Raw Intel

From the “Strongly Worded Letter” department of the Rules Based International Order school, there are more nations signing up to so something to keep the free flow of goods at market price through the global Sea Lines of Communication (SLOC), of which the Strait of Hormuz is one of the most important. Several more countries on Friday joined leading European nations, Japan ​and Canada in signing a joint statement, opens new tab saying they were ready to join appropriate efforts to ‌ensure safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz and would take steps to stabilise energy markets. This is the full text of the statement from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, J…

The last four years’ conflicts from the Strait of Hormuz through the Red Sea to the Black Sea have presented a raft of lessons to the navies of Europe. How are they positioned to address the lessons, and what moves are already taking place? Returning to the Midrats Podcast LIVE today at 5 pm Eastern to discuss this and related topics will be Alessio Patalano. You can join the studio and the live chat at this link. If you’re reading this after the show, refresh the Substack page later Sunday for updated links to the uploaded audio. Alessio is a Professor of War and Strategy in East Asia and senior fellow at the Center for Statecraft and National Security at King’s College…

As regulars here know, from the start of the blog - and a decade earlier IRL - one of my core stands is that we are long past the need for having large formation of maneuver forces based overseas in now rich and ready allies. Besides unit rotations, occasional exercises to practice surge, and combined training and logistics facilities, everyone needs to come home. As a maritime and aerospace power, we need to be home based, but postured for forward deployment of land forces to support allies and interests. We are a mercantile republic, not an empire. It has been a lonely vigil, and I know many of the respected and wise members of the Front Porch disagree with me, but …

BZ to our Coast Guard friends. There is a lot of good here in this message. The master message is, "tell our story." Simple but powerful. Having Chiefs - every Chief - helping bring in new people sounds like it should be happening already, but it isn't. Telling "our" story should be a given, but it isn't. All the services are having trouble recruiting, and no small measure of the problem is that our senior leadership from CJCS on down spent a bit too much time the last few years playing socio-political games and telling the public the military is full of racists, sexists, and rapists to a degree that we don't have time to spend telling the great story that represents 99.…

For those no longer on active duty or civilian employee of DOD, you haven’t had a chance yet to received your “extremism training.” Thanks to the Salamander underground, we now have a copy for everyone. On a scale of 1 to 10 where a “1” is a solid, well done presentation, and a “10” is an intellectually sloppy, ham-fisted, neo-zampolit led struggle session, I will give this a 6 … edging towards a 7. It was a huge lost opportunity. Officially, this was in response to the storming of the Capitol on 06 JAN. For those who did not catch my comments at the time, you can read them here and here. There would not have been a standdown without that event, but a broader net was th…

New year, new decade, and a new President. Where should be be looking to have the right view on changes to strategy and maritime power? What existing trends are getting stronger, weakening - and what new things are starting to show up on the scope? Our guest for the full hour this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern to cover the full natsec waterfront as we find it will be returning guest James R. Holmes, PhD. James holds the J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and served on the faculty of the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs. A former U.S. Navy surface-warfare officer, he was the last gunnery officer in history t…

While the rest of the world paused to focus on COVID-19 the last year, even though the pandemic started there, the People's Republic of China did not stop her long, steady push out to the world to take the place she feels she in entitled to. From the border of India to South America and back to the Western Pacific, China feels the wind at her back. Where is China signaling she will be be the greatest challenge to her neighbors and the global community? Returning to Midrats this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern for the full hour will be our guest Dean Cheng. Dean is the Senior Research Fellow for Chinese political and security affairs at the Asia Studies Center of The Her…

Two of the greatest self-inflicted institutional failures of the USN in the last half-century were Tailhook 91 and Fat Leonard. They decimated a generation of leaders and the hard-won service reputation with the American people and their elected representatives that we are still trying to climb out of. While Tailhook 91’s failure was mostly in the response of senior uniformed and civilian leadership to the political pressure by feeding their young to Vaal hoping to save their own skins, Fat Leonard exposed a greater, more dangerous rot that tied in all the worst features of human nature; greed, lust, envy, and addiction. As much of Fat Leonard was avoidable if there were…

Need a moment to recover from Valentine’s Day? Of course you do! This Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern, the Midrats Podcast goes LIVE with our ever popular Free-for-All format. We have our topics, but you can join in during the show chat and offer up your own If you read this after the show, just refresh the Substack page Sunday night to find the uploaded podcast You can join the show at this link. Leave a comment Share This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. View the full article

It is well past time that we had a frigate SITREP, specifically the gray-hulled version of the Legend-class Cutter we are going to build for our Navy. No reason to rehash my concerns and assumptions—click the frigate hypertext above if you need to catch up, but…let me just say…though I’m glad she’s on the way and we’ll find good use for her, I hope Flight I is a short run. I know hope is not a plan, but back in December, I had this little bit of hope: I suspect that already there is work being done on a Flight II, which will incorporate the multi-mission capability of the patrol frigate proposed over a dozen years ago … While looking over the FY27 budget request, it appea…

