More Patrol Craft, Not Fewer with LCDR Jordan Bradford, USN - on Midrats

In a sharp departure from the ideas that brought them to the fleet, the Navy, "...appears poised to sunset the MK VI and Cyclone-class patrol craft programs in rapid succession, with no replacements on the horizon."

Why are these small craft in our Navy today, what missions are they doing, and what risk are we accepting if we let this capability go? What follow on craft could even do the job better?

To discuss these and related issues this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern will be LCDR Jordan Bradford, USN.

The starting point for our conversation will be his article from the May 2021 Proceedings, "The MK-VI id Dead - Long Live the MK VII."

Lieutenant Commander Bradford is the commanding officer of USS Typhoon (PC-5). He is a 2009 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and has formerly served as strike officer on board the USS Vicksburg (CG-69), navigator on board the De Wert (FFG-45), and combat systems and operations officer on board the Detroit (LCS-7). His opinions are his own and do not reflect any endorsement by the Navy, the Department of Defense, or the United States government.

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Fullbore Friday

This FbF I'd like to take a moment to recognize someone who is, in my mind at least, fullbore.

He did not do anything exceptional in war or other usual benchmarks to make FbF ... but he did something more.

He brought to life to a huge audience the great deeds of others in the naval service. He did it in a way that made people think about the example set and the lessons that could be useful for today and the future.

Brain cancer took him this week, too soon, but he left behind a legacy generations will benefit from.

Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, Neptune's Inferno, Ship of Ghosts, A Fleet at Flood Tide and more. Regulars here know these books and their author, James D. Hornfischer.

He was always a gentlemen and always responded to DMs and emails. I am mad I never tried harder to have him on Midrats more than just once. I looked at the emails I exchanged with him in 2016 for A Fleet at Flood Tide and we just couldn't get the schedule right. It's my fault, really.

A lesson for me here. I'm sorry I didn't try harder Jim. Your books deserved it. My bust.

James D. Hornfischer; author, historian, navalist, and an all around great guy. Thanks for the gifts you've given us all.

Fullbore.

Diversity Thursday

So, as Russian hackers go after our supply chains, the Chinese fleet expands across the globe, hard drugs flood our cities via the sea, as piracy and Islamic inspired terrorism expands around the African littorals, what do you want the Office of Naval Intelligence to focus their finite attention on?

The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) has established an “Artwork Working Group” to develop more inclusive artwork for Naval offices. 

Internal communications obtained by The Daily Wire show that ONI created a “diversity and inclusion artwork working group” to “address the issue” of inclusion in artwork within the naval offices. According to emails, the group began after a virtual diversity town hall in 2020 wherein an ONI employee “raised a concern about how the artwork on display throughout the [National Maritime Intelligence Center] did not represent the diversity of people serving in the Navy.” 

... 

In an email from the ONI Chief of Staff, officers were encouraged to submit any suggestions that might “make everyone at ONI feel valued and welcome through displays and/or artwork.”

I think we covered the photo games first in DivThu well over a decade ago. Excitable and immature people walking hallways county jelly beans is the most basic, blunt, and laughable tactic of the diversity bullies ... but it works in the face of weak leaders terrified of their own shadow. 

As we have seen at universities and corporations, so too we are seeing here. The imbalanced fetishes of an active and aggressive small group ... or just an individual ... are hijacking organizations to distraction.

Why? Simple; they have intellectually cowardly leadership who are terrified of being called names.

Everyone involved here needs to be reassigned. Publicly. Openly. They fear the wrong people.  

The COS at ONI has a Political Science degree from the US Naval Academy. He knows exactly what he is part of here.

These are unserious leaders in a serious job. Sorry, but it has to be said. 

To win the 72-Month or 72-Week, and not the 72-Hour War...

 ...we have better start planning to fight the marathon.

Now that we are contested at sea, we are setting ourselves up to be unable to return ships to the fight.

Details from the GAO's latest over at USNIBlog.

Give it a read and wake up.

I Have Not Come to Bury DTS, but to Yell at it

Since I left active duty I really have not had all that much time to yell at DTS. I mostly just laugh at it from a distance as it was no longer my problem ... at least not directly.

DTS has been horrible from day one. I know it. You know it. Worse, those who promoted and enforced it know as well. But, they didn't really care enough to do anything about it ... until it was a teenager. 

