There are certain people who, due to the quality of their work, the content of their character, and their downright excellence and dedication to their chosen field, influence generations of people. In a way, they become a benchmark, a reference point, an ideal.

In naval history, for the last few generations of naval officers, one name has risen to the top of everyone’s list, Dr. Craig L. Symonds.

Dr. Symonds passed away earlier this week.

Craig L. Symonds, beloved scholar, writer, professor, husband, father, and grandfather, passed away at home on Tuesday, October 13th from complications due to cancer. He was 79.

Craig was born and raised in Anaheim CA on December 31st, 1946 to Lee and Virginia Symonds. After graduating from UCLA in 1967, he began graduate studies at the University of Florida where he met his wife Marylou Symonds (nee Hayden). They married in 1969 and had their son, Jeff Symonds. Drafted for Vietnam, Craig was assigned to teach Naval History at the Naval War College in Newport, RI. After finishing his service in 1975, Craig returned to Florida to finish his dissertation, and then was hired by the United States Naval Academy as a professor of history in the fall of 1976.

Craig taught history at the Academy for the next thirty years, including an exchange year in Dartmouth, England at Britannia Royal Naval College, and retired as one of its most decorated professors. He won the yard’s highest awards for teaching (thousands of former students can attest to his dynamic classroom), research (Craig wrote fifteen books on the Civil War and the US Navy while at the Academy), and civilian service. His last book on the Civil War, Lincoln and his Admirals, won the Lincoln Prize in 2009. He also won the Knox Naval History Lifetime Achievement award in 2014, and returned to the Naval War College in Newport to serve as the Ernest J. King chair from 2019-2021.

Upon retiring from the classroom, Craig shifted the focus of his writing to World War II, writing four books for Oxford University Press that ultimately led to his receiving the Pritzker Military Museum and Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2023: The Battle of Midway, Neptune, World War II At Sea, and Nimitz at War (which also won the Gilder-Lehman Military History Prize). In 2025, he published Annapolis Goes To War, the story of the Naval Academy class of 1940, and his final book, Twelve Battles that Changed America, will be released posthumously next year.

Dr. Symonds made his first appearance here back in 2009 on Claude Berube’s recommended Christmas books.

A decade ago, I had the pleasure of working with Dr. Symonds and Claude on a limited-run podcast, Warrior Writers.

At that time, we used the now defunct BlogTalkRadio program and, sadly, that means that the podcasts are no longer available. I do have the audio from our weekly conversations offline, though.

In honor of Dr. Symonds, I think I am going to look at how I can bring this series back. They are timeless, really. That’s the least I could do for his memory.

79 good years, Craig. Fullbore.

Share

Leave a comment

There she is…just look at her—a B-52G in all her Cold War 1980s livery that says, “Yes, my belly is bright white, because I’m going to nuke you and don’t want to get all hot afterwards” glory.

For generations before us, and for generations to come, whenever a military competitor posed a challenge to our nation, you were usually one or two bullet points away from someone asking, “Hey, can we configure a B-52 to do that?”

As one finds with platforms with built-in flexibility and square footage, the answer is usually “yes.”

By the time the 1970s were over, the U.S. Navy realized that it didn’t just have a Soviet submarine problem, it had a significant Soviet surface fleet to deal with in the North Atlantic and Pacific. Our submarines were not the solution…they had more pressing issues to deal with, and they couldn’t be everywhere.

Our aircraft carriers and air wings were not designed to take on surface forces. They could do it, and their aircraft could carry Harpoons, but…still.

Sure, the Navy had P-3C Orions that could also launch Harpoons at range, but…still…not in saturation numbers, and not that quickly.

At some point, it was asked, “Hey, can we configure a B-52 to do that?”, and the answer was, “Yes.”

By the early 1980s, heavy bomber wings operating out of Loring Air Force Base in Maine and Guam were certified to bring the pain with 8–12 Harpoons per bomber.

I was the first time Midshipman Salamander became aware of this monster…but that was almost four-and-a-half decades ago…the same length of time as that between 1900 and the end of WWII.

The Harpoon is … not quite what it used to be, but we could get by with it.

Well, in the last half-decade, the U.S. Navy has discovered that it is now the world’s second-largest navy and again finds itself faced with a numerically superior and dangerous opponent at sea, this time the People’s Liberation Army Navy.

We have a modernization plan for that.

The US Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) issued a notice on October 7, 2026 signaling its intent to award a sole-source contract to Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control under an existing basic ordering agreement. The goal is to integrate the AGM-158C Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) onto the US Air Force’s B-52H strategic bombers. Interested parties have until October 22, 2026 to respond.

…

The B-52H can already carry up to 20 AGM-158 JASSMs on its wing pylons. LRASM (AGM-158C) was developed from the JASSM airframe, adapted specifically for the anti-ship mission. Because the two missiles share the same base platform, extending the B-52’s JASSM-carrying capability to LRASM is seen as a relatively natural technical step, with the bulk of the work concentrated on software, interfaces and certification. LRASM also carries added radar-warning receivers, target-recognition algorithms and autonomous targeting logic, and is known for being able to operate independently under electronic warfare conditions such as GPS jamming or disrupted communications.

More than just B-52 possibilities here…

The Air Force has already integrated the munition of which LRASM is derived from, the AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM), across its bomber and fighter fleets. B-52 and B-1 fleets have extensively deployed the missile during the U.S.-Iran War, according to Pentagon media.

For its maritime strike-focused derivative, the Air Force first fielded the missile from the B-1 Lancer. In June, the service revealed that the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber can launch LRASM during a sinking exercise in the Indo-Pacific.

The U.S. Navy’s patrol bomber (as I like to call it just to excite the usual suspects), the P-8A Poseidon, is stuck with the legacy Harpoon for a while.

U.S. Navy’s P-8A Poseidon currently deploy AGM-84D Block 1C Harpoon anti-ship missiles for their anti-surface warfare missions. Incremental future upgrades include the AGM-84 Harpoon II+ variant which brings GPS and a data link that allows the shooter to change the missile’s target in flight. The venerable (and world famous) Harpoon will have to be replaced, eventually, at some point in the future, as is already the case on surface ships (with the Naval Strike Missile selected by the U.S. Navy for new programs such as the LCS and FFG(X)).

That is…unfortunate…but not for too much longer. Last year, testing was done with the P-8A and LRASM.

I assume she can carry them on the same pylons she carries Harpoon on, so that gives her four.

Four is not 20, but it is more than 0, and that means something.

Let’s be direct about this. In the event of a war west of the International Date Line, our heavy bombers will be the belle of the ball. There will be more missions for them than aircraft. We know that.

Perhaps, if we have I&W of a large force taking to sea, we can get some bombers loaded with 20 LRASMs to bring the pain, but that would be about it. The Navy needs its own long-range asset to carry LRASM. The P-8A will need to be it…but…still…a BUFF bringing 20 to a party…that’s style.

UPDATE: I forgot to put in this helpful grid.

Leave a comment

Share

It is on rare occasion that we do a guest post here, but friend to the blog, Midrats Podcast alumnus, and co-host the CavasShips podcast, Chris Servello put together an inspired review of the moment we are at, this decision point, our nation has as a naval power. A must read.

Chris, over to you.

Standing in Greenwich, on the outskirts of London, surrounded by museum ships, artifacts and reminders of centuries of British seapower, I found myself thinking less about the past than about America’s maritime future.

That may sound like an odd conclusion to draw in a museum. But every gallery seemed to make the same point: naval power is not inherited forever. It depends on decisions made years before the consequences become obvious.

I came to London last week for APEX Europe, a thought and defense tech conference where defense leaders from across NATO are talking about the approaches, capabilities and investments that will shape future security. Those conversations felt more urgent after spending time in Greenwich. The museums made clear that maritime strength is about much more than ships. It depends on industrial capacity, technological imagination, national will and the willingness to act before a crisis makes action unavoidable.

That raises a difficult question for the United States: Are we making the decisions today that will preserve American maritime power tomorrow?

I’ll acknowledge something up front. I know I can sound like a broken record on this subject: act now, make hard choices, invest in the industrial base, embrace new technology, take care of our sailors and save our Navy.

But it’s hard not to keep saying it.

I can’t read another story about shipbuilding, listen to another speech about maritime strategy or visit another American or allied naval museum without reaching the same conclusion:

This is our moment.

For the United States Navy. For the maritime services. And for the nation.

Walk through the quaint town of Greenwich and you are surrounded by evidence of what maritime power meant to Britain—not just militarily, but economically, technologically and strategically. British seapower was never an isolated military capability. It was tied to the country’s industrial strength, commercial reach, technological innovation and national ambition.

What struck me most is that these museums are not really about old ships, paintings or artifacts.

They are about choices.

Some were smart. Some were disastrous. Some were made early enough to shape history. Others came only after events had made the cost of waiting impossible to ignore.

There is a lesson in that for America today.

Maritime power is not something a nation inherits forever because previous generations built a great Navy. Every generation has to choose it again.

Ours is making that choice right now.

We are making it through the ships we fund—and the ones we do not. Through the capacity we add to our shipyards, the workforce we recruit and retain, the weapons and munitions we procure, and the infrastructure we modernize.

We are making it through our willingness to experiment with autonomous and unmanned systems, super intelligence and other emerging technologies. More important, we are making it through our ability to move successful ideas out of demonstrations and into the hands of sailors.

And we are making it through our people: whether we give sailors, Marines, civilians and industry partners the resources, training, tools and leadership they need to solve hard problems instead of simply discussing them.

None of these challenges are secrets.

We know the condition of the American maritime industrial base. We know how long it takes to build and maintain ships. We know the pressures facing our workforce and supply chains. We can see the pace at which potential adversaries are expanding their maritime capacity.

We also know that technology is changing warfare at remarkable speed.

