Sea Control - Sea Control 303 - The Case for Seaplanes with David Alman

Episode Date: December 19, 2021

Links1. “A Japanese Seaplane Could be the Difference Maker for the U.S. Military,” by David Alman, War on the Rocks, November 4, 2021.2. “Bring Back the Seaplane,” by David Alman, War on the Rocks, July 1, 2020.3. “Extend Air Wing Range with Seaplane Tankers,” by David Alman, USNI Proceedings, May 2021.4. “Seaplanes go to War: The Role Seaplanes Played During WWII,” by David Alman, USNI Proceedings, August 2021.5. “From Sea to Sky,” by David Alman, CIMSEC (December 10, 2019).6. “Give Amphibians a Second Look,” by Walker Mills and Dylan Phillips-Levine, USNI Proceedings, December 2020.7. War Plan Orange: The US Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897-1945, by Edward S. Miller, Naval Institute Press 2007.8. “Implementing Expeditionary ASW,” by Walker Mills, Dylan Phillips-Levine, Trevor Phillips-Levine and Collin Fox, USNI Proceedings, April 2021.9. “AFSOC plans to demo amphibious MC-130J by end of next year, commander says,” by Leila Barghouty, Defense News, September 20, 2021.10. “Air Force special operations general visits Japan to gain insight on seaplanes,” by Jonathan Snyder, Stars and Stripes, November 10, 2021.11. “DARPA Requests Information for Wing-In-Ground Effect Aircraft for the US Military,” by Peter Ong, Naval News, August 24, 2021.12. “Modern Sea Monsters: Revisiting Wing-in-Ground Effect Aircraft for the Next Fight,” by Walker Mills, Joshua Taylor and Dylan Phillips-Levine, USNI Proceedings, September 2020.

Hey, Jared here. Walker Mills is your host today. He's joined by David Allman to discuss the case for seaplanes. This episode was edited and produced by Marie Williams. Speaking of editors, we are looking for some additional editors to add to our team. If you're interested, please email us at seacontrol at simsec.org with your resume. At SimSec, we believe victory in the maritime domain starts with great ideas communicated compellingly. Write, fight, win. Beginning with Giving Tuesday going through December, we're holding our annual Write, Fight, Win holiday donation campaign to support SimSec into the new year. SimSec's proud to say, since our founding, our content has been free and always will be.

Especially as more websites build paywalls or pursue intrusive advertising, we hope those in the SimSec community who value our free, no-ad model will consider supporting us with monthly donations. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec podcast network, The Village Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. Welcome back aboard the Sea Control Podcast from the Center for International Maritime Security. Today we're talking with David Allman, an officer in the Air National Guard and author of several essays about seaplanes that have been published in USNI Proceedings,

War on the Rocks, and a fiction piece about seaplanes that was published in SimSec, which we're going to be talking about today. His most recent essay is A Japanese Seaplane Could Be the Difference Maker for the U.S. Military. David, welcome aboard. Can you go ahead and introduce yourself a bit more formally to our listeners? Yeah, thanks, Walker. Great to be here. As you mentioned, I'm currently serving as an officer in the Air Guard. I'm in the fighter training pipeline about to start the F-16 course after finishing undergraduate pilot training in UPT, and Intro to Fighter Fundamentals, ISS. Prior to joining the Guard, I did a joint B.S.M.S. in aeroengineering at Georgia Tech and then worked as a management consultant engineer and strategic

analyst. So ultimately, at the end of the day, I'm a dude who, among other things, likes airplanes and especially seaplanes. Awesome. Glad to have you on board. And again, before we start, I'd like to remind our listeners that the opinions presented here are solely our own and should not be taken as representative of any of the institutions that we're associated with. So David, to start out, let's just maybe do some definitions. So what is a seaplane? And is it different than a float plane or an amphibious aircraft or a wing and ground effect aircraft? And how should we think about those? Yeah, it's a great thing to clarify. I think, well, there might be some arguments over the semantics. I'd say that you generally can lump the water vehicles into two big categories.

