Why is 2027 Important?

It all has to do with the Salamander Deterrence Space.

Details and extended commentary over at USNBlog.

Come on by.

PLAN Submarine RECCE Guide

Nice one stop shopping for the People's Liberation Army Navy submarine force.

We need cute little phrases to remember them, like, "Jin has a chin," "No tail Kilo," "Short-chin and shack on the Shang," "Ming has a thing," you can take it from there.

h/t HI Sutton.

Are Midshipmen Dying for Sport?

Why are Naval Academy football players dying? 

In the last seven years, three Midshipmen who played at least two years of football at the US Naval Academy and the Naval Academy Prep School have died of natural causes.

2014: Will McKamey, 19, 5-9, 170-pounds: died after collapsing and falling in to a coma during practice. History of brain injury.

2020: David Forney, 22, 6'3" 305 pounds: died of cardiac arrest in his room.

2021: Michael Myles James, 22, 5'11" 230 pounds (2018): unspecified natural causes in his sleep. Recruited to play football, went to NAPS, played freshman year. 

I have kids the same age as these MIDN, that is what first caught my attention. I cannot imagine getting that phone call, or walking it to that room ... it is a living nightmare I would not want to see happen to anyone.

In life, death can happen to anyone and no activity is safe. Football is known to be more dangerous than most sports, and at each level the players and the hits get larger and harder.  Still, in a college as small as USNA and with people so young, those numbers seemed unusually large. That got me to start pulling a string.

The Capital Gazette has some interesting numbers we should look at:

This is the 14th midshipman death in eight years, and the second in a year’s time at the academy, according to previous Capital reporting. Midshipman 1st Class John Johnson died in December while on leave.

Johnson is the first midshipman to receive his posthumous degree under a new policy that allows midshipmen who have met the academic requirements for their degrees and are approved by the academic board.

Midshipman 1st Class David Forney and Midshipman 3rd Class Duke Carrillo died in February 2020. Forney, of Walkersville, Maryland, was found unresponsive in his dormitory room Feb. 20. Carrillo, 21, collapsed while taking a physical readiness test Feb. 8 and was later pronounced dead at Anne Arundel Medical Center.

The midshipman will be the fourth off-duty/recreational death in 2021 for the United States Navy, according to the Naval Safety Center statistics. Nine members of the Navy, including Johnson, died while off-duty in 2020.

This is an incomplete dataset that could be improved, but there is more than enough here to start asking some questions. For instance;

- While in the eight-year period there were 14 deaths, it is difficult to break out how many were from accidents. Ideally they should be pulled out of the dataset. If they were, the numbers would be even worse. If I could get a list - I asked a few USNA alumni if there was a memorial page or such that listed MIDN who died while at Annapolis but it appears there isn't - I could pull the name/names off year 8 so as to be the same period of time of 7 years of the football player deaths. That would make the football player percentage even larger as well. We'll stick with what we have and run with it anyway.

- While MIDN James was not on the team this year, he went to NAPS where he played and he played his 4th Class year. Two of his four years he was playing. He counts.

That gets us to the numbers:

- Plus or minus a hundred or so, there are ~4,576 MIDN at Annapolis.

- The last USNA football roster has 104 players. That means 2.3% of the MIDN population is on the football team. If you include people who were once on the team but are not on the roster, a bit more, but not that many more.

- In this eight-year time span football players represented 3/14 deaths. That is 21.4% of the deaths.

That number should concern everyone. That should give pause. 

That brings up all sorts of questions:

- In other colleges across the nation, is there a difference between the death rate of football players relative to the rest of the student population? More or less, especially for natural causes?

- If we looked not just as this 8-yr time period at USNA, but further, 15, 20, 25 years, do these numbers hold, or is this simply a "rough spot" in time?

If this is not just a "rough spot in the numbers," then what do you do with this knowledge?

Midrats Pre-July 4th Melee!!

One week prior to the July 4th holiday, and it's time to catch up on the latest events in the maritime security arena ... and an arena it is.

We have a new SECNAV nom ... but no one is talking about it.

We have the CNO expending T-AKE amounts of personal, professional, and institutional capital defending quaint academic social theory, FORD enjoys a banging time at sea, and the Royal Navy enjoys a Russian air and sea spectacular!

...and that is just the first few things.

As always with our free for alls, we have an open chat room and open phone line to the studio for those who join us live ... so don't be shy. 

Join us live if you can and roll in with your preferred topic in the chat room or call the switchboard number right here on the showpage.

If you use iTunes, you can add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes button at the main showpage - or you can just click here.

Fullbore Friday

What have you seen in your life?

What have you done in your life?

When your time comes, will you feel you gave it all you can?

I offer to you Commodore David Hughes, Royal Navy;

He joined the Royal New Zealand Sea Scouts with his twin brother John aged 14 and then the Royal New Zealand Navy as midshipmen.

After sea training with the Swedish Navy aboard the Prince Oregon, a three-mast sailing vessel, the brothers attended Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth for officer training, then on to Collingwood and Excellent for training as gunnery officers.

David was subsequently assigned to motor torpedo-boats and made three trips to Dunkirk during the evacuation as a sub lieutenant, while his twin brother was killed as navigator of a Q ship – used to lure enemy submarines into a trap – which was sunk by the Japanese in the Indian Ocean.

He remained on the Dover Patrol, grappling with German E-boats, supply vessels and coastal batteries and took part in the legendary St Nazaire raid in 1942, suffering a shrapnel wound to the stomach.

Recovered, he served in Normandy and was then assigned to the staff of Winston Churchill as a liaison officer, accompanying the premier to Yalta in 1945.

After a spell on secondment with the US Navy and post-war service with the RN, he joined the MOD… but never disclosed his job due to its secrecy.

He settled in Whiston, near Rotherham, in South Yorkshire and became an active member of the nearby branch of the Royal Naval Association in Mexborough, serving as its president.

Even at the age of 106 he strove to keep in touch with the modern Royal Navy. He was gutted at missing out on a visit to look around flagship aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth (aged 105) and similarly hoped to look around the Imperial War Museum, where his medals are held.

Commodore Hughes passed away earlier this month, just short of his 107th birthday.

A long life, well lived.

Fullbore.

Diversity Thursday

Today we're going to build off of last week's DivThu that was focused on the CNO, Admiral Giday, USN.

