Midrats

From November of 2011: They share the hazards, smell the smells; all that is needed so that those at home may understand what their countrymen are doing in the far reaches of the world on their behalf.The best know that to tell a story, you have to be in it. Sometimes, the story catches up with them.Our guest for the full hour will be Kimberly Dozier,  foreign correspondent for CBS News Radio specializing in the Middle East from the disputed territories of Israel to the war in Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden.She reported on the war in Iraq from 2003 until she was injured by a car bomb in 2006. She recently returned to Afghanistan and Pakistan as an Intelligence/Counterterrorism correspondent for the Associated Press.She is also the author of Breathing the Fire, the story of her recovery from her injuries in 2006.

Now that Summer is on the way and that there are more national security issues being produced from the South China Sea to the Dardanelles than can be consumed locally - that sounds like the perfect time for Sal from CDR Salamander and EagleOne from EagleSpeak to hold a Midrats "open house."A little bit of a potpourri of what we find of interest from the latest news,to a chance for you to call in or ask via the live chat room the questions and issues you'd like to to discuss.Join us this Sunday from 5-6pm.

This Memorial Day Weekend we are reaching back to a 2010 episode where we look back at the Vietnam War and then look forward to the next decade's Fleet options for our Navy. 50 years in 1 hour. Our guests will be retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel J.G. Zumwalt and journalist Greg Grant. Lt. Col. James Zumwalt is a retired Marine infantry officer who served in the Vietnam war, the 1989 intervention into Panama, and Desert Storm. He is an author, speaker and business executive, and currently heads a security consulting firm named after his father—Admiral Zumwalt & Consultants, Inc. His articles on Vietnam, North Korea, foreign policy and defense issues can be found in various newspapers and magazines, including USA Today, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Washington Times, The LA Times, The Chicago Tribune, The San Diego Union, Parade magazine and others. He is a member of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), and from 1991-92 was the Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs. Greg Grant is a national security and defense writer and edits the Defense Tech blog and is an associate editor with Military.com. His writing on military technology and international security have appeared in Foreign Policy, Slate, The Washington Post, The Los Angles Times, Defense Technology International, The Washington Quarterly, Survival, Government Executive Magazine and National Journal. He arrived in Baghdad in April 2003 with the Third Infantry Division and returned a number of times to cover the war there. He reported for Jane’s Defense Weekly and from Iraq, and Afghanistan for the Military Times newspapers. Before taking an interest in journalism, he worked as a military analyst the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. He holds an M.A. in Strategic Studies from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

Since WWII, have we developed an officer corps that has not only developed a record of defeat, but has become comfortable with it?Is our military leadership structurally unsound?In his recent article, An Officer Corps That Can’t Score, author William S. Lind makes a scathing inditement of the officer corp of the United States in from the structure is works in, to its cultural and intellectual habits. We will have the author with us for the full hour to discuss this and more about what problem he sees with our military's officers, and what recommendations he has to make it better.Mr Lind is Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation, with degrees from Dartmouth College in 1969 and Princeton University. He worked as a legislative aide for armed services for Senator Robert Taft, Jr. and Senator Gary Hart until joining the Free Congress Foundation in 1987. Mr. Lind is author of the Maneuver Warfare Handbook (Westview Press, 1985); co-author, with Gary Hart, of America Can Win: The Case for Military Reform (Adler & Adler, 1986); and co-author, with William H. Marshner, of Cultural Conservatism: Toward a New National Agenda (Free Congress Foundation, 1987). Mr. Lind co-authored the prescient article, "The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation," which was published in The Marine Corps Gazette in October, 1989 and which first propounded the concept of "Fourth Generation War."

For the career minded Naval professional, to have a chance for the greatest advancement and promotion, you have to push and push hard. The reputation you build in your first 10 years sets the tone for the rest.Except for very rare exceptions, there are no second chances. There are no pauses, one iffy set of orders, one poorly timed FITREP, and you are on an off-ramp. You must work harder, you must sacrifice, and if you are to have a family young, you need a very strong support structure.For men - there is always the RADM Sestak, USN (Ret) option; wait until post O6, then start the family your peers did 20-yrs ago. For women though, there are some hard biological facts.The average American woman gets married at age 26. For college-educated women the average age at first birth is ~30. If you want to have more than 2 kids, you need to start earlier.  Mother Nature has her own schedule that doesn't often match yours.With women making up more of the military than ever, what are the challenges out there biological, cultural, psychological, and relationship wise to "making it happen?"You can't have it all - but how do you get the best mix you can?We will have two guests on to discuss. For the first half hour we will have Major Jeannette Haynie, USMCR, a 1998 graduate from the US Naval Academy, AH-1W Cobra pilot, and  currently a Reservist flying a desk at the Pentagon and working through graduate school - and fellow blogger over at USNIBlog.The second half of the hour, our guest will be Robyn Roche-Paull, US Navy Veteran, wife of a Chief, ICBLC, and author of the book Breastfeeding in Combat Boots.