seaplanes so airplanes that use the sea like the pan am clippers or pby catalinas and then the other category is the wing and ground effect vehicles wigs like the russian crano plan so if you can sustain flight out of ground effect you're a seaplane if not you're a wig now within the category of seaplanes you can farther divide it out into two categories flying boats and float planes so flying boats are ones whose hulls or fuselages are designed to interact directly with the water, whereas float planes, on the other hand, have floats, you know, the big pontoons kind of underneath the fuselage. So generally, flying boats are going to be higher performance than float planes, kind of purpose-designed to interact with the

water, whereas float planes are usually but not always converted from land planes. So it's kind of an aftermarket type deal. Amphibious, then, is kind of an adjective on those. So you can have an amphibious flying boat, like the five alpha variant of the PBY Catalina, which had a conventional landing gear as well to land on a runway. Or you can have an amphibious float plane. Or one could say you could have an amphibious seaplane, although I'd probably just refer to the amphibious seaplane as an amphibian to use the noun form of the word. So practically applied, this means that you could, again, call that five alpha variant of the Catalina a flying boat. You could call it a seaplane. You could call it an amphibian. You could call it a combination of

those really dealer's choice, depending on the setting, but it's definitely not a float plane. I'll pause there. Does that, is that helpful? Yeah, that's good. I think I'm going to have to go back and write that down for personal use, but that is a, that's a, that's a good way to think about it. And you seem to be, to kind of prefer using seaplane in your writing. Yeah, I think that it's a more kind of general term. You know, I think the term flying boat or float plane kind of implies a very specific thing. Whereas in my writing, I'm very bullish on the kind of generalized seaplane utility. In your first essay for War on the Rocks, Bring Back the Seaplane, you talk a little bit about the history of the seaplane. So could you give us like the short brief of the history of seaplanes in the U.S. Navy? Yeah, you're exactly right.

And so I think the somewhat quixotic but still true answer is that the history of U.S. military aviation, especially U.S. naval aviation and the seaplane, were basically long the same history. so you know this is really true the navy which today ironically of course is the one service that seems to not be looking at them but whatever if we digress but so basically you have in 1911 the navy goes ahead and acquires its first three aircraft two of those are seaplanes designed by curtis so you have right from the start seaplanes are an integral part of naval procurement naval thinking we go to world war one the first american aircraft to arrive in France are also seaplanes, Curtiss HS1 seaplanes. Seaplanes are an integral part of the force. They're doing patrol, ASW, and other missions. And in the sign of things to come,

we have a Medal of Honor awarded to a Navy, I believe a Lieutenant JG, maybe a Lieutenant for landing a seaplane on the water and rescuing a downed squadron mate. So the First World War ends. Seaplanes are escorting President Wilson's convoy to France for the Paris Peace Conference, still a critical part of the force. After the war, we have a Navy seaplane, the NC-4, which becomes the first aircraft to cross the Atlantic. And then throughout the 20s and 30s, the Navy is still experimenting with seaplanes as part of the force, doing stuff for the high end site. The first big debate over the future of seaplanes kind of happens in the 30s. So you can go read Edward Miller's Outstanding War Plan Orange for some of this. I know you have,

but for the listener. And so basically, the Navy has this big debate over, you know, how do we do this scouting far in advance of the fleet when we're worried about closure at night? You know, if you have a fleet traveling at 30 knots, you have eight hours of darkness, that's 240 miles of closure. Well, if both fleets are going at each other, you have nearly 500 miles of closure overnight. So you need some legs to get out there and see things. And so seaplanes are potentially going to fill this role as airborne scouts, kind of like the cruisers were. And then you have some bright officers like Ernest King who are saying, well, if they're going out there anyway, why not have them fight also? And so that kind of debate over, we need long range, we want to be able to

