Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs. My name is Ryan Evans. I'm the founder of War on the Rocks. In this episode, I spoke with Senator Mark Kelly and Congressman Mike Waltz about their efforts to revitalize American shipbuilding.
Where did this idea of bipartisan cooperation on maritime issues start, at least between you two? I think we both had the idea and we're both working on something separately. For me, this has been an issue I've been thinking about all the way back to 1982 when I showed up at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and over time learned sort of the sorry state of our maritime issues.
shipbuilding capacity and being able to move cargo, just the state of the merchant marine. But the congressman and I realized that we both had this interest in trying to revitalize the merchant marine. And
You know, to have something that's bipartisan and bicameral is usually the best path to success. Yeah, I sit on both armed services and intel. And I haven't been thinking about it anywhere as an army guy, knuckle-dragging Green Beret. I haven't been thinking about it nearly as long as the senator. But sitting on those committees, I just kept kind of reimagining.
running headlong into this issue of the state of our naval readiness, the fact that year over year across administrations, we're retiring more ships in the Navy than we're building. We have a
strategic sea lift fleet. These are basically big military cargo ships that would get, for example, a division of tanks over to Korea or the Middle East or what have you, like we did in the Gulf War and becoming aware of how much that is really atrophied and is in a terrible state. And then looking at the explosive growth of the Chinese Navy and
Really, the light bulb went off, Ryan, when I saw that the Chinese Navy is building itself and probably the most rapid military expansion since Germany in the 30s on the backs of its commercial operations.
For example, the Chinese received 1,500 orders for new ships, all kinds, LNG, tugs, barges, and big container ships, some of the largest in the world. 1,500 orders for China. We received five last year. And just having my head in all of it,
The fact that we've gone from 300 shipyards to less than 20, it's just one more example of kind of the hollowing out of another American industry that has been outsourced and now subsidized strategically by China. And so that's kind of how my head got into it. And then I realized how much the Senator has been thinking about it and working on it and
Anything we can get done in this town that's bipartisan, bicameral has a fighting chance. Ryan, when I graduated from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, we had 400 U.S.-flagged, ocean-going merchant vessels in international trade. Today, that number is around a little over 80. Went from 400 to 81. China has 5,500. Congressman mentioned China.
shipbuilding and our naval shipbuilding capacity. Well, our ability to build
to build Navy ships is directly connected to our shipbuilding capacity for merchant vessels. The supply chain, the suppliers, the shipyards, those have to be available to support DOD and support the United States Navy, and that has atrophied over decades. - Tell me how that relationship works. China has, as you indicated, Congressman, a very clear idea of how its merchant marine fleet
relates to hard power. So we know, for example, that China in an amphibious landing would plan on using commercial ferries and they exercise them as such.
It seems like we lack the same vision of how merchant marine connects to hard power, connects to our ability to project power. So if each of you could sort of give your own take on that relationship. So they also put requirements on their merchant vessels, military requirements. So the PLA Navy instructs the shipbuilders and the companies that operate these ships within China that, just as an example, and I might be
speculating a little bit on this, but like safety equipment, communications equipment, other things that could help in time of war for this civilian merchant ship, this Chinese ship to assist in any military sea lift or in time of conflict.
We don't do that. We also don't subsidize the building of ships the way the Chinese do. I mean, this is just one more example of the Chinese Communist Party. I mean, they have the Made in China 2025 plan where they've identified key, from pharmaceuticals to AI to key sectors in industry that they are quite unfairly when it comes to just kind of fair competition and trade, have focused on it, have heavily subsidized it, have priced
many people, not just us, they're doing the same thing to the South Koreans, Japanese and others, kind of out of the market, flood the market with cheap labor, steel and government subsidized industry, and then steal that market from them to a strategic end. And I say those 5,500 ships, every one of them because of state control can be turned into a warship in some way, shape or form, can be militarized or can be used to deny us
key goods that we need for our economic lifeline. I mean, we're 80% trade, 80, 90% trade in terms of our own economy. So if they could choke that off, that's a strategic threat.