We are going to tie in the connection between Critical Race Theory, Antiracism, and Marxism - topics everyone is talking around for reasons best explained by them if you can get them to actually answer a question.

If you missed last week, click here and read it, watch the videos, then come back,

We'll leave last week at the House, and go to the CNO in the Senate in this remarkable exchange with Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR).

The CNO did not answer the question. He just repeated talking points from last week. He brings up unrelated topics ... as if Kendi's work has anything to do with critical thinking, China or Russia.

No other side contra to Kendi's world view is on the reading list that one can reference to have a discussion about the issue, or "think critically." There is no balance here at all. The CNO has chosen a side. He has become political on a domestic issue, dragging his Navy along with him. 

The CNO has read Kendi, I'll take him at his word, and by all indications is a true believer. Hoist that onboard and accept it. I have.

From here on out it is important to remember that when the CNO uses the words, "racism" and "equity," he does not define it as you and I do - but as Kendi does,

In his book,"How to be an Antiracist," Kendi defines racism as;

Racism is a marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalized racial inequities. 

Next, equity: 

Racial equity is when two or more racial groups are standing on a relatively equal footing. An example of racial equity would be if there were relatively equitable percentages of all three racial groups living in owner occupied homes...

Apply that concept to nuclear power school, medical schools, as well as biathlon and NBA teams. You can only get there by using a 1920's KKK definition or race married with strict quotas.

That is the remedy being injected right in to the veins of our Navy.

What a shame. Many (D) oppose the Navy because a larger Navy was a Trump thing, and as such it must be opposed and resisted because orange man bad. Now we have many natural allies of our Navy on the (R) side not all that sympathetic to other issues the CNO may bring up because in word and action, the Navy now seems the most woke of all the services.

Then again, maybe not. Perhaps we have a savior.

Then this Wednesday we had the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley, USA up in the House. 

Again, we have unrelated talking points that clearly show that they do not know what they are reading, if they have read it in full. Mostly the Chairman and CNO sound like they are just repeating what their briefers from the DOD/DON branch of the diversity industry told them. "White rage?" That isn't in Kendi, and wasn't about the events of 1/6/21. There are all sorts of strange defections here. Watch it yourself.

He brings up Mao, Marx, and Lenin. Huh. Funny he should say that.

I want to bring to your attention a 4-minute segment from a podcast by Jonah Goldberg from last week. You can listen to the full podcast here if you want, but this segment from ~the 16-20 minute mark are germane. 

Here's the transcript;

“The Ibram X. Kendi, I think that’s his name, the foremost guy in this anti-racism stuff. That’s basically,  if that is what we are calling Critical Racism theory, right, which is that, this anti-racism thing that it doesn’t matter wether if you don’t bigotry in you heart, that if you don’t affirmatively support what he and his milieu of activists define as anti-racist policies, then you are objectively racist. 

And, people keep asking why does this has anything to do with, why do people call this Marxist, actually I was had a long conversation with my wife about this the other day. To the extent it draws on Marxism, which it does as a matter of intellectual history, even though I doubt one in a thousand people who talk about Critical Race Theory as a good thing could explain to you what its roots in Marxism are, but it goes back to this idea of Material Conditions that is in Marx and a lot of Marxist thought.

It’s very much like this anti-racism stuff in this way. It used to be Marxists when they had their conferences or  gave their speeches or whatever, that would say, “It is objectively true that…”, right, and they would argue that, “it is objectively true” because they liked to use the phrase “It is objectively true..” because it conjured, it drew upon the myth that Marxism was scientific. This has nothing to do with one person’s opinion or a contest of values, they always liked to steal authority on the cheap by claiming it was scientific. 

That’s largely gone now, but instead what’s left is this same sort of Marxist argument they used to make which is that if you were not with the program of the communists or the socialists or whatever, and you had a point of view that wasn’t for the revolutionary overthrow or radical revolutionary transformation of society, then you were objectively on the side of the ruling class, the aristocracy, the industrial class or what Randy Weinegarten called the ownership class. 

That’s where this whole thing about class consciousness comes out of in that is where you are part of the proletariate, the working class, the lumpen proletariate, all those kind of things, once you achieve class consciousness, once you actually see the exploitation inherent in the system, then of course you will act in solidarity with the other members of your class for the overthrow of the established order, and if you don’t agree with all of that, then you are objectively on the side of the oppressors. 

So that’s the psychological-rhetorical trick that Critical Race Theorists use or at least Anti-racist theorists use when they talk about race insofar that they say that we have a monopoly on the truth. We have a monopoly on what constitutes racist policy and not racist policy and if you don’t affirmatively side with us in pushing anti-racist policies, and philosophies, and ideas, then you are objectively on the side of racism and it doesn’t even matter whether you are personally racist, because you are on the wrong side of the defining Material Conditions of how society is organized. 

That would be wrong enough and bad enough except for the fact that because most of these people don’t actually understand that that they are mimicking Marxist arguments, they take it an step further in they say that not only are you on the side of racism, but you must actually be a racist in your heart if you disagree with us."

Interesting times we find ourselves in. You were warned here every Thursday.

---

UPDATE: Highly recommend everyone take a time to listen to or read the transcript of the recent Hugh Hewitt interview with Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL) on Chairman Milley's comments.

---

UPDATE II - Electric Boogaloo: This Solzhenitsyn quote seems germane.

“And he who is not sufficiently courageous to defend his soul — don’t let him be proud of his ‘progressive’ views, and don’t let him boast that he is an academician or a people’s artist, a distinguished figure or a general. Let him say to himself: I am a part of the herd and a coward. It’s all the same to me as long as I’m fed and kept warm.”

Think Tanks & Money

Do you ever listen to someone from this think tank or that, or read one of their reports and wonder, "Where do they get their funding?"

Some  think tanks are quite open on where their funding comes from, many are not.

Does that matter?

I'm pondering over at USNIBlog. 

Come by and ponder with me. 

The Kowtowing Kiwi

Watching our great Anglosphere partner New Zealand continue to debase herself in the face of the communist Chinese government should be as frustrating and disappointing to all free, liberty minded people as it is to me.

