Naval Power in Action with CAPT Brent Sadler, USN (Ret.)

Ponch and Moose connect with Brent Sadler, a retired U.S. Navy Captain and Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, discussing maritime strategy, U.S.-China relations, and naval power in the Indo-Pacific. 

Sadler reflects on his collaboration with Ponch at PACOM (now INDOPACOM) from 2012-2015, where they shifted from linear, phase-based planning to non-linear, adaptive approaches like complex adaptive systems and a "spectrum of rivalry" to counter China's hybrid threats. 

The conversation covers the ongoing "new Cold War" with China, which Sadler argues began post-Tiananmen Square in 1989 and encompasses economic, diplomatic, informational, and societal warfare rather than just kinetic conflict. Key examples include China's maritime insurgency in the South China Sea, the West Capella incident as a model of "naval statecraft," and historical influences like unrestricted warfare, the 100 Years of Humiliation, and WWII collaborations. Sadler critiques U.S. shipbuilding deficiencies, advocates for reforms like a Naval Act and unmanned systems, and addresses topics such as Force Design 2030, the 2027 Taiwan threat timeline, the Fat Leonard scandal, Panama Canal security, and Tomahawk transfers to Ukraine. He emphasizes non-linear thinking, cultural understanding, and building industrial capacity to deter China, drawing from his personal background growing up in Asia and professional experiences.

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March 25, 2025

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Chapters

• 0:00 Origins Of A Nonlinear Mindset
• 4:29 Breaking Linear Plans At PACOM
• 7:13 Spectrum Of Rivalry And New Cold War
• 10:24 Are We Already At War With China
• 15:08 Complexity, Corruption, And Vigilance At Sea
• 19:16 Naval Statecraft Defined
• 22:22 The West Capella Playbook
• 27:01 Maritime Insurgency In The South China Sea
• 31:10 History, Humiliation, And CCP Narratives
• 36:08 Culture, Empathy, And Realpolitik
• 39:22 Formative Years In Asia
• 42:58 Countdown To 2027 And Readiness
• 48:38 Rebuilding America’s Shipbuilding Base
• 54:06 Jones Act, Markets, And Capacity
• 58:16 Panama Canal, Ports, And Leverage
• 1:03:31 Carriers, FA-XX, And Range
• 1:07:06 Force Design 2030 And Logistics
• 1:12:14 Long-Range Fires And Command
• 1:16:58 Tomahawks, Ukraine, And Escalation
• 1:21:08 Fleet Design Priorities Now
• 1:25:41 Life In DC And Building A Network

Transcript

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 0:57

All right, Brent Sadler is here with us today on No Way Out. Before we get airborne moose and to our listeners, I want to provide some context on how our paths crossed maybe 10 years ago. So I'm a Navy reservist, uh, you know, knucklehead reservist, uh, guys that show up and work on their footrups and that type of thing. Um, I show up to Paycom J5, and Captain Sadler um grabs me and says, Hey, I want you to uh help us with something. And I'm gonna introduce you to a Lieutenant Colonel uh Russell Davis. Do you remember Russell Davis there?

Brent Sadler: 1:30

Uh oh, I remember Russ. Yep.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:32

Yeah, yeah. So um Russ grabs me, and the three of us sit down and we start talking about complex adaptive systems, the Kinevin framework and John Boyd's Observe Orient Decide Act Loop. And I'm like, ah, great place to be, complexity thinkers, my type of people. And um, what I ended up getting tapped to do by by Captain Sadler, I'm a commander at the time, is to work with Russ on a resiliency war game. And that war game, uh, we can't get into a lot of details about it here. Uh, maybe Brent could talk a little bit more about what how that has influenced um maritime strategy and strategy in Indo PAYCOM. Um, but what we did there is we got away from the linear approaches to strategy, um, things that we learned in the cockpit. And I hate this because a lot of people that come out of the cockpit start with the end in mind and work backwards. Uh, this approach is more about understanding the context. What does the context tell us? What are those affordances? What should we be doing with the strategy? And that's what I think Brent really brings to our national strategy conversation is he he thinks like this. He looks at the world and says, This is what's happening, this is what is likely to happen. Here's how we need to prepare for that. So, uh, what I want to do is turn it over to you, Brent. Uh, great to see you here. And uh, I know you want to talk about the South China Sea and what's happening there. So, so build on that if you can.

unknown: 2:52

Yeah.

Brent Sadler: 2:52

Well, yeah, great, great to connect back with the shipmates and you're bringing back dusting off some cobwebs. Uh, the stories and what we were doing back there, uh, I was at PACOM 2012 to 2015. So when you came, when we met, I would been, I think about two years of very little sleep dealing with uh talking with all our folks in the Western Pacific and East Asia, so U.S. Forces Korea, uh, our embassy folks in places like India, but also in uh Malaysia, the Philippines, and of course, deployed units. And then at the other time of the day, I'm dealing with the DC folks. So I never got any sleep because Hawaii is like right in the middle of that. And we were doing the rebalance to Asia Pacific, and what became very clear early on is business as usual was just wasn't working. And the other thing is when I came to PayCom, into PayCom now, but PayCom at the time, my mandate was take the China expertise that I was able to put in place here in DC and start what was called a competitive strategic uh strategy. It informed a lot of other things. That's probably about as much as I can say on that one. But I came to PAYCOM with a mandate and it was execute what I'd started uh, you know, for my small role and started the defense uh strat defense strategic guidance, the rebalance of the Asia Pacific. Uh and the way that we did planning, uh a little bit of Navy and Army here for a little bit. You know, everyone in uniform Navy understands that Army is very doctrinal and can be almost like vapor locked into it. But it's also understanding their language. You can actually get them to become really big allies of ours. And and they did. So the way that planning was done, and this is what you came, this is what you're talking you were getting in in the mix of, the way that we did planning was very linear. It was very, you know, okay, we're in phase zero, one, two, three, four, five. These are the the ray the levels of conflict, and it was very, you know, cookie cutter. It's like you meet these conditions, the general or the admiral will say, now we're in phase one, and then things would just magically change. That's not human nature, that's not human existence, that's certainly not the way that our adversary, the Chinese, behave. And so we started in like 2012 through the 15, we moved to a much more gradual, graduated kind of thinking where we blended things. And you may be going up in escalation, but then you can also, you're planning to also go down in the way that you want. What we were trying to do was connecting war fighting into peacetime campaigning, and that we could seamlessly go back and forth. Um, a spectrum of rivalry is what eventually Admiral Munch uh called this this approach. And that was like 2019 time frame when he when he started calling it. So this was a year's effort that you were a part of. Uh it, I think we knew it at the time that it was a poison pill that we were putting into the the department's uh thinking, and a poison pill for all the right reasons. It changed the way we think. Uh, I think it's complicated our adversaries' understanding of how we how we would fight, thankfully. Um, a lot of work left to be done. It's a fight that I'm still engaged in. The first book that I wrote, heavily informed from our experience together uh at Paycom and a lot of other things. Uh, this is a U.S. Naval Power 21st Century new book, which just came out in September, uh, talks a lot about the details about one specific area, and that's the South China Sea, uh, but also in the new Cold War. How do we actually fight uh and persevere rather in this new Cold War that we're in with China? So I just fair, man. You took me back.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 6:39

Yeah, I wanted to bring that up because I wanted to thank you for how that really changed my perspective that there are solid people in the DOD or DOW now uh that know how to plan, know how to do things. And and Russ was a Sam's grad. Oh, yeah. I want to add one more thing, which is very important here for our listeners. Um, Grant Hammond was uh Russ's advisor, uh, I believe around our command of staff college time to his transition to Sam's. For those of you who are not familiar with uh Grant Hammond, he is the author of A Mind of War uh and also the uh author of uh a discourse on winning and losing, which is John Boyd's work, uh, which we talk about quite a bit. So to have that type of influence, that nonlinear thinking, that understanding context, uh, is critical. And there are pockets inside the our our Department of War now that know how to do this. And Brent uh gave me that opportunity to actually utilize these tools and techniques and experiment and probe to see what we can get. And I would say that that experience with the uh resiliency war game was probably that the one of the most exciting things I got to do as at a strategic level or operational level warfare. So thanks for that, Brent.