What's the American version of that look like, though? Because I don't think we're going to have a situation where DOD is directing commercial shipbuilding requirements necessarily. Well, the American version of that is the legislation that Mike and I are working on. It's a great segue right there. Right. I mean, you can look at this as three legs of a stool. One is the cargo, government cargo, commercial cargo. What kind of preferences can we provide for U.S. flagged, U.S. built, U.S. operated ships?
with US crew members? The shipbuilding, leg of the stool here. What incentives, tax incentives, can we provide for people to build ships in US shipyards, flag them under the US flag, and then crew them with American officers and unlicensed individuals? And then the other end is the workforce. COVID in a lot of areas really hurt the workforce. It was substantially affected by COVID, the maritime workforce. Today, I had the
CEO of Maersk, the US subsidiary of Maersk, sitting right here, I mean, an hour ago. And he was talking about the impact that COVID had. So we have to have a supply of, and not only the folks at sail that go to sea, but the individuals that work in shipyards. By the way, a lot of these jobs, similar to the Chips and Science Act legislation we did, that we're creating this
you know, new ecosystem or bringing these jobs back to the United States. But these are jobs that you can, are well-paying, that you can raise a family on that do not require a four-year degree. So it's about the legislation. And this is a comprehensive piece of legislation that Mike and I crafted.
I would add to that, for example, I've introduced, it's called the Mariners Act in the House, and we're now folding a lot of those provisions into what we're working on, both into this year's defense bill and then also into the legislation we're working with the Senator. A maritime trust fund that would take a lot of the fees that come through with shipping and cargo and reinvest those in. I would love to see a shift in some of the bipartisan infrastructure money. It's $1.2 trillion.
A lot of that is still sitting out there in the system. Shipyards are a key part of our infrastructure. We're also working with the Navy. The Navy, for example, is investing in a submarine workforce. But again, it's getting those workforce investments that are coming out of the Defense Department, I think, going more broadly. This is Department of Commerce, Department of Transportation. This is a broader ecosystem that the Navy could benefit from rather than taking kind of a very
Yeah.
You harden some of those, you provide them the right type of GPS and comms gear, kind of like we have a civil reserve fleet where you can grab some commercial airliners in a time of an emergency to create...
a civil maritime fleet that you can grab that could run, for example, in between the Philippines and Guam or in between the islands out there in Southeast Asia should we need them. So there's a number of things that we can do and we're working on it, I think, as the clock's ticking, particularly when it comes in the Indo-Pacific. Do you think that the Jones Act is something that should be revisited?
Well, I mean, we need those ships, right? And currently there's a substantial number of them. And, you know, if we were to have a conflict right now, we have access to those ships. We could even move cargo overseas if we had to under the right circumstances. So no, I don't think at this point, you know, there is a need to do that.
Our goal with this legislation is to fix the rest of this, the entire industry, the workforce, the shipbuilding, the cargo preference, the U.S. flagging of ships, provide the incentives out there. And then we've also got to figure out, I imagine this is going to be a question, how do you pay for this?
Where does the money come from? And there are ways to do that. I mean, we can- You're preempting all my good questions. I know. That's what you do. I knew where you're going. I've been here. I don't think I've been here as long as the congressman, but I've been here long enough to know how this works. And there's other countries through tonnage taxes, tax-
Our shipping companies, as they bring cargo into their ports, we can do the same. We can take fees that already exist in the maritime industry, and we can kind of roll them back into the industry to pay for some of these tax incentives and other programs that we need to really...