Sophie Richardson puts the New Zealand government on report; 

New Zealand has signed on to a number of key initiatives led by other countries criticising the Chinese government’s ... Yet these remarks tend to be in the passive voice, sending a mixed message of wanting to criticise without irking Beijing. That squeamishness is reflected in other recent policies and remarks, including Labour’s peculiar position in the parliamentary debate over whether to use the term genocide to refer to Beijing’s policies towards Uyghurs, ...

The government’s decision not to join a January 10 statement with Five Eyes allies on arrests of democracy activists in Hong Kong, saying it had communicated its concerns bilaterally to Beijing, raised eyebrows when a few weeks later Wellington and Beijing agreed to upgrade a free trade agreement. Ardern has had to publicly defend her government against allegations that New Zealand was giving Beijing a free pass on its human rights record.

...

No New Zealand government has thoroughly confronted Chinese state and Chinese Communist Party influence in New Zealand. Former politicians, parties, universities, and companies across the country have been shown to have problematic ties to Beijing, yet there is little movement towards a broad, thorough public examination of these relationships.

In 2018, the Chinese embassy in Wellington hosted a reception for the People’s Liberation Army – a force deployed to crush peaceful speech from Tibet to Tiananmen Square – not at its own premises but at Te Papa, a public institution devoted to multiculturalism.

Human institutions often reflect, and are motivated, by the same things as the humans who run them.

Though a generalization, human actions are generally driven by the desire for four things deeply rooted in the brainstem; money, status, sex (aka social clout/influence), and resentment.

The order can change from person to person, but scratch the surface of any problem, and one of these will be right there under the surface, usually supported by the other three.

These drivers can be seasoned by other aspects of human nature, virtue and sin. 

When you look at a policy being pursued that seems good from your perspective or bad, look at the four motivations. What seems to be driving it? If you are having trouble, look at the flavorings that shape the four motivators for good or bad.

Though I’m not Catholic, I’ve always held their theological work in the highest regard – especially the easily grasped portions. Let’s use those for our flavorings.

You have the Seven Heavenly Virtues, first four from classic scholarship, the last three of a more theological underpinnings; prudence, justice, temperance, courage, faith, hope, and charity.

Then you have the Seven Deadly Sins; pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth.

How does this help us understand New Zealand’s actions?

My take is this is mostly driven by money (economic) not so much flavored by sin, but by a lack of virtue – specifically courage. If they had more courage, it would decrease the primary desire for money, and would bring status to the front. A status bolstered by justice, hope, and charity (for the oppressed).

Poor leadership is always the result of a lack of virtue. Poor leaders are not necessarily driven by sins – though that is more common than not – but by a weakness of virtue. That “weak” in “weak leadership” is just that – leaders weak in virtue.

New Zealand’s problems are a reflection of weak leadership. 

New Zealand took an opposite fork in the road from its close brother Australia when it comes to China. Will the New Zealand people catch up to the Australian view? 

In their isolation and leadership, hard to say … but this has to soak in at some point. The character of the New Zealand people will be reflected in how much they accept this kind of leadership.

They need to be more like Australia and Palau and less like some backwater Duhu Fu. 

Will the Franco-German Project Beat NGAD?

Well, at least they have a full scale static display;

The German defense ministry has forwarded a request to lawmakers seeking approval for almost 4,5 billion euros, or $5.3 billion, that would pay for the country’s contributions to the next stage of the Future Combat Air System.

Lawmakers on the Bundestag’s Budget and Defense committees are scheduled to consider the request next week. It covers a collection of research and technology-development activities, collectively dubbed phases 1B and 2, between 2021 and 2027. During that time, officials want to begin regular test flights with a demonstrator, constructed under the auspices of France’s Dassault Aviation.

I am a fan of the German thinking here;

German officials also want to offset nationally what they consider insufficient attention to the fields of electronic warfare, mission planning, weapons interfaces, and the secure distribution of sensor data, according to the document.

How fast could they move the timeline to the left if they had more money? Hard to say ... but 2027 is closer than it seems.

Fullbore Friday

Were there milbloggers, gadflies, and other agitators before their time? You bet there were.

Before “CDR Salamander” emerged from the head of Neptune, there were many examples that nudged “me” in to being. They are sprinkled throughout our history, some like Sims are well known – others have faded a bit in to the mists of time.

Today I want to bring someone out in to the light that is worth remembering. He saw well in to the future what realistic technological capabilities were emerging  that would more effectively and efficiently deliver what makes or breaks war at sea; delivering ordnance to target.

Let’s take a moment to appreciate a great naval officer, Admiral Sir Percy Moreton Scott, Royal Navy, 1st Baronet, KCB, KCVO.

To honor him I want to pull a few quotes from his 1919 book, Fifty Years in the Royal Navy. You can get a hard copy at the previous link, or via books.google, a free PDF is available.

Heck, I'll embed it below too.

Remember, this is right after World War One ended.

As I could not convince the Admiralty that the sub marine was anything more than a toy, I considered it my duty to communicate with the Press. On the 15th December, 1913, I wrote a letter but withheld it on representations by a member of Parliament that the Little Navyites, then very powerful in the country, might use it as a weapon to cut down the Navy Estimates, and that I should better serve the country by waiting until the estimates were passed, and Mr. Winston Churchill had got the money. He could then, if he agreed with me, easily strike off some battleships from the building programme, and spend the money voted for their construction on submarines, aircraft, and anti-submarine measures.

Their Lordships were so annoyed with me for venturing to put their heads straight as regards submarines that at the end of the year they took away the pay that I had been receiving for helping them with director firing. Their letter was remarkable for the statement that the installation was practically completed in several ships and that the manufacture of the gear was in a very advanced stage. As a matter of fact, it was only completed in two ships and was not even designed for the various classes of ships in which it was to be installed. In this letter, dated the 30th December, 1913, the Admiralty bade me farewell, expressing " their high appreciation " of my services in connection with “ this sighting gear ” and referring to its marked success."

…..

In due course the Navy Estimates for 1914-1915 were published, and as the substance of them revealed that the Admiralty had realised neither the menace that submarines were to this island country not the necessity of providing measures against them, I sent a letter to the Times on the 4th June, 1914, the gist of which was as follows : 

“ That as we had sufficient battleships, but not sufficient submarines and aircraft, we should stop building battleships and spend the money voted for their construction on the submarines and the aircraft that we urgently needed.

“ That submarines and aircraft had entirely revolutionised naval warfare.