I am just old enough to remember how an efficient system worked. LT Salamander went to Admin and told a PN3/YNSN or whoever had the billet, “I need to travel to Norfolk with OPS for this conference (hands hard copy of message and travel request form). We need to leave next Monday AM. The conference runs through late WED, so if we can get home that night, great, if not the next AM. If possible, we should be able to stay at the hotel there, as per the message. If not, closer the better. We’ll need a rental car too. Thanks.”

Within 24-hrs, all was set up. You went. When you came back, you put your travel claim in the PN3/YNSN’s in basket. If you screwed things up, you’d get a call or more likely, they would just fix it for you.

I also remember the time before the scam that was/is government travel cards. You got an advance, if needed, but more often than not used your own personal card and then filed receipts for things that could be reimbursed.

Government travel cards ... talk about an administrative burden ... but a different topic for a different day, perhaps. 

But no, the system that worked would not do. That wasn’t … well, you know the buzzwords. We sure couldn’t use COTS either. Oh, no.

You can see a few of my historical references to DTS via the DTS tag here, but let’s go back to the start and see how we’ve progressed since my post in January 2006 (yes, over a decade and a half ago), I wrote this.

I know a guy who is going on TDY to New Zealand. He wants to take his wife. SATO using DTS quotes the round trip of $4,000. Well, he wants wifey to come along, and using their own research on her ticket they knew that tickets on that flight were about $1900. He told the SATO folks and she said she was glad to find out. It seems that DTS doesn't look for the best price, though the flight info was from Travelocity as clear as day, but DTS doesn't have that same info.

Classic example. Gov'munt contract for something that already exists in industry. Can't outsource because the GS unions wouldn't have that ..... don't be shocked. Just more taxpayer money thrown away. If you think I am babbling, or you want to get upset - click here and here.

You don't want to know my story. Trust me - it is so bad - I really don't want to go over it.

What is the latest DTS update? 

Via the ever-wonderful Doctrine Man; 

So, when it was announced recently that the Pentagon is preparing to sole-source the contract to replace the Defense Travel System (a process that began three years ago), you might expect a rousing roar of approval from the masses. Masses, worth noting, that have been subjected to three decades of a system so convoluted and capricious that it was euphemistically known to many as the “Don’t Travel System.” But most of us who spent those decades with the Defense Travel System also understand that any replacement—even Defense Travel Modernization—is still going to be subject to the same arcane travel regulations and the same human error. That translates to a fairly high likelihood that even though the system itself might be a significant improvement over its Quasimodo-like predecessor, many of the frustrations common to official travel will remain.

Everyone knew DTS was bad from almost the start … but here we are over a decade and a half later for a resolution … and it won’t resolve the core of the problem.

That tells you a lot about the dysfunction in DC. Tells you a lot about why we seem frozen in aspic when it comes to bringing the fleet what it needs to win ... or hell, just travel to Norfolk and back without expending half a work-day setting up and resolving the travel for a 3-day trip. 

Our ossified and accretion burdened bureaucracy has lost the bubble on why it exists in the first place. 

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Let us hope we learned our lesson with DTS and bring the fleet something that saves time, money, and headaches. I am a closet optimist. We’ll see.

In Memory of Neighbors Unknown

Every few years I repost this little bit from 2005. It is time again. I'll add the commentary I put with it in 2013 and have slightly modified some personal items to keep it up to date.

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In a culture where more often than not, all your neighbors are really just transients - they move in an out every few years, chasing whatever they are chasing.  Their families are scattered hither and yon; few really related to anyone.

I've wondered for awhile what impact the reality of the rolling, self-imposed Internally Displaced Persons has had on our nation - perhaps causing us to miss something. Is it a net-gain, or a net-loss? 

Well, perhaps I am projecting; I have always thought I was missing something.

Sure, post-military I returned to my hometown, the place I was born - and that is nice. I now have a smattering of relatives and people I grew up with who are still here - so I feel like I have what I have always wanted; a real sense of community.

Mrs. Salamander is a very rare creature in our boom-town; a third generation native, with another three to four generations going even further back a couple of hours down the road.

Even though this was where I was born, it never really felt like "home" - as community was a different concept for me based on my cultural reference.

My mother was the first of her generation to move from our small town in Mississippi since our family helped found the county and the city in the first decade of the 1800s - she still calls it "home" in spite of the fact she left it six decades ago. 

We would go "home" a lot when I was growing up. I always got a kick out of everyone more or less knowing each other; heck - related to each other. Names had meaning, relationships had meaning - and perhaps a post for a different day; race had a huge meaning in a way in my sheltered color-free upbringing I had no concept of.

