Midrats

Old foreign and defense challenges return, new ones emerge, and existing ones morph in to something slightly different. The only thing that is constant is that there is no opportunity for a learning curve for the Commander in Chief of the United States of America. From the first day in office to the last, a needy, grasping, and unstable world will look to or at our nation. What are those challenge...

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. To discuss this and more - especially in light of the election - will be returning guest, Bryan McGrath, Commander, US Navy (Retired)....

The systems that trains, mans, and equips our military - and provides guidance and support to their civilian masters is broadly shaped by Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986. There is much discussion that in the middle of the second decade of the 21st Century, is there a better system to serve our national security requirements than one designed at the height of the 20th Century's Cold War? Using his ar...

Midrats is back live! With a week left to go till the election, I am sure you are about done with all the political talk, so join us at 5pm Eastern this Sunday, October 30th as we cover the the globe on the breaking national security and maritime issues that have come up over the last month. From FORD to KUZNETSOV; from The Baltic to Yemen we'll have it covered. As always with our Free For Alls; i...

For those who have seen the Great Carrier Debate between Jerry Hendrix and Bryan McGrath, one thing was clear - both gentlemen had only scratched the surface of their thoughts on the topic. At about the same time, the concept of "distributed lethality" had seeped its way in to the conversation. To examine both topics and to review the national security issues you should expect to see in 2015 will...

With all the news out of Yemen, I thought it would be timely to go back four years to our interview with Claude Berube about his first fiction, novel, The Aden Effect.  Last year he had a follow on, Syren's Song. Terror attacks on an American embassy. Piracy on the high seas. Political intrigue. Leadership at sea. Not just the news of the day, but some of the topics you'll find in Claude Berube's...

What is a "crisis in leadership? In an organization that prizes the Type-A personality that takes risk combined with a strong intellect - yet at the same times asks from it silence and order - what happens when each end loses faith and trust in the other? Our guest for the full hour will be Peter Munson, Marine officer, KC-130 aircraft commander, Middle East specialist, author, and editor of Small...

At the height of hurricane season, people think of the impact such storms can have on the security, economy, and even the political direction of places if hit by such huge events such as Katrina. As we saw in the attacks in New York City in 2001, terrorists are trying to create those same effects, along with a few more. With a global economy, local events can have international impact. How do you ...

Reaching back to a great show from four years ago this week. The "Arab Spring" has not turned out as well as many hoped, and in much of the Arab and Muslim world, the will of the people does not necessarily translate in to freedom and a pro-Western leadership. With many more years to go in the Long War struggle, how do we navigate through the rapidly changing world which is mostly beyond our contr...

Put the popular, and mostly accurate, image of the flamboyant General Patton, USA given to us by popular culture to the side for a moment. Consider the other side of the man; the strategic thinker, student of military history, and innovator for decades. This week's episode will focus on that side of the man. For the full hour we will have as our guest J. Furman Daniel, III, the editor of the next...

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...

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...

With a resurgent Russia, the security environment from former Soviet Republics to the traditionally neutral nations of Finland and Sweden has changed dramatically. What are those changes and how are they changing how these nations see their place in the larger Western security infrastructure? We’re going to look at how thing are changing in how they work and see each other, NATO, and what they nee...

The thankfully bloodless embarrassment that was the Farsi Island Incident is still making news after the January 12, 2016 seizure of 10 U.S. sailors by Iranian forces. Especially for our Surface Warfare community, there are a lot of hard, cold lessons here not just about the incident itself, leadership and professionalism – and institutional lessons about how conditions are set and organizations a...

We live in a crowded world with limited resources. What happens when this meets modern technology's ability to shorten the time/distance equation and increase the ability to know of what lies below the waves? What complications do we fine when the above two points meet up with the eternal search by growing nations to reach for the seas to support their homeland's growing needs?   As populations de...

How did the US Marine Corps and local tribal leaders turn the corner in Fallujah?  Who were the people on the ground, Iraqi and American, who were the catalyst for the change that brought about a sea change in the tactical, operational, and strategic direction in Iraq? Our guest for the full hour to discuss that and more will be author Bill Ardolino. We will use as a base of our discussion his new...

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...

The events of the last week in Turkey brought that critically important nation in to focus, and we are going to do the same thing for this week's episode of Midrats. Turkey has a history of military coups as a byproduct of an ongoing drive to be a modern secular nation against the current of a deeply Islamic people. This week we are going to look at how Turkey found itself at another coup attempt,...

From the sacking of the Baltic Fleet leadership, fighting in Syria, to developments from Central Asia to the Pacific - Russia in 2016 is on the move. To discuss the who, what, where, and why of Russia in 2016, our guest for the full hour will be Dr. Dmitry Gorenburg, Senior Analyst, CNA Strategic Studies, an Associate at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, an author, and host...

As China continues to slowly use a variety of tools to claim portions of her maritime near-abroad in the South China Sea and elsewhere, part of their effort includes what can almost be considered naval irregular forces - a Maritime Militia. What is China doing with these assets, why are they being used, and what could we expect going forward as she taps in to a variety of assets to attempt to esta...

If the requirement is to be able to operate, fight, and win in the Littorals - is the Littoral Combat Ship the answer? Other nations have the same requirement - yet have come up with different answers. Are we defining our requirements properly in face of larger Fleet needs and the threats we expect? What platforms and systems need to be looked at closer if we are to have the best mix of capabiliti...

When the BREXIT dust settles one thing will remain – the Long War against Islamic terrorists. In a wide arch along its bloody edge, Islamic extremism continues to look for new opportunities for expansion, and within the borders of Dar al-Islam seeks to impose a retrograde view of Islam by destroying religious minorities, secular governments, and Islamic modernizers. This Sunday returning guest Bil...

I still believe that The War Between the States is a more accurate term - but to keep with the last vestiges of Northern cultural imperialism - we'll call it the Civil War. Though mostly a land war - the war at sea was critical in keeping the agriculturally based South from getting the money and material it needed to fight the North.  The war also saw innovation and concepts that echoed in every n...

As part of our ongoing series of interviews with the editors of each addition to the 21st Century Foundations series, we will have David Kohnen the editor of the latest in the series, 21st Century Knox, on for the full hour. Kohnen described the focus of the book, Commodore Dudley Wright Knox, USN, as someone who, "... challended fellow naval professionals to recognize the inherent relevance of hi...

Last month started what we hope will be a regular occurrence in the education of our future leaders; the US Naval Academy took 10 Midshipmen along with a group of instructors onboard the topsail schooners Pride of Baltimore and Lynx as part of an elective history course titled “War of 1812 in the Chesapeake: A Schoolhouse at Sea.” We will have two of the instructors for the cruise with us for the...