Sea Control - Sea Control 416 - "The Navy Should Take More Academics to Sea" with Blake Herzinger

Episode Date: February 26, 2023

Links1. "The Navy Should Take More Academics to Sea," Blake Herzinger, Proceedings, January 2023.2. "A Sea Ride With Australia’s Indo-Pacific Endeavour,” Bec Strating, Lowy Institute, June 2019.3. "Australian Pilots Hit With Lasers During Indo-Pacific Exercise", Euam Graham, The Strategist, May 2019.4. "Sea Control 361 - Carrier Killers with Gerry Doyle and Blake Herzinger," by Jared Samuelson, CIMSEC, July 10, 2022.5. "Sea Control 391 - Indo-Pacific Maritime Hour with Blake Herzinger & Jimmy Drennan," CIMSEC, November 19, 2022.6. Blake Herzinger American Enterprise Institute Profile.

Hello, and welcome to the Sea Control Podcast. I'm Nathan Miller. In this episode, your host, Dr. Ed Salo, speaks with Blake Herzinger about Herzinger's article for Proceedings, The Navy Should Take More Academics to Sea. In his article, Herzinger highlights the merits of humanizing the role of the U.S. Navy in the Pacific. CIMSEC is looking for a volunteer to join our technical team and support our web operations. We're looking for someone with a background in WordPress implementation and support, as well as knowledge in web hosting and networking. Some knowledge of identity management and security operations is also helpful. Please reach out to content at simsec.org to share your background and discuss.

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Today we'll be talking to Blake Persinger, the author of a recent article for Naval Institute Proceedings, The Navy Should Take More Academics to Sea. Blake is a non-resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, as well as a U.S. Navy Reserve officer with over 13 years of service in the Navy as an intelligence officer with experience all over the Indo-Pacific and Middle East. Welcome to Sea Control. Hey, thanks, Ed. Thanks for having me.

Always a pleasure to be back on Sea Control. And of course, this isn't your first time here on the podcast. Last year, you were on the show discussing the book you co-authored, Carrier Killer, Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles and Theater of Operations in the Early 21st Century, as well as the episode we did recently on the Indo-Pacific Maritime Hour, which was I think in November. So we're glad to have you back about your recent article. Oh, it's such a pleasure. I love SIMSEC. I think that there is no better place for junior officers and anyone who's interested in the maritime space,

but particularly junior officers that are looking to kind of break into thinking about these things, creating this forum that simsec has done uh i just think is is i think it's wonderful i'm for for jo's by jo's i just think it deserves everyone's attention and i'm i'm happy to see it cooperating now uh with y caps like we did in november um john bradford's organization is also fantastic and has done a great job in integrating more awareness of the navy and and the sea services into the consciousness of our Japan-based folks, people all over the Pacific, and with ties in the United States. So can you tell us a little about yourself and your career to date? Yeah, you bet, Ed. So like you said in the intro, I commissioned as an intel officer

in 2010. I joined the Navy in 2008. I served in the P-3 Navy, and I was there when the P-3 went away and we started to get the P-8 into the fleet, which was exciting. Over that time, I deployed in Europe, North Africa, did some work in Eastern Europe, and then came over to Singapore. And I've been here for almost 10 years. And in Singapore, I've done a number of different things. I left active duty in 2017, classic Navy story, met a really nice girl, and we got married. So now we have two kids and we're still here in singapore and uh still loving it and i joined the reserve in 2017 when i left active duty i had what i thought then was maybe a non-typical experience but i realized that it was maybe a bit of a typical experience in that you join the reserve

and they're like okay go do it and you're kind of like what is it how does how do you be a reservist how do i reservist and good luck i mean you just got to figure it out and i almost got kicked out my first year because I didn't figure it out very fast, not so quick on the uptake. So I worked for a unit that supports Commander Naval Forces Korea. So I've gotten a really fun education on the problems that we faced and the opportunities that we have with our ROK counterparts in South Korea. And that's been really enjoyable. I became a foreign area officer in 2020 after returning from my last intel deployment back to the Middle East where I served on USS Louis B. Puller, ESB-3. And, you know, great experience. I worked with amazing

sailors, which is the reason that I love the reserve, but came back and said, you know, I think I've had enough of the Intel life, which classic Herzinger timing coincided with when the Intel community started saying, oh, we need more Intel 04s. We're going to start paying bonuses and doing all this stuff and deploying them less. So of course, you know, I assume that's because I left the community that they did that. But the move to the foreign area officer community has been one of best of my naval career. Wonderful, wonderful people, extremely knowledgeable, so engaged with what the Navy is doing, and they care so much about their people and what they're out there to do. And I think my exposure in the FAO community has kind of brought me toward this idea for this