“ That if we were at war with a country within striking distance of submarines, battleships on the high seas would be in great danger ; that even in harbour they would not be immune from attack unless the harbour was quite a safe one.

“ That probably if we went to war, we should at once lock our battleships up in a safe harbour, and that the enemy would do the same. “ That all naval strategy was upset, as no fleet could hide from the eye of the aeroplane.

“ That submarines could deliver a deadly attack in broad daylight.

“ That battleships could not bombard an enemy if his ports were adequately protected by submarines.

" That the enemy's submarines would come to our coasts and destroy everything they could see."

…

What is the future Navy to be ? Some officers say that the battleship is more alive than ever; others declare that the battleship is dead. I regarded the surface battleship as dead before the War, and I think her more dead now, if that is possible.

The battleship of today costs roughly £ 8,000,000; she carries about 1000 shells containing about 100,000 lbs. of high explosives ; her effective range is, say, 15 miles, she is vulnerable to aircraft with bombs and aerial torpedoes, and to submarines, the latter possibly carrying a 15-in. or 18-in. gun; and the ordinary automobile torpedo is still in process of development, and may, in the future, carry a ton of high explosives, which would probably sink any battleship.

For £8,000,000 we could build many aeroplane-carrying ships, equipped with aeroplanes carrying over 100, 000 lbs. of high explosives. If these aeroplanes carried fuel sufficient for five hours, their range would be about 150 miles out and 150 miles home.

In the battleship we put all our eggs into one basket.

In peace-time the aeroplane - carrying ships could be used as passenger ships, and the aeroplanes for carrying passengers instead of bombs.

As to relative cost of upkeep, the single battleship would require in peacetime about:

- 40 officers ... £8,000 

- 800 men ... £60,000

- Provisions and stores ... £30,000

- Coal ...  £10,000

- (total) ... £108,000

Say £120,000 a year. 

The aeroplane-carrying ships and the aeroplanes would cost nothing ; they would be earning money. The officers and men to form the crews of the ships would belong to the Merchant Navy. Aeroplane pilots will be as numerous as taxi drivers and get about the same pay. The battleship waddles along at twenty miles an hour, and cannot waddle very far, and in comparison with an aeroplane has a very low rate of speed.

The object in war is to introduce high explosive materials into your enemy's ships or country ; transmitting this high explosive by guns is expensive as the container of the high explosive has to be very strong, and consequently very heavy, to withstand the shock of discharge.

It takes a battleship weighing 30,000 tons to carry 100, 000 lbs. of this explosive. Ten aeroplanes weighing about three tons each would carry the same amount, so the relative weights of the carriers is as 30 tons to 30,000 tons.

When the battleship nears the end of her coal or am munition, she must waddle home at about the same speed as a South Eastern Railway train ( I am told that this is the slowest line on earth ), and it takes her several hours to fill up even if she uses oil fuel. The aeroplane does not waddle home, but comes back at 100 miles an hour, and it takes three minutes to fill her up with fuel and am munition. 

The future is with the aeroplane, which is going to develop rapidly in the next few years. Probably we shall also have submersible battleships of 10,000 tons. What chance will the surface battleship, presenting a huge target, have against such a vessel?

Be a gadfly. Take the slings and arrows. You serve your navy and your nation, not a bunch of imperfect people conflicted by personal ambition and the bias of the now. 

Always demand that those in charge of your navy are doing all they can and investing their money wisely so when your nation orders your Sailors in to harm's way, they have better and more capable tools to do their job than your nation’s opponents.

Admiral Scott, fullbore.

As a final note ... I'll just leave this here for the Front Porch;

Financial independence allowed Scott to indulge his intellectual arrogance and judgemental nature, which, when combined with his flair for self-publicity, formed the basis of his fractious relationship with Navy authorities. 

Diversity Thursday

Today we return to the subject of the addition to the CNO's reading list of a book that openly calls for the most sectarian view of race. Worse, it calls for the official application of racism in to official policy.

For those who have not read his book, let me pull out how Ibram X. Kendi defines things in his book, "How to be an Antiracist," the book in question. 

Words mean things, and when people redefine words, you need to pay special attention;

 

Now operationalize that concept in your mind every time in our Navy you hear, "equity." From Flight Surgeons to Nuke Power School - operationalize the above concept and how, once people read this CNO recommended book, they move to reflect that in how we do business.

Outside our Navy, by that example everything is racist from medical school, to the NBA, cattle ranching, and the music world.

To accept that definition is to either encourage unending sectarian conflict and activated "one drop rule" discrimination based on race, creed, color, national origin, etc ... which naturally, will lead to sectarian conflict.

To inject Kendi's world view is to invite conflict. Indeed, that is exactly where it wants to go. Chaos and conflict are opportunities for those who desire power and control.

Now to yesterday's hearing. 

You can watch the full hearing here or here, but below is a cut specifically to the 01:08 point where the CNO is asked about the disgraceful addition of the divisive and sectarian Ibram X. Kendi to his reading list.

It is one thing to see the obviously flustered CNO try to maneuver around his own minefield, but I think it is much more revealing to read the transcript;

Congressman Lamborn (R-CO): "Admiral Gilday, I have to ask you about something first, that I'm concerned about and a lot of people in the civilian world. I sent you a letter with two dozen people on it concerned that you recently added several books to the Navy's professional reading list promoting Critical Race Theory and one of these books is Ibram X. Kendi's "How to be an Antiracist" and it argues that the entire American system is corrupted from top to bottom by racial prejudices which account for all differences in outcomes in out society and one sentence out of that book says that, "The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination." Now, I understand that this is a voluntary reading list, but how does exposing to our Sailors to the idea that they are either oppressors or the oppressed, and that we must actively discriminate to make up for past discrimination improves our Navy's readiness and lethality for great power competition?"

CNO Gilday: "Sir, initially you mentioned Critical Race Theory. I am not a theorist, I'm the Chief of Naval Operations, but I can tell you is factually on a substantial enough of time talking to Sailors there's racism in the Navy just like racism in our country and the way we're going to get after it is to be honest about it and that's what we're doing and that's one of the reasons that book is on the list doesn't mean I have any expectation that anybody believe or support everything that Mr. Kendi states in his book. I don't support everything that Kendi says, but the key point here is the Sailors in our Navy, we have to be able  to think critically. They have to be able to look outwardly at China and Russia and they have to understand what these societies, why those societies who are potential dangers to the United States inwardly. We have to understand ourselves and we have to understand critically that we value diversity, and I thought okay..."

