Amen. Now…. about getting the State Department off their butts to make sure we can access all of those nice, quiet, out of way places to do that. Think WW2 AFDMs.
The CCP FM has been busy taking those nice quiet spots out of play.
example:
"In March 2022, Solomon Islands signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on policing cooperation with China and was also reported to be in the process of concluding a security agreement with China. The agreement with China could allow an ongoing Chinese military and naval presence in the Solomons."
They already have the 4 strike length mk 41 cannister launcher. Not sure about a crane in a container, but we could load real fast and from many places if we could do so with a container crane.
Excellent, and reading the entire piece over at The Wahoo is both encouraging and illuminating. The nagging problem is resources--that is MONEY. This administration will never, in my opinion, devote nearly enough funding to put the Navy on the road to where it needs to be. To do so would require significant reductions in welfare and transfer payments. This is, to put it mildly, unlikely to happen under the current regime.
Hate to say this, but there is always the possibility that with the pick of Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. as Chairman of the JCS that the Navy's probable acceleration into more Fundamental Transformation could put it into a more favorable light with the Biden Regime. And with that newfound favor get boatloads of MONEY. A good step? I dunno. Sounds like rocks & shoals ahead. Got a bad feeling how the Navy would spend the money.
General Brown is a General--he is not going to ever be sea service oriented. He was, apparently, selected like everyone else in Biden land--using a DEI bingo card. I suppose we can be grateful he's not transsexual. Basic to the MONEY problem is that all the procurement etc. is top down driven by DOD apparatchiks. Navy has its problems, for sure, but a lot of the crap is flowing from the very top. Having said that, it's a pretty good question why someone or ones hasn't put his stars on the table in a public way to protest and illuminate what's going on.
We need a commission packed with serious minds and prestigious credentials in order to reach the profound intellectual conclusion, "spend more money or we lose."
I've always thought that if you can show me where you saved a dollar I might give you another dollar to spend on something you thought it worth saving the first dollar to go after.
We need to find the money we let slip by from stagnation. Improve retention by modernizing how billets get filled etc. good read on that in Proceedings this month on Coast Guard interaction with other NATO navies.
During the Reagan Administration, John Lehman's skillfully delivered PR campaign garnered support for the USN in Congress and elsewhere by framing the issue in simple terms. Soon phrases like "GI-UK Gap" and "600 ship Navy" were common parlance. One hopes that the recommendations of this commission can avoid the recondite...making the conclusions easily repeated by lay and professionals alike.
We need real conservatives. It used to be that free trade and free enterprise were core values of conservatives; Democrat and Republican. Obviously, an island nation of Entrepreneurs is going to figure out pretty quickly that a blue-water Navy is necessary for the flow of trade.
But, we don't have conservatives in government anymore. The Democrats lost most of theirs when the right-wing of the big tent fell in. The Republicans call them RINOS and hound them out of the party so that they can wage culture war against blacks and gays.
The vast middle, the mass of folks to the right of AOC, and to the left of MTG understand the value of a strong Navy. Those are the folks we need to appeal to.
The problem is those vast middle folks who want a "strong navy"..... don't want to pay for it.
Theodore Roosevelt was a protectionist; who just so happened to support building a strong Navy. The loss of the defense industrial base has been accelerated by free trade policies.
I prefer to expand trade; but not at the cost of eliminating capabilites we need for national defense/independence.
I'm going to dispute your claim "Theodore Roosevelt was a protectionist," as I don't see support in the historical record for such a claim. The busting of the Trusts, was a free-market response to monopoly power, protectionists don't protect markets, they think their central planners are smarter than market forces.
The reason we don't have capabilities we need for national defense has nothing to do with the policy of free trade which transformed a bunch of unwashed dirt farmers into a globe-straddling superpower.
We eliminated the ability to build warships when we closed down our naval shipyards and "privatized" shipbuilding.
We had the War of The Rebellion in part because the Southern states were worried the Republican plans for higher tariff rates would severely damage, if not destroy their economy. US industrial growth took off during the War, and was supported after by relatively high tariff rates.
And the War Criminals of the Army Air Corps bombing flat potential competition.:)
And while a fixed airbase is more vulnerable to being attacked, it is hard to sink Guam or Okinawa, and it's hard to rapidly repair an aircraft carrier with bulldozers and rapid repair mats.
Taking out the military facilities on Guam and Okinawa: highly likely.
In addition to the 10 items on Bryan's list, I'd like to add "State Dept needs to finish the negotiations and sign new updated Compacts of Free Association with the Federated Sates of Micronesia, Republic of Palau, Republic of the Marshall Islands." In addition, negotiations with the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands regarding modernizing various facilities need to be resolved.
Repairing damaged runways is a pretty well understood process. It's a lot easier to fix a bunch of 20 foot holes in the runway than one 20 foot hole in the flight deck.