article, which has kind of been circling it a while, like how could we do it? Why would it make sense? And how could we marry up kind of these efforts that the FAOs are doing to help the Navy things strategically and also to reach out to our partners and i think it finally kind of coalesced for me uh mentally and i was able to put some thoughts down on paper how did you get kind of interested because i'll say i got interested in talking to you about it when i saw the title i'm a history professor so i was like wow that's pretty cool so it is cool right like it's such a you know my dad was in the navy his dad was in the navy you know i got to go on a tiger cruise on USS Enterprise when I was like six years old, like that stuff is cool. People remember that

kind of thing their whole life. It's an immense opportunity. And I think so often in the Navy, we kind of get our heads down and we thinking about the mission and we got people out there talking about warheads on foreheads and it's, you get too hyped up about work, work, work, work, work. Instead of thinking about the broader service that the Navy pays to our nation, You know, the things that the Navy does in peacetime are not just flying jets over Central Asia and dropping bombs on people. Right. They also keep our sea lanes clear and open. They support mariners. They counter piracy at sea. You know, our Navy's been chasing pirates since the earliest days of the United States of America, which is amazing. It's an incredible, you know, as you know, as a history professor, it's an incredible heritage that we have.

You know, you've got Decatur out there, you know, telling the Barbary pirates we're not going to pay them and doing all sorts of great stuff, burning ships and blowing up things. And we don't have to take people out on Tiger Cruise to see things get blown up. But I actually I know some of the the academics that that the Australians embarked for Indo-Pacific Endeavor starting in 2017. And I didn't necessarily hear about it because I saw the articles they wrote, but they did write articles, which were great. But I noticed it because they were on social media, right? Posting like, hey, here's me sitting in the CO's chair on the bridge and having a great time. I mean, I think the Australians are more relaxed about people sitting in the CO's chair than we are. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe they got in trouble for that. I don't know. But they were clearly having a great time, you know, and, and it was like, wow, hey, you're getting to see someone who's out with the Navy, seeing what the Navy does, but you're also getting to see the side of it where like, they're just having a blast, right? And they're seeing new things and kind of seeing things they've studied for years through fresh eyes and seeing a new way up and close, you know, up close, you know, you can smell the paint and the dirty socks, you know, they're eating in the galley, they're having a great time. And I just think that the ADF, the Australian Defense Force, made such a good decision doing that, such a low-cost, high-return enterprise to build a constituency for themselves. So they were the ones that originated this idea, or did they steal it from anybody that you could tell?

Excuse me, we can edit that. Strategically appropriated. Yes. Well, so for the Australians in 2016, you know, the Turnbull government released this defense white paper that was a bit more focused on Australia's immediate neighborhood, right, and reengaging the region as Australia in their own neighborhood, in their own backyard, engaging more with security forces in Southeast Asia and in the South Pacific. You know, the the the countries really that sit all around Australia's periphery that are kind of the gateway for Australia to the world in terms of maritime traffic. So as a result of that. The ADF turned around in remarkable speed that I don't know if we could emulate and by 2017 had created Indo-Pacific Endeavor. So this regional exercise, they, you know, they visit a dozen or more countries, the whole ADF goes, you know, the RAF is flying in, the army is embarked on Navy ships, and they're traveling around, they're, you know, building construction projects, they're delivering humanitarian aid, they're doing exercises, doing key leader engagements. and then they brought along these academics who kind of have free run of the ship other than you

know very secure spaces and they're kind of their time is their own they can kind of they don't have a dog and pony show they're just there and so they can go watch things you know and they can see things they can go sit down and talk to people and and I think that even just the articles that came out of 2017 if you look some of the ones that come to mind were from Ewan Graham and Beck strating, just phenomenal stuff. And the insights that they took away were great. And I thought one of the coolest things that ADF did was they were comfortable enough to just let them do what they were going to do and write what they were going to write. And, you know, is it going to be bad? Is it going to be good? Well, you know, they were very transparent and they gave them the access

and they just said, you know, here's how we do what we do. And in my opinion, you know, what came out was, was excellent. And it painted the ADF in such a good light, such a honest, you know, unbiased light. I just thought it was great. I don't know that they necessarily stole the idea or appropriated it. And some, some readers did point out that, you know, I, I gave lip service to the Center for Naval Analyses, which does embark people on board U.S. Navy ships for certain things like uh exercises and things the naval war college apparently does this as well but i know there are other programs that you know basically lost funding uh either during covet or before that used to be used for embarking people in the u.s navy and we've kind of apparently lost that

now those are those are secondhand reports that i've gotten that that funding is gone but i think that's a shame i think this is uh this is a key time for the u.s navy and we need to be building more friendships and developing those constituencies instead of letting them go unfunded um and while i'm encouraged that we're letting cna and the war college on board that's kind of like you know you're bringing your people right it's sort of you know they're already on the team generally if you work at the naval war college you know you're not going to come out and like slam the navy which you know we don't want people to do but generally you're assuming that those people are fairly familiar with the Navy and how it works.