So this is not primarily a problem of awareness.

It is a problem of action.

America still has enormous advantages: remarkable sailors and Marines, world-class engineers and entrepreneurs, tremendous technological capacity, experienced allies and partners, and a private sector capable of moving quickly when given the opportunity.

But opportunities have expiration dates.

That is the part I keep coming back to—the part that, I admit, can make me sound like an old compact disc stuck on repeat.

Someday, there will be museums telling the story of the Navy we are building—or failing to build—right now.

Future generations will know what we knew.

They will know what China was building. They will know the condition of our shipyards and industrial base. They will know which technologies were emerging. They will know what military leaders, policymakers, analysts and industry executives were saying.

They will also know what we chose to do about it.

That is why protecting America’s maritime legacy is not about nostalgia. History should not become an excuse to admire the past while competitors build for the future.

The point of preserving history is to learn from it.

The museums in Greenwich are a powerful reminder of what can happen when a nation understands that its security, prosperity and global influence are inseparable from the sea. It is also a reminder that maritime dominance is neither permanent nor guaranteed.

America has its own extraordinary maritime inheritance.

But inheritance is not destiny.

We have to build. We have to experiment. We have to learn faster. We have to accept some risk and tolerate some failure. We have to expand industrial capacity, invest in our people and move promising technology from PowerPoint slides and demonstrations into the hands of sailors at sea.

Most of all, we have to act with the urgency this moment demands.

History will not simply record the challenges America faced during this period.

It will record the choices we made.

And the opportunities we either seized—or allowed to expire.

Chris Servello is the co-founder of Provision Advisors PR and Government relations firm, as well as the co-host of the award winning maritime podcast CavasShips.

Leave a comment

Share

The last 12 months have been good for our Navy. Regardless of what you think of this year’s operations against Iran and her proxies:

• Our surface forces built off their years of success in the Red Sea over the last year and have a level of experience in actual warfighting not seen since…well…WWII really. We saw a little bit of a threat in Korea, Vietnam, and a spot of bother now and then…but a sustained threat like this? Not seen in generations. Everything from low-speed drones to anti-ship cruise missiles to anti-ship ballistic missiles was thrown at our Aegis destroyers and our remaining cruisers…and nothing got through to them or the carriers and auxiliaries they supported. They sent a lot of ordnance downrange to top it all off.

• Speaking of auxiliaries, our merchant mariners started this conflict short of mariners and ships, but they supported sustained combat operations at sea with limited access to good and safe ports in a way that, again, we only have a whisper of understanding of. We have a lot of lessons here, and I hope to see action on them soon.

• In line with the above, we only know the wafer-thin details of the strikes Navy and Marine Corps aviation conducted. Everything from strafing runs to anti-mine work to sinking submarines.

• Our submarines managed to sink an enemy destroyer… in case you forgot… and I’m sure they did all sorts of fun things we’ll read about in 2040. Ditto our Marines and Naval Special Warfare bubbas. We saw hints of what you were doing if we knew where to look…but we don’t need the details. Tip of the hat.

Long deployments, extended combat operations, few safe and friendly ports to support them…and still…they excelled in everything that was asked of them.

Excellence was expected and provided. It was clear that we practiced until we were perfect, and then practiced perfection...or as close as we humans can get to it.

Oh, did you forget we took down the Marxist dictatorship in Venezuela and sent the Cubans, Chinese, and Russians packing? Yes, a joint operation…but…from the sea.

We are starting to see movement on the industrial front in shipbuilding, shipyards, and new programs. The Primes are being challenged by nimble, and quick-moving new players. The competition will be good for everyone…and a net positive for the tools our Sailors will take with them the next time their nation asks them to go in harm’s way.

There are 364 other days of the year when we can look at areas that need improvement or discuss some sub-optimal people or activities…but today is as good a day as any to say what is clear to see: Navy had a good year.

May the next year be even better.

Speaking of birthday presents…if you have not already pulled the trigger to be an underwriter of the CDR Salamander Substack, well, maybe today is your day!

In celebration of our Navy’s birthday, we’re offering a 20% discount on monthly and annual paid subscriptions today only. Your subscription will provide you with…

1. My undying gratitude and thanks for supporting what we do here.

2. Extra attention to your comments…as I know you are invested in the creative friction we try to promote here.

3. Access to the paid-subscriber-only UNCLAS Read Board Podcast.

You have until midnight Eastern Time to claim your discount. Click here.

Leave a comment

Share

My feelings have not changed that much since—I want something designed to be stacked up like so many Pringles—or for you science fiction fans, how the Cylons in the Battlestar Galactica reboot kept their Raiders on their Basestars—ready for use in number. Sailor-proof and combat-ready.

You hear the subject of “Drone Carriers” come up on a regular basis. You have to have the right drones to make it worthwhile, and if I were in charge of ship designations, they would be classified as CVQ. I’m willing to consider such, as I mentioned when I got a bit excited last April with the Portuguese Navy’s latest toy.

We’ve “appreciated the problem” and delayed action for too long, so what do we do if we want to do something now as opposed to do nothing but produce PPT and bad military fiction novels for the next decade?

My Cylon Raider CONOPS was based on integration with the existing carrier air wing and stealing hangar bay space, but what if we had a tactical drone that didn’t need that level of support and could operate independently of the CVN/CVW construct?

As now is better than later, what would we use to carry them? Our existing carrier air wings may be maxed out, and we don’t have enough shipyard time to modify the hangar bays. We already have too few large-deck amphibs and LPDs to do the missions they already have assigned. I have no desire to wait a decade and a half for an over-budget, over-engineered dedicated drone carrier. (In its present construct, we would not be able to get what Portugal is getting through NAVSEA intact.) We’d need something we already have that could, with a few modifications, fit the bill…not unlike how we made Jeep Carriers in WWII. Perfect? No. Good enough? Absolutely.

We should be moving faster more than slower. Experiment. Be prepared to fail, iterate, succeed, or, at worst, realize a lot more is needed before the concept is ready for the big show.

I have an idea. Actually, other people have already found my solution, and I’m going to adopt it.

First, let’s look at what drone might fit the bill.

Shield AI, a specialist vying to provide the autonomy software for the Air Force’s autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft, has won government backing for its X-BAT drone—but not from USAF.

The $50 million cash infusion comes from the Navy and the Defense Innovation Unit, which see intriguing possibilities for a jet designed to take off and land vertically from a trailer. The aircraft is powered by the same F-110 General Electric engine that powers an F-16. With an airframe smaller and lighter than the Viper, the engine can generate enough thrust for vertical takeoff and to land in a manner similar to SpaceX’s reusable rockets.

First things first. Take CCA and put it at the end of the line for some option down the road. It will just slow things down. THAT software is not ready, but other software is. Let’s use what we have, and then work on what we want.

For the Navy, the potential benefit of X-BAT is clear, Holmes and Penney agreed: X-BAT could launch and return to surface combatants of all kinds, not just aircraft carriers. It would give the Navy more ways to deploy airpower. Navy destroyers and amphibious ships already carry munitions and fuel, so they don’t have the logistical problems the Air Force would have in its ACE concept of operations.

…

Shield boasts that its Hivemind autonomy software is “the world’s best AI pilot” and has delivered “real battlefield outcomes.” But Penney noted that mission autonomy—the ability for software to execute complex air missions—is “a lot harder” than most people realize and something the Air Force is still ironing out through the CCA program.

On top of that, X-BAT’s signature ability to take off and land vertically is a technically complex, though not unheard of, undertaking. Shield AI has shown it can do VTOL with its smaller V-BAT aircraft that has a propeller, but the X-BAT is as large as a fighter jet. It will need to generate large amounts of thrust to take off and be extremely responsive and stable to land.

Let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Let’s not start off with a “complex air mission” with MOD-0. Sure, we’ll get there…but lets start off with something simple…a TLAM that comes back. A cruise missile delivery-to-launch-point and return. Heck, I’ll take simple ISR/ELINT etc for MOD-0.

Yeah, and the concerns about the operating envelopes for landing (sea state, wind across deck, etc) will need to be worked out…I’d like to see those curves…but let’s assume it is acceptable…limited but acceptable.

Where could we launch them from…where? I know you recognize the hull shape below. We have them in production. They’re the multi-tool of naval power.

The Puller Class ESB.

How many X-BAT can you carry? Can you store more below?

They are actually a bit larger than a WWII Casablanca CVE.

Together with the announcement, Shield AI has released a new rendering showing X-BAT aircraft deployed on an Expeditionary Sea Base (ESB) vessel. In August, the Navy’s PAE Aviation office said that, “to maintain maritime superiority, agility in acquisition is just as critical as the technology itself.”

Preparations towards first test flight

Shield AI also announced on Sept. 30 the selection of Newton, Kansas, and Des Moines, Washington, as sites for the X-BAT’s production, flight testing and sustainment.

…

Shield AI’s signature Hivemind autonomous flight software is planned to fly the drone in environments without Satellite Navigation (SATNAV) and communication links.

The F110-GE-129 has so far been tested with an Axisymmetric Vectoring Exhaust Nozzle (AVEN), while scale models of the X-BAT have undergone wind tunnel tests, wing structural stress trials and radar-cross section testing. Other videos released by the company have also shown its unique Launch and Recovery Vehicle for Tethered Flight (LRVTF) docking mechanism, developed for runway independent operation.

It would be great if we could adopt a SpaceX approach to this capability instead of the NASA approach. We don’t need perfect now. Better will show up, but only after you get good with the basics. Be prepared to lose a few and celebrate the opportunity to learn when you do.

Don’t overpromise and underdeliver. Assume you will need changes. Be happy with the MOD-0 or ‘A’ model, then quickly upgrade to the ‘B’ model, and so on.

The future is here. All we need to do is accept it as it is.