Brent Sadler: 7:45

Yeah, your legacy lives on, by the way. I was in Hawaii not too long ago in the midst of I wasn't invited because it was I stay away from the classified world now that I'm such a public figure uh uh out here now, out of uniform. So uh but they were doing a they were doing one of the successors of what what you were what you were beginning. So it's very much an appreciated challenge. Um lots of questions, and the more that you experiment, the more that you understand your own limitations. So, you know, to you to comment, Tun Tzu, know your enemy, but know yourself. And so these logistics exercises are profound. Uh they're being done in more places than than in DupeCom, too. So thank you for your effort on that as well.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 8:27

Thanks again. Hey, so we we've had folks come on and talk about Force Design 2030 uh from the Marine Corps. I I think a lot of that has uh built on some of the things we may have looked at years ago. Uh it may be right or wrong. That's we will maybe check in with you on that here in a moment. Uh we also look at uh understanding context and probing and and that type of thing, uh, as well as unrestricted warfare by the Chinese, the the Chinese doctrine that may or may not be out there. Um the the current sense that I get from folks is that we're waiting for a kinetic war to happen. Uh the way Moose and I look at it right now, we're already at war with the Chinese, right? We're already at it's it's a it's a fifth generation, maybe a fourth generation type of warfare. Can can we get your thoughts on that right now? Are we is there are we at war?

Brent Sadler: 9:10

Yeah. Uh in the communist Chinese or the Chinese Communist Party's mentality, yes. And it was began it while the bodies were still warm in Tiananmen Square in June of 1989. And we know that from the leaked Tiananmen Square papers, which by 1998, 1999, uh it was out there, it was floating around, it was a little bit like a pirated copy back in the 90s to get your hands on this thing. Um, but you can find it now and you can read it and you can see the deliberations. Very clearly, the Chinese Communist Party under Deng Xiaoping, the supposed moderate and one that was going to bring China into the into like a Western free market economy, and one that we could live with, uh was the leader in making that distinction. So the Chinese Communist Party is what it is. Its colors remain Chinese, remain communist red, and it's not compatible with a free markets, and it's not compatible with individual liberties, the sovereignty being with the individual. So yeah, we're at war. Uh it's a it's a war with Chinese characteristics, so subterfuge, deceit, uh hedging every action uh so that you can actually further your own interests. Things like educational exchanges with like middle schools or high schools are in the context of this war in a chin in the Communist Party's mind. We don't think about it that way, but we have to. We're about 25 years late to task, uh, that it's economic, it's diplomatic, it's societal, it's informational, and where I think most of the listeners to your show, it's military as well. And um so yes, and you see it, and you know what you're looking for.

Speaker 1: 10:54

That's uh that's pretty amazing, especially when you talk about the the the kids in school being exchanged. It was no different when I was in grad school. I think half our cohort was from was from the uh from the PRC. Um and that's all part of a grander strategy, I think, that most people are completely oblivious to. And a lot of the the criticism that I've had on some of the and by the way, I'm I am a charter member of the South China Sea Yacht Club. Um, I spent a year on a uh a cooperative engagement float uh back in 2000 when we were you know keeping our restoring relations, you know, keeping relations up and that sort of a thing. And um I'm sure at some point we'll talk about Fat Leonard, uh, which is someone I saw with my own eyes and uh met. Um but I I I what you were alluding to when you talk about things like exchange programs and things like I'm saying about like my grad school cohort being you know half from PRC, and we think of things that are happening like lawfare and currency war and other things that were written about in unrestricted warfare. It seems to me that a completely myopic view of only focusing on kinetic possibilities is completely short-sighted given the the real and present danger of China, who tends to understand complexity in Sun Tzu and John Boyd more than it seems that our own our own country does.

Brent Sadler: 12:24

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot there. I mean, I I was probably a I was a flag lieutenant at Seventh Fleet, so I may have actually visited with the Admiral.

Speaker 1: 12:31

Well, you know, carrot float, right? Cooperation afloat, readiness.

Brent Sadler: 12:35

We would, and we did a lot of things. So our paths crossed, yeah. Oh, yeah, I'm sure we are we crossed paths. Um uh both old Westpac sailors and Marines.

Speaker 1: 12:44

Luckily, as a first lieutenant field artillery officer, I was of no value to Fat Leonard. So he was there though. Yeah. So anyway.

Brent Sadler: 12:53

Um yeah, my goal, I and I it's a shame what Fat Leonard was able to do, but again, like all of us that live on the sea, death can come at any moment. You always have to be vigilant. Yeah. Uh even when peacetime, because the sea, the ocean is unforgiving to the stupid. And when you make a mistake, uh she's willing to take you right away. So it's much the same way. There are a lot of grifters and and folks out there trying to take to take advantage, and leadership had a lapse. It's the best way to put it. And Fat Leonard was always an ever-present risk. He was known. I kept him away from the ship, the Blue Ridge, for my tenure. Not even allowed on the pier. He tried numerous times to get on board. Uh, my last J I did a very long junior officer tour back in the 90s. It was like almost four and a half years. Uh, and my last Westpac, we pulled into Padia, Thailand, and the skipper had me on the periscope, uh, said, Look at the pier. I'm not leaving if you see a big fat guy. And I'm like, Yeah, there's a fat guy. What kind of fat guy am I looking for? And and I I flip what we he looks he looks through the scope and says, I'm just staying on the ship, I'm not leaving.

Speaker 1: 14:05

Yeah, I mean, fat Leonard, the the the name fat was actually an understatement. I mean, he was a ginormous uh being. Um I well, and I I certainly I love your comments. I I I believe, you know, even as a Marine, you know, we're naval too. And I think that our edge, uh, whether we're naval aviators, whether we're subsurface, surface, uh, anybody in the naval branches has that edge of calculating in the sea, which is the uh one natural, ever-present force of constant change. You're constantly adjusting for it. Um I wonder about the there's another dichotomy there that is kind of a weird thing, is when when he was operational, we actually were pretty effective with him. And that was one of the the major points of the uh podcast series on him that we had Tom Wright on to come and talk about was the fact that, hey, all of this bad shit happened, and this is really bad and repugnant, and yet at the same time, our national security and whatever in in uh in the South China Sea and other places was actually pretty effective, irrespective of all the uh immoral and unethical things that uh you know, from time immemorial since sailors have put to sea, this stuff, this is not new. This is nothing nothing new. I guess it's probably new in a uh a media environment like we have.

Brent Sadler: 15:19

Well, you need to know you need to know who you're dealing with. And when you did, at least from my experience as a flag lieutenant, uh so junior officer or Westpac sailor all the way through to 2001 as a flag lieutenant, um, know who you're dealing with. Know what role they're playing. Um I mean, it's warfare and it's competition with bad people that we're trying to outmaneuver and outsmart. Uh you're gonna have bad actors that will be allies at times, but there's always a risk. And so uh again, it's a nature, it's just the nature of doing business. The the legacy of the Fat Linder scandal, I think, was uh far worse. The consequence was far worse than you know, they should have hammered the individuals that did the bad things.

Speaker 1: 16:03

Yeah.

Brent Sadler: 16:03

It had a chilling effect over port visits and engagement throughout Southeast Asia for, I mean, for a long time. I was a defense attache in Malaysia and I was fighting this, and this was 2017 to 18 timeframe. Uh and that actually had a tactical and strategic impact on our ability to deter what the Chinese were doing. So I think we've turned the corner, but we have to be always vigilant.

Speaker 1: 16:30

Let's pivot it back to the the overall theme and get away from Fat Leonard, but just really point to the fact that it does what Fat Leonard shows, amongst all the other things that we've talked about, is that the complexity of this. There's nothing simple of point A, point B, we're the good guys, they're the bad guys. It's not, it's it's not that simple. It's extremely complex.

Brent Sadler: 16:49

No, the um the concept, again, from my lessons growing up in Asia, uh, and then as a junior, and all those experiences, you know, the Fat Leonard's in the mix of that. And this concept called naval statecraft. The last administration uh embraced the idea. This administration, under Trump, is also embracing the idea, uh, though they're not using, thankfully, the last administration's term. They took my term naval statecraft and called it maritime statecraft. And it it we need thinkers and leaders that think nonlinearly, able to see how different timelines, different efforts can actually come together in unexpected ways, and then lead those changes. Um economic statecraft, naval presence, active and aggressive diplomacy that's actually focused. Um, these things all come together in this cocktail called naval statecraft. And we need leaders to do that. Um there's a few examples that exist that I point to, but uh, we still aren't designing and acting on a plan. It's more happenstance and getting lucky by having the right person in the right place with the right tools.

Speaker 1: 18:00

What would you say is the gold standard or the or the model worth emulating? Who's who who would you say?

