I, as many alumni, believe that USNA is a national treasure and should continue. BUT – to do so, it must be able to continue to demonstrate USNA is required. It must demonstrate that it is effective in carrying out its primary mission – to “graduate leaders dedicated to a career of naval service.” Recently, in response to a FOIA request, after almost 3 months, USNA has been unable to provide even the definition of “a career of naval service,” let alone an evaluation of its mission effectiveness. Captain Westbrook’s article does not, unfortunately, support his premise that USNA is… Read the rest of this entry »
This is a response to Bruce Fleming’s article published on salon.com on 7 March. His article was titled in the hyberbolic terms and vernacular one does not normally expect from college professors: “Let’s get rid of Annapolis: Our military academies screw taxpayers and the students — and serve only the powerful brass.” I am writing from aboard the Sixth Fleet flagship, USS Mount Whitney (LCC-20), steaming in the Adriatic Sea. Despite submitting this rebuttal to the editors of salon.com soon after Fleming’s article was published, they have refused to print my response. Many thanks to the U.S. Naval Institute Editors… Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: naval academy, salon.com
We are a Navy at war. The war we are in is not a conventional war, but it is one nonetheless. It is a war that relies heavily on intelligence. Irrespective who or where you wish to place the blame, can anyone be even remotely comfortable with this timeline? After Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) expressed her displeasure of the ongoing situation during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Mabus explained that when Branch’s name came up in 2013 in connection to the Glenn Defense Marine Asia bribery case, he chose to pull Branch’s clearance out of an abundance of caution… Read the rest of this entry »
To: IRGC Commander Mohammad Ali Jafari CC: High Council of Cyberspace From: IRGC Cyber Army Major General Esmail Madani Subject: Operation Cyrus Date: Oct. 25th, 2021 How to Defeat America and Win Back the Persian Gulf: Operation Cyrus America’s military center of gravity is, and has always been, public support for its endless wars. America’s enemies in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan understood this well. They drained public support by killing Americans and their puppets in hit-and-run attacks, forcing them to spend ever more blood and treasure to accomplish their ill-defined political goals. The public became fatigued and sought an end… Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Cyber, Daesh, Hypothetical, Information Warfare, ISIS
Please join us at 5pm (remember Eastern Daylight Time) on 13 March 2016 for Midrats Episode 323: Building a Navy in Peace That Wins at War The wartime record of the US Navy in under four years of combat from late 1941’s low point to the September 1945 anchoring in Tokyo Bay did not happen by chance. It did not happen through luck, or through quick thinking. It happened through a process of dedicated, deliberate, disciplined and driven effort over two decades in the intra-war period. What were the mindset, process, leadership, and framework of the 1920s and 1930s that… Read the rest of this entry »
Many of you are familiar with the popular Navy recruiting poster that showcases one of our big-deck carriers and the caption: “90,000 TONS OF DIPLOMACY.” Warships send a strong message of resolve and by their very presence–they deter conflict. Nowhere is this more relevant than in the Black Sea, where our freedom of navigation operations, reassurance measures, and annual exercise plan contributes to the safety, security and prosperity of the Black Sea Region. However, under the terms of the Montreux Convention, an international treaty, a 90,000 ton aircraft carrier is prohibited from transiting the straits into the Black Sea, so… Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Black Sea, Partnerships, Russia, Turkey, ukraine
The modern age has not just made the world flat, it has made it transparent. Just as the internet lowered the barriers to entry in the areas of reporting and commentary from everything from pet cats to grand strategy, so too has it changed the ability of military forces to move with any degree of confidence that they can control who knows where they are when. A great example of this real-time OSNIT has been around for centuries, but what has changed is the timeline has moved from weeks to instantaneous. If there is an IP connection, you are being… Read the rest of this entry »
Please join us at 5pm EST on 6 March 2016 for Midrats Episode 322: Radical Extremism, Visual Propaganda, and The Long War: In the mid-1930s, Leni Riefenstahl showed the power of the latest communication technology of her time to move opinion, bring support, and intimidate potential opponents. The last quarter century’s work of Moore’s Law in the ability to distribute visual data world wide in an instant has completely change the ability of even the smallest groups with the most threadbare budgets to create significant influence effects well inside traditional nation states’ OODA loop. How are radical extremists using modern… Read the rest of this entry »
For more than 200 years the U.S. Navy has been integral to the security and prosperity of the United States, evolving to meet the security and maritime needs of America. The Optimized Fleet Response Plan (OFRP) grew out of recognition that after 14 years of sustained combat operations for our deployed units, the resultant trends in maintenance and modernization execution, training time compression, deployment length increases and personnel churn were unsustainable. OFRP is designed to optimize a series of processes to generate a maximum amount of operational availability of our naval forces in order to deliver rotational forces; accomplish maintenance… Read the rest of this entry »
Read and read widely. Building off a comment during the last Midrats by our guest, Dr. Toshi Yoshihara, I took time this week to read Australia’s 2016 Defence White Paper. Follow the link and give it a read, what an superior bit of work by our fellow Anglosphere brothers on the other side of the world. As outlined in a great summary video by the Sydney Morning Herald’s David Wroe, the White Paper is a clear eyed view of the world coming up in the next decade; a world that has dark shadows that demands a free people to have… Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: australia, China, South China Sea
Recent Posts
- A Response to Captain Westbrook’s “Testimonial to the Value of the U.S. Naval Academy”
- Cut Annapolis at Our Peril: A Testimonial to the Value of the U.S. Naval Academy and U.S. Service Academies
- Slave to the Process; Numb to the Pain
- How to Defeat America and Win Back the Persian Gulf: Operation Cyrus
- On Midrats 13 Mar 2016: Episode 323 – “Building a Navy in Peace That Wins at War”
Tags: Annapolis, naval academy, usna