This assumes that people are bright enough to harden the rest of the base and not assume that Aegis, Patriot and THAAD will be 100%, because they won't be. Given the track record of the DoD 'leadership' I'll admit that this is a pretty big assumption. If not, a single bomblet warhead will certainly do a number on Anderson. If appropriately hardened then you need to use a much larger smart submunition to target every single hardened structure individually, which means a lot more missiles need to make it through defenses to mission kill the site.
It takes a lot of ordnance and multiple attacks to keep an airfield out of action. Who in the neighborhood has lots of ordnance and multiple ways to deliver it? First, suppress the defenses. And then it's not just runways: ramps, shelters, maintenance facilities, comm facilities operations centers, piers, fuel storage, fuel pumping stations, ordnance storage, radars, air defense systems, control towers, airfield fire department equipment and facilities, the BOQ (easier to kill pilots in their beds instead of in the air), warehouses . . . lots of targets. Ten point bonus question: can you name the Joint Force exercise series where we routinely practice defending Guam?
"Implication: The Commission should consider the wisdom of the Founders and Framers and evaluate whether there have been any important modern developments that should cause us to rethink that wisdom."
Long March 9. If successful, I would find it difficult to believe that the PLA will not use the platform to place in orbit a constellation of KEWs. Two oceans and friendly neighbors? Pshaw.
Bryan, to be frank? The real question is if any of the staffers who will be tasked with reading and regurgitating a summary for their respective legislative boss will have the intellect to adequately understand what they've read.
Maybe we need Warriors running the Navy and not the Perfumed Princes that are appointed by politicians. Maybe then we wouldn't have to put up with the nitwittery they comes out of the offal office these days.
As former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said: “When it comes to predicting the nature and location of our next military engagements, since Vietnam, our record has been perfect. We have never once gotten it right.”
Thank you, Friend.
You've earned the approbation.
Images from embedded keyword google search visually frame influence of Sun-PM Midrats Podcast participants:
As I pointed out on Mr. McGrath's Substack, the Navy will need more non-combatant ships to help readiness; tenders and tankers.
more missiles and the ability to reload a VLS at someplace other than a shipyard pier.
When we fight the PLAN, there won't be many tidy shipyard piers intact.
Amen. Now…. about getting the State Department off their butts to make sure we can access all of those nice, quiet, out of way places to do that. Think WW2 AFDMs.
The CCP FM has been busy taking those nice quiet spots out of play.
example:
"In March 2022, Solomon Islands signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on policing cooperation with China and was also reported to be in the process of concluding a security agreement with China. The agreement with China could allow an ongoing Chinese military and naval presence in the Solomons."
I'd say "and a launcher that is easier to load and resupply. Those 40' foot container launchers have some real potential from that vantage point.
Also, can you fit a crane and a few missiles in the ~30 ton capacity of a 40' container?
They already have the 4 strike length mk 41 cannister launcher. Not sure about a crane in a container, but we could load real fast and from many places if we could do so with a container crane.
Stated simply, "we need to rebuild the Navy from the keel up and fantail forward."
Excellent, and reading the entire piece over at The Wahoo is both encouraging and illuminating. The nagging problem is resources--that is MONEY. This administration will never, in my opinion, devote nearly enough funding to put the Navy on the road to where it needs to be. To do so would require significant reductions in welfare and transfer payments. This is, to put it mildly, unlikely to happen under the current regime.
Hate to say this, but there is always the possibility that with the pick of Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. as Chairman of the JCS that the Navy's probable acceleration into more Fundamental Transformation could put it into a more favorable light with the Biden Regime. And with that newfound favor get boatloads of MONEY. A good step? I dunno. Sounds like rocks & shoals ahead. Got a bad feeling how the Navy would spend the money.
General Brown is a General--he is not going to ever be sea service oriented. He was, apparently, selected like everyone else in Biden land--using a DEI bingo card. I suppose we can be grateful he's not transsexual. Basic to the MONEY problem is that all the procurement etc. is top down driven by DOD apparatchiks. Navy has its problems, for sure, but a lot of the crap is flowing from the very top. Having said that, it's a pretty good question why someone or ones hasn't put his stars on the table in a public way to protest and illuminate what's going on.
We need a commission packed with serious minds and prestigious credentials in order to reach the profound intellectual conclusion, "spend more money or we lose."
I've always thought that if you can show me where you saved a dollar I might give you another dollar to spend on something you thought it worth saving the first dollar to go after.
We need to find the money we let slip by from stagnation. Improve retention by modernizing how billets get filled etc. good read on that in Proceedings this month on Coast Guard interaction with other NATO navies.
During the Reagan Administration, John Lehman's skillfully delivered PR campaign garnered support for the USN in Congress and elsewhere by framing the issue in simple terms. Soon phrases like "GI-UK Gap" and "600 ship Navy" were common parlance. One hopes that the recommendations of this commission can avoid the recondite...making the conclusions easily repeated by lay and professionals alike.