revitalize this industry like we're doing it with the Chips and Science Act. Yeah, I think there was kind of a missed opportunity early in the war in Ukraine when there was this really strong bipartisan will to make major investments in defense and write big checks to address this issue as a part of our overall defense posture. There was the Shipyards Act that Senator Wicker sponsored years ago that sort of
I think just died in committee before he became chairman that would have invested 25 billion in maritime infrastructure. When you think about price tag and how much this need, how big this needs to be, I know you're still working on the legislation. Where are your heads at on that? And I'll just say on the Jones Act, without the Jones Act, I think we would even have fewer flag ships than we already do. I think we'd be even...
in worse shape. It's kept the pulse of our industry going between that and military spending. And then look, so part of this is I think there is a role for government to kind of bring in the defibrillator and really kickstart this ecosystem and this industry. But then I think a lot of it can be self-sustaining. I'm talking to capital markets. And if we look at something like the center I've been talking about, like opportunity zones for shipyards that give preferential treatment to both
domestic and external investment. You're seeing the South Koreans take a very hard look at the Philadelphia shipyard and to bring that know-how, that capital in a joint venture. I think that's really exciting if done the right way. It's going to be kickstarting and then also attracting
international and national capital that it's sitting on the sidelines ready to go. That's a really good point. I think that too many people still think of the defense budget and government budgets overall as a sort of zero-sum game, whereas the capital markets have these enormous resources that are just not being correctly tapped and incentivized. That's a good conservative in me. It's
Well, yeah. Government can't solve. I mean, they literally can't solve this problem. The private sector is going to have to be appropriately incentivized. And I think we're having a good conversation. But after we do that and we rebuild an industry, I mean, a lot of the expenditures that we make up front, this investment we make up front, we'll eventually get that money back. We'll grow the economy, create all these good paying jobs. Those folks pay taxes. That money comes back to the
government, we could reinvest it. You mentioned, Senator, the workforce issues. There are some sort of near-term problems with the workforce from what I understand is while manufacturing wages overall in the country have gone up by about 20%, a lot of these shipyard wages are sort of locked in by firm fixed price contracts that were written years ago. Are there any near-term fixes to that that you're envisioning as a part of this legislation, or is that just something we have to sort of get through? Well, I've had those discussions with
shipbuilders about wages. And, you know, it's hard to, sometimes hard to convince a guy to do a job, you know, lugging around welding equipment outside to weld ships together when for three, four bucks less an hour, you could be working in some inside job somewhere, right? That's much physically much easier. I think it's going to be on them. I mean, if the shipyards want a
qualified, motivated workforce, they're going to have to pay good wages. That can't happen, typically doesn't happen overnight, but I think in time you would see folks being compensated for the work they're doing, adequately compensated. Yeah, I think this is part of, the Senator raised it earlier, it's part of a broader national conversation on trades and skills. We have to make VOTEC cool
cool again. And I have this conversation quite a bit down in my district and we get industry back into apprenticeships. For example, the tiles on the space shuttle, the workforce for that are literally aging out. And a lot of these space companies are starting to go back to a European model of apprenticeship where they grab a 17, 18 year old and say, come work with us. And then they hire them and they just skip college. And when we start really looking at the finances, you didn't walk away with a quarter million in debt.
or even more, and you immediately have a great job at 20 years old. Or if you look at the Mariner workforce and you can go to six, 12 weeks of training and get an initial license, be making 60 to 75,000. And by the time you go back and get your first class license, you're making multiple six figures.
Again, skipping the whole need for a college degree and going right into the workforce, it makes financial sense. But I think we have to sell it and we have to get to a point where you're sitting around the Thanksgiving table, you know, you're not patting the kids on the head that went and got their four-year degree or patting the kids on the head that have a great job. And when you consider the folks who are actually going to sea on these ships, you know, it's a challenge. You know, you got to be away from your home and your family for a certain period of time. So there are other things we can do that we're looking at putting in this legislation.
you know, possibility of maybe a tax exemption for mariners, but also some other career retention possibilities, education benefits. I mean, these are things we're exploring in the legislation to make sure that we have the workforce that's willing to, you know, get on a ship. And I mean, right now, you know, you go through the, you know, Red Sea, you're somewhat at risk. This is service in some sense, this is service to your country to make sure that we have a well-functioning supply chains that
support our economy. So there are other things we can do to incentivize people to go into these jobs. One idea I've heard is creating new grants or extending Pell Grants to people in the skilled trades. Is that something that you guys are looking at?