Brent Sadler: 18:06

Yeah, so 2020, uh the West Kapala incident. Uh so I was already back in DC, I was already getting ready to retire when this and actually, yeah, I actually did retire as this was peaking. Um so I I was watching it from the outside. What I found out, what I'm about to tell you, was all by luck. Was not by design. And no one's gotten better at it yet. But so if we roll the clock back to 2019, uh the Malaysians charter this this offshore vessel, the West Kapala, to do offshore energy surveys in their own EEZ. But of course, the Chinese think it's theirs. So they start screwing with them. The classic form, maritime militia, Chinese Coast Guard. But this is also coming to an election in Taiwan. And as all of us know, in the military, there's one thing on the calendar that you can you always have to be ready for things going sideways, Taiwan presidential elections. So there was a lot of U.S. naval and military presence in the region or ready to come to the region if the Chinese wanted to try to do a repeat of the third Taiwan crisis, another thing that happened in the late 90s, that was about Taiwan presidential elections. And so these naval forces were in the area. The Chinese are messing with the West Kapala in the South China Sea. Uh naval forces kind of started being pr viewed by the Chinese and others in the region as being a deterrent against the Chinese. But it wasn't until the Seventh Fleet Admiral at the time connected very explicitly, and I don't I I I I kind of know how and why he did it, but it wasn't with the intent of a bigger purpose. And he said naval presence is also to assure the economic rights of our partners and upholding the rules-based order. I had never seen an admiral or political leader connect specific naval presence with the economic rights of our partners. Not normally you'd hear them like, oh, so much shipping, 80% of the world's sh trade is on sea lift, and it's free open sea lanes. That's that's anodyne. It's for say it's not going to move the needle if you're a Malaysia. But if you're a Malaysia trying to get money out of your seabed and energy that your government budget relies on, which it does, and it does it still does, having an ally say, hey, our military is in the area to keep bad guys from impacting your bottom line, your economy, your economic rights. And what happened after that statement is you started to see, uh, and Vietnam was the ASEAN chair, you start to see statements that you never really heard coming out politically that were in support. Not, hey, the military US needs to not stir things up. You you hear a softening. And then in July of 2020, Secretary of State says a speech, by the way, that was prepared to occur back many months earlier, that said China's claims on the South China Sea are illegal. They're excessive and they're illegal. Now, had the Admiral's statement happened after that, everyone in the region would have thought that we were being aggressive and that it is the U.S. that's instigating a problem that they would have to deal with and want and a military presence that's not going to serve their own national interest. But because we did it in that right sequence, because we have the naval presence there for other reasons, and it was there for a long time, everyone's like, well, wait a minute. The U.S. military, they are reliable, they're present, they're here also because of my national interests are aligned with them, and they're pushing back on the bad guys in a very forceful way that we can understand. Secretary of State's uh comments in July of 2020 were very explicit in unmistakable terms. And then to add the cherry on top, after that, polling across ASEAN countries showed that the United States was the security partner of choice by wide margins. That was a change from a year before, and also that China was not the economic partner that they wanted. It was more aspirational. So things changed all for the better for at the populous level, and the elites in the region started submitting demarches, public demarches, to the United Nations uh as well as to Beijing, that their actions were unhelpful. That is an example of naval statecraft economics and understanding your partners' needs, backed with a with a visible and persistent presence at the right place with the right type of platforms, and of course, very aggressive diplomacy, targeted aggressive diplomacy.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 23:45

Brent, at the moment you have two aviators leading up, one leading up Indo PayCom, and then you have another one leading up Pac Fleet. You know how I started the statement that hey, we can't take that aviation mindset and start with the end in mind and work backwards. Um, you have them in a room, you have an opportunity to talk to them about what should they should be doing. What is your advice to them right now given the current situation? And maybe you should provide some context as to what's going on in the South China Sea today and what we need to be doing to counteract that, and maybe what we ought to be doing in the future with our forces positioning there.

Brent Sadler: 24:17

Yeah, I've actually talked to a couple of those folks in the past, uh, and I've worked with uh Admiral Paparo, uh shipmates together on the CNO's personal staff while we were both captains. Um so they wouldn't be surprised by the following. Uh first, we're not organized for task. Um the Chinese have been waging an aggressive long-term maritime insurgency. The target, there's the center of gravity is not the US Navy in the South China Sea for them. It's a peacetime competition over the patterns of behavior and what the its competitors, its neighbors, view as their waters. They want to change that. It's not it's not a war fight. So it's it's an insurrection or an insurgency against the rules-based order, which is unclause, you know, where territorial seas begin and end, and where pe what economic rights are included in everyone's EEZs. The Chinese are trying to make it all their waters. And so that's the goal, and we haven't really realized it. So the leadership now in the last few years, I think everyone gets it. Um but the nice thing.

Speaker 1: 25:23

Is that like a Monroe Doctrine, the like a like a Monroe Doctrine type framework?

Brent Sadler: 25:27

Uh not really. Uh it I I I again using army doctrine uh to help rally. So counterinsurgency, it the people are the center of gravity. In a maritime counterinsurgency using army doctrine, the center of gravity are the fishermen, it's the offshore oil exploration, it's the economic livelihood that's the center of gravity. It's why the West Kapala incident was so instrument, why it worked.

Speaker 1: 25:54

Um and Well, I I just mean from the standpoint of do they have a sphere of influence uh premise that we do here in our own hemisphere with say the Caribbean and everything else.

Brent Sadler: 26:06

Yeah, that so absolutely. But once upon a time on this on Admiral Greenert's personal staff, when I first 2011, this was one of the early go find out what's driving them, why are they reading all about Mahan? Um yes, they do have that kind of, and they've they've very diligently read our history and the world history on this to try to make their case. So they knew they know what they want, and they're trying to rationalize it. And the rationalization is like, well, yeah, you use your Monroe Doctrine, but it's a misunderstanding of the history. The Monroe Doctrine was about protecting uh the uprisings and the revolutions for, you know, Boulevard revolution throughout Latin America in the early part of the 1800s, uh, to keep the Europeans, specifically the Spanish Empire, which was kind of the evil empire of its day for Americans, out from suppressing and murdering all of the potential democratic revolutions that were going on at the time. So that's kind of the historical genesis was we were trying to keep these influences out because the British, the French, the Dutch, they were already there with their own colonial presence. Um, so it's important to understand. But for a Chinese communist narrative, they know that historical difference. They use it of like this is our area, our sphere of influence. Um so they definitely got and studied that uh very much. They've also studied our World War II history in the Pacific, which, if we want to go back to the logistics, um, they they're taking a page out of our lessons learned of 1941, 1942.

Speaker 1: 27:48

I'm I'm interested that you you mentioned World War II. There's another thing about World War II in China that I had not been aware of until uh a mentor of mine from the Marines, a retired colonel and history professor, taught me about. It was called Seiko, and it was the Sino-American Cooperative Organization. And this was a guerrilla force that uh it was it's sometimes called the uh I think the Rice Patty Navy, and it was uh headed by Admiral uh Milton Miles, uh, a future Commandant Robert Barrow was he did his lieutenant time in the world World War II there. Um but basically they were guerrilla insurgents against the Japanese on mainland China, uh, and it was a it was a joint effort between the Navy and the Marine Corps, and yeah, they'd ambush and they'd um they they'd create a lot of havoc. And as I understood it, it was two major camps between this rice padding navy that was more affiliated with Chen Kai-shek and and um what became uh the Republic of China and Taiwan, uh sort of versus uh William Donovan and the Office of Strategic Services that was more with Mao, and and as those as those were conflicting. And there were a lot, it's it's a book called A Different Kind of War. It's been out of print for years, but it was actually through the Naval Institute where I had first heard of it. And I don't know if that history has anything to do with it because we we we were supporting both gangs, so to speak, you know, both factions in China that that make up modern day China today, with the one exiled to what was then known as Formosa, but then of course the the mainland PRC. So I did they look at that and what do they think of that?

Brent Sadler: 29:23

Uh I think the Chinese so the Chinese Communist Party has a and Chinese people have kind of a mixed feeling about that history. They're very proud of like the Flying Tigers. Uh they protected it at the worst moments of the Cultural Revolution, they protected uh Stillwell's headquarters, they kept a lot of the memorabilia safe. You can still kind of go find it, and so they revere that that moment in history. So um they view us as an ally in that moment in history, an important one. And I think the Chinese people, it's endearing too broadly, the Chinese Congress Party hasn't been able to suppress us, suppress it all these many years later. Uh they're not taking lessons from it, I think, there because it doesn't serve their purpose. Their purpose is to suppress their people and move out to acquire more resources, more influence, you know, and they're near abroad. And how do they actually persevere in a war over Taiwan? Those are the last one's the most important. The persevere in a war over Taiwan is really what animates a lot of us.

