Saturday, August 27, 2011

The Right Weapon Systems at the Right Time, on Midrats

Don't miss the last Midrats of the Summer. EagleOne and I go live this Sunday from 5-6PM EST with two guests you don't wan to miss.

From today's operations off Libya to the closing days of WWII - what are the lessons of using military power to create the effects ashore?

For the last 6-months, conflict once again brought out the question often forgotten in the quiet times; where are our carriers? As was covered well in last month’s Proceedings by Dr. Norman Friedman, the essential effectiveness and efficiency of the CV/S/N. Land based air has its place – but any distance makes the ability to provide persistent effects from the air over the battlespace prohibitively expensive compared to a carrier off shore.

For the first half of the show we will have returning guest Dr. Friedman on to discuss.

For the second half of the show we are going to go back in time to the waning days of WWII with author D. M. Giangreco, the Arthur Goodzeit Award for Best Military History Book of 2009 awarded by the New York Military Affairs Symposium for his book Hell to Pay: Operation DOWNFALL and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947. We'll reflect on VJ-Day and what could have happened without the ultimate game changing weapon - the nuclear bomb.

Join us live if you can and pile in with the usual suspects in the chat room where you can contribute your thoughts and observation - and suggest to us questions for our guests.

If you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio - but the best way to get the show and download the archive to your audio player is to get a free account and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now that was a great Midrats!  The casualty figures for both sides discussed by Mr. Giangreco are simply astounding.  <span> </span>

ewok40k said...

Well, it would be quite like the Eastern Front in Europe, a real total war... of course there was always a blockade/starvation option, but that was not a little bit better than nukes, ne?
All in all the entire mess ended up relatively clean, with Emperor trading "peace for throne and immunity". It could  be much, much worse, not the least for Japanese themselves.