy of crime and violence on the high seas in the 21st Century will be Ian Ubina. Ian is a reporter for The New York Times...

Over 18-months after the deadly collision of the USS FITZGERALD with the Philippine-flagged merchant ship ACX Crystal off the Sea of Japan, from the courtroom to the fleet, we still have not come to terms with latent causes, accountability, or even a full understanding about what happened from a human and machine perspective. Earlier this year, journalist Geoff Ziezulewicz received a copy of the F...

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...

This Sunday we're going to focus on the things of nightmares; Anti-Ship Cruise Missiles and Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles with fellow paleo-milblogger SteelJawScribe. In a wide ranging discussion, for the hour we'll cover ASCM history, Cold War tales, and what present day Russia and Crimea are bringing to the game. SJS is a retired Navy Captain with multiple operational tours, including command of...

Nine years of Midrats. That’s right, EagleOne and I have had the pleasure of talking to you and our guests for nine years. This Sunday we’re going to have just the two of us on to talk about not just the last nine years, but the general growth of podcasting the last decade. We’ll also review what we have top-of-mind for 2019. As always on our free-for-all shows, you’re invited to call in or ask qu...

First aired in the second year of the show, still a great listen. When you mention books on naval history, there are but a few authors whose work immediately come to mind, and our guest is one of them. Unquestionably one of the finest writers of naval history of the last half-century; James D. Hornfischer. We have talked about his books on a regular basis both on Midrats and over at our homeblogs;...

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 mana...

Where are the lines between what is legal, what is ethical, and what is moral? Who writes these lines and how rigid are they? For the individual and the military as an institution, why are these things important? Are there universals? National? Institutional? Are they at the end of the day, personal? Is there a hierarchy of ethics? Where do they come in to conflict with loyalty, duty, or mission?...

With budget fights chasing money and arguments about hulls in the water, which part of our Navy makes sure what comes out the other end is more than just a fleet in being? A Navy that can get underway, get over there, fight, get back, get repaired, get upgraded, and deploy again - second to none? We are going to dive deep in to the commands, men and women who make that happen, NSWC Carderock and o...

The latest incident at the Kerch Strait was just the latest turn of the ratchet in the long-running efforts of Russia against Ukraine. This slow rolling conflict has a variety of different paths it can head from here, and few of them are good for the stability of Russia, Ukraine, the EU, NATO or the United States. What is the latest state of play and the bold-faced items we should be watching? Our...

How can our navy and its leadership better communicate internally and externally? What are the ways an organization can effectively inform influencers and the public in a way that is accurate, transparent, and effective? Our guest for the full hour to discuss this and more will be Commander Chris Servello, USN. Chris has more more than 20 years of global experience in strategic communication, mess...

This podcast first aired in December 2015 How do you design a game that has practical tactical application to the naval tactician?  Even more ambitious, how do you make one accessible and understandable with the goal of making it a mobile wargame for eventual use by sailors and warfare commands. For today's show we will discuss one of the projects of the CNO's Rapid Innovation Cell (CRIC), the gam...

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. How are radical extremists using modern technology, especially in the visual arena, to advance their goals, who are their audiences, and how do you counter it? Using as a starting point the Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Ar...