From a historical and military planning point of view, it is hard to understate the sea change this represents not just for NATO but for the nations’ involved. Finland will launch an immediate debate on joining NATO, Finnish officials said on Wednesday, as the country reconsiders its longtime stance outside the Western military alliance following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Prime Minister Sanna Marin said that a decision would be made in coming weeks. “There are different perspectives to apply (for) NATO membership or not to apply and we have to analyze these very carefully,” she said at a news conference in Stockholm, according to Reuters. “But I think our process wil…

The growing intermeshing of American and South Korea maritime industrial capacity is, rightfully, back in the news. Last week we discussed South Korea leaning in to help build auxiliaries. That’s solid JV ball, but news came out last week that they’ve managed to negotiate an opportunity to play on the varsity. Via Philadelphia Today. President Donald Trump announced last month on social media that the United States will share its nuclear submarine propulsion technology with South Korea, which plans to construct its submarines at the Philadelphia Shipyard, writes Justin Katz for Breaking Defense. “South Korea will be building its Nuclear Powered Submarine in the Philadelp…

As described on Amazon, "Eight CIA officers are dropped into the mountains of northern Afghanistan on October 17, 2001. They are Team Alpha, an eclectic band of linguists, tribal experts, and elite warriors: the first Americans to operate inside Taliban territory. Their covert mission is to track down Al- Qaeda and stop the terrorists from infiltrating the United States again."Most may be familiar with one member of that team, Mike Spann. This Sunday we will spend the hour talking about that Team, the first few months of the Afghanistan conflict, and what the war and its future looked like early on as described in the recent book, First Casualty: The Untold Story of the C…

When you discover that you need to become a sea power in order to secure your nation and its people ... it can't happen over night. In 1520, the Danish king Kristian II mobilized his fleet and seized Stockholm, thus strengthening his position and control of commerce. In order to oust the Danes and decrease their dominance in the Baltic Sea, Sweden needed a fleet. King Gustav Vasa purchased ten ships equipped with weaponry and arms from Lübeck and they were delivered on 7 June 1522 at Slätbaken, close to Söderköping, and since then, this day has been recorded as the birth of the Swedish Navy. ...sometimes it takes two years and you have to outsource it ... but ever since …

Can a military organization suffer from attention deficit disorder? There are very few moments in time – the mid-1990s was a rare one – where a nation’s national security apparatus has the luxury and white space to get distracted and complacent. 2021 is not one of those times. With a new leadership team in place in DOD, are we sure they are focused on the important challenges of China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia? What are the top distractions that those concerned with the proper stewardship of our nation’s defense need to make sure don’t entice away time, money, and effort? With his recent article, Don’t Let the Department of Defense Become the Department of Dist…

For all those Afghan nationals who helped us and we promised we would take care of them, if they are not already out of the country, it looks like the Kabul airlift option is off the table; Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid gave a press briefing and asked the US not to encourage Afghan people to leave the country. He said the group is no longer allowing Afghan nationals to go to Kabul airport and called on crowds at the airport to go home. Mujahid said "our aim is to rebuild our country." "We are asking women to stay home at the moment," until security is guaranteed, the Taliban spokesperson said. He said Taliban fighters are not yet trained "how to deal with women.…

The wrong people with the wrong ideas talking to important people with little experience of the real world have got us here - why do we think they will get us out of the problems we are in? We no longer are the largest Navy, and we no longer act as a competent, reliable, or well led Navy. What to do? Our friend Kori Schake has some ideas, and I'm pondering them over at USNIBlog. Come on by and bring your amens. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?d=yIl2AUoC8zA http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?d=qj6IDK7rITs http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=ftNoVp5xiRQ:o_KziZ34ALM:gIN9vFwOqvQ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=ftNoVp5xiRQ…

We haven’t really discussed the imbroglio presently roiling USMC-world around General Berger, USMC and “USMC Force Design 2030.” Well, today we’re going to step in – second hand. The document itself isn’t as interesting to me per se as the reaction to it. Berger is trying to look at where we are today, what challenges the nation faces, what the USMC’s role in addressing that challenge is, what resources provided to do it, and has come up with a path he and his staff believes best addresses the challenge. No plan of vision is perfect. There are always weaknesses and imperfections, but decisions do need to be made. The old guard, or as Bob Work - Former Deputy Secretary of …

What the Spanish Civil War was to WWII armor and air tactics, the extended conflict in Ukraine and to a lesser extent Syria is to electronic warfare. There isn't so much "new" that is being developed, but hard lessons forgotten since the fall of the Soviet Union. The closer you get to Ukraine, the more clear it becomes. Poland gets it.Polish firm WB Group harnesses low-power radios and quasi-satellites in a scalable and adaptive communication system.A Polish company has developed a tactical communication system called Cicha Sieć (Silent Network) with a low electromagnetic signature that leverages lessons learned from the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. WB Group launched Sile…

The story of Europe's growing struggle with its intentional own-goal of importing a critical mass of people who will not simply, "become European," will be an ongoing story this century. Especially in France. Outsiders also misunderstand the situation on the ground in France as it deals with radical Islamism. After the recent attacks, the government chose to close a mosque and an NGO suspected of ties with radical groups. But more consequential legislative action was initiated this fall, when the French government proposed a bill seeking to fight “separatism.” Building on months of dialogue with religious organizations like the French Council of the Muslim Faith, Mac…