Leave a comment

Share

When Americans think about admirals in the Pacific in WWII, names like Nimitz, Spruance, and Halsey spring to mind.

You cannot fully understand the war in the Pacific if you don’t also look at the leaders on the Japanese side—men like Yamamoto, Kurita, and Nagumo.

On this week’s Midrats Podcast, we’re going to dive into the story of Admiral Yamamoto with our guest, Ronald Drabkin. We’ll tap into his research that led up to his next book, Admiral Yamamoto: The Gripping Story of the Legendary Japanese Naval Commander Who Planned and Executed the Pearl Harbor Attack.

You can listen here, or via the Spotify widget below.

Summary

In this episode, we explore the life and legacy of Admiral Yamamoto, a complex Japanese naval leader with a nuanced understanding of America, who played a pivotal role in World War II. Join us as we delve into his background, strategic mindset, and the lessons from his career.

Key Topics

• Yamamoto’s early life and education

• His understanding of America and its influence

• Naval strategies and battles in WWII

• Japanese military culture and rivalry

• Leadership style and personal quirks

• Impact of his decisions on WWII

• His relationships and personal life

• Post-war perception and legacy

Chapters

00:00 - Live intro and how Midrats handles audience questions

01:16 - Why the show is revisiting World War II and Admiral Yamamoto

02:41 - Ron Drabkin joins the show and the new book on Yamamoto

05:07 - Yamamoto’s childhood as Takano and the missionary who changed his life

07:21 - Lincoln, Franklin, and the ideals Yamamoto admired in America

10:11 - His letters reveal his real reactions to the United States

12:02 - Academy struggles, bullying, and the chip on his shoulder

14:14 - Poker, bluffing, cigars, and the gambling instinct

16:01 - The Russo-Japanese War and the loss of his fingers

19:19 - Why Yamamoto went to Mexico looking for oil

21:16 - The War College visit and Yamamoto’s aggressive curiosity

22:56 - Building Japanese naval aviation and rejecting battleship thinking

26:01 - Ruthless training standards and the cost in pilot losses

28:27 - Why the Japanese Army and Navy could barely cooperate

31:38 - The strategic logic behind a short war and Pearl Harbor

36:09 - Was Pearl Harbor supposed to force U.S. collapse?

38:07 - Midway planning and Yamamoto’s longer-term thinking

40:30 - Chioko, letters, and what his private life revealed

45:35 - Why Japanese submarines were not used as commerce raiders

46:45 - Vice Admiral Hori, friendship, and the survival of Yamamoto’s papers

49:34 - The myth of “Harvard-educated” Yamamoto and his lack of American friends

51:32 - Navy versus Army politics in Imperial Japan

54:04 - The Washington Naval Treaty and Yamamoto’s frustration

55:24 - Would Yamamoto’s survival have changed the war?

57:52 - How Japan views Yamamoto today

59:57 - Book release timing and where to find it

Ronald Drabkin is a popular author of books on World War II and espionage history. He initially learned Japanese while attending a Japanese University, before starting a career at Intel and other high tech companies.

He learned as an adult that his father had worked in counterintelligence for the US military. Curiosity about his father’s work drove him to do research that resulted in his first papers and book on Japanese naval intelligence.

He noted that the romanticized American view of Admiral Yamamoto as a “reluctant warrior” didn’t seem accurate. Furthermore, no new biography of Yamamoto had been published in a very long time, and substantial new information was available in Japan.

He has spent the last three years researching Yamamoto’s life across Japan and has even met and heard stories from Yamamoto’s family and some of his admirals, such as Kurita and Nagumo.

Share

Leave a comment

Zeebrugge. If you have been there, or visited its inner city of Bruges, you know what a beautiful and peaceful place it is - as most all of Belgium is today once you get out of the large cities like Brussels, Liege, etc. 

In 1918, though, Belgium was a nightmarish slaughterhouse where the bodies of millions were blended into the beaten earth—where like Okinawa and Iwo Jima over a quarter century later—the living earth would move with a blanketed mass of maggots.

In one of history's subtle hints she will give you early if you wish to listen, Britain found herself on the edge of starvation due to a threat few understood or even knew of at the beginning of the war - the submarine. Something new, unexpected, and decisive needed to be done.

By 1918, the Great War had entered a decisive phase. While Russia had been knocked out of the war, its place had been taken by the United States, which now provided a fresh pool of manpower and industrial capacity to the Allied cause. The transfer of these resources however was threatened by the continuing war at sea and the U-Boat menace that also threatened Britain's link with the continent. The early advance by the German Army in 1914 had meant that the Belgian ports of Ostend and Zeebrugge had been overrun and with the expansion of the port facilities, the Germans were in a position to threaten the very lifeline that supplied the Allied armies in France. The two ports were connected by a canal network with the city of Brugges that also gave access to the open sea. Brugges in turn, was connected to Germany by the railway network and partially completed U-Boats were shipped from Germany, to be finished at Brugges and then make their way to the open sea by means of the canal system. The canals formed a triangle and inside this, the Germans had built a series of airfields from which they conducted air raids on Britain and fortified the entire length of the coast with light and heavy artillery batteries. The Royal Navy did not attempt to bombard these ports until 12 May 1917 when it bombarded Zeebrugge in order to put the lock system out of action and used a smoke screen to hinder German observation. While the bombard failed in its task, the Germans stepped up defensive measures and as the war progressed, the front line drew ever closer to Ostend, bringing it within range of the Royal Marine heavy howitzer battery in France, forcing the Germans to transfer many of its facilities to Zeebrugge.

One of the objectives for the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) was the expulsion of the Germans from Flanders and to capture the ports of Zeebrugge and Ostend. The battle however failed to achieve the intended breakthrough and so any attempt to expel the Germans from these ports or to deny them the use of these facilities meant that any future attempt would have to made from the sea. The mounting losses in the war at sea caused the Royal Navy to look at the problem. A suggestion by Admiral Keyes that the ports might be blocked by sinking a ship in the entrance was initially rejected but as the war dragged on, the Royal Navy returned to the idea and it was decided that it might be done with the use of several ships, although the exact position would have to be chosen with care so that it would not be possible to get around the ships or to dredge around them to create additional channels and their bottoms would have to be blown to sink them as quickly as possible and prevent drifting.

So, as is often done in this line of work, the word went out. Volunteer for a mission you know nothing about—odds are you won't come back. You will be trained quickly, sloppily with a pick-up team. You execute.

As the ships were approaching the entrance to the port, some protection would be afforded (in the case of Zeebrugge) by the Mole, which extended in an arc across the entrance to the channel. It was over a mile in length and some 100 yards wide, having extensive storage facilities and hangers for seaplanes. A railway connected the Mole to the shore and was used to transfer men, equipment and stores. As the planning for the operation got underway, a special Royal Marine battalion (mainly volunteer) was formed in February 1918 to eliminate the battery that was situated at the end of the Mole and would threaten the block ships as they approached the canal. Lt Col F E Chichester was appointed to command the battalion but was succeeded by Major B N Elliott. The battalion consisted of a headquarters, a machinegun section, a mortar section, three rifle companies and medical support staff. The troops were to be conveyed to Zeebrugge in HMS Vindictive, assisted by the Iris and the Daffodil, two Mersey ferry boats that had been provided for this operation. Once they had reached Zeebrugge, Daffodil was to push Vindictive against the Mole until she could be secured and disembark the troops. The ships were modified for this task. Special ramps were fitted to Vindictive so that the storming parties could reach the Mole, while Iris and Daffodil had been fitted with ladders to that their parties could climb up onto the Mole. Vindictive was strengthened and armoured against the storm of fire she would receive and additional armament fitted so she could support the troops as the moved onto the Mole.

By April 1918, the preparations for the raid had been completed, the men trained for their tasks and the shipping collected for the operation. Three block ships were to be sunk in the Zeebrugge canal entrance, HMS Thetis, HMS Intrepid and HMS Iphegenia. The first time the force sailed, 11 April 1918, the weather conditions changed as they neared Zeebrugge, which forced a postponement, but on the eve of St George's Day, 22 April 1918 the force sailed and during the passage, Admiral Keyes signalled "St George for England". Commander Carpenter on the Vindictive replied, "May we give the dragon's tail a damned good twist." By 23.20 on 22 April, the monitors had opened fire on Zeebrugge. Twenty minutes later, the motor launches that had accompanied the force began to make the smoke screen. One minute after midnight, St George's Day, Vindictive arrived alongside the Mole after which Daffodil arrived alongside her to push her against the Mole. By this point the smoke screen had begun to lift and the defensive fire was intense. In the approach to the Mole, many of the ramps fitted to Vindictive were damaged and only two could be used to allow the storming parties to disembark on the Mole. The ladders fitted to Iris were damaged as well and so the troops had to transfer to Vindictive to land. Once on top of the Mole, they had to endure intense German machinegun fire in order to get to the battery and while they failed to knock it out, they prevented it from firing on the blocking ships and so succeeded in their mission, something for which they suffered heavy casualties for.

The distraction caused by the motor launches and Royal Marines enabled the block ships to approach the canal entrance without too much difficulty. Thetis ran into problems when one of its propellers got caught in a net, forcing her to collide with the bank. She had to be sunk some distance from the entrance but performed admirable work in helping to direct the remaining two ships into the canal entrance itself. Both Intrepid and Iphigenia were able to be sunk in the correct positions, thus blocking the canal. Two submarines, C1 and C3 were packed with explosives and rammed into the viaduct, demolishing it, thus isolating the Mole from the shore. The crews from the submarines and the block ships were picked up by the motor launches despite heavy fire from the German batteries. By 00.50 on 23 April the recall had sounded and by 01.00 the survivors were all aboard. A quarter of an hour later, Vindictive had cleared the protection of the Mole and was undergoing intensive fire from the Germans but managed to come through it. The raid on Ostend at the same time proved to be a failure but another attempt was tried the next month and Vindictive was used as a block ship in that operation. The Royal Marines had been on the Mole for just an hour and the force had displayed such courage and devotion to duty that it gave great encouragement to the Allied forces at such a dark hour in the war. The 4th Royal Marine Battalion was awarded two Victoria Crosses with another six being awarded for the action at Zeebrugge and three being awarded for the actions at Ostend. At Deal, on 26 April 1918, a ballot was held as to who should receive the awards, with Captain Bamford and Sergeant Finch winning. In order that the gallantry of the battalion would be remembered, it was decided that no other marine battalion should be named the 4th.