fight, leads us to, in 1933, Consolidated getting a contract for the PBY, the patrol bomber aircraft designed by Consolidated, the famed Catalina. So the Navy said they wanted an aircraft with long legs that can fight, they got the PBY. And so ultimately, some of these advancements in land aircraft during the 30s led to the PBY and other seaplanes being viewed more as patrol aircraft and less of its bombers, but it was still capable of both. When World War II starts, the PBY is the main seaplane, although I'd be remiss to not mention aircraft like the Kingfisher carried by cruisers and battleships, as well as small numbers of other aircraft like Coronado. And so for American military aviation and the PBY in particular, World War II starts

early. You have a PBY with an American on board, no less, which helps spot the German battleship Bismarck, eventually leading to its sinking. We have PBYs doing the neutrality patrols or supporting the neutrality patrols. And we also have a PBY helping USS Ward prosecute a Japanese midget submarine minutes before the war starts, firing off a warning message to Pearl Harbor, but it doesn't get decoded in time. And then we have the first Medal of Honor recipient, the first American Medal of Honor recipient in World War II, going to a PBY Catalina crew chief who is shooting at attacking Japanese planes at Pearl Harbor. And this is interesting because when you think about it, we have all these targets on Oahu, and the Japanese are really

prioritizing targeting the american seaplanes because they're so concerned about them coming after them and you're finding them and attacking them um you know in the philippines you immediately have pbys uh pulling you know sort of an agile combat employment or an ace type deal uh distributing around the lakes uh and the philippine islands to avoid detection and survive and so most of the the B-17s from the Far East Air Force are destroyed at Clark Field, most of the PBYs actually survived that opening blow. So we go on to the rest of the war where seaplanes do everything. They spot the Japanese fleet at Midway. We have the Black Cat seaplanes helping internet Japanese supply lines in the Solomons and elsewhere. They're doing ASW. They're doing

electronic intelligence ELINT missions. They rescue survivors from the USS Indianapolis. They actually spot the survivors from the USS Indianapolis and then rescue them and on and on. And we also start to get new, more capable seaplanes like the Mariner that have higher performance. And so with war then, you know, the seaplanes are kind of still that traditional, you know, floaty looking boat type deal. But the Navy winds up capturing a bunch of German hydrodynamics research that helps markedly improve the performance of seaplanes. And this stemmed from the work done by Blom and Voss in the BV222 and the BV238. And this is kind of those long, slender fuselages, the high length to beam ratio. And this is the theoretical underpinning behind the R3Y Tradewind, a four-engine turboprop

cargo plane, which became part of the proposed seaplane striking force. We also have the SeaDart, a seaplane fighter. and then the pinnacle in my mind is the P-6M Seamaster, a high-speed mine layer with a notional nuclear mission. And so unfortunately, all these projects are canceled for various reasons that we can get into. The Navy operates the P-5M Marlin, which is kind of an advancement, kind of based on some of that hydrodynamics research, first flown in 1951. So the Navy operates that P-5M Marlin until 1967. It serves in Vietnam. And then ironically, we have the Air Force that flies the Albatross until 1973 in the Air Guard, something near and dear to my heart.

And then the Coast Guard flies the Albatross, I believe, until 84. And that's it so far. Hopefully the history continues. And I guess we're seeing a little bit of that with Avsock, but that's kind of the probably two long words. I think it's fascinating because they were, you know, as describing they're so important to everything the navy was doing and and they've totally gone away so i mean is there kind of the the short form of of why we don't have them anymore what what killed these programs yeah so it's in my opinion and again there's no real great academic treatment on this subject but i think based on the literature i've read there are four interrelated reasons two external, kind of to the Navy, and two internal. So on the external front, World War II

meant that we built a lot of runways all over the world. So that made the unique attribute of a seaplane, the ability to land on water where there were no runways, less interesting, and rightfully so. The second is budget cuts. Budget cuts in the 1950s forced the armed forces to scale back on a lot of plans. And so you have these two external factors going on. And in that environment, we have some internal factors as well. So first, all these kind of next-gen seaplane programs all ran into development problems. The trade wind in particular was flown with unreliable Allison engines, the first turboprops. And so basically every engine designed with the Allison T40 engine wound up being canceled, like aircraft such as the Sky Shark and Super Savage.