We need real conservatives. It used to be that free trade and free enterprise were core values of conservatives; Democrat and Republican. Obviously, an island nation of Entrepreneurs is going to figure out pretty quickly that a blue-water Navy is necessary for the flow of trade.
But, we don't have conservatives in government anymore. The Democrats lost most of theirs when the right-wing of the big tent fell in. The Republicans call them RINOS and hound them out of the party so that they can wage culture war against blacks and gays.
The vast middle, the mass of folks to the right of AOC, and to the left of MTG understand the value of a strong Navy. Those are the folks we need to appeal to.
The problem is those vast middle folks who want a "strong navy"..... don't want to pay for it.
Theodore Roosevelt was a protectionist; who just so happened to support building a strong Navy. The loss of the defense industrial base has been accelerated by free trade policies.
I prefer to expand trade; but not at the cost of eliminating capabilites we need for national defense/independence.
I'm going to dispute your claim "Theodore Roosevelt was a protectionist," as I don't see support in the historical record for such a claim. The busting of the Trusts, was a free-market response to monopoly power, protectionists don't protect markets, they think their central planners are smarter than market forces.
The reason we don't have capabilities we need for national defense has nothing to do with the policy of free trade which transformed a bunch of unwashed dirt farmers into a globe-straddling superpower.
We eliminated the ability to build warships when we closed down our naval shipyards and "privatized" shipbuilding.
Ummm, TR called himself a protectionist.
We had the War of The Rebellion in part because the Southern states were worried the Republican plans for higher tariff rates would severely damage, if not destroy their economy. US industrial growth took off during the War, and was supported after by relatively high tariff rates.
And the War Criminals of the Army Air Corps bombing flat potential competition.:)
How about Jerry Hendrix?
And while a fixed airbase is more vulnerable to being attacked, it is hard to sink Guam or Okinawa, and it's hard to rapidly repair an aircraft carrier with bulldozers and rapid repair mats.
Sinking Guam and Okinawa: not going to happen.
Taking out the military facilities on Guam and Okinawa: highly likely.
In addition to the 10 items on Bryan's list, I'd like to add "State Dept needs to finish the negotiations and sign new updated Compacts of Free Association with the Federated Sates of Micronesia, Republic of Palau, Republic of the Marshall Islands." In addition, negotiations with the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands regarding modernizing various facilities need to be resolved.
Repairing damaged runways is a pretty well understood process. It's a lot easier to fix a bunch of 20 foot holes in the runway than one 20 foot hole in the flight deck.
This assumes that people are bright enough to harden the rest of the base and not assume that Aegis, Patriot and THAAD will be 100%, because they won't be. Given the track record of the DoD 'leadership' I'll admit that this is a pretty big assumption. If not, a single bomblet warhead will certainly do a number on Anderson. If appropriately hardened then you need to use a much larger smart submunition to target every single hardened structure individually, which means a lot more missiles need to make it through defenses to mission kill the site.
It takes a lot of ordnance and multiple attacks to keep an airfield out of action. Who in the neighborhood has lots of ordnance and multiple ways to deliver it? First, suppress the defenses. And then it's not just runways: ramps, shelters, maintenance facilities, comm facilities operations centers, piers, fuel storage, fuel pumping stations, ordnance storage, radars, air defense systems, control towers, airfield fire department equipment and facilities, the BOQ (easier to kill pilots in their beds instead of in the air), warehouses . . . lots of targets. Ten point bonus question: can you name the Joint Force exercise series where we routinely practice defending Guam?
Hank disagrees. He’s still asking Rat if Guam will capsize.
"Belief 4: The national maritime industrial base is insufficient to support the Navy we have, let alone the Navy we need."
Can't build and sustain more ships, plus what we already have unless this is addressed.
"Implication: The Commission should consider the wisdom of the Founders and Framers and evaluate whether there have been any important modern developments that should cause us to rethink that wisdom."
Long March 9. If successful, I would find it difficult to believe that the PLA will not use the platform to place in orbit a constellation of KEWs. Two oceans and friendly neighbors? Pshaw.
Bryan, to be frank? The real question is if any of the staffers who will be tasked with reading and regurgitating a summary for their respective legislative boss will have the intellect to adequately understand what they've read.
Uh oh.
I'd be happy to be wrong.
Maybe we need Warriors running the Navy and not the Perfumed Princes that are appointed by politicians. Maybe then we wouldn't have to put up with the nitwittery they comes out of the offal office these days.
Congrats Bryan. You have a shit ton of material from the porch over the years.
As former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said: “When it comes to predicting the nature and location of our next military engagements, since Vietnam, our record has been perfect. We have never once gotten it right.”
^ https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2023/04/25/beyond-ship-counts-training-readiness-and-capabilities-count-too/