In a day when entire nations ponder abandoning the battle against an existential threat to their very existence because of the casualties suffered at Zeebrugge in a matter of minutes, it can make you wonder if we can even try to understand what these men did and why. We can try. That is what the study of history is. That is why what we have done to the study of history from elementary school through college and as adults is a crime in itself and a shame on our culture.

And in the end;

Much was made of the raid. Keyes was knighted, and 11 Victoria Crosses were awarded. The Germans, however, made a new channel round the two ships, and within two days their submarines were able to transit Zeebrugge. Destroyers were able to do so by mid-May.

Did it make a difference? Of course it did. Did the pundits of the day nitpick it to death? No, they understood that war from the Strategic to the Tactical is a dark room you step into. No, it has only been nit-pic'd once the pundits were safely behind the wall of freedom that those who bled built.

First posted NOV08.

Leave a comment

Share

The Sparrows Point Shipyard outside Baltimore has a history dating back to 1887.

She is one of the many neglected and underused monuments to a once great industrial power just waiting for the right people with the right vision to return.

I think we have it.

Via Howard Altman and the good people at TWZ,

…the Trump administration on Tuesday announced that Anduril is building a new two-million-square-foot facility in Baltimore designed to help speed up the production of Virginia class nuclear-powered attack submarines. The plant, dubbed Arsenal-2, will eventually produce components like torpedo tubes and spherical air flasks, which will then be sent to the two shipyards that build nuclear submarines, General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding. Anduril’s plan to build complex submarine components is a huge leap for a company with a shipbuilding portfolio consisting of a limited number of smaller craft.

The submarine component plant announcement was made as the Navy is struggling to keep up with its goal of producing two of these boats per year amid a wider issue of construction and delivery delays across the service. However, it will be years before the first Anduril-produced components are placed on a submarine…

…

“Today’s $6.6 billion investment represents the president’s commitment to restoring American maritime dominance by constructing new vessels in communities like Baltimore and across the country,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told a group of reporters, including from TWZ, at a Tuesday morning press conference.

Those funds include a $3.7 billion investment from Anduril to build and staff the new facility, and a contract worth up to $2.9 billion awarded to Anduril by the Navy to produce the components.

…

“Today’s $6.6 billion investment represents the president’s commitment to restoring American maritime dominance by constructing new vessels in communities like Baltimore and across the country,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told a group of reporters, including from TWZ, at a Tuesday morning press conference.

Those funds include a $3.7 billion investment from Anduril to build and staff the new facility, and a contract worth up to $2.9 billion awarded to Anduril by the Navy to produce the components.

As Anduril is a privately held company, we can safely assume that none of that $2.9 billion from the government will be put towards stock buybacks.

Ahem.

Anyway, the Primes cannot get to 2.0, so we need more industrial capacity. If Anduril can bring it, bring it in style.

So much is going on.

If you are having trouble keeping up with all the good news happening in the shipbuilding space, you’re not alone.

This next bit is incredibly smart.

Before Arsenal-2 is up and running, Anduril said it plans to “manufacture critical Virginia class submarine components at a new 160,000-square-foot facility in Orange County, California, purpose-built to support key submarine construction processes and SUBSAFE-qualified production qualification [efforts].”

The Orange County facility will give Anduril “a two-year operational head start to develop and validate manufacturing methods, production workflows, and quality systems before Arsenal-2 comes online,” the company noted. “It will support prototyping and production of Virginia-class test assets and critical maritime components, including torpedo tubes, while allowing Anduril to recruit and train the early workforce on the systems and standards that will ultimately scale at Arsenal-2. Once Arsenal-2 comes online, the Orange County facility will continue supporting broader maritime manufacturing efforts across Anduril’s industrial network.”

In case you are wondering what Arsenal-1 is…

Arsenal-2 follows the development of Anduril’s Arsenal-1 plant in Ohio, first announced two years ago. That five-million-square-foot facility, once fully up and running, will be able to “produce tens of thousands of autonomous weapons systems addressing the urgent needs of the United States and our allies,” the company said at the time.

BZ to the New York Post … nice summary video.

I would be remiss if I did not point out this one aspect of this project that gives me pause: the State of Maryland has a pernicious political and regulatory environment, not to mention labor rules. I assume this has been mitigated to an acceptable level in back-room discussions. That’s my planning assumption. If not…ick.

I’m going to have to do a ‘Gulf of America’ post next week just to review with you what’s happening in Texas and Louisiana, but there is exciting “creative friction” happening all over the national security space.

Here’s another example.

As I mentioned on yesterday’s UNCLAS Read Board Podcast, you absolutely have to give a listen to the Ruthless Podcast interview with Joe Lonsdale on Rebuilding American Shipbuilding, AI, Data Centers, and America’s Industrial Boom. His comments about the Pentagon bureaucracy and the Primes are so spot on…you just need to hear it from him.

The interview starts at about the 41 minute mark.

Leave a comment

Share

Summary

Sal discusses current geopolitical tensions, the state of Iran, the importance of reindustrialization, and the resilience of Western systems, providing insights into global security and policy strategies.

Key Topics

• Gaza conflict and its implications

• Iran’s strategic trajectory towards Cubanization

• Reindustrialization efforts in the US, especially n…

Read more

Some things are so fundamental, they don’t change all that much over time.

Hard moments in history are clarifying events. The more difficult they are, the clearer they can make things for you.

As I have mentioned before, one of the big wake-up calls I received after October 7th, 2023, was how much very real Jew-hate existed in modern Western society. Not just there, but excused by a large part of our cultural and political system as well.

People and institutions revealed themselves to us. Distressing, but clarifying. Don’t look away when you see what is being said and done today. No. Look closer. Remember. Note. Act. Don’t forget.

Politicians, academics, the media, the entertainment industry, and just the people down the street revealed themselves. The mask did not slip; for many, it was gleefully ripped off.

While the universities have quieted, a bit, the real important areas are thoroughly infected. Just look at the Senate race in Michigan. Look at some of the candidates for statewide office in Minnesota. Look at the newly elected mayor of New York City.

Jew hate—and I am not interested in your nuanced spin about anti-Zionism, let’s be adults here—has been mainstreamed. And it started the same day the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza set forth on their murder, rape, pillage, and kidnapping.

As for Gaza in 2026, I have no more sympathy for that city than I have for the cities of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan that we and the British left in ruin. They started wars of aggression, and the victims of that aggression rose to the occasion to stand against evil. They started total war, they invited total war.

Those who wanted total war, supported total war, or did nothing to stop total war—behold the feast you brought upon yourself. Either accelerationists or nihilists, it does not matter.

Behold the wages of your enterprise.

Israel was, if anything, restrained in this war—more restrained than almost any equally justified military in history.

As we are now starting our fourth year of the Israeli-Gaza War of 2023, I’m not going to retell a lot that I’ve already written on the topic. If you want to catch up, see the posts with Gaza and Israel tags.

I want to remind everyone how we got here.

Talk to anyone familiar with the political realities on the ground on October 6th, 2023, and they will tell you that the communities that surrounded Gaza were, politically, the most accommodating and left-leaning you would find in Israel. The ones who had the most sympathy for Gazans. It was those Israelis who received the nightmarish wrath that extruded out of Gaza the morning of October 7th, 2023.

Just look at the killings and kidnappings numbers for some perspective.

Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been at war with the Palestinian Sunni Islamist group Hamas (a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, or FTO), which led an attack that day from the Gaza Strip into Israel. More than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals (including 46 U.S. citizens in Israel) were killed on October 7, and Hamas and other groups also seized some 251 hostages.

How should Americans look at those numbers (besides the very real 46 fellow Americans killed). When adjusted for population, that would be as if in one day, 40,729 Americans were killed by an invading force. 8,519 Americans kidnapped.

Would we do any less? I think not.

That is just the murder and kidnapping. I would refer everyone to the Dinah Project Report if they want details of the campaign of rape on October 7th. The injured are in the thousands more.

Now, today, see what is right in front of you. All across the world, the campaign of rape and murder that Gazans opened their war with has been rewarded by recognition of a state that never existed. Left-wing cities and college campuses have allowed open Jew-hate to flourish. Hundreds of thousands have marched from Amsterdam to Dearborn supporting Hamas, and, as such, wholesale rape, murder, torture, and kidnapping.

It really is that simple. Those who excuse it are, in my mind, as morally bankrupt as those who support it.

Never again? For the worst reasons, we have decided that, perhaps, just a little.

Demand accountability and call it as you see it.

Speaking of institutional rot, I would be remiss—because it is inside the Navy lifelines—if I did not once again remind everyone of the moral cowardice of one of our own institutions. In a venue that justified its existence largely on the lack of attention to the plight of women as victims of war, the staff that run the Women, Peace, and Security program at the Naval War College ignored—just weeks after the mass rape and slaughter of women and girls—the entire atrocity by Gaza.

I am still waiting for full accountability there. Heck, I’ll just take partial at this point.

Where to from here? I don’t know. What I do know is that anyone who calls for a “two-state solution” simply has not been paying attention. Even Israeli Arabs no long think this is possible.