And that's kind of an interesting side note. That T-40 engine was developed from the T-38 turboprop engine. We're getting into a little engine history here. But that T-38 turboprop later became the engine used in the C-130 and then in the B-22. So it's possible, and there's probably no way of confirming this for sure, that the engineers who made these mistakes on the Tradewind engine applied those lessons learned to the engines that are now flying in our C-130 and B-22 fleet. Kind of fun, I think. So we have the trade wind with engine problems gets canceled. And then the

Seamaster program experienced two crashes during its development, both due to controls issues. The headline here, though, and what I'd want the listener to take away is that both of these seaplane programs ran into development problems unrelated to them being seaplanes. They were 1950s test programs. So planes crashed. They had engine issues. That was kind of normal. But we have these development problems. The second internal issue is priorities. So it's in this context, these aircraft running into development problems, questions about seaplanes, utility in a world with many runways and declining budgets, that it may be dominated by carrier aviation carrier admirals is looking at shrinking budgets and saying you know we can

do the nuclear mission with polaris which is which is an awesome new thing we're now developing and if we have to choose with aviation well we want tactical carrier aviation obviously and so the seaplanes kind of get cut so to summarize four things declining budgets runways everywhere development problems and different priorities. And then without Navy funding, nobody else is going to fund them. Although, as we mentioned before, ironically, it's the Air Force and Coast Guard that operate them the longest. What's your case for bringing them back, right? I mean, that's kind of at the gist of most of the stuff he's written is that, hey, now is the time that we really need these unique capabilities that seaplanes provide. So

what's the case? For me personally, there are really three reasons. One is that they're wicked cool and the aerospace nerd in me loves them. Two, from an analytical perspective, I think if we're going to operate in a region of the world dominated by water and we're worried about bases and base survivability, then it seems we should explore an aircraft meant to operate in a world dominated by water and lacking runways, right? I mean, that's where the seaplane thrives. That's what it was meant to do. And then lastly, you know, I and many of my friends have a vested interest in the ability of U.S. forces to conduct combat search and rescue in the Pacific in an area dominated by water. And so obviously, you know, quote, because Lieutenant Ullman thinks they're cool,

unquote, is not a great reason to bring them back. But I think the second two points, this point about, you know, operating in a water-dominated world and CSAR have a lot of merit. If you're doing EABO, if you're doing CSAR, then a seaplane has a ton of value proposition to you. We can talk about it more later, but air-to-air refueling is hugely important to the joint force. Basically, if you want aircraft capabilities, or if you want aircraft to operate in the Pacific, then you really want to strongly consider the seaplane. And I think, and where a lot of my thinking derives from is, you know, if we think big for a second, if I'm China, I've spent a lot of time, energy, and money trying to figure out how to hit airfields and sink ships. The last

thing I want is for the United States to say, you know, hey, look, that's cool and all, but we're bringing back the seaplane striking force. Good luck trying to find planes with 100-foot wingspan scattered over the Pacific, ready to lob LRASMs at you. And oh, by the way, if you do find them, you better hit them exactly because the ocean doesn't crater. Dreaming big, I know, but I think that there are a lot of possibilities that the seaplane opens up to you, a lot of things that help complicate what your adversary is doing. And it's, you know, it's not some crazy novel thing. Like we've done it before. These, these are aircraft that work. We know how to use them relatively speaking. And so why not at least give it a go experiment and then see if it's something

that actually has a lot of value proposition to the joint force. What would be the most relevant are the most important capabilities to bring back? You know, you've mentioned CSAR, you've mentioned refueling, which is interesting. You've mentioned strike, you've mentioned transportation. Is this kind of an all of the above proposition or are some of those missions more important than others? Yeah. So I think that right now the short answer and the unhelpful answer is that we don't know. I think that CSAR is kind of the low hanging fruit and that we know that in the event of conflict, we will be doing strike operations over a large expanse of the ocean. We know that our current systems do not really have the range to, you know, at least