Lamborn: "Admiral, I agree that we should have a robust and a great discussion and any racism uprooted and taken away. I absolutely agree and I endorse that, but should we have future discrimination? Do you, don't you disagree that particular statement, do you?" 

Gilday: "Sir, I have to look at the context of it. I'm not trying to be evasive, but I don't, as I mentioned, I don't support everything Kendi asserts, I don't believe everything that I read. I think that I hope, I think that everyone has to be in a position to weigh facts from fiction. Even our Sailors, they're bombarded every day from misinformation, much of it comes from China and Russia on this issue that's getting in our national psyche. I'm trying to get after it in the Navy."

Lamborn: "OK, well I hope that's one statement you don't endorse and maybe we can follow up on that."

There is so much to unpack here, and so much that is revealing. I can't cover it in one post, and if you've watched the clip and read the transcript, the problems with the CNO's response and understanding are self-evident.

Let me pick my top issues.

Theory: I'm sorry, but the CNO specifically and Flag Officers in general damn sure better be theorists. That is their job.

You have to understand and execute the practical application of theory; just war theory; deterrence theory; recruitment theory; etc. The oft mentioned, "Project Overmatch" is a theory. Alliances are based on theory. Most of what the late great Wayne Hughes taught us was theory.

Sorry, that dog don't hunt CNO.

Kendi: OK Admiral, now let's get to why of all authors you have Kendi on your list. If you don't support all of what Kendi asserts, what do you support that he asserts such that you would put it on your reading list? If you want Sailors to think critically, where are the books out there that provide a different view than Kendi on the topic of how to address racism so our Sailors can critically weigh his ideas against others? If that is your desire, then you've failed. If that isn't your desire, then it is clear what you are doing - endorsing political sectarianism - intentionally or unintentionally.

Misinformation: What specific examples of misinformation that our Sailors see daily on racism is coming from China and Russia that you think Kendi's work is helpful with? Are people entitled to state that the ideas, examples, and opinions about the USA - its people and institutions - in Kendi's book are themselves "misinformation?" 

This very revealing exchange - there have been more and I hope there will be more - clearly tells us we have one of two things, or both: 

1) Either the CNO is fully engaged in Kendi's view of our nation and it's people, or... 

2) ...he has decided to let the Navy's branch of the diversity industry bully him in to including his and similar works so they will not raise trouble and call him nasty names.

Either answer to the above is unacceptable.

Yes it matters. The United States of American is an experiment in self-governance by a gloriously polyglot people. The only way this will work is if the people see themselves as Americans first, and believe that their government will treat them as individuals; equal to all other citizens. We've spent the entire history of our republic striving to get better at this ideal and have been more successful in this regard than any other nation in the history of the world. 

As we approach the middle of the 21st Century, if we turn from the concept of judging people by the content of their character instead of their race, creed, color, national origin, or other sectarian divisions, and turning back towards lower-brainstem sectarianism, we are heading to a very dark place. No society that encouraged sectarianism amongst its people has ever survived. It always leads to division, and usually rivers of blood.

To inject that view in to a nation's military, as opposed to suppressing it, is the height of foolishness and greases the path towards self-destruction.

---

UPDATE: Later on in the hearing, Rep. Banks (R-IN) also weighed in to the topic. 

The CNO comes off even worse.

 

Tomorrowland is Going to Get us Killed

We think we know the future, we don't.

We thought our leadership would learn from killing 17 Sailors in the summer of 2017, but it didn't.

We thought our Navy would be ready for war sometime this decade, but we've decided to taunt fate and push two decades down the road.

Pray for peace.

Details over at USNIBlog.

---

UPDATE: Link fixed. Sorry, my bust.

A Graduate Level Class on Efficiently Grilling the CNO

No, this isn't Rep. Luria (D-VA) week on CDR Salamander, though it is playing out as such ... but my post that was going up today is going on the back burner so we can bring up this jewel ... dare I say a Salamanderesque episode as uploaded by our friend Herb Carmen from today's HASC hearing.

I'll let Rep. Luria take it from here.  If we could have another dozen or so like this on The Hill, that would be great. Thanks.

Now, dig deep in to the point she's making here. Our Navy got in the pickle it is right now from overpromising and underdelivering; by acting like a salesman for the defense industry, vice a customer of same.

More of this is needed ... and on THU we'll have an earlier exchange with a different member of Congress that we'll cover.

Where is Our Admiral William Small? Rep. Luria Would Like to Talk to Him.

The Front Porch got some nice top-cover to start the week off. This is good.

As we covered here and on Midrats, sadly, the US Navy’s uniformed and civilian leadership over the last decade left a record of a serial inability to plan for the future of our Navy and worse, clearly define its importance to the security of our republic. 

Compounding the errors at the dawn of this century in the Age of Transformationalism, in the middle of the last decade it became clear to me in stark relief that the key to avoid further compounded errors lies in Congressional action.

We need to identify and support Representatives and Senators of all parties (remember, there are (I) in the Senate), who show the right focus and understanding to lead the required change through legislative change. DOD/DON is incapable of reforming itself, but it will follow the law and the holder of the purse. 

Ultimately, legislative change will need to replace Goldwater-Nichols, the COCOM structures, and accretion bound and ossified procurement system. Until then, we can do other things in parallel that can help shape the future – and must shape our fleet now. 

One such action is strategy.

During to the last Navy strategic effort of heft back in 2007, I dug out my hard copy of the 1986 Maritime Strategy I received as a Midshipman. As this is 2021, let us take a moment to contextualize those timelines.

Here we are in 2021 referencing 2007, 14 years ago, and 1986, 35 years ago. 14 years is the length of time from the end of WWII and the commissioning of our first ballistic missile submarine, the USS GEORGE WASHINGTON (SSBN-598). 35 years is the same length of time from the end of WWI to the de facto end of the Korean War.

Yes, we are thinking at the speed of smell.

What about today? What can we do when our uniformed and civilian leadership seem hobbled by socio-political distractions or intellectually frozen in aspic? Again, we need to look to Congress.