Speaker 1: 30:24

But so another strateg another strategic orientation question. So you know, uh again, we as naval forces, I mean, we've we've been doing something in China since the 1800s, right? I mean, we've we've we've we've had a lot of exposure. Uh, I think that the the naval forces, the Navy, specifically the Navy and the Marine Corps, you know, we've had a lot of Eastern influence, and it's uh uh it's traceable back very far. Um James Bradley, who wrote the book Flags of Our Fathers, and the other one about the Aishima raids, and I can't think of the name, Fly Boys. Um, he also wrote a book called The China Mirage, and he's talking about how the past hundred years that China is recovering uh morally, you know, from what they view as Western damage upon them or Western incursion upon them, uh starting with the opium wars and going through things like the Boxer Rebellion and the China Marines and the Shanghai presence and everything like that. And how how much of that history still weighs on their minds when it comes to diplomacy? Because, you know, for most Americans, if you know our age, uh history started on 9 11. You know, for most uh people at a young age, say like my kids in college, you know, history started on the day that Trump took office and everything's gone to hell, right? So like we don't have the scope and breadth of history in a strategic lens that that they do, which can go several seconds. Centuries, what what effect is that having on things?

Brent Sadler: 31:51

Yeah, no, the Chinese Communist Party has uh hijacked that history of the 100 years of humiliation.

Speaker 1: 31:56

Yeah.

Brent Sadler: 31:57

Uh and they and they use it as a rationale for for their excessive behavior, um, and their bullying, quite frankly. Most m their their neighbors in the region know better, and but they don't have they don't have a whole lot of options unless they get strong partners like the US acting a lot smarter and informed by this, understanding this history. So the Chinese Communist Party, they they use it as part of their mandate, is that they are bringing back China to its global dominant role that they always felt entitled to. And it is a form of entitlement. I mean, China is, you know, look at the characters, it's central country or central empire, central kingdom. Uh they they view themselves as that, very literally. Um but it's also not honest historically. And I think there's a lesson here for Americans to take. And and I've got a book that I got when I was like 10 years old sitting on the bookshelf behind me down here, uh, that's the Hundred Years of Humiliation. It's the title. It's a lot of really graphic pictures. Uh, but I read it when I was like seventh grade, eighth grade. Um the lesson from this is that China, the the Empire of China at the in the early 1800s, basically picked a fight with the British Empire. Uh two very proud empires rather than try to figure out how to actually benefit in a relationship mutually respectful, the Chinese were too arrogant, and the British Empire was too proud to accept that arrogance. And eventually, because the Chinese lost sight of having a strong, vibrant military and society, become corrupted over time, a lot of weaknesses, they eventually over series. It wasn't just the British, the French also had an opium war as well with the Chinese. The Chinese had basically picked fights uh in the first half of the 1800s with basically every major imperial power. Uh so they didn't, they weren't, they were not smart diplomatically at the time, highly arrogant, uh, and they kept losing. Eventually they had the Taiping Revolution, and it was a massive bloodbath. At one point in time, you had a Christian revolutionary, the Taipings, that almost toppled the entire Chinese empire, and you would have had a very different China today if had that happened.

Speaker 1: 34:13

Um that's also a major force, though, too, of the of the of the Taiwanese and the like Chen Kai-shek was a Christian too, wasn't he?

Brent Sadler: 34:21

Yes.

Speaker 1: 34:21

Yeah.

Brent Sadler: 34:22

Yes. So there's there's a there's a tension there. And the Chinese Communist Party has taken another history lesson from dynasties of the past. Secret, they'll call them secret societies, why they hate the Falong Gong. It's like an exercise and meditation group, but they view them with high suspicion and therefore they go, they overreact. Because in the past, the yellow turbines, the red turbines, there are all these like secret societies in the past that became the genesis for you know insiditious and revolutionary behavior that eventually caused the demise of dynasties. So the Chinese Communist Party, acting like a Chinese dynasty of the past, cannot allow any type of independence. They cannot allow any type of grouping of people, no matter how benign. And this is this is something they they know, but they don't address. We should certainly take lessons from China's experience of the Opium Wars uh and be very, you know, we need to nurture our society and our constitutional republic. That it that is at the core of what sets us apart, and it's our strength. Uh, we also need to take very seriously the threats around us, but never be so arrogant as to think that just because we are, that we will dominate. Nothing is given freely, and things will be taken from us if we're not careful.

Speaker 1: 35:43

Our last guest is a retired Marine colonel who um was born and raised in Pakistan, who's Pashto, and had come to the United States, uh, became a Marine officer, and then was fighting in Afghanistan. Uh, and and you know, he certainly knows the culture there uh because he knows the tribes and the codes and things like that, and he's of that. And one of the things that we talked about was cultural misalignment and lack of empathy, um, how there's the there's a there was a wide cultural chasm between the Americans and the Afghanis, you know, when we were intervening. How do you assess that cultural chasm right now with the Chinese?

Brent Sadler: 36:22

Well, it so you we may be, and I would say on our side, we have had a we have a very deep bank of goodwill and empathy on the Chinese part. Um and they've reneged and they have violated, and again, deceit, the 36 trajeams are a historical Chinese kind of approach to competition. It's based in foundational and deceit. Um, we didn't appreciate that. And when you when you expect a partner or another country to react, behave in a certain way, and they don't they don't meet that, then that makes you the aggrieved party. It's better to understand who you're dealing with, going back to the fact, Leonard. Know who you're dealing with and what their motivations are, and don't have high expectations that they're gonna meet or live up to an American's gold standard on anything. But embrace them for who they are and what they are and treat accordingly with with with suspicions and also with uh vigilance as required. That's true of allies too. We don't always agree. Well, but in the case of China, um there's a lot that are that we are not in the same moral sphere. We have very different histories, very different cultures. That's not to say that we are preordained as peoples to be at each other's throats. The only reason why we have a potential of being at each other's throats is because the Chinese Communist Party is driving them in that direction. And I would say, yes, we need to understand the Chinese, but we're a far different place than we were in the 80s when I was growing up in Asia and what I've seen of America changed in appreciation of. But we still have a long way to go. Um we tend to accept the think the best in people, even when it's not there.

Speaker 1: 38:12

Give us some context. You mentioned growing up in Asia. Give us some context for the listeners, you know, that you're you're coming at this, not from someone that just wrote about this stuff in books. Uh give it, give us some more context on that.

Brent Sadler: 38:23

Uh um so I moved, so the best thing is elementary school was in northern Virginia. So I got that my parents very all that DC kind of world. But then middle school, I grew up in Guam.

Speaker 1: 38:36

So was your dad Navy too?

Brent Sadler: 38:38

No, DOD, not uniform. Um worked like labor union disputes, com troller of budgeting and things like that. Really not very exciting, very prosaic stuff.

Speaker 1: 38:49

The guys that actually make it all work, though, right?

Brent Sadler: 38:52

Yeah, all that stuff. I said, shut up, it's boring, boring, boring. When I became a captain, it's like, all right, Dad, tell me, let's go back in time. Tell me about how this budget thing works and how this, you know, labor disputes. Guam in the 80s, so 83 to 86, Japan, 86 to 89. Some of the key life moments, the people power movement in the Philippines. Um, very important moment. Marcus, when he got kicked out of a peaceful, large, it was, I don't think there were very many deaths, and it was like a handful of deaths accidental, but it was a peaceful uprising that toppled a very brutal dictatorship. And an alley.

Speaker 1: 39:30

Corazona Kino came in, right? After they had killed Nino, yeah.

Brent Sadler: 39:34

So he flew through Guam. Um, it was in the news going off to exile in Hawaii. Um uh also around that time, well, before that, I also went to China with my father through Hong Kong in 1985, early 85, and we went into the new terror into southern China in the early days of the open door policy under Deng Xiaoping's uh efforts. Very, very different China. Everyone was in white mouth suits. Uh, there was a very tense moment where my father was going to take a photograph and the entire street stopped. Like you went, like you walk into the wrong bar and the record stops.

Speaker 1: 40:11

Yeah, the record scratches, yeah.