Yeah, we've done some work on that already where traditionally I think Pell Grants led to like a four-year degree. I think we've expanded that to some community college programs that provide just certificate programs, and there's no reason why we couldn't do the same thing in the Mariner workforce.
You also mentioned earlier, Senator, the CHIPS Act and the labor issue. Are there a lot of similarities between the problems? I know that the CHIP fabs are tend like much more highly skilled technical jobs, but it's all skilled labor. So are there some of the same dynamics at play? Well, at the highest level, you're talking about a national security issue. We have to have access to semiconductor.
chips. We lose access to chips from Taiwan because of something China does. That's going to have a huge negative impact on our economy very quickly. So the Chips and Science Act is addressing that. We're going to make the best semiconductor chips in the world here in the United States, a lot of them in Arizona through TSMC and Intel. Similar to that is we are and have been a seafaring nation
We've got water on both sides. We have to have access to the oceans. We can't rely on foreign governments to maintain the supply chain of the stuff we need to power our economy. We just can't. And in the time from when I graduated from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, 400 ocean-going merchant vessels, U.S. flagged, to 80 today, that number is going in the wrong direction. And we've got to turn this around.
Just a quick break from our conversation about shipbuilding and maritime strategy to talk about a new show that we are launching over at War on the Rocks for members only. My colleague Cody is going to tell you all about it. My name is Cody Rutherford. I'm a membership editor at War on the Rocks, and I'm excited to tell you about Marine Pulse, a new members only podcast, which is for Marines in the United States Marine Corps, hosted by current and former Marines.
I'm Ian Brown, a wargame analyst and retired Marine Corps CH-53 Echo helicopter pilot. My name is Heather Eichord, and I'm a Marine Reservist.
In my civilian work, I work in defense innovation and I'm eager about bringing in the best of commercial technology to the warfighter. I'm Dakota Wood, CEO of a national security consulting firm. I spent 20 years in the Marine Corps as a logistician and a strategist on the Marine Corps staff. I'm Walker Mills and I'm a Marine officer. I'm an infantry officer, a foreign area officer, and an MQ-9 Reaper pilot. Marine Pulse is launching next week and new episodes will come out weekly. Check out these clips from upcoming episodes.
You wanted to be a Marine. It's supposed to be hard. It is hard. Hard is authorized.
The reserve component of the Marine Corps is made up of patriots who don't have to be there, but they're there because they want to be there. China and the PRC and the PLA specifically have made it very clear how they view this problem that is incumbent upon us to prepare appropriately. We are in the middle of a military technological revolution. If you don't understand that, you're way, way, way behind. It is happening right underneath us.
You can listen to Marine Pulse by becoming a member at warontherocks.com membership.
And now back to our conversation with Senator Mark Kelly and Congressman Mike Waltz. The one issue that I know is going to be devil efforts to expand our shipyard infrastructure is regulation. I'm a big believer in protecting our environment, but getting EPA and Army Corps of Engineer approval for a lot of these shipyards is just a process that can go on for years, which we don't really have that time. So what are you envisioning in terms of addressing that red tape issue? You're asking all the easy permitting reform. Yeah.