A few years ago when we traveled back to Mississippi to lay my father's remains to rest in the cemetery that has my relatives'  remains are going back two centuries, my oldest niece walked in to the local drug store that also has a barber shop and a coffee house in it. She had with her her youngest son and my sister. They just wanted to have a cup of coffee. The server brought it to them and then, not recognizing them, asked how they were and what brought them to town. Well, within 5-minutes, there were 3-4 people around the table telling stories about my mom in High School, and how they remembered my her children, now all grown, when we visited during the summers.

In that small Mississippi town, history isn't abstract, it walks with you. Events of a century ago were still there, still waiting for you around every corner, if you look for it and have the right person with you to tell you about it. What your family did or did not do decades or a century ago still matter; still have an impact on the present.

I miss that, and think that we as a nation have lost a bit of something by not having it. In the faster parts of the nation, the hole brought by that missing is even greater.

Winding down a couple of decades of war and thinking about the above as we move in to Memorial Day weekend - I though about community in the context of a post I did the first year I was blogging.

I lived in Norfolk back in 2005, and I jogged by a hunk of granite all the time. It took me a couple of years until I decided to just stop and read.  I'm going to post in full that bit from 2005 and the follow-on and ask you to ponder your neighborhood; the few blocks to the left and right of where you live. How many of your neighbors have been lost in this war? As many as this small Norfolk neighborhood? Regardless of the number, would anyone have a connection strong enough to lead them to make a memorial for those lost?

Maybe yes, maybe no ... but a good thing to ask yourself today. I am.

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Neighborhood Memorials; May 2005:

I have gone past by this monument countless times. As of late, it started to bother me more and more. What is it?

Being that this is an older neighborhood, and the eagle is hard to miss, I realized that this had to be a monument of some kind.

We have all been to the grand monuments. The large monuments. The understated monuments. The sublime monuments. The controversial monuments. The insulting monuments.

What could be more personal than a neighborhood monument that simply states, "These were our neighbors that fought and died for us."

How common are these little neighborhood monuments? I did a quick search for these names on the Internet. Inside a day I found out that in 1935, Robert L. Settle was an Eagle Scout, but that was about it.

I found out more about Sadron C. Lampert Jr. through has close relatives in the area that I managed to find. In a quick email exchange I found out some detail that, when you think about it, every name on every monument has. When you look at these men, struck down in the prime of life, you have to think about the lost potential. For you economists out there, the opportunity costs for a society of those lost in conflict is huge. Earn it we should. With his permission, the grandson of Sadron C. Lampert sent a quick background.

While I obviously never had the honor of meeting him, his father (Sadron Sr.) was alive until I was about nine. Sadron Jr. was killed when my father was just one or two.

He skipped two grades in high school and went to Yale, where he played football and graduated PhiBetaKappa. He went to work for a firm in New York, where he met my grandmother (boss's daughter, if I'm not mistaken).

Sadron Jr. was drafted into the Army in late 1943. He served as a communications officer in Europe. He, like all the Sadrons, had pretty poor eyesight and was constantly breaking his glasses. This may have contributed to the circumstances of his passing. He died in September, 1944 near Empoli, Italy. He was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart.

By going to the outstanding National Archival Research Catalog, I found out that Robert W. Jones was a 2nd LT in either the Army or Army Air Corps when he was KIA. Charles H. Ware and Carl T. Wood; in the digital age they are hidden.

The irony is, the Winona Garden Club no longer exists, but as you can tell, someone in the neighborhood is keeping the monument up. Somewhere, on microfiche I'm sure, is the story. The questions are still there though; did they know each other before they left overseas? Did their families know each other? Did the families stay after their death? Did they serve together?
I've been to the WWII monument in D.C. and this little neighborhood monument had much more of an affect on me. Perhaps it is the personal nature of it, or the depth that Sadron Lampert, Jr.'s grandson provided. Next time I see something like this hidden in a corner, I'm going to walk over and see. After all, that is what they were put there for. The former members of the Winona Garden Club succeeded. Decades later, people are still giving tribute to their neighbors.

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Winona Memorial II: November 2005:

With Veterans Day, it is a good time to focus again on something I ran into this summer; something everyone has, I hope; a local personal memorial to those who died in service to their country. In this case it is a small little memorial in Norfolk, VA in an neighborhood called Winona Park.