To finish things up, Konstantin Kisin has some points that need to be heard. As good now as then.

Share

Leave a comment

Airfield security has been a pebble in my shoe for a very long time. I assume everyone is familiar with my post from 11 months ago a bout the wake-up call at Whitman AFB? If not, give it a read, then come back.

Let’s all get our reference point first from last week.

Five men who were arrested on suspicion of explosive and terrorism offences after a major incident was declared at an RAF airbase in the west of England have been released on police bail.

Three vans were spotted near RAF Fairford in the early hours of Sunday morning and the police were called. A major incident was declared, and everyone in the small village of Whelford was evacuated.

The head of Counter Terrorism Policing has stressed that the five men remain under investigation and must adhere to strict bail conditions. It has since come to light that the first of two 999 calls was made by one of the arrested men.

A dual UK-Iranian national, aged 25, has also since been arrested on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts.

Investigators are exploring “multiple lines of enquiry”, Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor said on Monday, including whether proxies or individuals were working on behalf of a foreign state - knowingly or not.

Like all professionals do, let’s go to the map room.

This is what the geometry looks like.

OK. Soak that in a bit. Whelford is one of the few little residential areas around this base where our literally irreplaceable heavy bombers were operating from. The parking apron they are using? There it is, right around where the “RAF Fairford” label is.

Now, let’s give you some scale. The smaller circle is 500 yards from where the vans and “fellas” were. The larger circle is 1,000 yards.

Put on your force protection hat. Remember Operation Spider Web from over a year ago and what it was warning us about?

I know for a fact that there has been a rather heated argument over whether we are simply taking too many risks with some of our “There’s nothing dangerous about this airfield! Why, four generations of my family have been flying out of here.” attitude. Habits, inertia, etc.

We Americans make some assumptions about distance that is simply not a reality overseas, especially in Europe.

Let me give you an idea of what the USAF is used to when it comes to controlling the land around your strategic assets.

The issues about Whitman AFB that we discussed last year? Here is what those 500 and 1,000 yard radius circles look like from the CCP’s trailer park.

One of the two airbases that B-1Bs are based out of in the U.S. is Dyess AFB outside Abilene, TX.

The 500 and 1,000 yard radius circles are applied here—using the Whitman-standard-mobile-home-park launch area outside the base boundaries.

We are spoiled. It is as if no one really did a good Red Hat from a force protection point of view and assumed we’d be as safe “over there” as we are “here”. Complacent, comfortable, and … well … its England … how much safer can it be?

That is an assumption best left to the past. FY2027’s Jolly Old England is not your grandfather’s Jolly Old England. From letting those found in Fairford out on bail early, to the whole Diego Garcia issue, to their neglect of their military readiness, to their flooding themselves with undigestible hordes of military-aged males from parts of the world who hold the West in contempt…the whole stew is starting to smell a bit off. Old assumptions no long apply.

What should the Navy be thinking about? As the members of the Front Porch know, I’ve always been a fan of Strategic Homeporting going back decades, not just for our aircraft, but for our fleet.

I hate fleet concentration areas simply because it makes the enemy’s targeting challenges easier. Master air bases simply ensure compounded strategic risk in an era of transnational terrorists, millions of illegal aliens, and drone technology. Accountants love consolidate mega-bases as much as our enemies.

Let’s look around a few of our CONUS Navy bases.

Compared to Fairford, NAS Oceana is a little better, but not much.

On the other side of town, Naval Base Norfolk is even better from the marina parking lot on Willoughby Spit. Ahem.

Even my favorite force protection nightmare, Naval Base San Diego, looks like Fort Knox compared to Fairford.

Now, if you really wanted to put a dent in the U.S. Navy air ASW, surveillance and reconnaissance, then the trailer park across from NAS Jacksonville…well…yeah.

So, does everyone have a better handle on why we had to bug out of RAF Fairford?

We could go through a whole host of other legacy NATO bases and get equally ugly results.

What to do?

1. Disperse our most critical assets across more bases. Yes, it makes logistics, maintenance, more difficult and expensive…but that is cheaper than losing assets on the deck that are no longer in production.

2. Rededicate ourselves to the concept that institutionalized #1: strategic homeporting. Packing everyone in one spot is just stupid.

3. Take base security seriously. The United States Air Force Security Forces need to make the Royal Air Force’s RAF Regiment look like mall cops and should have full control over the air defenses of its bases, from last-100-yard gun systems up to Patriot batteries clawed back from the Army.

4. NAVAIR needs to benchmark what the USAF does with its bases, especially naval airbases.

5. The Secretary of the Navy and the Chief of Naval Operations must, at every opportunity, bring up the lessons of the last few years about the disadvantages of large, static bases as a primary way to project power. Remind everyone of the flexibility, security, and national ownership of having your assets afloat—from C2 to strike. Assets at sea are not fully secure, but they are harder to kill.

We live in a new tactical, operational, and strategic environment.

Distribute risk.

Mitigate threats.

No, it isn’t sexy. It isn’t cheap. It isn’t fun, but it must be done.

Leave a comment

Share

It is easy to be cynical about published strategies. Often they don’t quite align with what actually happens (history has her own plays), or they distract themselves with unimportant or irrelevant “latest thing” socio-political posturing.

While everyone’s eyes have been focused over the last half-year on U.S. and Israeli actions against Iran, does everyone remember where military action this year started?

Venezuela.

Let’s step back a bit and look at a couple of quotes from documents we discussed in detail over the last year, the National Security Strategy (NSS) and the National Defense Strategy (NDS).

As the NDS is subordinate to the NSS, let’s start there.

After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region. We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere. This “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests.

Our goals for the Western Hemisphere can be summarized as “Enlist and Expand.” We will enlist established friends in the Hemisphere to control migration, stop drug flows, and strengthen stability and security on land and sea. We will expand by cultivating and strengthening new partners while bolstering our own nation’s appeal as the Hemisphere’s economic and security partner of choice.

Look at that last part. The three are intertwined. The same cartels that control the drugs flooding the U.S. are also the ones who are making bank on each illegal alien that crosses the southern border.

…control migration, stop drug flows, and strengthen stability and security on land and sea.

So, how do you “operationalize” this concept?

Let’s look to the NDS.

In recent decades, our nation has been overwhelmed by a flood of illegal aliens. At the same time, narcotics have poured across our borders, poisoning hundreds of thousands of Americans. Narcotics traffickers in our hemisphere have profited enormously off this evil and are rightly designated as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs)…

At sea, we have seen direct action against drug-running boats and their resupply vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.

Ashore, there have been hints here and there, but now we are seeing combined operations out in the open.

Via CBS,

U.S. troops helped Ecuador dismantle a local branch of Mexico’s notorious Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), arresting more than 30 members, Ecuador’s interior minister said Thursday.

Quito, a Washington ally, is enthusiastically cooperating with President Trump’s crackdown on organized crime across Latin America.

Thursday’s early-morning operation “was conducted jointly with U.S. troops and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA),” Ecuadoran Interior Minister John Reimberg wrote on X.

Over 30 Ecuadorans were arrested for allegedly belonging to the group with a “direct connection to the CJNG,” he said.

The minister said the group was involved in trafficking cocaine from Colombia, the world’s largest producer, to international markets via ports in southwestern Ecuador.

Some 320 Ecuadoran police officers and 50 uniformed personnel from the U.S. Southern Command took part in the operation spanning several cities, he said.

While I think there are some good faith arguments against attacking drug boats (as I’ve stated from the start, I support this direct action that I used to dream about in the 1990s, when I was chasing these people on the high seas), it is hard to argue against the coordinated action with South American nations. Heck, even Marine Raiders are getting in on the action.

After all, it is the money via demand from the U.S. (and Europe) that is enabling these cartels destroying the rule of law in other nations. It is only fitting that we invest our resources to help mitigate this negative secondary effect.

Political shifts to the right in South America are opening the door to more cooperation with the U.S. against these cartels. This is a gain for everyone.

President Daniel Noboa tied the raids to his speech at the U.N. General Assembly a day earlier, where he said “no state can confront alone an enemy that crosses borders.”

So much potential here, and we are only getting started.

Cappy has a good 30-minute summary of the action, with more detail than you will find anywhere else.

Share

Leave a comment

You go to war with the weapons your government gives you, not the weapons you wish you had. The key as a leader is how you employ what you have against the enemy.

I give you the Imperial Austrian triple-decker wooden battleship, Kaiser. Yes the AUSTRIAN Navy, again.

Why her for Fullbore? Well, the year was 1866 and this wooden warship held her own in the first major naval battle in Europe between ships of iron and steam and the Italian Navy at the Battle of Lissa during the Third Italian War of Independence.

Sure, she was outdated and Fleet Admiral Wilhelm Freiherr von Tegetthoff was only 39, but the battle was a glorious effort for a navy that had only a little more than half a century left.

Encountering the Italian fleet early on the morning of 19 July 1866, Tegetthoff sailed straight for the center of the Italian fleet, hoping to ram the ships to make up for his own fleet’s lack of firepower. The smoke from the Italian ships made visibility very poor, however, and the Austrians missed the Italian fleet completely. Swinging around, Tegetthoff again charged, this time setting two Italian armored ships on fire and damaging several more.

After Tegetthoff’s flagship, the Erzherzog Ferdinand Max, rammed and sank the armored Italian frigate Re d’Italia, the Italian fleet retreated the next day. Tegetthoff returned in triumph to his base at Pola (Pula). Nevertheless, his victory did not materially affect the outcome of the war, as Italy emerged victorious.
...
Seeing things going badly, Persano found the courage to throw himself into battle, deciding to ram the unarmoured screw battleship Kaiser rather than one of the armoured ships engaged with the Italian 2nd Division much nearer him. However, Kaiser managed to dodge Affondatore. Taking heart from his admiral, the captain of Re di Portogallo decided to hurl his ship at Kaiser, maintaining a heavy fire with her rifled guns as he did so. At the last moment, von Petz turned the tables on her and turned into the ram, in effect conducting a counter ram. The impact tore off Kaiser’s stem and bowsprit, leaving her figurehead embedded in Re di Portogallo. The Italian used the opportunity to rake Kaiser with fire, putting her mainmast and smokestack into the sea. The smoke was so great that as they backed off for another ram they lost sight of each other and ended the duel.