One of the congressional leaders navalists should keep in their scan is Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA). Consistently solid on naval matters, as one would expect from a fellow member of the exalted order of retired Navy Commanders, her article out today at WOTR is worth your time to review.

In it she states one of the most important concepts people in 2021 need to understand about the urgency of the needed change in the direction of our Navy;

As the Navy focuses almost exclusively on future capabilities, it risks overlooking the immediate threats posed by that competition today. A Battle Force 2045 plan does little to ensure a ready battle force in 2025. Today, no longer in uniform, but as the vice chair of the House Armed Services Committee, I believe the constitutional role of Congress “to provide and maintain a navy” should be based on something more than future hopes in technology and budget expectations. We need to be prepared now for any contingencies that may occur on our collective watch.

...

U.S. maritime leaders need to answer the question: How would the U.S. Navy deter or defeat Chinese naval aggression, which may perhaps be compounded and complicated by other states such as Russia, Iran, or North Korea acting opportunistically while U.S. Navy forces are engaged elsewhere?

...

...the U.S. Navy has lost a generation of shipbuilding to failed programs. For example, the DD-21 program office (which resulted in the Zumwalt-class destroyer) was established in 1998. Originally scheduled for a 32-ship production line, but pared down to just three, the Zumwalt and her two sister ships have not deployed. ... Similarly, the CVN-21 program executive office, which was set up to produce what became the Gerald Ford-class aircraft carrier, was established in 1996. The USS Ford has not yet deployed.

...

 Multiple challenges with the Littoral Combat Ship program have resulted in some of those ships being slated for decommissioning only a few years into their intended lifespan. The Constellation-class frigates, intended to provide a more capable alternative to the lightly armed littoral combat ship, will not be present in the fleet in significant numbers for a decade or more.

Hard truth, and glad to hear it from Congress. 

Time is of the essence, and we are late.

Today, U.S. Navy leadership should heed the words of Lehman: “First strategy, then requirements, then the POM, then budget.” The global situation and America’s competitors and adversaries may have evolved, but the process by which the U.S. Navy designs and builds the fleet should take a valuable lesson from the 1980s. If the United States is to remain a global power, it needs a Navy fit for the purpose and the United States, as a nation, needs to make the commitment to prioritize national defense and make this investment.

Verily. 

Small Islands in Great Power Competition, with Alexander Gray - on Midrats

China is interested in a lot more than just the first or second island chain. In the vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean, the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia are critical to the sea lines of communication for the economic powerhouses on both sides. 

From the Age of Discovery to today, their importance rises to the top of any power who wished to influence the area.

To look at this area of returning importance with us for the full hour from 5-6pm Eastern this Sunday will be Alexander B. Gray. 

The starting point for our conversation will be the issues he raised in two recent articles; How the US Can Protect the Sovereignty of the Smallest Pacific Islands in The Diplomat, and Why a Crisis in the Pacific islands Matters for Washington and Beijing in The Hill.

Alex is a Senior Fellow in National Security Affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council, served as Director for Oceania & Indo-Pacific Security at the White House National Security Council from 2018-2019.

If you use iTunes, you can add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes button at the main showpage - or you can just click here. You can find us on almost all your most popular podcast aggregators as well.

Fullbore Friday

Our Navy needs a 4th USS Aaron Ward.

Read all of this and tell me this isn't a name that needs to be active in our fleet.

We also need a ship named after her CO, Adam Sanders.

I'll just stick with the citations:

The Presidential Unit Citation for Aaron Ward reads as follows:

For extraordinary heroism in action as a Picket Ship on Radar Picket Station during a coordinated attack by approximately 25 Japanese aircraft near Okinawa on 3 May 1945. Shooting down two kamikazes which approached in determined suicide dives, the USS AARON WARD was struck by a bomb from a third plane as she fought to destroy this attacker before it crashed into the superstructure and sprayed the entire area with flaming gasoline. Instantly flooded in her after engine room and fireroom, she battled against flames and exploding ammunition on deck, and, maneuvering in tight circles because of damage to her steering gear, countered another suicide attack and destroyed three kamikazes in rapid succession. Still smoking heavily and maneuvering radically, she lost all power when her forward fireroom flooded after a seventh suicide plane which dropped a bomb close aboard and dived in flames into the main deck. Unable to recover from this blow before an eighth bomber crashed into her superstructure bulkhead only seconds later, she attempted to shoot down a ninth kamikaze diving toward her at high speed and, despite the destruction of nearly all her gun mounts aft when this plane struck her, took under fire the tenth bomb-laden plane, which penetrated the dense smoke to crash on board with a devastating explosion. With fires raging uncontrolled, ammunition exploding and all engine spaces except the forward engine room flooded as she settled in the water and listed to port, she began a night-long battle to remain afloat and, with the assistance of a towing vessel, finally reached port the following day. By her superb fighting spirit and the courage and determination of her entire company, the AARON WARD upheld the finest traditions of the Unites States Naval Service.

For the President,

James Forrestal

Secretary of the Navy

The Navy Cross citation for Commander Sanders reads:

The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross to Commander William Henry Sanders, Jr., United States Navy, for extraordinary heroism and distinguished service in the line of his profession as Commanding Officer of the Destroyer USS AARON WARD (DM-34), in action against enemy aircraft on 3 May 1945, while deployed off Okinawa in the Ryukyu Islands. With his radar picket station the target for a coordinated attack by approximately twenty-five Japanese suicide planes, Captain Sanders gallantly fought his ship against the attackers and, although several bomb-laden planes crashed on board, skillfully directed his vessel in destroying five kamikazes, heavily damaging four others and routing the remainder. Determined to save his ship despite severe damage and the complete loss of power during this action, he then rallied his men and renewed the fight against raging fires, exploding ammunition, and the flooding of all engineering spaces until, after a night-long battle to keep the ship afloat, he succeeded in bringing her into port. By his inspiring leadership and courage in the face of overwhelming odds, Captain Sanders upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

Like I said, read it all ... and be humbled at man's ability to persevere.

Fullbore.

Diversity Thursday

Want to know an organization's priorities? Follow the money.

The skunk at the navalist picnic last week, in an already tough year, was the unexpected - by almost everyone - rather clunky MEMORANDUM of June 4, 2021 put our by the Acting Secretary of the Navy.