As a byproduct of my original posting, the family of one of the men on the memorial, Sadron Lampert Jr., has been kind enough to send along some more details on Sadron Lampert Jr. that adds depth to the name. I'll quote from some of their emails below, taking out the names. A reminder that these were real people, with real families, real futures, real desires, real hopes. Everyone that leaves early, sacrifices a lifetime.

Nothing dramatic here, but next time you hear or see a name, remember each one has some kind of connection - some history - some grieving family. War is an expensive undertaking - and money isn't the currency.

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Dear CDR Salamander:

I happened to Google Sadron Lampert and found your article on the WWII memorial in Winona. My name is XXXX. I live in Norfolk, and my father, XXXX, is Sadron's brother. I would like to add to and clarify some of your information regarding the five young men from Winona who gave their lives serving their country.

The only person among the five that my father did not know was Robert W. Jones. Three of the families literally lived next door to each other: the Lamperts, Settles, and Woods. In fact, my grandmother, XXXX Lampert, was next door consoling Mrs. Settle on the death of her son, not knowing that her own beloved Sadron had already been killed.

By the way, my grandparents had already lost a little girl, Doris, when Sadron died, and my father, who was five years younger than Sadron, had gone into the Army before Sadron and was in New Mexico training to go overseas when he heard of his dear brother's death. My father--my hero--went on to fly more than his share of missions over Japan, flying out of Tinian. The siblings had another brother, Ralph, who died at age 56 of a massive heart attack.

To clarify Sadron IV's e-mail, Sadron III was two when his father was killed. Sadron III, of course, is my first cousin.

Sadron, Jr. entered Yale at age 16. He graduated at age 20. He was on a special football team--the 150 lb. varsity team--because of his slender stature.

Sadron, Jr., .... met his wife, Edith, (while she) was working at Farmer's, Inc., my grandfather's company, as a secretary when Sadron, Jr. met her. She was from South Norfolk. ...... After Sadron and Edith married, they moved to New York, where Sadron was the manager of marine and war risk insurance at Johnson and Higgins on Wall Street.

Sadron and Edith were married at Rosemont Christian Church in South Norfolk. The church was on Bainbridge Blvd., the same street where Edith's family lived. Her maiden name was Edith Herbert. Again, Sadron and Edith were a lovely couple. My mother and father can still picture them attending their church, First Methodist, Edith dressed to the nines and Sadron perfectly outfitted in a gorgeous white summer suit.

Sadron, Jr. was actually drafted in early 1944. He was drafted as part of Roosevelt's Limited Service Act because of his nearsightedness. Instead of the Army using his vast intelligence and putting Sadron where he could have made a weighty difference, the Army sent him straight to North Africa and then to Italy. .... He died on September 14, 1944, three days before my father's 21st birthday, because he and a boy from Wisconsin caught a mortar in their foxhole at Futa Pass, Italy, which killed both of them instantly.

Although Sadron Lampert was at Futa Pass at Highway 65 in Northern Italy on September 14, 1944, several WWII websites list incorrect information. For example, one lists him as "Lambert" and another lists his date of death as Sept. 29, 1944. Both are incorrect. Sadron Lampert died on Sept. 14, 1944.

I know that the fighting between Sept. 2 and Sept. 25, 1944, along highway 65 through Futa Pass--known as the Gothic Line--was intense. Between Sept. 10 and Oct. 26, four U.S. divisions suffered over 15,000 casualties. Some sites even suggest that the Futa Pass activity in September 1944 was a diversionary sacrifice to draw enemy fire away from other strategic points.

Sadron was dashing and extremely intelligent; everyone admired him. My mother also grew up in Winona and remembers seeing Sadron and Edith together and thinking what a perfectly beautiful couple they were. They had the aura of movie stars. My grandparents continued to live on Morris Crescent until their deaths. My grandfather, Sadron, Sr., died in 1983. I was lucky enough to know him well into my adulthood. My mother's parents lived on Huntington Crescent until their deaths (with my grandmother living almost to age 97). My uncle and my brother and his family still live in Winona, so my attachment to the neighborhood is quite strong.

Charles H. Ware went by Hal. He and my dad were the same age and were on the high school football team together. My dad believes that he was in the Army Air Corps.

Carl Wood was drafted rather late in life. He was 6 or 8 years older than Sadron. He was the first husband of another long-time Winona resident, Winnie (Mrs. William) Scullion, who died several years ago. Her sons (by her second husband) are still in the area.