It’s all here. Using 2,000-year-old tactics to win. Making the best of the fleet you have. Aggressive action. Leaders who lead and win without waiting for specific direction to do so.

More on the Kaiser, she survived the battle, here.

Leave a comment

Share

I was looking for a quick summary of the significance of the Battle of Agincourt and why it might have been chosen as the name for the effort to, in a year’s time, set up a new 4-star functional combatant command, the Autonomous Warfare Command.

In a discussion of Jodi Taylor’s fictional novel A Second Chance, Hazel Cushion over at Welcome to Jodi Taylor Books made a solid summary.

The Battle of Agincourt …. demonstrated that a well-disciplined force, equipped with innovative tactics and superior weaponry, could overcome numerical superiority on the battlefield. Moreover, Agincourt shattered the myth of invincibility surrounding the French knights, paving the way for future military innovations and strategic thinking.

That captures what everyone is trying to do.

How do we need to look at Robotic and Autonomous Systems (RAS) as a key to battlefield success for our nation as we approach 2030? How do we reshape our large and unwieldy defense sector to rise to the occasion?

With the 5th anniversary of the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022 six months away—and with things having finally evolved to demonstrate the central role RAS will have in future wars at sea and ashore—we have finally decided that our leisurely pace, bureaucratic sloth, and general appreciating-the-situationness were not sufficient for the needs of the moment. We need to move faster with more. Inside our system, besides requirements and needs (not always the same), how do we do that?

You need three things:

• Sponsorship

• Money

• Advocacy

I don’t think anyone has been satisfied with where we are at the opening of 1QFY27. That appears to be the driving force behind it. The existing structures are not getting the job done, so time to change the structure.

Yesterday, among a half-dozen areas covered in his State of the Force speech (the other five I may cover next week in whole or in part), Secretary of War Hegseth brought up a solution his team has come up with to get things up on step. I’ll put the video of the speech at the bottom of this post.

The process is Operation Agincourt. The endgame is a 4-star Autonomous Warfare Command to be stood up a year from now, October 1st, 2027.

The full memo is below, I cover a few items that stuck out to me after the memo.

1. We have got to find something better, name-wise, than that acronym that…well…how do you pronounce that, “Der-PUM-ux-es”? At first glance, you have to wonder: is that one of Elon Musk’s kids?

2. This clearly states that while it will be a combatant command, it will be a supporting command, and the existing COCOMs will be the supported.

3. This is an aggressive but necessary and doable timeline.

“…rebalanced Joint Force investment allocation…”, money, people, and authorities are going to be moved around. Lots of cheese to move. This is where the fighting will be. I hope that this restructuring, from a personnel point of view, will be created out of existing funded billets from other commands, i.e. no increase in staff bloat.

1. Congress will have to put in necessary legislation. We’ll see what happens after the election.

The next year will require a lot of work, done quickly, with a new Congress, and a ticking clock.

For those in the right place at the right time, what a great opportunity.

Leave a comment

Share

I won’t lie, I really wanted the successor to the Grumman Iron Works, Northrop Grumman, to get the award…just to have that legacy back on the flight deck…but…I am not emperor.

Boeing it is,

…the Department of War announces a contract awarded by the U.S. Navy to Boeing for the Sixth-Generation F/A-XX Strike Fighter under the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program. The contract is valued at more than $20B for the full-scale development phase. The contract procures multiple test aircraft for ground, airworthiness, systems, and weapons integration testing.

Boeing already has the USAF’s F-47 contract…so I will assume there will be a fair bit of commonality. Perhaps a similar path to how the YF-17 became the F/A-18? We’ll see, won’t we?

Based on the fuzzy image Boeing put out at the top of the post, it appears to be tailless…dare I say, a flying wing.

I’m not as concerned with aesthetics as I am with robustness at sea and being designed for the requirements of a carrier-based fighter (…and yes, get rid of the F/A and just use F)

Everyone here knows some of my baseline requirements for F/A-XX, in order of importance:

1. Range: The Pacific’s vastness demands range from you, but that vastness also grants you more security. Range give you safety and flexiblity.

2. Numbers: We have to build a lot of them and be able to scale if needed. That means the right compromise between cutting edge and practical production. The next Great Pacific War will not be measured in weeks or months, but years. We will have significant battlefield losses.

3. Capacity: Carry a lot of fuel and a lot of weapons.

In summary…and you know where this is going…it has to be a heavy fighter.

I will make the assumption that the A-model will be single seat…but there are a whole host of missions (which we have a F/A-18E and F)—especially with the integration of collaborative combat drones—that make a two seat heavy fighter an additional tool in the airwing toolbag that you will need.

This next line gives me a bit of hope.

Following this contact award announcement, Boeing will deliver the platform to augment and eventually replace legacy F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and EA-18G Growlers beginning in the 2030s, and operate alongside the F-35C.

EA-XX should be a two seater…so the engineering will have to be done anyway.

The aviation version of the transformationalists will enlist the accountants and the drone-autists to try to force an all single-seat fleet, but that would be a mistake. They might get support from those who read more military fiction than understand military practice, so there will be an ongoing argument that hopefully isn’t engineered into a fait accompli.

Again, we’ll see.

The important thing is we can now move forward to prototype testing and eventual production.

Chop chop. History is impatient.

Meanwhile…we still don’t know a lot…but we can guess.

Over on YouTube, BingoFuel put this out three days ago. Nice overview of why the future is tailless.

Leave a comment

Share

I have an affection for all the ships I have been on, and the Big E is one of my girls. I like to keep an eye on her.

She’s the ship that keeps on giving, in a lot of ways.

I am quite sure that when the USS Enterprise (CVN 65) was laid down during the Eisenhower Administration just 13 years after the end of WWII, someone had to have thought, “How are they going to deal with all the radioactive bits when they decommission her in the next century?”

I’d place a pretty good bet that in hushed tones, the general response was, “We’ll be dead by then. That will be someone else’s problem.”

Maybe not. Back then they probably thought we’d do something responsible like, “Oh, they’ll just encase them in glass and then dump them at the bottom of the most isolated and stable part of the ocean floor, or deep in some cave in Nevada. Don’t worry, it isn’t like they’ll just put them in a metal box and stack them all together out in the open in CONUS. It will be fine.”

Oops.

We are just a few months shy of a decade removed from the Big E’s decommissioning, and her hulk is still haunting Pier 2 in Newport News. There she is, at the top of the post.

So far, it appears that the lawyers have been doing the most work.

Via Luis Reyes at AutoNotion,

The fuel, at least, is long gone. More than 1,000 shipbuilders defueled all eight reactors in a job that ran from 2013 to late 2017, and what’s left behind is low-level radioactive structure. Even so, Navy documents say the hull could still hold more than 8,000 tons of hazardous or radioactive waste.

The contract took two tries and a federal judge

Here’s where it gets messy. The Navy first handed NorthStar this job in May 2025, for $536.7 million. Then HII ShipCycle filed a protest. HII is the parent company of Newport News Shipbuilding, which means the outfit that built the Enterprise, defueled it, and has it tied up at its own pier also wanted the contract to destroy it. Frankly, you can’t blame them for trying to keep the whole life cycle in house.

HII’s complaint said the government’s online bid portal glitched on deadline day and shut its offer out. In February 2026, Judge Philip Hadji of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims sided with HII, called the contracting officer’s handling of the situation “arbitrary and capricious,” and ordered the Navy to rerun the competition. The ruling pointed out that HII’s proposal came in roughly $100 million below NorthStar’s. NorthStar appealed, the Navy reopened the bidding anyway, and everyone got to submit fresh offers.

The do-over changed the price. NorthStar won again on July 15, this time at $418.5 million, about $118 million less than its own first bid. It wasn’t free, though: the finish line moved from November 2029 to September 2030.

For those doing the math, that is 13 years after her decommissioning in 2017. That really doesn’t tell the full story, as she was deactivated five years earlier, in 2012. They still have not announced when they are going to tow the old girl—18 years after she was of any real use to the fleet.

Unlike our other CVN, which have only two, the one-off Enterprise had eight reactors and all the glowing bits that go with it.

Navy documents say the hull could still hold more than 8,000 tons of hazardous or radioactive waste.

I was going to make a snarky comment about all the asbestos I personally took with me when I left, mostly in my lungs and clothing, but a different topic for a different day.

The glowing bits have a long journey to the eastern deserts of Washington.

Here’s her glowy-bits’ new neighborhood. Trench 94, with all the other Navy nuclear waste we don’t have the institutional bravery and vision to find a more secure and permanent home for.

This is what we consider the final resting place? Really? One day, just pile sand over it and hope for the best?

I hope we get better and faster at this. USS Nimitz (CVN 68) is not that far behind.

Leave a comment

Share

Like I said to more than one person, “So, the Japanese are going to get the CG(X) we should have already in the fleet?”

Well, now the Italians are making me green with envy too.

Europe’s Organisation for Joint Armament Cooperation (OCCAR) has issued a €3.7 billion ($4.2 billion) contract for the production of two Italian Navy DDX destroyers to the Orizzonte Sistemi Navali (OSN) joint venture, made up of local firms Fincantieri and Leonardo.

“The DDX programme is set to redefine the Italian Navy’s capability profile in the field of air and missile defence through a significant generational leap” at both a platform and combat systems level, said the two manufacturers in a joint statement today.