Brent Sadler: 40:12

Yeah, so it was exactly like that because we were taking a picture and there was a PLA senior officer smoking a cigarette leaning against a light post, and everyone stopped and looked at us. And we got my father got extremely nervous, and our handlers were nearby but didn't see this. And as we're walking away, a Chinese gentleman, maybe my age, but he looked a little older in a mouseuit, was looking around, but he was making a beeline for me. And he came up and he looked around and he shook my hand and he leaned in and he said, I love America, and then he scooted off. Fast forward 1989. Friends of mine were in Tiananmen Square uh the day before the tanks. They were tourists. I don't uh I had words with their parents now, but we were high school classmates and they got stuck in Beijing. And of course, we heard all the news and all the stories, things that weren't getting out, we were getting um through this. Was not the internet days, but we were getting a lot of that. And so these kind of events and life experiences definitely shaped, and again, the books I write and my work is all the you're kind of getting at what's the thing, what's my North Star? It's preventing what the Chinese have said they want to be prepared to win to wage a war and win in 2027. It it's been all towards that. So our time at Indopaycom was all driven by the same understanding that the calculations, you know, the goal remains the same in Beijing. They feel entitled to preeminence across the world economically, socially, diplomatically, and militarily.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 41:50

One thing I've noticed about our leaders is we always push back when we hear from our friends and enemies that they're gonna do something. And our our you know, the common response is, oh no, they won't. They're not gonna do that. So 2027, can you talk a little bit more about that? And then how are we prepared for uh that potentiality?

Brent Sadler: 42:08

Yeah, so I've done the math. I was one of the and and I actually was one of the guys that actually started talking about this back in 2011 and 12 timeframe. Uh it you know, it was with the CNO's personal stuff, but it was more broad than that in the government at the time. Um I also again, there were things that I saw in late uh 2020 uh that also got my attention. And so in January of 2021, I wrote an article that basically said for the following reasons the Chinese have accelerated their timelines from 19 2035 to 2020 before the end of the decade. I knew I was postulating 2027, but I didn't say that because at that time we had Admiral Davidson hadn't said his famous March uh 2021 testimony where he said 2027. Um but it was there for everyone to see it. The data is is is irrefutable. But um are we ready for for 2027, if that's the question? Um not really. And I say that because war is perhaps the most unpredictable, riskiest endeavor that human beings ever enter into. An underdog can defeat the Goliath. It's in the Bible. Um it's it's a it's a nature of if of human beings. Just because you have the most modern and largest military doesn't bestow upon you guaranteed victory. And I think we have had this kind of uh victor's euphoria for far too long, which is not deserved. And we have to know ourselves better. So there is a competency at sea in war fighting that we need to be much more sincere and honest. We've performed very well as sailors, marines, soldiers, airmen, um, like in the Red Sea, but that ain't a fight with the Chinese. That's like junior varsity or kids' soccer compared to pro that we have to be ready for. And there's gonna be a lot of bloodshed. And that shock of the first punch, um, we need to be ready for it. I'm not sure we're there. Uh, we have some leaders, we have some, we have a lot of chiefs, we got a lot of gunnies, we got a lot of good folks. Uh, but they need the backing of the political leadership, which I think we got now. Uh, but I also think we need to have the ships and the munitions that matter. It's not enough to have the spirit or the heart of the sailor if they don't have the ship and the weapon to put lead on on target.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 44:37

So I'm right in Virginia Beach, not too far from Newport News. We've had folks come on the show to talk about uh shipbuilding in the past. We've had uh actually folks that looked at um uh Charlie Pratzman, who who really understands the toilet production system and and lean manufacturing and how awesome our production capability was in Newport News just 80, 90 years ago, right? We don't have that today. And we had the uh former skipper of the USS Ford on here talking about that. I spent some time with him and and some other folks as they were working on the uh elevators in 20, what, 2019, 2020, something like that. Um, you know, that that ship's coming out of the yard, it has some problems. Um our shipbuilding capability. Can you talk a little bit about that? Where are we and what do we need to do?

Brent Sadler: 45:21

No, so I've been uh on the leading edge of this. So as soon as I got out of the Navy, one of the great things of being at, you know, at a think tank in DC is that uh I have a platform and I can basically talk truth to power and everything I back up with facts. On the shipbuilding, I came out shooting gunning for how to improve Navy's shipbuilding, and I knew the commercial maritime industrial sector was pretty bad. But everywhere I look to try to find out, okay, well, let's bolster up naval shipbuilding by standing on top of or helping this part of the commercial sector, and there wasn't anything there. So the problem was actually much worse than I ever imagined. And it's still, I get surprised on how bad it is. That's not to say that it's impossible. Defeat is a choice. And we can and we have recovered from very bad industrial capacity in shipbuilding. World War I is the case study in this. Uh we were late to task, but in the next war, we're not going to be able to rely on the British Empire or the French to bail us out or to delay in the next World War. We will be the ones on the front. And so when it comes to shipbuilding, we have the people. There's a lot of industries that are adjacent to shipbuilding, technical competencies that transfer into it, say in construction. Wire and cable runs, you do that in apartment buildings, you do that in big uh tech centers that are being built, you can do that on a ship. Uh you have to learn a little bit, of course, and transfer that, but skill sets that are transferable. Same thing with welding. It's not a question of we don't have enough people. It's a question of paying them, training them, and getting them the work. And so the orders come to mind on this. We need to have a steady and predictable demand signal for stable designs as a Kickstarter to get the capital investment to grow the waterfront. Um, the way that we've been doing business with these publicly traded prime is not the the number one customer is not the Navy, it's the shareholders. And that's not a ding. I don't ding the business folks for doing what they do. They have to make a profit, they have a business. The people that work for them's livelihoods depend on that business model. But what Congress needs to do is they need to change the incentive structure. This is not for the Navy. This is beyond Navy's capability. Congress needs to change the incentive structure. So inside things like the Ships for America Act, another thing very much been involved in from its genesis, is that we need to like look at tools like what the Estonians do use, which is a distributed profit tax, to encourage reinvestment of profits into workforce and capital infrastructure. That's how you grow the shipyards without a war that demands like national, you know, presidential authorities like moving resources. We're talking peacetime. And ideally, it always stays there. Uh so and also attracting capital from like our allies, not China. They're not in this discussion, but to attract investment in the United States, like Hanhua in Philadelphia Shipyard, a canary in the coal mine of this idea, quite frankly. And we'll see how it goes. By all accounts, it's it's proceeding as planned and having the desired effects there. But um we need to attract investment, which seems to it, which is happening. Tens of billions of dollars is flowing into this industrial sector. Uh, but we need the orders. And Congress and the Navy's business as usual approach here ain't gonna do it. It's one of the reasons why I've been calling for a Naval Act. Uh, you know, using the language and the ideas of the late 30s naval acts. Um the Navy knows what ships it needs, and in designs that are already in series production. Flight three uh destroyers, okay. Yeah, we've been building those, we're gonna continue building those. We need those. Virginia class nuclear submarines, we know that. So if you look at the five-year, the future years uh plan, the fight it, and you just say, okay, let's add up all of the stable design ships that are in there. And I've looked at the last few years and I said, let's just build these 45 ships. Give me a dedicated budget, appropriate it, and let's get a lot of that money into the system so that capital investments can be made to deliver this order of ships. The other thing is it it also helps the Wall Street side of it too, because now they've got the backlog and they've got the assurety of orders. So you do those other things I mentioned earlier, like a distributed profit tax to incentivize, but it also makes a lot of sense from the way the business works. And you're gonna get what we need: more shipbuilding capacity, more shipyard workers. Not by pushing money to hire them without orders, but by ordering the ship, which is the only thing the Navy should care about, is I want 10 destroyers, I want them in 10 years. Give me my ships. You figure out the labor, you figure out the cranes and your warehouses. That's not my business. Here's the requirement, here's the design, go build me a goddamn ship.

Speaker 1: 50:24

What effect would uh more complex than that? What what effect, and you know, I I'll disclose my bias. You know, we've both been stationed in Hawaii. Um I I know that you lived in Guam, and uh I'm also ethnically Puerto Rican. I I have a massive aversion to the Jones Act. And the and the Jones Act uh it seems to me is putting a stranglehold on us on a uh from a maritime perspective that most people won't let on. And it's uh it's 102 years old that needs to needs to go away. What do you what are your thoughts?

