What a great weekend for a good old fashioned Midrats Podcast Maritime Melee!
Petty domestic political posturing has decided to broach a whole series of our favorite subjects for the last 17 years: carrier shortages, neglect of our auxiliaries in our Combat Logistics Force, leadership at sea, ships adrift…enough for a whole series of shows, but Mark and I promise to keep today’s show to an hour.
You can listen at this link, or via the Spotify widget below.
Show Links
Chapters
00:00: Introduction and overview of naval challenges
02:07: The need for more ships and the Ship Act
04:14: Historical context of fleet size and shipbuilding
07:06: Deployment length, mental health, and port visits
11:59: The aging fleet and the importance of new ships
16:08: Logistics challenges in the Indo-Pacific region
20:04: Power outages and maintenance on USS Benfold
24:55: The political landscape and funding issues
29:51: Mental health support and sailor resilience
35:03: Geopolitical considerations and port call limitations
39:55: Technological innovations and future ship designs
45:01: The importance of bipartisan support for naval modernization
49:45: Conclusion and call to action for naval investment
The Benfold situation brought back a memory from about 40 years ago. My first ship, a Knox-class frigate, had an electric-system casualty that also resulted in the ship completely losing power. If memory serves, the casualty was in the switchboard that was supposed to switch from main to emergency power, and even though the diesel worked, there was no way to route power to the rest of the ship. Thankfully, the engineers came up with a workaround and got power back less than 24 hours later. We were DIW in the Pacific Ocean far from land, so we weren't at risk of running aground. Fortunately the USS that was transiting with us noticed that we disappeared off their radar scope and weren't answering radio calls, and they eventually turned around to find us.
Naming-names. Good for you Sal and Eagle1 for calling-out Adm Mullen. I think commenters and long-time readers have expressed their opinions on Ward Carrol's golfing-buddy and it needs to be amplified. Mullen was no friend to the fleet, I can't think of a single thing he did that strategically improved the fleet and his career was throughly invested in his political livelihood & alignment