…

The DDX measures 180 meters (590.5 feet) long and features a 13,500-tonne (14,881.2-ton) displacement, in addition to a range in excess of 4,000 nautical miles, according to the joint statement.

The statement added that the surface ship will provide an “unprecedented” integrated air and missile defense (IAMD) “capability against missile, ballistic and hypersonic threats” courtesy of a SADOC 5 C5I system, a digital S-band AESA radar and MBDA-made weapons.

In line with a first quarter financial results and a business outlook update, Fincantieri indicated in May that it expected to seal near-term orders worth around €5 billion, including the DDX deal. The shipbuilder noted then that two units from the Italian Navy’s Joint Maritime Mission System (J3MS) program would be contracted within months.

Beyond domestic business, the firm “plans to finalize major contracts with several foreign navies both for the supply of surface vessels, including FREMM frigates, and for the provision of services in the Middle East and other key geographic areas,” reads the Q1 summary.

Back in my post last year, I included this handy comparison that included the South Korean cruiser (and yes, I know they are calling these destroyers, but my Aunt Fanny, these are cruisers) and the Arleigh Burke Flight III for comparison. I’ve added in the Italian ship. (NB: depending on sources, numbers can vary slightly, and the comparison below includes the ASEV’s higher displacement).

I don’t want this to degenerate into a discussion about BBGN and the mothballing of the DDG(X) program. No. On a very serious note I want to point again to a marker I put down years ago: NAVSEA and our entire military shipbuilding infrastructure have yet to produce an effective surface warship design since the Cold War ended three decades ago.

We have a whole series of outright failures like LCS, DDG-1000, FFG-62, and programs that never left the PPT like CG(X) and DDG(X).

Other nations with significantly smaller bureaucracies and industries out-think, out-manage, and out-lead our Navy when it comes to the design-build corner of maritime power.

We have great weapons. Superior electronics. But they’re all being shoe-horned and spot-welded onto designs two generations old.

A fix is supposed to be in. Let’s hope it is. However, we won’t really know until we have more new ships being built, and the only new clean-sheet design with funding, BBGN, is displacing water. Years. It will take years.

Until then, well, Arleigh Burkes until the crack of doom, and we can watch other nations do what we were once world leaders in.

Has anyone been held accountable? Has a name-and-shame story been told that lets the American people know the who and why?

Why not?

We know the who and why of the Ford Pinto. We know the who and why of the DC-10. We know the who and why of AMC.

…but still. Here we are.

Where is our Navy’s Richard Feynman? Feynman is one of your humble blogger’s heroes. He’s the one who famously demonstrated how the cold compromised the Challenger’s O-rings and helped explain why the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up.

That is what we need.

Again, reform is great. Perhaps some of the changes we have recently made will bear fruit—but that will be for nothing if we do not have a clear, blunt, and open discussion about how this nation’s greatest gift from prior generations—its Navy—was allowed to drift into serial incompetence and bureaucratic self-indulgence.

If we do not pull out the truth and hold it up to the light for all to see, then the system and the people in it will drift back to their prior state; the dog will return to its vomit.

Until then, congrats to our Italian and Japanese allies. Take whatever number you are planning to build and double it. Make no mistake, it will increase your nation’s security, your collective security with your allies, and I will bet good money that one day if the balloon goes up the U.S. Navy will come begging for you to help escort our CVN and ESG.

Leave a comment

Share

Tuesday was the 250th anniversary of the death of a young man who was given so much, earned so much, and at the ripe old age of 21 gave it all in service to our nation at its very birth.

In case you missed it, I am referring to one of the greatest Americans the state of Connecticut ever produced.

At a time when only a minority were in rebellion against the British crown, he stepped forward. As in all revolutions, the example set by others early — and the efforts made by the few who led the way — is what makes their honor so great.

Hale had a lot to lose. He came from, and was raised to assume, the highest roles in the established colonial order.

Wiki has a great summary, and I will borrow generously from that account.

Nathan Hale was born in Coventry, Connecticut, in 1755, to Deacon Richard Hale and Elizabeth Strong, a descendant of Elder John Strong. He was a great-grandson of the Reverend John Hale, an important figure in the Salem witch trials of 1692. He was also the grand-uncle of Edward Everett Hale, a Unitarian minister, writer, and activist noted for social causes including abolitionism. He was the uncle of journalist Nathan Hale, who founded the Boston Daily Advertiser and helped establish the North American Review.

In 1769, when Nathan Hale was fourteen years old, he was sent with his brother Enoch, who was sixteen, to Yale College. He was a classmate of fellow Patriot spy Benjamin Tallmadge. The Hale brothers belonged to the Linonian Society of Yale, which debated topics in astronomy, mathematics, literature, and the ethics of slavery. Nathan graduated with first-class honors in 1773 at age 18 and became a teacher, first in East Haddam and later in New London.

At an age when modern young men are still trying to figure out who they will ask to prom and what fraternity they might want to join at college, Hale was already out of college and working as a teacher.

Open rebellion started before he was even of legal drinking age, by modern standards.

What did he do? At 20 years of age,

…Hale joined a Connecticut militia unit and was elected first lieutenant within five months. His company participated in the Siege of Boston, but Hale remained behind. It has been suggested that he was unsure as to whether he wanted to fight, or possibly that he was hindered because his teaching contract in New London, Connecticut did not expire until several months later, in July 1775. On July 4, 1775, Hale received a letter from his classmate and friend Benjamin Tallmadge, who had gone to Boston to see the siege for himself. He wrote to Hale, “Was I in your condition, I think the more extensive service would be my choice. Our holy Religion, the honor of our God, a glorious country, & a happy constitution is what we have to defend.” Tallmadge’s letter was so inspiring that, several days later, Hale accepted a commission as first lieutenant in the 7th Connecticut Regiment under Colonel Charles Webb of Stamford.

Hale was also a member of Knowlton’s Rangers, the first organized intelligence service organization of the United States of America, led by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Knowlton.

A few months before his 21st birthday, Hale made a decision.

Stop.

Ponder where you were at that age. Consider each clause of the next paragraph, and then think about the character and example of this young man. As a side note, that is why I chose the statue in NYC‘s City Hall Park of Hale at the top of this post. Too many artistic representations of him make him look like he’s in his 40s. He wasn’t. He was a young man.

He was barely 21 years old.

In the spring of 1776, the Continental Army moved to Manhattan to defend New York City against the anticipated British attack. In August, the British soundly defeated the Continentals in the Battle of Long Island via a flanking move from Staten Island across Brooklyn. General George Washington was desperate to determine the location of the imminent British invasion of Manhattan. To that end, Washington called for a spy behind enemy lines, and Hale was the only volunteer.

No training as a spy. No senior person to work with…as the revolution was not even a year old. He simply said, “Send me.”

On September 8, 1776, Hale volunteered to go behind enemy lines and report on British troop movements, which he knew was an act of spying punishable by death. On September 12, he was ferried across Long Island Sound to Huntington, New York, on British-controlled Long Island. Hale planned to disguise himself as a Dutch schoolteacher looking for work, although he did not travel under an assumed name and reportedly carried with him his Yale diploma bearing his name.

…

An account of Hale’s capture, later obtained by the Library of Congress, was written by Consider Tiffany, a Connecticut shopkeeper and Loyalist. In Tiffany’s account, Major Robert Rogers of the Queen’s Rangers saw Hale in a tavern and recognized him. After luring Hale into betraying his allegiance by pretending to be a Patriot himself, Rogers and his Rangers apprehended Hale near Flushing Bay in Queens, New York. Another story is that Hale’s cousin, a Loyalist named Samuel Hale, was the one who revealed his true identity.

British General William Howe had established his headquarters in the Beekman House in a then-rural part of Manhattan … Hale reportedly was questioned by Howe, and physical evidence was found on him. ... According to some accounts, Hale spent the night in a greenhouse at the mansion, while others say he spent it in a bedroom there. He requested a Bible; his request was denied. Sometime later, he requested a clergyman. Again, the request was denied.

…

According to the standards of the time, spies were hanged as illegal combatants. By all accounts, Hale comported himself well before the hanging.^[15][16][17] Frederick MacKensie, a British officer, wrote this diary entry for the day:^[15]

He behaved with great composure and resolution, saying he thought it the duty of every good Officer, to obey any orders given him by his Commander-in-Chief; and desired the Spectators to be at all times prepared to meet death in whatever shape it might appear.

On the morning of September 22, 1776, Hale was marched along Post Road to the Park of Artillery, which was next to a public house called the Dove Tavern (at modern-day 66th Street and Third Avenue), and hanged. He was 21 years old.

Yes, some mythology has evolved around him. So what? Much of it appears to have a sound basis on what happened. In 1776, they did not make recordings of all meetings. They did not have cameras and microphones. There were no stenographers or legions of press around every corner. However, there were records—not perfect—but enough to give substance to the core of the story as understood by two centuries. Perfect accounting of events? Rarely. Good enough? Sure.

No official records were kept of Hale’s final speech. It has traditionally been reported that his last words, either entirely or in part, were: “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” The account of the quote originated with British Captain John Montresor, who was present at the hanging. The next day, he spoke with American Captain William Hull under a flag of truce. Hull recorded in his memoirs the following quote by Montresor:

“On the morning of his execution,” continued the officer, “my station was near the fatal spot, and I requested the Provost Marshal [William Cunningham] to permit the prisoner to sit in my marquee, while he was making the necessary preparations. Captain Hale entered: he was calm, and bore himself with gentle dignity, in the consciousness of rectitude and high intentions. He asked for writing materials, which I furnished him: he wrote two letters, one to his mother and one to a brother officer. He was shortly after summoned to the gallows. But a few persons were around him, yet his characteristic dying words were remembered. He said, ‘I only regret, that I have but one life to lose for my country.’”^[19]

Because Hull was not an eyewitness to Hale’s speech, some historians have questioned the reliability of this account.^[18]

Over the years, there has been a great deal of speculation as to whether Hale uttered this line or some variation of it.^[20] If Hale did not originate the statement, it is possible he instead repeated a passage from Joseph Addison‘s play Cato,^[21] which was widely popular at the time and an ideological inspiration to many Patriots:

How beautiful is death, when earn’d by virtue!
Who would not be that youth? What pity is it
That we can die but once to serve our country.