Brent Sadler: 50:56

Yeah, some people had the wrong impression of me. So I was nominated to be the maritime administrator, but I come from one of the illustrious organizations that's virulently anti-Jones Act. Uh that's not the case. I come here and I've brought with me a very pragmatic approach to it. Um, one, the Jones Act, it's very inward looking. It's the wrong focus on the wrong type of ships. Great at safeguarding and production of barges, intercoastal waterway from the Gulf of America up to the East Coast, great for lakes movement, not good at building ships that are competitive or viable in interocean trade. And those are the ships, quite frankly, and that's the type of ship building that the Navy needs. So the Jones Act hasn't been delivering to no one's surprise the types of ships needed. It hasn't helped the industry because the industry is not hungry enough. So my take on the Jones Act has been it's not the right thing to focus on. There's a lot of invested uh uh self-interest or interest groups that are focused on it, but it's not the thing we're shooting at. What's better worth the time politically, economically, and militarily is let's focus on building an American comparative advantage in the shipping and shipbuilding sector in the global marketplace. Let's get hungry for global market share. That does not conflict with the Jones Act. And in fact, some elements of the Jones Act are helpful to kick start that effort. And that's captured in the Ships for America legislation. Uh that spirit is in there. Uh President's Executive Order, re-regaining America's maritime dominance. That spirit is in there too. Uh and it's you know, eventually, if we get a competitive edge and we start to get a call it a fiducial level of market share, that we have a healthy, not a dominant, but a healthy maritime industrial base in the global marketplace. We'll be able to build Navy ships on time at cost. We'll be able to meet our national security needs to shipping and repair if we're in a war to get those ships back to the fight. We can't do that today. And when you do that, the need for the Jones Act will evaporate. It won't be necessary anymore. We will have a very healthy maritime industrial base, and you never have to take it off the books, it's just there, but it's no longer really an issue. And the special interest will have adapted and they will overcome it, and it will no longer be necessary. So, my point on that is you don't need to repeal it. Revising it is also, you know, an anthema to too many folks. Better is focus in on what matters, competition in the global maritime space. That'll get the Navy the types of capacity, the types of ships the nation needs.

Speaker 1: 53:55

How about so this is uh my my dad grew up in Panama, and I've always wondered about you know, the the my my grandfather worked in the canal zone and we we handed it over, it's no longer ours. Um there's always been uh a move, and the Chinese seem very serious about this, um, of expanding their influence in Latin America, certainly around uh the sea lanes of a of a Nicaraguan canal, which would be a sea level canal and would not require locks, unlike the Panama Canal. No matter how much you widen it, you still have to deal with the fact that the Pacific and the Atlantic are not on the same altitude. Um what are the discussions around that? You know, you hear things, people say, oh, and you know, when so-and-so's elected, you know, we're gonna take the canal zone back, or you know, we're gonna we're gonna build the Nicaraguan Canal.

Speaker 2: 54:45

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 54:45

Um how important are those things, um, especially with China, because they have had so much influence on South America?

Brent Sadler: 54:52

Yeah, so um I'm with you uh on the Panama Canal. I remember the history of this. I had friends that actually went and fought there in the 89 uh to go after Noriega. So very familiar with it. Um but set aside the history and the patriotism aspects of it, just from a pure economic and security aspect, the Panama Canal is critical for the United States. Uh the Suez Canal, when it got shut down because the ever given turned sideways back in 2021, it had it was not really a matter to the U.S. economy. If the same thing were to happen in the Panama Canal, because we rely on it to move so much commerce from one side to the other, it would impact the U.S. economy in a very severe way. Eventually things stable out, but the cost will have been sunk and we will have uh we will have uh swallowed in an additional cost to doing business, and that's prosperity, lost prosperity. On the national security side, I mean, the reason why we built it was for national security because there was, you know, the newspapers were following every day the movement of steamers to go from the East Coast to the West Coast during like a gold one of the late gold rushes in Alaska, and they're like, oh, this is we need some a better way to do this. Uh and then, of course, the Spanish-American War gave another impetus for this. So that geography, you know, doesn't change, but you can build canals and you kind of kind of help work around it. So on what the Chinese have done specifically, it was clear that they were buying in to have influence. Uh, when C.K. Hutchins was trying to sell off its its ports early after the election last year, and with the new administration of President Trump was going to make an was facilitating an offer, it riled the Chinese Communist Party because this has been part of their plan. Control the terms of trade, control strategic ports, be able to nullify any access or tactical advantage the United States might be able to gain by moving through the Panama Canal and by buying those ports out from them in order to balance. So CK Hutchins was going out, they had like massive debt. So the $19 billion deal equals their debt. They were trying to level out their debt by selling off a lot of their overseas ports. It was more than the Panama Canal. But the Chinese Communist Party would have had their entire decades-long strategic plan upturned by that smooth. And they still, I think, should have that canal purchase deal go forward without the Chinese Communist Party. There's an effort to include Costco in their state-run Chinese shipping company. That's like letting the fox in the in the hen house and cannot should not be allowed. Um, on the Panamanian side, in my estimation, by looking at the record and even their own public statements going back, you know, over the last 10 years, they have knowingly violated the treaties. And that abrogation of the treaty means that the president, on the behest of the American people, can go back in and say, well, let's go back to pre-79 status quo any and start over again. That's not what Trump's actually doing. He's threatening it, and I think there's a legal case, certainly in terms of the treaty, that could be made. Not necessary. Get the port's ownership out of the Chinese hands, make sure that the Panamanian government understands that element of the neutrality treaty that we signed. So anyway.

Speaker 1: 58:22

What about the prospects of a Nicaraguan canal?

Brent Sadler: 58:25

Oh, that one, yeah, I looked at that. I mean, it's been a long time. Um the Chinese have talked about doing similar things across the the Kra Peninsula in Thailand. Um but the problem is it it's it's a lot of you're gonna have to move a lot of land. The other thing is you have to have the ability, even with the Panama Canal expansion, you have to keep water flowing into it and also to operate the locks. And as you mentioned, it's not ocean levels are not exactly the same. The world's not a perfect ball. Um, so it's lopsided. And the geography is is is kind of a it's an SOB. I don't know if sailor language is.

Speaker 1: 59:05

What's our largest ship that can get through the canal, the current the Panama Canal now? What's the largest? What's uh you can't get a a Nimitz class through the Panama Canal? They they still have to go around the horn, right? I mean, what's the largest ship?

Brent Sadler: 59:19

Well, there's two canals the old canal, absolutely not. The one that we built. The one that was built and finished in like 2014-15 time frame. I think operations started in 15, but construction was done in 14. Um, I think you probably could. Would you? Probably not. Um and I'm not a hundred I'm not sure on that, to be honest with you. But you can move some very large container ships through the expanded Panama Canal. And they have a draft that's comparable to a nuclear aircraft carrier when the container ships are fully laden. Um, which I'm not sure if that's in some cases they do offload cargo and then they train it across to the other side. So some of these ultra-large container ships have they've taken cargo and weighed off so they can ballast up. Uh, but they are roughly comparable to an aircraft carrier, a four-class aircraft carrier.

Speaker 1: 1:00:12

So it's a dumb marine question. Do do subs transit the canal or no?

Brent Sadler: 1:00:17

Uh I I did twice.

Speaker 1: 1:00:19

Oh, okay.

Brent Sadler: 1:00:19

Well uh on an SSBN. We didn't have nuclear weapons on board because we were coming out of a major availability, and that was known at the time. Um but we went through canal, I went through two different submarines. Uh one was a training cruise for major update for the weapon system, and then I went through as a as a department head on the next submarine to go through to do the certification of the of the missile systems off of uh off of Florida.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:00:47

Hey, Moose, I was gonna say every Marine should know that submarines go underneath the continent, right? You know that, right?

Speaker 1: 1:00:52

Yeah, I thought there were tunnels under the under the continent, yeah. The water tunnels. Yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:00:57

I want to shift gears a little bit. So the uh POTUS was out here at Norfolk over the weekend. Uh went out to an aircraft carrier. Uh I want to talk about a couple things. Uh force design 2030, if you have any comments on that. Fleet design, and I think in the news right now we're looking at the sixth generation stealth fighter FA XX. I'll get your thoughts on any of those two.

Brent Sadler: 1:01:16

Well, this I'll start with the simplest one. The the next strike fighter needs to kind of go back to the the re because we're in a similar world why we needed uh the Tomcat, the F-14 Tomcat. Uh range of the aircraft, speed too, but I that's lesser uh in my mind. I'm not a pilot, wasn't a pilot. Uh, the other is the range of the weapon. So the Tomcat had had a really like a thousand plus mile range. It was like 1,300 mile range. And it also had the Phoenix. Uh, at the time, the longest air to air missile. The Chinese now have. That air, the longest range air-to-air missile, so they can outstick us and they can also outrange us. So we need to have the range and the speed. So that I think the the next uh fighter aircraft for the carry needs to be a dedicated uh like the Tomcat was dedicated to that kind of fight. Range and speed, get the Chinese uh bombers before they get close enough. Get in. The other side of this is get in also to launch longer strike to prevent the China so you can still operate beyond their anti-ship ballistic missiles. Yeah. So if you look in my new book, you'll see these two pictures where it kind of is a concept graph about how these operations play out, and you'll see this rectangular area about a thousand miles off the China's coast. That's the reason. Because that's also when you start thinking about the range of the anti-ship ballistic missiles, um, it's a nice place to be to launch sorties, and then you move in, you you surge, and you and yeah, but that that fighter is critical, so but it needs to have range. Range, range, range. Um force design 2030, the Marines. I kind of was there when the idea was berthed. Um, we had Department of the Navy, uh be careful how much I share, but uh Mattis uh and others from the Marines and future forces would come and brief us. And this goes back to you might have seen some of the success, some of the follow-on conversation, but Kravenovich came out in 2012 at PACOM and we talked about archipelagic defense. So things like distributed lethality, Loki, all of that was just coming together and these long-range fires ideas. So I'm a big fan of Force Design 2030. I'm not a big fan about how the Marines and the Navy work together uh on trying to figure out how they're gonna get the a critical element, which is their their logistics connector ship. Now the medium landing ship or medium amphibious. Um, the names change so many times I lose track of it. But the requirements were pretty straightforward 10 years ago. Um and dinking around with the con ops that you haven't actually exercised on as a reason for delaying never really made sense to me. So in the meantime, the Filipinos and the Japanese are building the types of ships that our Marines and Army folks could be traveling on. Um this is the biggest thing on it. I I do agree that armor, the M1 tanks for the Marines, I'm not a big fan of it. I mean, the Marines need to be on ships. I'm a big fan of FMF. The fleet marine folks. Oh, yeah. Get them back.