We hear that whether it's oil and gas. Right now we're dealing with it in Cape Canaveral. I think it's a well-intended, obviously over the years kind of regime that's just gone amok. By the time you deal with local, by the time you deal with state, and then by the time you deal with Corps of Engineers and federal, government and government money perhaps has the patience, but capital markets don't.
don't. They'll just take it and invest it somewhere else where they're going to see a more rapid return. I think at some level, at least a fast track has to be part of it. And we're dealing with it right now with a couple of shipyards in Florida that if they get some of the contracts that are pending, they don't know that they're going to be able to execute in time because of the permitting. So one of the things that we're looking at is as part of the contracting process that they've already kind of
whether it's US Fish and Wildlife, Forest Service, you can go through the whole EPA, through the whole litany of agencies that it's already pre-baked. I think the onus should be on the other part of the government. If you're going to let an RFP that will require an expansion, then put the onus on the government, not the awardee to have already got
gotten the wicket. So I think we need to really just kind of rethink the whole framework. Whether we get that done, part of this might be a little aggressive, but- Yeah, we have it in there now. I mean, as a goal is regulatory reform to put together interagency committee to look at regulations and how do we get approvals expedited. I've got legislation that has bipartisan support in the House and the Senate actually passed
by unanimous consent in the Senate, to fix this for semiconductor manufacturing. The Building Chips in America Act that helps to expedite and sort of get around the NEPA process if a
Ship manufacturer complies with clean air and clean water laws and has gone through a state process. They wouldn't have to do a full NEPA. We're looking at what kind of reforms we need in regulations for shipbuilding as well. I think the most common sense, reasonable path, whether it's critical minerals, expanding Cape Canaveral, a shipyard, I think the low-hanging fruit is to stop the duplicative nature of it. If you go through a state process,
Do you really need to go through the federal? If you go through the federal, do you really need to start all over again with the state? And what we often find with the state and federal is they point to each other and just leave the applicant stuck. So if you get through one, it should be darn well good enough for the other. What expansion's going on at Cape Canaveral? Starship. Oh, wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Right. And PAD 39. A lot of thrust coming out of the back of that thing. And then it's just the volume. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, if you're looking at almost, I mean, they're on track for three to four launches per week.
I mean, they're with a goal of eventually getting to one a day. So if you're at 120, 150 plus launches already, not to turn this into a... But we can nerd out on space. Talking to an astronaut. California, but back to the permitting piece, California's tough and getting tougher. It's one of the reasons that Virginia is starting to invest heavily in Wallops and that launch site because it's literally... And there is a tie back to the merchant. I mean, this is the new...
commerce space, right? Like literally is going to be in space, but there's everything from barging the rocket components to barging the engines around. We're using our Jones Act fleet for that, but we can't be buying Chinese made ships to put our most sensitive materials for space on. And while we're on the topic, you know, you, of course, we're in the Navy and an astronaut. Does it burn you up a little bit that Space Force doesn't use naval ranks?
Wow, that was a switch. Sort of. Yeah. Yeah. I've actually thought about that. Navy SEAL Dan Crenshaw had the push for that. Somebody killed it in the defense bill when we created the Space Force. Like you were saying, Congressman, it's a very maritime domain in some ways of how you would think about the space and the purpose of it. I'll talk to the chief of staff of the Space Force about it. Maybe we get him to switch. Maybe we get him to change those uniforms too. Oh, you don't like them? Oh, I like them. I like them. Yeah.
This report that you're holding that you came out with with two of your colleagues, which we'll link to in the show notes, I think it's worth reading. It's sort of centered around these 10 recommendations, and I won't go through them all, but there's three I do want to touch on. One is this sort of, you don't call it this in the report, but it sounds like a sort of maritime czar appointed by the president. Why do you think that's important? And do you think it risks another czar?
is just adding to this list of czars that doesn't really get anything done. Yeah, right. I mean, that's the age old debate. The National Security Council really is intended to be the czar and pulling the interagency together on the executive side. But in this case, I think it's such a heavy lift to get this industry revitalized again, number one. Number two, you have so many agencies involved between commerce, transportation, the defense department, treasury, CBP and ICE, CBP at least. NOAA.