It is almost certain that Hale’s last speech was longer than one sentence. Several early accounts mention different things he said. These are not necessarily contradictory, but rather, together they give an idea of what the speech might have been like.

I am willing to give Hale, and history, the benefit of the doubt.

BT

BT

BT

This is where I go into a rant on the absolute state of history and historians in the United States. I won’t repeat the arguments I made—and linked to—back in 2024. You can find them at this link if you need to catch up.

We can just add this to the stack of evidence from your local community college to our service academies and war colleges over the last few decades. The left ducks are picking ducks, and the results are all around us. People are policy…and how history is reported.

I think reasonable people would surmise that Hale would be an iconic figure for the state of Connecticut, an example for the young to look to when trying to understand what service, duty, and honor expects from those to whom much is given.

Part of a historian’s job is, of course, to ensure that facts are reported, but there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. You’d expect a balanced approach with all things, but especially historically important individuals.

Well, you’d be wrong.

The state of Connecticut has a public Connecticut history page. If you go to the “About” section, you’re given a bit of a warning.

ConnecticutHistory.org, a project of Connecticut Humanities, is a state public history resource written for a diverse set of readers, ranging from students to educators to history enthusiasts. We provide engaging, well-researched stories about Connecticut history that link to reliable primary and interpretive resources. Our goal is to encourage readers to engage with the institutions, archives, museums, and communities that hold and interpret the materials that explore the diversity of Connecticut’s history.

They have an entry on Hale. When you look at the CV of the author, you have another warning.

Nancy Finlay grew up in Manchester, Connecticut. She has a BA from Smith College and an MFA and PhD from Princeton University. From 1998 to 2015, she was Curator of Graphics at the Connecticut Historical Society.

Her 1984 PhD was in art history (NTTIAWWT) with a dissertation on, Animal Themes in the Painting of Eugène Delacroix — so the American Revolution may not be her strong suit. However, that didn’t stop her,

He never lived in the Nathan Hale Homestead. There is no credible proof he ever said, “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.”

Actually, there are credible accounts, as referenced earlier…but Nancy is on a roll, pissing on the sacrifice of greater humans.

Don’t forget, this is published on an official Connecticut history website.

Washington and his army holed up in Manhattan and badly in need of reliable information about the opposing forces. Washington began recruiting spies. Although spying was not considered a very honorable occupation for a gentleman, Hale had been in the army for over a year and had yet to see any action. He decided to volunteer.

…

…but he asked too many questions and soon aroused suspicion. In conversation with a British agent posing as an American sympathizer, he revealed his mission and British authorities promptly arrested him.

In the few days that Hale had been absent, Washington’s troops retreated again and the British occupied New York. Hale was brought to General Howe’s headquarters at what is now First Avenue and 51st Street, and promptly condemned to death. The following morning, September 22, he was taken to the artillery park at what is now Third Avenue and 66th Street and, after mounting a ladder, was hanged from a tree.

…

Hale was not a very good spy, … his famous last words, “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.” The words are from Joseph Addison’s play Cato, and though the play was a favorite of Hale and his friends when at Yale, there is no reason to think that Hale spoke them at his execution.

Again, there is “reason to think”. All you have to do is review primary sources, as described above.

After slinging all the above, she almost seems resentful that,

In 1985, a vote by the Connecticut legislature officially designated Nathan Hale as Connecticut’s state hero.

I’m sorry Nancy, but what did you do when you were 20 and 21? How would you compose yourself when walking up a ladder to a noose at that age?

In Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell, the vast frozen lake Cocytus, the inner circle called Judecca, is where you find those who betrayed their lords and benefactors. Their souls encased in ice in distorted positions.

Every American owes their position to our benefactors who bought, bit by bit, our independence with their sacrifice. To betray this memory with such laziness and callousness is monstrous.

Shame on Connecticut for allowing this treatment of their state hero. Shame.

Leave a comment

Share

If you are an old NATO hand, you are very familiar with the struggle to fill the Combined Joint Statement of Requirements (CJSOR), which is where you try to find the actual military units to fill the requirements of your Operational Plans (troops-to-task).

Once you finally get some troop-contributing nation (and yes, this is a bunch of land-centric verbiage, but welcome to NATO) to pony up for a specific line, you then have to review the National Caveats that will come with the offer. More often than not, we would be better off not having them arrive at all.

A few real world reasons:

• They can come with so many restrictions (our company of security personnel cannot conduct kinetic operations outside the perimeter of the airport. “Sorry, if you are ambushed 50 yards from the gate, they can’t help you”) that they become more of a burden than a help.

• They arrive, but they don’t have enough equipment to do their job…and ask other nations to supply everything from ammunition to kevlar and food.

• They arrive, but their systems do not work in combat environments. They worked fine on PPT and in a controlled range with bespoke systems, but standard-issue real-world performance? Nope.

This is all well known for NATO staff officers. However, even NATO staff officers would roll their eyes when they had to work with the European Union’s nascent military arm and its staff.

Its bureaucratic process was so Continental, cumbersome, and often just silly, that it made us NATO staff-weenies feel like snake eaters.

Take whatever frustration level you have working inside NATO and multiply it by three. That’s the EU military staff…which is not a shock, as it lacks the Anglo-Saxon military umph that the U.S., UK, and Canada bring to NATO operations.

Well, as we briefly discussed on the last Midrats Podcast, the EU escort mission in the Red Sea, Operation Aspides, seems to be getting a little wobbly.

When the Italians, of all people, are getting tired of your ineffective bureaucracy, you know you have a problem.

Italy is considering using its naval assets already deployed under the EU’s Aspides mission to independently escort Italian merchant ships through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, with Defence Minister Guido Crosetto warning that Rome cannot wait for EU bureaucracy to respond to a renewed Houthi threat.

The move comes as fighting and tensions involving Yemen’s Houthi rebels have escalated again, with the group threatening shipping through the Red Sea and contributing to a sharp rise in gas prices.

“We cannot allow bureaucratic delays in decision-making to aggravate an already complex situation,” Crosetto said on Thursday, announcing “we have decided, with the Chief of Staff, not to wait for Aspides to decide whether our ships can pass or not”.

Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani praised Crosetto’s initiative and called on other EU countries to provide more ships for Aspides, saying some are not making the necessary contribution to the mission.

Apparently, this is not just Italians complaining about everyone else.

The European Union’s naval mission to protect shipping in the Red Sea would need to boost its numbers to more ​than 10 warships, its foreign policy chief said on Monday, adding that for ‌now there were not that many in the area.

The EU’s Aspides mission was launched in 2024 to protect shipping from attacks by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis, and diplomats have said there are currently six warships operating.

…

"When Aspides was ​put in place, then the indication was that it needs at least 10 ships. ​The situation, I think, is even more grave right now," Kaja Kallas told ⁠reporters on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.

The EU military staff is notorious for underestimating military requirements. They lowball the lowball in an attempt to force-mode their means to their end. 10 ships? I would bet the number the core planning team wanted was closer to 15, but got downgraded by the senior leadership.

Kallas sent a letter to the EU’s ​27 member states on ​September 19 asking them ⁠to up their contributions. The issue would be discussed at upcoming defence and foreign ministers meetings, she said in the letter.

“This situation, which ​is still evolving as we speak, is already affecting European interests with ​repercussions on ⁠our supply chains and could have implications for our ability to support our economies which were already hit by rising fuel prices,” she said in the letter.

The Europeans, whether wearing their NATO or EU hat, have two problems; capacity and capability.

1. Capacity: they have underspent on their military and their navies for so long that they simply do not have enough ships on paper to sustain a naval operation for any extended period of time. Note I said, “on paper”. When you actually pull the readiness numbers, the number of ships they actually have that are fully mission capable is even smaller. Their Sailors are great—and in some cases better than your average US Navy Sailor (O or E)—but they simply do not have the right warships to go in harm’s way.

2. Capability: As we covered earlier this month, they have a significant shortfall in missiles to meet the threats they will face, even against 3rd and 4th-rate threats like the Houthis. They just aren’t. Even when they do, they run into problems like we saw in 2024 with the Danish frigate Iver Huitfeldt.

Roll both of those issues together along with an instinct to bluff for a bit and head home, like the FS Charles de Gaulle (R91) Carrier Strike Group did this summer, and…there you go.

Keep this in mind when the “1,000 Ship Navy” mindset tries to work its way back into our naval considerations and planning. Do not let them use that discredited excuse for not building the navy we need.

• “We don’t need frigates. Our allies have them.”

• “We don’t need robust mine clearing capabilities. Our allies have them.”

• “We don’t need that many escorts. Our allies will contribute some ships.”

We’ve seen where that mindset gets us.

Allies are great and wonderful and are great contributors when they arrive…but we cannot expect for them to be there whenever and wherever we need them. That is a recipe for retreat and defeat.

Until then, may the Italians spend more on their wonderful navy. They really do make good stuff, and are great Sailors.

Leave a comment

Share

This episode explores recent developments in US military strategy, technology, and infrastructure, emphasizing the importance of fundamentals and realistic planning in national defense.

Key Topics

• US-Greenland-US relations and strategic agreements

• Impact of NATO and European NATO capabilities

• Development and deployment of the MQ-25A

• Challenges in mai…

Read more