independently go out there and rescue someone. The seaplane is like right off the bat, you know, the Japanese US-2, it can solve that problem for us. You know, we know that we might need to resupply platoons of Marines on isolated islands. We know that, you know, we can probably do that to some extent right now. But we also probably know that a seaplane would be helpful there. So I think that right now, the key is that we really just want to start small and say, you know, go out and acquire two or three seaplanes, like literally two or three singular seaplanes, and just experiment with them and figure out, hey, there's this capability that we haven't really explored. When we explore it, where do we see that we could get the highest impacts for our

limited dollars in the short, medium, and long term, and then go from there in determining what kind of acquisition program would actually make the most sense. A perfect segue into your most recent piece, a Japanese seaplane could be the difference maker for the U.S. military that just came out and more on the rocks about the the japanese us-2 seaplane as i understood it your pitch was kind of that we should acquire a couple of these from the from the japanese and start experimenting and how how do you think that would work and then a big question that i run into when we talk about seaplanes is who gets them is it the navy is it afsoc with with their float planes that they want should it be the marine corps uh you know how are we going to integrate these into

the force? Yeah. So, you know, as a member of the Alabama Air National Guard, I obviously think that Mobile, Alabama would be a great place to put them, put them under guard control, etc. But I think on a serious note, we should do kind of the following, and I'll hopefully have an article out on this in the next couple of months. You know, first, acquire two or three seaplanes. That probably means a choice between the US-2, the CL-415, the Canadian fire bomber, or the Albatross. And I understand there's some Australian folks who are going to be working on a modernized version of that. And there's also just a lot of surplus ones. So acquire two or three seaplanes should cost somewhere under half a billion dollars. Still a lot of money, but we're spending a lot

of money on a lot of stuff, so it might make sense. So get the planes. Then gather the few pilots in the military who have seaplane experience, and there are some, and hopefully some junior pilots as well. I'll volunteer for that. And you assign them to this notionally named Joint Seaplane Experimental Force. After that, base them at Whidbey Island, base them at Pax River, someplace where there's already the seaplane ramps. It's always the marina now on the Navy bases that people use to push their fishing boat in the water, but the seaplane ramps are all still there. The hangars are usually some National Register of Historical Places sign. So the infrastructure is there. Get the seaplanes, take them to these locations,

then send these guys out, you know, guys and gals out to Indo-PACOM or whatever for a few weeks at a time, and just talk to people, experiment and do things. So take the US-2 out with its, you know, relatively small door, but it's still a sizable door that they use for personnel recovery, and let them go out and talk to, you know, whatever, some Marine regiment, littoral regiment, and just figure out what kind of opportunities exist. And I can't really emphasize this enough. I think right now, I think the trend for a while is that we're kind of paralyzed by analysis and trade studies. And so instead of spending the money and doing analysis that may or may not reflect reality.

Let's just go out and use the seaplanes in an operational environment. And then once we've actually gone out and seen what some seaplanes can do, and once we understand their operations in more detail, then we can go to a Shinmeiwa or these Australian folks with the modernized albatross, Shinmeiwa being the maker of the US2,

go out to them with a super tight, coherent set of requirements and say, build this. And let's buy 20, which if you think about it, you know, you're probably looking at just notionally, you know, if it's a 200 million airplane, that's four mil for procurement, toss on another one or two bill for research and development. You're talking in under $10 billion programs spread out over a couple of years to acquire 20 seaplanes with a really, with a really focused mission. And then, you know, we can go from there. So as much as I want to kind of say, you know, let's build the Seamaster

2.0, you know, let's build a supersonic jet stealth, you know, AI-enabled nonsense seaplane. I think that, you know, right now we need to just kind of start slow and start joint. And then once we've determined, you know, what we really want to do, what would be of most benefit to the joint force, then we can go from there. You mentioned some other countries that have seaplanes or working on seaplanes. What else is there going on in the region? Are there other countries in Indo-Pacific that are working on seaplanes and building out these capabilities? Yes. So our friends, the Japanese have what is arguably the most capable seaplane in the world right now, the US too. Other than that, China is developing a brand new seaplane, the AG600.

