Midrats

Is the profession of arms, as the Navy believes it is, primarily a technical job for officers - or is it something else? To create the cadre of leaders one needs, do you train them as empty vessels that one only needs to fill up with what you want or an empty checklist to complete - or do you train them by helping them bring out their ability to lead and make decisions through informed critical th...

From the USA, Europe, Russia, to the South China Sea, nations continue to signal where their priories are by what type of fleet they are building.  What capabilities are they expanding, and what capabilities are they letting drift away? To discuss this and more for the full hour will be returning guest Eric Wertheim. Eric is a defense consultant, columnist and author specializing in naval and mari...

In case you missed it the first time, especially for those whose fathers served in uniform, you owe it to yourself to listen to our interview with Stephen Rodrick about his book, The Magical Stranger: A Son's Journey into His Father's Life. You will really enjoy the interview, and I cannot recommend the book any greater. Buy it. Rodrick is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and...

From November of 2011: They share the hazards, smell the smells; all that is needed so that those at home may understand what their countrymen are doing in the far reaches of the world on their behalf. The best know that to tell a story, you have to be in it. Sometimes, the story catches up with them. Our guest for the full hour will be Kimberly Dozier,  foreign correspondent for CBS News Radio sp...

Now that Summer is on the way and that there are more national security issues being produced from the South China Sea to the Dardanelles than can be consumed locally - that sounds like the perfect time for Sal from CDR Salamander and EagleOne from EagleSpeak to hold a Midrats "open house." A little bit of a potpourri of what we find of interest from the latest news,to a chance for you to call in...

This Memorial Day Weekend we are reaching back to a 2010 episode where we look back at the Vietnam War and then look forward to the next decade's Fleet options for our Navy. 50 years in 1 hour. Our guests will be retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel J.G. Zumwalt and journalist Greg Grant. Lt. Col. James Zumwalt is a retired Marine infantry officer who served in the Vietnam war, the 1989 interve...

Since WWII, have we developed an officer corps that has not only developed a record of defeat, but has become comfortable with it? Is our military leadership structurally unsound? In his recent article, An Officer Corps That Can’t Score, author William S. Lind makes a scathing inditement of the officer corp of the United States in from the structure is works in, to its cultural and intellectual ha...

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 mus...

So far in 2014, the big lesson is what people have known for centuries; in Eurasia you cannot ignore Russia. The cliché is accurate, Russia is never as weak or as strong as she seems. What do the developments so far mean not just for Ukraine, but for all the former Soviet Republics, slumbering Western Europe and Russia's near abroad? To discuss this and more, for the full hour we will have returni...

It hasn't gone anywhere, the Long War, that is. People may be suffering whiplash having to look back to Europe in the middle of a Pacific pivot, and the Arab spring wilted in to extremism and bloodshed - but the war against the West still goes on from lone wolf attacks at home, to drone strikes across the swath of southwest, south, and central Asia. Coming back to Midrats for the full hour to disc...

A lot of people were surprised when Russia came back on stage this year - but not Midrats listeners. This Easter, let's go back 100 episodes to our interview with Midrats resident Russia go-to-guy, Dmitry Gorenburg. Here were the questions we were trying to answer two years ago;  While the news seems to be all around Russia from the rise of China, the incredible success of the Baltic states, Afgha...

"Where are the carriers?" Regardless of the writing, talking, and pontificating about "Why the carriers?" - when there is a real world crisis - leaders still ask, "Where are the carriers."  Since we waived the requirement for a floor of 11, we have drifted to the new normal of 10 without dedicated additional funding. 10 isn't even an accurate number. With one undergoing nuclear refueling - you rea...

As with most concepts and good ideas, you really don't know what you need and how you need to do it until you put Sailors to task and head to sea. The idea of an Afloat Forward Staging Base has, in a variety of forms, been a regular part of naval operations arguably for centuries under different names and with different equipment. What about the 21st Century?  More than just a story about the use...

This Sunday, join our guests Vice Admiral Bill Moran, USN, Navy Chief of Naval Personnel, and Commander Guy Snodgrass, USN, Prospective Executive Officer of Strike Fighter Squadron ONE NINE FIVE, in a discussion of the challenges in officer retention that is facing our Navy. As over a decade of major combat operations ashore winds down, economic & budgetary stresses grow on defense spending, a str...

The Chief of Naval Operation's Rapid Innovation Cell (CRIC) was established in 2012 in order to provide junior leaders with venue to identify and rapidly field emerging technologies that they see needed in the Fleet. Who is in the CRIC, how do they get there, and what are some of the projects they have been working on? Join us this Sunday for the full hour with Commander Ben Salazar, USN, Director...

With the new defense budget out, new QDR out, the withdraw of maneuver forces from Afghanistan, rising interest in INDO-PAC operations, and a resurgent Russia: after over a decade of COIN and land wars in Southwest and Central Asia - what is the status of the United States Marine Corps?  Materially, intellectually, and culturally - is the USMC set up to move best towards the expected challenges an...

In concept, execution, and ability to effectively provide its part of the national defense infrastructure, has a separate Air Force served this nation well, and does it make sense to keep it a separate service. Our guest this week makes the case that the experiment in a separate US Air Force is over, and it has failed. Though we need airpower, we don't need a separate service to provide it. With u...

Revisiting a show from NOV 2011,  They share the hazards, smell the smells; all that is needed so that those at home may understand what their countrymen are doing in the far reaches of the world on their behalf. The best know that to tell a story, you have to be in it. Sometimes, the story catches up with them. Our guest for the full hour will be Kimberly Dozier,  foreign correspondent for CBS Ne...

What direction do we need to go for our next maritime strategy? Using he recent article, Control of the Seas, as our starting point, our guest for the full hour will be Seth Cropsey, Senior Fellow and director of Hudson Institute's Center for American Seapower.   He served in government at the Defense Department as Assistant to the SECDEF Caspar Weinberger and then as Deputy Undersecretary of the...

Nothing like some time snowed in to focus the mind. Join us this Sunday from 5-6pm as we cover the maritime angle from China to shipbuilding to Cyber with a Midrats free for all. Have a topic you wished we would cover? Well, the phone lines are open.

When you send your elected representative to Washington DC, you are not just sending one person. For each Congressman and Senator - there is a cadre of staffers that makes it happen. Bills do not sprout out of the heads of politicians - no - they are carefully crafted, often over years, by the people you see in the background on C-Span. Politicians cannot and do not read source documentation all t...

For those who don't care about Football or get all grumpy if they don't get enough of their Midrats, we're heading back to early in our second year and visit our old friend.  In the small world of the Navy blogosphere, when you think of Japan, one name should immediately come to mind; Skippy-san of the blog FarEastCynic. Though most know Skippy by his "interesting" perspective on some of the "inte...

Lost to many whose news sources in the USA consists of the major newspapers and the standard networks, for most of the last dozen+ years, the conflict in Afghanistan has not been a USA-Centric battle; it has been a NATO run operation. When the Commander of the International Security Assistance Force has been an American 4-star, the visuals can be misleading. For most of the last decade, American f...

That's right ... Midrats has been on the air four years. This week we aren't having guests, just the two hosts and any listeners who want to take the opportunity to call in or throw a question or topic to us in the chat room. Breaking news, regular topics, or whatever you pull out of your seabag - we're going to cove it Green range, as it were.

Though nations for thousands of years have been wrestling with the challenge of Joint operations,  we're still trying to get it right. As an island nation with significant global interests ashore, the USA has a rich history of doing Joint right, and blind parochialism as well.  Using this as a starting point, this Sunday for the full hour we will have returning guest, John Kheun. Dr. John T. Kuehn...