Speaker 1: 1:04:22

That's why we have an anchor on the well, but but I guess I think some of the criticism has been um the logistics of sitting on rocks and waiting for something to happen, it eliminates the first strike capability or the shock troop capability, uh, the projection capability um of a mission that the Army already does.

Brent Sadler: 1:04:43

So on this one, this is a good one about nonlinear thinking and action. So, Bonj, when we were together at PACOM, I was just winning this debate. And the debate was because we and I was twisting Army arms. I had the 94th AADC talking with me on the sidelines to get Army invested in long-range fires. So if you're gonna so the first thing is, all right, if you're gonna operate in the first island chain and you're gonna challenge the Chinese, you're gonna need certain types of weapons. Longer range surface-to-air missiles than we had in our inventory. Surface to surface, you know, land as well as going after enemy ships, missiles that we didn't have in our inventory. And the INF treaty, this is 2012 timeframe, was still in force, even though we knew other people weren't following it. Um, so we didn't have the weapons that validated why you would operate there. But we knew we needed to operate there in a way that would cause the Chinese problems. The other argument that I had is like, well, we're not being invited there, so therefore we shouldn't plan on being there. It's like, well, wait a minute. The reason you're not invited there is because you're you're operationally meaningless without the weapons. And you go there on exercises, maybe you should start exercising like you would actually fight in the first island chain, and the host nations would start to see that you're credible and start bringing some weapons that matter. And I would point you to, and back in 2015 in a Balakitan exercise, we had a high Mars go and shoot into the ocean. Yeah, whoop whoop-de-doo. It wasn't the right kind of munition. But everyone saw it and the light bulbs were going off. So you have to think kind of think multiple timelines. It's like they're not going to invite you in if you're not a competent, reliable partner. So therefore, you have to actually invest in the weapon systems that assumes that you're going to be invited in to operate in the first island chain. So you had to do both, you had to you had to basically eat both ends of the spaghetti noodle at the same time. And maybe that's not the right analogy, but anyway. Um you asked about the the Navy force design. I got ideas on that one too, but uh I'll pause there.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:06:47

Yeah, so fleet design. Uh the HIMARS thing you bring up, you know, I work with the Army as an area defense commander uh under a JFAC type of scenario. So uh counter error scenario. Uh then we start integrating into ballistic missile defense, and then the uh the HIMAR conversation. I I know that gets into command command and control problems just like the tomahawk does. Who owns a tomahawk when it's inside of a theater, right? Is it the JFAC? Is it CFAC? Um, does it really matter? I I don't know. But you that's where I think you start crossing um uh I don't know, laser beams, if you will, between a a component commander and another component commander where they're looking at it and going, hey, how do I use this army asset when I need it for air or sea capability, maritime capability? So uh any thoughts to that where you know they don't want to cross streams on in that type of thinking?

Brent Sadler: 1:07:37

No, absolutely. So this used to frustrate me to all end. Um it's why we do fleet experimentation, it's why we do exercises, field exercises. Um perfect cannot be allowed to become the enemy of good enough. So get out into the field, test the command structures, test the systems, test your soldiers and sailors and airmen. Um and when we started doing that, we learned very quickly. And I think from when we were dealing with this, everyone wanted to stick on PowerPoint deep because they were risk-adverse on, oh my God, it's gonna cost money to go do an exercise, and we don't have enough money. And so no one was willing to put put money down to actually start testing it. Um, I would credit Putin for changing that. Uh, one is he violated the INF treaty and we broke that, so now we could start making these weapons that were needed. Two, he invaded Ukraine in 2022, and the Ukrainians like stumped him with a lot of this uh long-range fires. High Mars got in there, so everyone started to see the value. They even used some old uh Soviet ballistic missiles to take out a cargo ship, or I take it back, it was an amphib that was moving munitions in Burdansk in the Sea of Azov in about the first within the first year of the war. So everyone, the veil came off of everyone, and the blinkers were removed, the side, the blinders were removed on people's thinking in DC, on these long-range fires, uh, and on the possibility of using these kind of systems, and that command and control could be addressed. They didn't know what it is yet, but again, don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough to go out and try and work it out. Um, ugly is fine in an exercise. Ugly is death in combat.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:09:24

And a related uh question, Tomahawks have been in the news as being transferred to Ukraine. Uh vertical launch systems and you know, we launch where we launch them from and all that matters. I just want to get your thoughts on that uh narrative that's uh going around right now.

Brent Sadler: 1:09:38

Yeah, I mean, so on a strategic part, uh our leadership in DC had a had a complete misunderstanding of Russians. Uh you've heard me, probably even when we were at PACOM, I was bitching about this back in those days too. Um complete misunderstanding of Russian mentality. Uh when they were threatening escalation, that's not what really was going on. We should have called their bluff in 2022, 2023, uh, and basically made the cost of their prolonged war insurmountable for them. And instead we allowed it to we were always chasing them. We were allowing the Russians to set the tempo and to dictate where on the escalation ladder things were. Um and we went fell right into their preferred method of warfare, attrition. It's also one that the math works for them better than anyone else, and they knew it, so why not? So we were kind of stupid. The technical term, we were stupid with and and didn't understand what we were dealing with as a country with the Russians. So the Tomahawks, now fast forward to today, I think there's a strategy. I think it's much more based on what motivates the Russians, I think it's also much more informed by the necessity to end the war. Uh there's a lot of reasons why we need to end this war beyond Russia and Ukraine. Um and so a weapon system like a tomahawk, and I'm very familiar with it, um because they do launch them from submarines, there is a way to actually manage it in an operational and oper in a technical way. Uh but having those systems or weapon like that in theater that the Ukrainians are operating and targeting, uh that's the interesting piece. Uh that will cause Putin a lot of consternation because so far he has protected the the wealthier, the middle class, upper part, the the white Russian population. Again, you gotta kind of understand. I don't want to go through like the whole history of what and what's going on in Russia today, but it it stabs right at the center of gravity of Putin right now. And you're seeing some of this play out with Ukrainians targeting of Russian oil refineries. Oil refining, that's refined products, not really what the Russians are selling and making their money. They sell crude and LNG. The refined fuel is what their military and their citizens use to live their daily lives or to f fight day to day. So when the Ukrainians are taking out their refineries, they're hurting the Russian populace and they're having an impact on military operations. Uh and you can see this angst. The war is coming home uh for the for the Russian people in a way that it hadn't uh and hasn't really. That's not to say that bombs landing in Belgorod, which is like 20 miles away from the border, isn't registering with the Russian people, but it's not significant enough to move the needle in a Russian sensibilities. So we can't mirror Americans into Russians. We're very different.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:12:49

So the Tomahawk was one of my favorite weapons to plan for as a at the operational level of war when I was working at an airspace operations center. So Navy guy at an airspace operations center, going through CMSA, uh coming to Norfolk to learn all that stuff, and to really integrate that into a scheme of maneuver that it's just absolutely insane. And I'm not going to go into a lot of details here, but as a planner, and I think you know this, um, that weapon brings so much to the table. Uh, and and you know, our surface warfare officers and our submarine community when they're launching them, um big show, big, big, big, big excite excitement for them. Just so people know, that planning actually helped happen somewhere else. It's kind of cool how it works. It's it's it's probably one of the greatest stories in our military right now is how we integrate that weapon and plan for it. Um, so you know, I'm not gonna say I'm for or against uh giving it to the Ukrainians, but it is it gives a um a great potential for them to do some good work there.