No. Yeah, you're right. I mean, yeah, we can keep going. Marad, that's right. You need someone that said, well, with the authority of the president of the United States that had tapped them on the head, I think to pull all of it together. If you even just look at the span of committees in Congress that this thing goes across, you know, Senator Kelly is going to be the czar here to go across all those chairs to actually get the funding and the approvals and the waivers to get things done.
Another one you talk about in there is this polar assessment, sort of assessment of threats, opportunities, issues in the polar regions. Why did you feel it was important to include that in this report? Well, I mean, you know, the Russians and the Chinese too, they're building icebreakers. We don't have a fleet of icebreakers. It limits our access in a polar region. I recently flew up to Alaska and then on a twin otter and then a helicopter to go up
on the USS Indiana and go underneath the ice and surface through. It's pretty cool. I had never been on a submarine at sea before. We demonstrated, we do this every couple of years, our ability to do that. And, you know, we've got a great submarine fleet. It's one of the, and not being a submariner, being an aviator,
Sometimes hard for me to say, but I think one of the real advantages we have as a US military is our submarine force. Just need twice as many of them is the issue. Yeah, that would help. And we need them to be ready. Yeah, they're great. But what we don't have is we don't have icebreakers. So it's hard to operate a surface fleet in the Arctic without an icebreaking fleet. We're building...
One or two, you know, right now, this is something that Lisa Murkowski, Dan Sullivan from Alaska, you know, focus on. But the Arctic is becoming really like a strategic AOR for us.
and for the Russians and for the Chinese. Part of it's the retreating ice. You now have Northern sea lanes. You have shipping going out of Northern Europe across the top of Russia to get to China and then across the North side of Canada increasingly. What does that do geostrategically? It bypasses the Panama Canal. It bypasses the Suez Canal, which have been key choke points, frankly, heavily influenced
by the West over the years. And then secondarily, it's exposing all kinds of new oil and gas, critical minerals opportunities, but also competition up there. And thirdly, if you look at our strategic defenses, they're geared towards the Arctic, particularly when it comes to nuclear command and control and systems.
They never envisioned when we put those in in the 60s and 70s that they would have to be defendable. But when you have Chinese frigates sailing right by, that's an issue. I think Canada needs to be much more engaged than they are and making investments that they haven't been in addition. Huge understatement, yeah. Yeah, a huge understatement. I mean, really the bottom of the barrel if we're talking NATO summit and –
defense investments. And then I think the Navy, we got to have some tough conversations. Having a presence in the Arctic isn't just the submarine fleet as important as it is. It's being on the surface and being present as well. And they can't just keep subcontracting that to the Coast Guard with its two 40-year-old icebreakers. That's a perfect segue into the next recommendation. You talk in the report about forward presence with high readiness and combat logistics.
I agree with that. I've been a longtime advocate for a bigger Navy, but this is, I guess, a two-parter. First, given we're so far behind in shipbuilding and the Navy as it exists is already undermanned for the ships that we have.
How much more aggressively do you think we should be looking at more unmanned and low-manned options for building this future fleet once we're able to expand our shipyard capacity? Well, we've already started doing that with recent ship designs. One I can think of is LCS. Go from a ship that's a little bit smaller
maybe smaller or size of a frigate. Frigate would typically have maybe two or 300 crew members. You're down to about 50. We can do a lot more with fewer people now because of automation and AI.
But as you mentioned, we also have a need to do that. Recruiting has been a challenge. We recently did this survey about why do young people not want to serve in the U.S. military? You know, it's harder to recruit individuals. When the economy's good, you know, people have other options. They tend not to gravitate towards the military. We also have a lot of folks that can't pass the
tests, physical fitness tests, medical exam, can't pass the ASVAB. So there are things we need to do to increase recruiting. At the same time, I think through AI and other technology, we can get the crew numbers down significantly. We've demonstrated that already. So the recommendation really gets at the fact that we haven't had a conflict with an adversary that can
truly contest, shut down, disrupt our supply chain since World War II. I mean, we didn't have a problem with the Taliban or the Al-Qaeda Navy or Air Force or the ability to interrupt our supply flows. We absolutely need to be far more prepared than we are to deal with contested logistics in the Indo-Pacific.
