Midrats

Captain Thomas J. Hudner, Jr. USN will be interred at Arlington National Cemetery this week. In his honor we will again run an interview we did early in Midrats' run.  His is a holder of the Medal of Honor from the Korean War. With him is the author of Such Men as These: The Story of the Navy Pilots Who Flew the Deadly Skies over Korea, David Sears as they talk about the role of Naval Aviation in...

If you've lost lock during the news-cycle Imbroglio on what is important in the national security arena, then you need to take an hour out and spend an hour with us for a few from the eye of the storm. Our guest for the full hour will be Phil Ewing. Phil is NPR's national security editor. He helps direct coverage of the military, the intelligence community, counterterrorism, veterans and other top...

Put yourself in the shoes of a museum curator. You have the funds to conduct some much needed preservation on battleflags captured by the US Navy from the War of 1812. To do that, you have to remove them from their home for almost a century. What happens when you all of a sudden find they are not alone? They are covering something else? No, this isn't another "National Treasure" sequel, but things...

Now that we're near the end of 2QFY18, it's time for another Midrats Frer-For-All! Just Sal from the blog CDR Salamander and Eagle1 of EagleSpeak covering the latest developments on the maritime and national security front. If you have topics you would like us to address, send them to us on twitter at @cdrsalamder or @lawofsea, join the chatroom while the show is live ... or even call in.

With a new administration well over a year in and a clearer view of the direction our Navy is headed, now is a great opportunity to check in with one of the most knowledgeable observers on the maritime scene, Chris Cavas.  Join us this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern for an hour-long broad-ranged discussion of national and international naval issues. Chris was the naval warfare correspondent for Defense...

As we enter our 17th of ongoing conflict in Afghanistan and the global struggle against terrorism, why is this war taking so long? Where are we making progress, where are we stalled, and where are we falling back? There are no easy answers to these questions, if there were they wouldn’t need to be asked. We will discuss these and related issues for the full hour with author Dr. Daniel R. Green, a...

It feeds, fuels, and makes everything a fleet does possible - we're talking logistics for the full hour 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 Caroli...

After the events of the last year in WESTPAC, there is general agreement that there is something wrong with our surface force. There have always been "incidents" involving warships - including tremendous loss of life. This time, things seem different - and we are still only in the beginning of a general reassessment of what needs to be done to make our surface navy better. Our guest this week to e...

First aired in Sept. 2014 How are we keeping out legacy Aircraft Carrier's in shape for the regular demands for extended deployments while at the same time bringing the new FORD Class CVN online? What are some of the lessons we have learned in our decades of operating nuclear powered aircraft carriers that we are bring forward to serve the Fleet in the coming decades so we always have an answer to...

Join CDR Salamander and EagleOne as they wrap up Year-7 of Midrats with an end of the year review. From WestPac to the former Caliphate; South China Sea to Sub-Saharan Africa; from LCS to our new SSN - we’re cover it. As always, our listeners are welcome to call in or ask us questions from the chatroom as look back at the year - and give a few ideas for what we see coming in 2018.

Power projection, sea control, access denial, and the ability to impose your will on the enemy from the sea; or depending on your perspective, prevent them from doing the same. If the comparative advantage of American military power includes the use of the world's oceans as a basing area from projecting power and national will, how can other nations design systems and tactics to trump that advanta...

Take a moment to get away from your shock that it is already December, and let it soak in that it will be 2018 in less than a month. That means that we are officially well in to the end of the second decade of the 21st Century. It is time to look at the latest global feet developments breaking this year, and to what should shape discussions next. From Argentina's missing submarine, submarine proli...

What is the best way to hone the intellectual edge of the officers who will lead our Navy? How do we gather our best minds and ideas together to best prepare our Navy for the next war? How is our constellation of war colleges structured, how did it get to where it is today, and how do we modernize it to meet todays challenges? We've put together a small panel for today's show to address this and r...