You can read it in full here or below, but it outlines some significant cuts in to the Navy's teeth, 

- The Navy cannot afford to simultaneously develop the next generation of air, surface and subsurface platforms...prioritize of of the following (sic) capabilities and re-phase the the other two after an assessment of operational, financial, and technical risk.

...

- The Navy cannot afford to own, operate, and maintain its current infrastructure ... the CNO is directed ... to achieve a 1 percent facility footprint reduction measured in square feet per year over 10 years.

...

- Defund Sea-Launched Cruise Missile - Nuclear development efforts.

Just when it needs the ability to get ready for the oft-touted "high end fight" we are cutting what will fight that war.

What is getting money? Well besides the SSBN replacement that we outlined as the main driver of The Terrible 20s over a decade ago, we want to invest in telework, Naval Community College, various flavors of suicide prevention, sexual assault, and sexual harassment programs, & mental health. 

Oh, and of course;

- Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) are critical to readiness of our Navy and Marine Corps team, and ultimately to our mission success. As part of the POM 23 process, the DON shall provide funding and manpower necessary to establish and appropriately staff and resource an office of primary responsibility to comply with the Department of Defense andDON DEI policies, guidance, and activities. Funding priorities for programs will be directed towards enhancing or sustaining recruitment, career development, retention, and training programs that reduct.eliminate barriers to service or advancement and deliver resources and benefits equitable to all.

As we've documented since the start of this blog, the Navy branch of the diversity industry is already a large and well populated commissariat. This grows it even more ... and it will foster more division, more inequality, more strife.

Watch how they operationalize the last sentence. 

Warfighting? Meh. 

Culture wars? Hell yeah.

LCS: We Can't Decom Them Fast Enough

What if at the same time Apollo 17 was taking off, the last manned landing on the moon, we had NASA appointing an administrator to see what could be done to improved the performance of the Mercury space capsule that put the first American in space a dozen of years later?

Ponder your reaction, the press, and Congress.

...then click over to USNIBlog and behold the latest spasm involving LCS.

How Far will South Africa be Pulled in to Mozambique?

As we first pointed out here last August, Mozambique needs to be in your scan.

Though we may be pulling back from engaging with global Islamic extremism, it is not pulling back from the world. 

Especially on the African front of the bleeding edge of Dar al-Islam, they are pressing wherever opportunities reveal themselves.

The problem in Mozambique is reaching the point that the regional power, South Africa, may get involved.

South Africa will press for urgent military action by regional body SADC to quell an Islamist insurgency in Mozambique threatening to destabilize neighbouring countries, the foreign minister said on Friday.

It will make this call at a summit of the Southern African Development Community's 16 member states next week, Naledi Pandor told Reuters in a telephone interview.

SADC leaders have been discussing how to tackle the insurgency by Islamic State-linked militants, with an option for force, but this is the first time South Africa has explicitly thrown its weight behind the idea of a military intervention.

Since 2008, SADC has had provision for a standby brigade, part of a regional defence pact that allows military intervention to prevent the spread of conflict.

That was from last month. After the meeting, as reported at the end of last week, things seem closer;

President Cyril Ramaphosa says Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries are prepared to assist Mozambique to fight the insurgency that has destabilised the north of that country. He says leaders of the region are dealing with the situation because if they don’t, the conflict could spill over into their own countries.

Ramaphosa says the SADC Troika has sent technical experts to the troubled Cabo Delgado province to assess Mozambique’s needs in the area.

Ramaphosa, however, would not say what steps are going to be taken.

“You don’t want to be involved in a war situation and tell your adversary that we are coming, get ready for us. You don’t want to do that. I know that the media is interested. When are you going to send boots on the ground? When are you flying over? I am afraid you just have to bear with us. That’s the type of sensitive information that we’ll have to keep quiet about.”

There is a lot of ruin in a nation, and RSA is still consuming a lot of the wealth and civic structures from the apartheid era. The ANC is not as bad as it was thought it would be in government, but it is not good. It isn't in much of a position to do a lot in Mozambique ... but something must be done. 

Another basket case like Zimbabwe on its border will do no good for South Africa - already having ethnic strife from economic refugees. Delicate is a nice way of putting things.

Keep Mozambique in your scan.

Three Card NGAD

When something you know is mundane, ordinary, and clearly unclassified is all of a sudden stamped with a classification, your first reaction should be, “What are they hiding?”, not, "What neat things are they doing!" 

Know your history.

I have spent a week waiting for someone to tell me the latest on NGAD isn’t exactly what I think it is, and no one even tries to explain it away.  They know.

Via Mallory Shelbourne at USNINews;

The Navy is keeping classified the amount of Fiscal Year 2022 money it wants to develop the next-generation fighter aircraft set to replace the fleet of F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, according to service budget documents.

The Navy’s FY 2022 budget justification documents withhold the amount of dollars the service is putting toward the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program. This is the second consecutive budget cycle in which the Navy has classified information about its investment into the service’s sixth-generation fighter.

It was over a dozen years ago that we saw what I consider the most egregious cover-up of our Navy’s fundamental failure to properly understand its responsibility for stewardship of the professional capital the taxpayers bought for them - the classification of INSURV. The previous link has my comments at the time.

An entire generation of leaders now have grown up - and been promoted - in this climate of cover-up in our Navy. That is what it is, no reason to sugar coat it.

After eight years of classified INSURV and the problems they hid, Rep. Whitman (R-VA) clearly identified what it was;

…he (Whittman) noted that Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV) reports used to be unclassified and but have been classified for almost a decade. 

“During peacetime INSURVs should be declassified, and that makes sure there’s transparency there that we know what’s going on,” Wittman said. 

“That creates, again, that direction, that focus to make sure that maintenance is being done, maintenance availabilities aren’t being missed, material readiness is being maintained. All those things are critical.” 

“All of us have to look at this as an opportunity to really do some groundbreaking things in how the surface navy operates,” Wittman said. 

“It doesn’t hurt for us to get to points where we feel a little uncomfortable – in fact, I would argue we have to get to a point where we feel uncomfortable to make sure we are exploring all the different avenues that we have to explore.”

Yes, we commented on INSURV back in the day, but that was part of the process. Fear and shame are great motivators, and there is nothing classified about poor maintenance practices…unless you are doing such a horrible job that your warships are almost helpless … but that just tells we need more transparency, not less.