It's just done a lot of its water testing. And that aircraft looks to be pretty capable as well, four engine turboprop vehicle. And so you naturally want us to wonder about why the Chinese might be building a seaplane. And, you know, part of me thinks to the end of Dr. Strangelove, where they yell, you know, Mr. President, there must not be a mine shaft gap. And I'm inclined to say there shouldn't be a seaplane gap either. That's just my opinion. But the Russians also have the Beria 200, the BE 200, which is more optimized for the firefighting role, but still pretty capable. You know, we have Canadians with the CL-415 and new variant 515, primarily a firefighter. And then we have, you know, Indonesia, Malaysia interested in some of those, or at least have

expressed interest. And then India kind of for the longest time has also expressed interest in acquiring the U.S. too. So I think basically the headline there is pretty much everyone who's operating close to a large body of water, except for the United States of America and the Indo-Pacific, seems to be interested in seaplanes to some degree, or is acquiring or development or developing them already. Yeah, I mean, and this is something that I mentioned with a buddy of mine when we wrote our own pitch for seaplanes and proceedings, but it seems like everybody else in the region is working on it.

You know, it just makes sense if you're talking about water, islands, and then these planes have a range of capabilities. I think something that we didn't get is also for ASW, anti-submarine warfare, right? So if the region's proliferating in submarines, they can also be a really fantastic platform for anti-submarine warfare. Can you talk a little bit more about the tankers? I think you wrote a piece in Proceedings about that. And how would that work? Because the Navy's, to me, seems to be pretty interested in tanking capability in there. They've got their unmanned, the MQ-25, I think it is, carrier-based unmanned refueling platform. But, you know, is there a way that seaplanes can help fix the range limitations that a lot of carrier-based strike aircraft have? Yeah, yeah. And if you'll let me, just one comment on your previous point about ASW. And I know you all had written an article about the Nimbus Cedians. I've admittedly not read it yet.

But one of the really cool things about some of the seaplanes is the kind of grandfather or father of the US-2, the US-1, actually was able to deploy a dip in sonar out of its hull, which is kind of a really cool capability. There are some tech issues there that would need to be worked out, but still kind of cool that it was able to actually do like pretty legit ASW in the form of a dipping sonar. To your point on refueling. So refueling is kind of how a lot of my serious thinking on seaplanes started. That's what that fictional piece in SimSec that I wrote a couple of years ago was all about, called From Sea to Sky. So basically, right, the United States depends on tankers to conduct strike operations. Even the mighty B-52 with its crazy range will typically still need tanker support. Just because of math and engineering, those tankers generally have to be closer to the

fight than a bomber, because if not, now we're going to use tankers to refuel tankers, to refuel tankers, to refuel bombers. You just get this huge cost increase, huge decrease in efficiency if these tankers are also having to fly from long ranges as well. And so basically, that means we want tankers closer to the fight. But if those tankers are closer to the fight, then an astute adversary will look at the problem and say, hey, I don't need to kill the B-52 or I don't need to kill the B-2 or a B-21 or whatever.

I just need to kill the tankers and the tanker bases. So seaplanes potentially offer a solution. There is an issue with probe and drogue refueling used by the Navy and Marine Corps versus boom refueling used by the Air Force. But basically, the idea is you'd have seaplanes, whether it be a US-2, next-gen design, whatever, stationed forward and dispersed. These would be supported by tenders, pre-placed fuel bladders, and so on. So you can notionally think about taking an island. If you get a war warning, you start having C-17s or whatever faring in fuel bladders. You build up a couple million

pounds of fuel. And then once a war kicks off and that runway gets potentially cratered, taken offline, whatever, well, then the seaplanes can land on the water close to the airfield and and use that fuel that's already pre-placed there. And so then those seaplanes would take off, refuel the inbound strike aircraft and land. And an adversary is now hunting for, you know, again, an aircraft with 100-foot wingspan. They can crater the runway all they want.