So far in 2014, the big lesson is what people have known for centuries; in Eurasia you cannot ignore Russia. The cliché is accurate, Russia is never as weak or as strong as she seems.What do the developments so far mean not just for Ukraine, but for all the former Soviet Republics, slumbering Western Europe and Russia's near abroad?To discuss this and more, for the full hour we will have returning guest Dr. Dmitry Gorenburg, Senior Analyst, CNA Strategic Studies, an Associate at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, an author, and host of the Russian Military Reform blog.Dr. Gorenburg focuses his research on security issues in the former Soviet Union, Russian military reform, Russian foreign policy, ethnic politics and identity, and Russian regional politics. He is also the editor of the journals Problems of Post-Communism and Russian Politics and Law and a Fellow of the Truman National Security Project. From 2005 through 2010, he was the Executive Director of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.

It hasn't gone anywhere, the Long War, that is.People may be suffering whiplash having to look back to Europe in the middle of a Pacific pivot, and the Arab spring wilted in to extremism and bloodshed - but the war against the West still goes on from lone wolf attacks at home, to drone strikes across the swath of southwest, south, and central Asia.Coming back to Midrats for the full hour to discuss this and more will be Bill Roggio, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Bill is also the President of Public Multimedia Inc, a non-profit news organization; and the founder and Editor of The Long War Journal, a news site devoted to covering the war on terror. He has embedded with the US and the Iraqi military six times from 2005-08, and with the Canadian Army in Afghanistan in 2006. Bill served in the US Army and New Jersey National Guard from 1991-97.

A lot of people were surprised when Russia came back on stage this year - but not Midrats listeners.This Easter, let's go back 100 episodes to our interview with Midrats resident Russia go-to-guy, Dmitry Gorenburg.Here were the questions we were trying to answer two years ago; While the news seems to be all around Russia from the rise of China, the incredible success of the Baltic states, Afghanistan and Central Asian Republics, to the European edge of the "near abroad" - Russia continues to be a major player.Is it still feeding off the corpse of the USSR, or is there a new dynamism and potential? If not a democracy in the Western sense and not Communist either - what is it?Where does it see its role beyond a seller of weapons and energy? Is Putin just about Putin - or does he have a larger vision for Russia?Why has Russia taken the position it has from Syria to Iran in the face of world opinion?To discuss this and more, for the full hour we will have returning guest Dr. Dmitry Gorenburg, Senior Analyst, CNA Strategic Studies, an Associate at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, author, and host of the Russian Military Reform blog.

"Where are the carriers?" Regardless of the writing, talking, and pontificating about "Why the carriers?" - when there is a real world crisis - leaders still ask, "Where are the carriers." Since we waived the requirement for a floor of 11, we have drifted to the new normal of 10 without dedicated additional funding. 10 isn't even an accurate number. With one undergoing nuclear refueling - you really have 9. Knowing what it takes to deploy, train, maintenance and preparing to train for deployment - in normal times, it takes 9 to make three if you are lucky. If you have an emergency that requires multiple carriers onstation - you run out of options very fast, and the calendar gets very small.Surge? If as Rear Admiral Thomas Moore, USN said last year, “We’re an 11-carrier Navy in a 15-carrier world.” - what risk are we taking with 9 that can get underway?Our guest for the full hour to discuss this and more will be Bryan McGrath, CDR, USN (Ret.), Managing Director of The FerryBridge Group. We will use as a basis for our discussion the article he co-authored with the American Enterprise Institute's Mackenzie Eaglen, America's Navy needs 12 carriers and 3 hubs.

As with most concepts and good ideas, you really don't know what you need and how you need to do it until you put Sailors to task and head to sea.The idea of an Afloat Forward Staging Base has, in a variety of forms, been a regular part of naval operations arguably for centuries under different names and with different equipment.What about the 21st Century?  More than just a story about the use and utility of the AFSB concept, the story of the USS PONCE is larger than that - it also has a lot to say about how one can quickly turn an old LPD around for a new mission, and how you can blend together the different but complementary cultures of the US Navy Sailors and the Military Sealift Command civilian mariners.Our guest for the full hour to discuss this and more will Captain Jon P. Rogers, USN, former Commanding Officer of the USS PONCE AFSB(I)-15.