Robert Settle was an Annapolis grad. He took Naval Flight Training and was killed in a crash stateside.
.....
Just last year, the Lafayette/Winona Civic League held a special Memorial Day service and dedicated the memorial site with new lights. My mother has photographs of the original dedication service, held in the early 1950s, complete with shots of Sadron, Sr.; his wife, Elizabeth; and their grandson, Sadron III.
.......

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To the family of S.L. Jr., thanks again for the email and putting the person behind the name.

Every name has a story like S.L. Jr. Every memorial is huge, even if smallish and in a small park; like the one that should be remembered on the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th Month. Armistice Day.

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UPDATE: Ninme has a nice tribute to Colonel Bolling from WWI.

Diversity Thursday

As most of you have noticed, we could do a DivThu twice a day every day for the last nine months or so ... but this is supposed to be a side-show and not a primary subject of cdrsalamander. 

As the Front Porch knows, when we started this almost a decade and a half ago, we were pretty much it in going after the diversity bullies, their commissariat and constellation of grievance driven rent seekers.  We are no longer alone.

The issue broke out above the ambient noise a few years ago, and now has some top-shelf advocates such as Christopher Rufo going at it full time. 

It is great to have company, but we still need to keep the drum beat going. I've decided to do the best I can to only bring in things that I think are either being overlooked or I know would be of specific interest to the Front Porch.

I have that this week. 

Last summer saw the triumph of a decades-long effort by the diversity industry to get their players in place throughout DOD in both dedicated billets - GS and uniformed. With them in place they had the opportunity to harvest dividends at the right time.

You have to respect the effort. As anyone can tell you who has been in the game, senior leadership is absolutely terrified of their permanent company civilian HR and DEI staff. They won't stand up to them. They won't say no to their suggestions.

In position and the field of play set, they just needed to wait for the moment to be ripe and they could make their move to get as much gain as possible. 

The great failure of the Trump administration in this area was its failure to appoint people who knew was was in play. As a result, nothing was done to dismantle the cancerous infrastructure fueled by racial animus, division, and sectarianism. 

We've seen the results in our Navy with the horrible Task Force One Navy, and the CNO including supporter of racist policies and programs Ibrim X. Kendi and others in to his reading list.

You get what you appoint. You will see what you recommend. The bitter harvest from this field will come to our table for years, but right now we have something to deal with. 

Biden's ahistorical Red Guard have their chisels, cranes, and paint cans ready to come after our Navy. These Americans, including retired Flag Officers, are demonstrating a kinship with the Afghanistan Taliban unworthy of anyone who expects to be consider a person of reason.

They are coming for ship names.

The Pentagon’s Confederate renaming commission is taking a look outside places and things named after individual Confederates, its chair told reporters Friday, to include anything named to honor the Confederacy.

Fort Belvoir and the guided missile destroyer Antietam have not before come up in the Confederate renaming discussion, but retired Adm. Michelle Howard said that the commission is taking a broad look.

Belvoir, originally the name of a plantation on which the post now sits, was dubbed Fort A.A. Humphreys when it became an Army installation in 1917. In 1935, it went back to Belvoir, at the request of a Virginia congressman who wanted to recognize the historical Belvoir plantation.

“We want to get to Fort Belvoir and dig more deeply into the historical context,” Howard said.

They are not looking for context, they are looking for pretext. Pretext to destroy.

They are not so much rewriting history, as ignoring it.

Similarly, the cruiser Chancellorsville, named after what is considered Gen. Robert E. Lee’s greatest victory, is already on the list, as is the oceanographic survey ship Maury, named for a Confederate sailor.

Previous generations who saw that after the massive slaughter that was our civil war, that we needed to come together and see this as one history, one nation.

That is unpopular now with the Red Guards wandering through the streets, but there it is.

How bad can it get? Until there is pushback, they will keep expanding. Just look at where the bleeding edge of the school system is:

The documents, obtained from Montgomery County Public Schools, detail the district’s “Anti-racist system audit” and critical race theory classes. They reveal that students who attended Thomas Pyle Middle School’s social justice class were taught that phrases such as “Make America Great Again” are “covert white supremacy.”

The phrases are ranked on a pyramid, with “Make American Great Again” ranking only slightly below “The N-Word,” the “KKK,” “lynching,” and “Neo-Nazis.”

If commissions in DOD are thinking about changing ship names, you don't think another commission on extremism won't benchmark where academia is?

Really? Why wouldn't they?