It doesn't matter. And so they'd have to legitimately go after the fuel stores, which are easier to hide and disperse than a runway, and seaplanes, which are easier to disperse and harder to find than a big-wing tanker needs an 8 000 10 000 foot runway um and so practically this means you could have a carrier operating west of guam you know operating under mcon and doing whatever else with its attached

sea planes in the middle of the philippine sea and the carrier would still be able to project power to the first island chain um and so that's in contrast to today you know whereas you alluded to you know that the navy's working on their mq-25 which in my opinion as a as a just a dude I think it's almost a joke. You know, it gives 15,000 pounds of offload at five or 600 miles range, which is like nothing. So even a converted US-2 is giving you 30,000 pounds of offload, double that.

And oh, by the way, the MQ-25, you're also having to trade strike aircraft for the MQ-25. So in my mind, it's kind of almost like a self-looking ice cream cone. I'm not a fan. There are reasons why it's cool. I think there's a purpose for the MQ-25 in the world. But allowing naval carrier aviation to project power long range is not it, in my opinion.

So, yeah, so right now the carrier has three options. MQ-25, not a fan, rely on Air Force big wing tankers, which I think, you know, one are probably going to be pretty busy in the event of a conflict. And also, I think our adversaries will, if they're smart, be targeting those. So not super convinced that those will be there for naval aviation. And then their last option, I think, really is be super far out of the fight, in which case, cool, we have a $15 billion aircraft carrier and 100 strike aircraft that are now steaming around Hawaii for whatever reason, because that's all it can do. um so you know in a crazy ideal world you'd have a boom equipped seaplane operating forward ensuring that b-52s out of barksdale or b-2s out of white men white men or whatever distributed conus base if our adversaries decide conus was not a sanctuary um and then they could continue

to fire jazz and ers downrange and then you know long term if we say you know these seaplanes are doing all this tanking well then maybe at some point we have the seaplane doing the shooting too i mean it seems like that's almost the priority mission in your mind is is getting something that can service air both air force aircraft air force strike aircraft and support the navy's uh the navy's carrier strike groups yeah if i had a magic wand and could do anything with the seaplane right now it would be you know get a squadron's worth of boom and probe and drogue tanker seaplanes unfortunately none of those really exist right now and so you know i think that kind of from the standpoint of trying to just get them back into the force i think there's more low-hanging

fruit but if you if you think about maybe maybe a better way to explain this would be You're the matrix of of like impact versus cost. I think the refueling seaplanes are high impact, high cost. I think CSAR is relatively low impact, low cost. And so I'm inclined to say, let's just go for the low cost stuff. Let's go for the easy stuff first. It also strikes me that while this isn't a new capability, you know, we've had it historically, you're kind of reintroducing it to the force. So, you know, start small and get people used to the idea that we're doing this again before you kind of ramp up the impact seems to be kind of a good strategy. Yeah. And really, you know, part of this is probably just due to my pessimism about our procurement programs. I don't want I don't want the joint seaplane experimental force to turn into the joint seaplane force, the JSS of the future. Right. I don't want it to be some, you know, multibillion dollar boondoggle that like turns everyone off to the seaplane.

Because we don't have the expertise, like Lockheed and Boeing and Northrop, they haven't designed seaplanes in many years. I guess Lockheed did some trade studies in the C-130, but we don't have the institutional knowledge to go out there and just crank out a seaplane design that we're confident is going to work. And so that's why my push would be acquire the known platforms, build up the knowledge, let our aerospace primes and hopefully some aerospace small businesses do the work on modifying them, experiment with them, build up that knowledge, and then go from there. And somewhat ironically, in a little bit of the history of the U.S. too, that's really what the Japanese did. So, you know, Shin Maywa used to be Kawanishi, I believe, I probably butchered the pronunciation, which designed all the Japanese flying boats up to and during World War II. Well, then after World War II, we basically said, stop, you can't do that anymore. And so when we finally brought back the Japanese military and the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force, we actually loaned Shin Maywa, an American albatross seaplane, for them to do experiments on so they could design the US-1, which led to the US-2, which is what now an American is arguing that we should buy. So it's all about building up that knowledge base, which I think we need to do again, obviously.