I mean, look at the issues we're having with a relatively uncontested port in Gaza and just establishing the thing and keeping it running. If we have ports denied in the Philippines, in Japan or elsewhere, that's going to be a huge issue and even more of a reliance on a merchant fleet that we can grab, that we can nationalize, that we can use in time of emergency and that's there for us. And then secondarily on your shipbuilding portion,
This is going to be, I hope, Roger Wicker or Trent Kelly or others that represent shipyards. I hope they listen, but I hope they don't. But I think in the near term, we're going to have to look at buying abroad. We're going to have to look at leasing. When it comes to icebreakers, we had a push in the last administration to lease some as an interim measure from Finland and Sweden that know how to make these things at a rate of probably about an
a cost of about five to one for what we're looking at producing. And then if we look even more so at perhaps with what we're doing within the Philadelphia shipyard right now, that sections of ships are assembled abroad, for example, in South Korea,
brought here and then you do the final assembly in our yards. But we need to be much more creative. We aren't going to rebuild this thing overnight. This isn't the arsenal of democracy in 1940, 1941. And fortunately, we're going to have to kind of expand our aperture a little bit of what we allow the Navy and our merchant Marine fleet to do. The second part of that issue is, again, big believer in a bigger fleet commercial land, the Navy itself. But the
The Navy's demonstrated some real problems that I think if you're sitting on Capitol Hill, you might wonder fairly if the Navy can actually handle doing some of these things. If you look at collisions, shipyard fire, corruption scandals, this is a service that seems to have some deeply rooted cultural problems at the leadership level.
I think the new CNO, she's trying to do a lot of the right things, but I worry that this is a larger cultural institutional problem that is not going to be easily solved to make all these things you're talking about, which I agree with what you're trying to do possible. I have to run and vote because I'll just leave you with this. I couldn't agree more. And we need leadership in the Navy that's looking to reform the Navy rather than just manage it.
and I don't see that right. I think the CNO is great in many ways. She's really focused on improving the readiness crisis that they're in. I mean, we have the last strategic advantage is our submarine fleet, but yet 40% of them can't get out the yard. To me, that is a five alarm problem and she is focused on that, but I don't see that real drive towards cultural reform to all of those issues. Don't take that as my army bias. I'm
I'm being very candid. I'm not seeing it. I've had those candid conversations with the leadership. I'll give you my naval perspective on this. I do agree, though. I spent 25 years in the Navy. I think there's some things we do really, really well. It's not just because I come from the aviation world, but I do feel that in naval aviation, Marine Corps aviation, we're very focused on being warfighters, that we had basically one mission, at least in my community, which is an A-6 intruder, deliver the payload.
on time, on target, and hit the target. And we focused on that all the time. I've seen other portions of the Navy, you know, where they spend a lot of time
doing a lot of administrative things that do not help them with their warfighting job. And we've got to work on that and give them the time and the training and the experience to be ready. Now, having said that, what we've seen recently in the Red Sea for surface warfare officers to actually spend a
a huge amount of time and effort and capacity actually fighting the ships, shooting down Houthi,
missiles over and over again. They have demonstrated a great level of competency, and I imagine there's going to be a lot of lessons learned from that. They're going to take back to the larger fleet, and we can move the entire Navy in the right direction to be prepared if we ever wind up in a conflict with a peer adversary. So I think we're moving in the right direction. My sense is we are with these other portions of the Navy that
used to be, in my view, maybe too focused on a lot of stuff that did not matter. I think that's a perfect place to end it. Thank you both for doing this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of the War on the Rocks podcast. Don't forget to check out our membership program at warontherocks.com slash membership. Stay safe and stay healthy.