Brent Sadler: 1:13:45

Um back to Well, I will say I will say it's important. There are various varieties of that weapon. Yep. And since it's digital, uh you can make changes to the programming of it, which is the targeting, such that you don't need that other place being an American other place. So Putin's full of crap when he's talking about only Americans can target it.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:14:10

So we we we got into a lot of that uh type of uh uh that approach uh later on when I was at the Air Space Operations Center. So really, really glad I got to spend some time with that. Back to fleet design, though. Any any other uh comments on that?

Brent Sadler: 1:14:24

Ah, so uh I wrote I wrote about it. So it's a short piece about a week ago because I've heard, and the reason I wrote that is I was hearing rumors that this new fleet design was coming out uh very soon, like maybe this week. I don't think that's gonna happen. I think it's probably delayed. Um, but I was I was given the indication by several sources that it was coming very soon. I don't know the specifics. Uh again, I I I don't know, but I haven't seen behind the curtain on this, which has also part caused me a little concern because I hadn't heard any rumors or murmuring about or outreach that you normally would hear in town when something of this magnitude is being considered. So it was kind of like the absence of any noise on this, which typically there are in circles like I run, I would hear about it, or I would have been like included in some unclassified discussions. They try to figure out, okay, well, how's this jackass going to attack this once it's released, just to mitigate the outside flapping heads like me uh when it gets released. None of that has happened. So the first thing is, wow, this group's really good at opsec. The other thing that's nagging in my mind is maybe this thing was done in a vacuum. So I wrote an op-ed uh and said, hey, here are the things that matter. Number one, get firepower to see. And you got to do it in the next 15 months, uh, and sustain getting more firepower to see into the future. Uh, the only way you're gonna meet that 15 month, you're gonna have to start using unmanned systems like the US V Ranger that shot an SM6 back in 2021. And we haven't done it since. So just get it out there. They can do picket ship kind of duty like we do with destroyers for missile defense of freaking Guam, put some missiles on it or containers, let the Chinese guess, and just drill holes in the Philippine Sea within missile range. Uh, that's number one. Number two, operate in ways that actually cause concern and complicate Chinese war planning. So fleet scale exercises or events operating, surging in, not just as like a couple ships or a carry strike group, but as a fleet. Fleet scale operations, start doing them. And there's a lot inside that that folks like the CNO's been talking about for years. Uh you go, you go basically MCON, no signals, and you're operating as a self-contained kind of local Wi-Fi or whatever you want to call it, where you're talking amongst yourselves, but you're operating independently. Start start doing that. There's some other things in the South China Sea by reorganizing for the purpose. Like I'm a big fan of First Fleet. You could do that too. Establish a First Fleet and operate to contest the Chinese in the peacetime, but you're also building up the backbone operationally, logistically, to sustain a fleet if you know for a long war with China at the same time. Um, the third and very critical, and this is the one that gets lost and sometimes just kind of gets shoved off on its own or given to others. What Navy decides to place its orders on has to be very deliberately done to increase the shipbuilding capacity and repair capacity of the same fleet that it's trying to build. So the 30-year shipbuilding plan should have an investment portfolio, part of it, and say, hey, we're gonna buy these destroyers, and oh, by the way, we're gonna try and get a second yard to build the flight three so that we can grow out. Here's part of the plan and why it's gonna cost more, Congress, because it's necessary. Oh, by the way, we're gonna we're gonna go ahead and do that second follow-on yard, even though the frigate is a little wobbly as a program, but we have a design that we can maybe tweak. We're gonna go get a second yard to start building more frigates because the Navy needs them, but we're gonna go do it in a different place so we get more workforce, we get more capacity. Yeah, it's gonna be more expensive. It's not gonna be an exact carbon copy of the constellation that Fincantieri is building, but it'll be it'll definitely incorporate all the lessons and all of the competencies that we're learned to build so far to date, that ship. So those are the three elements of the force design that I'll be looking for and be grading it on an A to F scale.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:18:37

Hey, so I want to kind of wrap it up here, but before we do that, I've got some general questions for you. What and and what is it, what is it like to do what you do up in DC? Is it frustrating? Is it fun? I mean, just give me some sense of what it your what your day-to-day is like. Being on TV, I see you on TV from time to time. I'm like, I know that dude.

Brent Sadler: 1:18:53

Um Yeah, you probably recognize the background. All the stuff the wife doesn't allow to stay at home. So this is my office up in Capitol. So uh very rewarding. I got lucky. Um, Heritage Foundation is not your normal think tank. I'm conservative, um, so it fits. They're a conservative think tank. Um facts matter. And the man, the, the, the mandate that I was given is follow, you know, make your recommendations based on facts. You'll get your day in court. And if it's if if your case is strong, then it becomes the voice of heritage. And I've won several big fights. I mentioned the Jones Act I uh earlier on. So credit to Heritage Foundation that I've got a place to where my voice uh is heard, and I'm allowed to be, and I go out and again have a platform, then to telegraph that out and to speak truth to power. And our audience in the DC world, again, most think tanks are focused on the executive branch, the White House or State Department. We focus on Congress, both Republican and Democrat. So if you look back in the 2020 time frame when I joined in the summer of 2020, you start to see me in an old, she followed me as a flag lieutenant at Seventh Fleet, Elaine Luria. Uh don't agree with a lot of her politics, but we both agreed very vigorously on Navy. And she talked truth to power. Uh, you know, enabling that was something that I consider very, very powerful. And also folks like Mike Gallagher. Now he's out of Congress, both of them are out, but he was also, you know, so both a Republican and a Democrat. The Ships for America Act, et cetera, I can go on and on. So for me, it's been highly rewarding. Um and again, I make a case. It's based on math, it's based on good, solid, solid logic, uh, and then make the case. Because a strong Navy is not a partisan issue, it's an American issue. And that didn't happen organically. And it also, I have to also put a pitch out. Uh, it's more than one person. I think you saw this when when we were at Paycom. It takes a team or takes a network to defeat a network. And there's a lot of competit, there's competition, you know, armies out there, and sometimes they're not on side. Um, and of course, China is always trying to derail things uh that could be a threat. So it takes a network to defeat that network that's that's either benign neglect or benign uh delay or distraction to the malign, which is the Chinese, and they're different. So anyway, I've I'm also part of a network of about a dozen or so navalists that are all very committed to this effort.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:21:36

And and you have friends that are not only in Congress, but they're uh getting selected for undersecretary of the Navy. Uh we have friends that have become admirals and three stars and four stars. What's that like to see some people that you've worked with in the past uh get into these positions?

Brent Sadler: 1:21:51

Uh well, I mean, I I take their success as, you know, they're team, they're a shipmate. So I take a lot of pride in the fact that, you know, I worked with those folks. I might have helped. We may have helped each other at some point in time. Um, I'm, you know, high discretion. Uh folks know my reputation on the high discretion. So I will talk truth to power, and I'll do the gentlemanly thing first and say, look, you're you're heading into shoal water, and if they go too bad, I uh I know it, I'm gonna do it anyway. I'm like, well, then I'm gonna start talking out of out loud. Uh so usually, well, always, I give the gentleman's uh courtesy of, you know, with this network of folks, and the assumption is that people that are in government are there because they have the interests of American people at heart. Unfortunately, it's not always the case. But when it comes to the Navy, I haven't been disappointed in that regard. Um, and so that's another good thing. But it's been remarkable. I mean, it's a different relationship uh with a lot of these. Like I can talk to senators and congress members, I can talk to very senior folks in government, political as well as uniform. And there's a there's a respect there because of the access uh and the clarity, the the you know, the discretion in all of those conversations. Um probably for another place, another time for many of those sea stories to come out. But um yeah, it's been very rewarding.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:23:12

Well, hey, I appreciate your time. Uh we've been looking forward to having you on the show. We definitely want to have you back. There's so many things going on in the world today that I know we could talk about. But uh, do you have any questions uh to us or about the show or anything that uh you you know we've talked about today?

Brent Sadler: 1:23:26

No, um well, thanks for quite a long platform. I don't get a chance often. It's got to be like these little 30-second little sound bites, which drive me crazy. So thanks for the chance to have a have a conversation, quite frankly. A very long uh conversation, and you brought me back, you really dusted off some cobblers there in the beginning of paycom time. Um, but it was good to good chat. Send me the link when it goes live. Uh definitely love to repost it if it's okay. Yeah, once you once you put it out. And um, yeah, let me know how I can help in the future.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:23:57

Absolutely. Well, thanks again. Uh, we'll keep you on for a few minutes, but thanks for being on No Way Out, and we'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 1: 1:24:03

Beat Army. Yeah, beat Army.