And then, David, kind of the last question I want to leave you with is, have you seen any movement on the part of the Department of Defense or the U.S. military? I mean, I think there was the news story that AFSOC was interested in converting a C-130. I think I saw just a couple of days ago an Air Force general officer visiting a base with some U.S. twos in Japan. I mean, obviously, you're kind of been leading the charge in terms of writing about this. You know, have you heard anything by people reaching out to you or seen anything in the news that indicates that there is interest on part of the military to procure this kind of stuff? Yes, I think the short answer is yes. Obviously, we're seeing ASSOC's interest with their MAC, their C-130 amphibian. We also saw DARPA, and it's kind of more in line with some of your writing, put out an RFI on WIG, the wing and ground effect vehicles.

you know I've heard kind of anecdotally and again from some of that you know just reaching out to people and people reaching out to me that in some of the war games that the United States is doing that there is kind of talk of like you know there are seaplanes and some of those but I think it's still at the level where we're suffering from a lot of misconceptions about seaplanes I think that a lot of people have in their mind this idea that a seaplane is this lumbering Pan Am clipper with people dressed in suits and drinking martinis. I don't think people understand that, you know, based on 1950s technology, which is what the US2 fundamentally is, we were operating seaplanes that, you know, can land in waves up to nine, 10 feet high, that can carry large payloads, that can do

a lot of really interesting things. And, you know, you see it where, you know, lots of people think that, yes, seaplanes can operate in the open ocean. Well, that's false. Lots of people think that seaplanes can't be very big. Well, that's false as well. You know, get the spruce goose, for example. And so I think, you know, to summarize, yes, we're seeing interest. I think we're still suffering from a lot of misconceptions about what seaplanes are and what they can do. And that's leading to us, I think, undershooting on their potential in our analysis and in our thinking. Before we go, I'd like to ask you, David, you know, could you give us a preview of anything you're working on now? And where, if anywhere, our listeners can find you online?

Yeah, yeah, happy to. So, I mean, you know, I have a lot of different interests. So, it's not all seed plan related, but basically, you know, four themes. One is technology is not a panacea, especially when dealing with peers. So, this basically becomes an argument for industry and mass. Another is on naval strategy and why it's super contradictory right now. And I don't think it makes any sense. Third is on French strategy in the interwar period, especially the Maginot line and how I think there's a pretty good argument on why it was a really good idea. And I think we should give the French a lot more credit than I think we do. And then lastly, on the aerospace front, you know, kind of what's near and dear to my heart,

working on some more seaplane stuff, especially kind of how to bring them back into the force. um you know and i'll say at this point you know i've written a few things on seaplanes um yeah i think i've kind of made my argument i'm hoping that you know at least a couple other people in the you know million people in the united states armed forces kind of can take up the mantle there's one other you know bright officer walker mills who wrote some stuff but like we have two people out of the whatever 1.3 million writing on seaplanes so need somebody else would take that um and then working on something just my thoughts kind of from an engineering perspective um on stealth and next generation air dominance and gad um where to find

me you know linkedin twitter various online journals you know i like writing for the strategy bridge but i haven't had time or on the rocks uh simsec proceedings whatever else kind of the the usual suspects yeah well we're happy at simsec to uh help you beat that drum and and hopefully we'll see more about seaplanes and be able to bring you back on when you write something else that we can talk about. I'd like to thank my guest, David Allman, again, for joining us today and talking about his recent essays on seaplanes. Take care. Bully in the Alley Help me, help me, help me, put it in Ali, put it out in Shemona.