In the early years of the show, we had the opportunity to inverview Captain Hudner, who just passed. His is a holder of the Medal of Honor from the Korean War. With him is the author of Such Men as These: The Story of the Navy Pilots Who Flew the Deadly Skies over Korea, David Sears as they talk about the role of Naval Aviation in the Korean War. Stuck between the Greatest Generation's high-water...

This week saw the release of the reports on the collision reports and Comprehensive Review of the incidents this summer between merchant ships in WESTPAC and the destroyers USS FITZGERALD and USS MCCAIN. The totally avoidable collisions resulted in the death of 17 Sailors and removal from our most important theater two of our most critical assets. Our guest for the full hour will be Bryan McGrath,...

This Sunday we're going to convince you to make plans to be in Annapolis next month. Coming up Saturday, Nov. 18, from 12 - 5 p.m. Eastern, our friend Claude Berube is husbanding the Naval Academy Museum's latest effort in what promises to be a very original and entertaining conference, NavyCon. NavyCon has a great line up to discuss how fleet forces have been portrayed in science fiction, in comp...

The General Board of the Navy existed for the first half of the 20th Century. In his latest book, America's First General Staff: A Short History of the Rise and Fall of the General Board of the U.S. Navy, 1900-1950, our guest Dr. John T. Kuehn describes how the Board, a creature of its time born from a defined need following the "last war," became the organization that drove the growth of a world...

As now VCNO Moran might say, this week we return to datum to an interview from bit more than three years ago when Admiral Moran, USN was Chief of Naval Personnel. We looked at the question of how does policy shape, limit, or empower the effectiveness of command at the unit level? Which policies are a net positive, and which ones are counter productive? Are there things we can do to better balance...

He is quoted often, correctly and incorrectly, but few have actually read his works in full - and even fewer know much about the man himself, Major General Carl von Clausewitz, Kingdom of Prussia. Out guest for the full hour will be Donald Stoker, author of the new book, Clausewitz: His Life and Work. Stoker is a  Professor of Strategy and Policy for the U.S. Naval War College's program at the Nav...

As the Syrian conflict enters what looks to be its end game, one old player on the scene is emerging stronger than it has ever been, a point of concern for all the nations in the area. How has the Syrian civil war changed Hezbollah and her allies, and what does it signal about the post-war order? To discuss this and related issues will be our guest for the full hour, Sulome Anderson. Sulome is jou...

From WESTPAC to the Caribbean to the Euphrates river valley to Arakan province, we’ll be covering the mostly maritime national security developments of the last few weeks for the full hour in a Midrats free-for-all format. This is also your chance to bring up the topics you want addressed. Join in the chat room live to share your questions, or call in to the show if there is something you like us...

In an era of the 24-hr news cycle but in a subject area where accuracy and subject-knowledge is required - how does the navy-focused media report on the fast changing environment? For the professional journalist, the last few months have shown that even peacetime naval operations can create stories as professionally demanding as reporting on wartime developments. The stories coming from the deaths...

In parallel efforts that in the Navy which led to Top Gun, the US Air Force looked hard at the lessons of air to air combat in the Vietnam War and brought forward "Red Flag," Moving beyond the technical focus, they looked to training and fundamentals to bring back a primacy of combat skills. Our guest for the full hour to discuss this and his new book, The Air Force Way of War: U.S. Tactics and Tr...

Nothing is really new, unprecedented, or that unique. If you are willing to look with the right eye, though tools may have changed, the fundamentals often remain the same. In the opening months of WWII, there is a story we don't study enough - mostly because it is not a pleasant story. For today's episode, we're going to take some time to do look at the story of the Asiatic Fleet in 1941, and what...

First broadcast in 2013, some details have changed, but the concepts are eternal. NB: ll ranks and discussions of future events are from 2013. Is there such a thing as Military Intellectual Entrepreneurialism? Large, sated, and complacent organization do not have a good track record of survival. Organizations of any size that nurture the mentality of small, hungry, and driven by creative destructi...