I remain convinced that you can draw a straight line from the horrible events of the summer of 2017 to not just the direct second and third order effects of hiding INSURV, but to the cultural mindset it enabled. 

Making uncomfortable facts classified is just a way to protect the powerful from being accountable - nothing more. We still have not addressed all the maintenance and material condition issues we “learned” from the summer of 2017's waste of 17 Sailors drowned in their racks, heck … we are still playing hide the ball on the manning issues.

We cannot afford to screw up NGAD, and I was hoping against experience that we would not. The fact we are on year two where we won’t even say what we’re spending on what is supposed to be a replacement for the Super Hornet only drags me in to further concern;

Look at this timeline;

The Navy finished its analysis of alternatives (AOA) for NGAD in July 2019 and as of August 2020, it had already started convening industry days for the program, USNI News reported last year.

The Navy has been seeking a replacement for the Super Hornet fleet for nearly a decade. The service put out its first request for information for the F/A-XX program in 2012

Nine years ago.

As we’ve stated over and over - next to reforming Goldwater-Nichols and the COCOM structure, we have to rip up root and branch our hide-bound and accretions hobbled acquisition system. 

It isn’t just inefficient and ineffective, it is a threat to national security. Just look at what it has done to our surface fleet the last quarter century. 

The aviation side of the house doesn’t have all that much better of a record. We’ve forgotten and thrown away range right when it became even more important. The light attack mafia won their tribalistic battles, but have left a flight deck that can't refuel a strike package, find and kill a submarine, or reach far enough without endangering mother. 

We’ve convinced ourselves that there was no way smaller aircraft carriers could park decks full of large footprint A-3, RA-5, F-14, EA-6B next to smaller aircraft - so we shrink our airwing in not just capability, but size, to the point of making its utility questionable. But hey ... the VFA guys got rid of all those VA & VF bubbas that teased them so much. They got rid of those goofy S-3s that kept taking up space ... so ... yea team.

Fewer aircraft with shorter legs is not how you win west of Wake.

With NGAD, it appears we have listened to industry oversell the promise of AI and unmanned systems, just assuming away very real issues such as bandwidth, reach back, ROE, engineering, and loss rates - all on the promise that technology risk is for losers and other people’s PCS cycle. 

This is what is driving what looks like a NGAD cock-up; the LCS of CG(X)s.

If you read the below and don’t get the sickening feeling that the same mindset and system that begat the clown show that was CG(X) isn’t slowly enveloping NGAD, then you’re not paying attention;

“As we look at it right now, the Next-Gen Air Dominance is a family of systems, which has as its centerpiece the F/A-XX – which may or may not be manned – platform. It’s the fixed-wing portion of the Next-Gen Air Dominance family of systems,” Harris said during a Navy League breakfast event at the end of March.

“But we truly see NGAD as more than just a single aircraft. We believe that as manned-unmanned teaming comes online, we will integrate those aspects of manned and unmanned teaming into that,” he added. “Whether that – we euphemistically refer to it as our little buddy – is an adjunct air-to-air platform, an adjunct [electronic warfare] platform, discussion of could it be an adjunct advanced early warning platform. We’ll have to replace the E-2D [Advanced Hawkeye] at some point in the future, so as we look to what replaces that.”

Harris at the time said the Navy divided its work on the NGAD program into two increments – increment one will evaluate a successor for the Super Hornet fleet and increment two will determine a replacement for the EA-18G Growler. The Navy has used F/A-XX to refer to the F/A-18 E/F replacement, while NGAD refers to the whole family of systems.

Someone get hold of NGAD while there is still time.

Not much time, but there is still time.

Have we learned nothing from the F-35 program? Did we not learn anything at all about “one stop shopping?”

They are over thinking NGAD. What we need now is an aircraft with legs that can deliver a tactically significant number of strike missiles that can hold an enemy's fleet, ports, and economic infrastructure at risk from distance. Design for 2-seats. Think of a 21st Century version of the SU-34. Go heavy now, that is the requirement.

If we feel we need an "air dominance" fighter for the fleet, then design one that does that with a lesser included secondary strike capability. We can have more than one aircraft under design and production at at time. If we are still trying to make the cult of efficiency happy by designing Swiss Army knives, then we are fools.

Are we compromising the good now for the future perfect that will never come?  If so, those in charge are steering us right in to a huge crisis at 2030 where the surface community finds itself today.

We don’t have time for that. Congress has no patience with the Navy for that. 

Remember, this is the team that brought us the FORD Class CVN that cannot even launch and recover the F-35C. A ship whose elevators and electrical systems seem designed to aviation tolerances and office park sensitivities that may not make it through shock trials, and if not, be able to deploy by mid-decade.

I, and others it seems, were giving them the benefit of the doubt. We were wrong. 

Congress needs to demand transparency. We cannot end up in 2030 with nothing to replace the Super Hornet. Its replacement should already be at IOC, but we playing three-card-monte with budget numbers.

If we screw this up - then why should the US Navy ever get more money in the budget? Any more responsibility? Any amount of respect and benefit of the doubt on Capitol Hill?

The Terrible 20s are fleshing out roughly as we saw a decade ago, and we appear to be compounding the problem through wholesale institutional incompetence.

Declassify now - not because it is in our self-interest (which it is) - but because we are a republic of a free people. The people and their representatives are not subjects.

Overclassification is a symptom of a larger problem. As outlined at CSIS’s Defense360 article from DEC09 by Patrick G. Eddington, Christopher A. Preble, and Seamus P. Daniels;

The overclassification of information poses a serious problem for national security. Restricting access to information prevents timely analysis and impedes decision-making by limiting debate on key policy issues to small groups of people within the government, and it inhibits public scrutiny of classified information and the decisions made from it. While it is critical to protect sensitive sources and methods, much of the information gleaned from these sources can still be made available in declassified formats. Still other information is already, and should properly be kept, in the public domain. Secrecy is inconsistent with the fundamental principles of transparency and democratic accountability, and the perception that government officials are using it to hide their own malfeasance contributes to widespread public disillusionment.

I am not sure what Congress is waiting for. 

Take the bad news and discomfort for a few retirement eligible Flag Officers now than the trainwreck to our Navy and the national security it underwrites that will come at the end of the decade if NGAD just becomes CG(X) with flight pay.