That could be wrong. That could be a faulty assumption, but that would be my assumption. So I think we could we could do better. We could, you know, get you on board, bring CSIS on board, bring any name, a think tank, name a university, you know, you're interested. Hey, put your name in the hat. Let's let's do this. We got five spots, you know, or whatever we want to do.

Well, I was going to say, I know. And again, I think this was killed because of budget cuts. You know, before COVID, I know that the ROTC, I teach the military history for ROTC, and they had so many slots for professors to come basically go to the camp that the cadets go to in the summer and see what they go through, which is, I mean, a little lesser. But, yeah, you know, to kind of experience that aspect of what they're going on and either funding or COVID and or both, you know, that went away. And I think that it's important that a lot of times a lot of the military historians and naval historians do have prior service, but a lot of people don't. I think, you know, being able to understand what goes on on a ship during an average day as opposed to, you know, will also help with that. You know, one thing that I thought was really interesting in your discussion of, you know, giving new sets of eyes, humanizing the Navy, and that these are some of the reasons for bringing the non-military advisors on board. What are some of the others that you can think of?

The constituency building piece is one that I find that I think is really important. And I don't think it has to be structured. You know, we don't have to have a step by step plan for making people like us. Right. Like, generally, the Navy is pretty cool. And if you let people see it and let people, you know, gosh, take two or three folks out, you know, for a carrier strike group, a group transit, you know, let them see the sunrise over the Indian Ocean. Like that is cool. They're never going to forget that. You know, that's really neat. Let them sit in the galley and eat lunch with sailors. Let them come to the wardroom and like, you know, see the kind of old school way that we still do things in there. You know, let them watch planes take off. Let them watch the cat shots. Let them go out on a, you know, a small boat and do donuts. Let them do all those things and, you know, help them understand what happens. Like you said, kind of seeing the day in, day out. From a critical side, I'm always skeptical. You know, you see all these reports with these maximalist ideas that maybe we should be doing X, Y, and Z. They need to be doing more, blah, blah, blah. Let people see how busy it is already.

You know, let them see, you know, how overworked an undermanned destroyer is already. Like, okay, well, seeing it now up close can help inform, you know, all right, what are we capable of? Or maybe, you know, how much should we, how much less should we be doing? Or how hard is the idea that I wanted to suggest now realizing that actually it's pretty difficult. I think getting people the more holistic picture of what it's all like helps them pose more realistic suggestions to policymakers. And the human side, I think, is really great. Like, go play spades in the galley, you know, play basketball in the hangar, get to know sailors and, you know, fall asleep on a ship. Like these are these things are I think they're just so memorable and it will help create those kind of bonds of affection that we would like people to have with our Navy as as the United States of America that needs a revitalized Navy and doesn't have what it needs. You know, we need to be reaching out to everyone we can to show them how good we really are and how we're worth the investment. And that's really, you know, at the end of the day, we need to show that we're worthy of the taxpayers' hard-earned dollars.

And that's a great way to show it, you know, showing the people that are working hard day in, day out to keep our nation safe at sea and to secure our shores. And I think part of that also helps the Navy because, you know, in recent years, we've had a hard time telling our story the right way. You know, Congress is increasingly critical of us constantly, openly. like, hey, you guys sound like you don't have a plan. You know, we're asking you for a plan. Where is it? What's going on? Why are your ships burning? Why are your ships running into each other? You know, what's going on? And we're, you know, we keep just throwing out numbers. We want 500 ships. We want, you know, I don't know, half an unmanned fleet. We want this. We want that. For what? You know, Representative Gallagher recently pushed through the change,

adding, you know, presence to the Navy's mission and establishing that that's something we really need to do and a lot of people are like hey why like what does that make a difference and you know for a navalist but like yeah it does make a difference and like well tell me why or like why doesn't the you know why doesn't naval leadership tell me why having people who are trained to ask really good questions like academics and think tankers generally are having them on board and giving them access to decision makers in the navy saying like hey why why are you saying this or what are you looking for here? Helping us to even ask some tough questions to ourselves and hone that message and explain ourselves a bit better, I think is invaluable. I think we really need help

doing that because I think if we don't get some message discipline locked in pretty quickly, we're going to be in trouble. Yeah. And then another reason you stay is kind of to show the difference between the Chinese Navy, the U.S. Navy, its allies. Can you kind of explain that aspect yeah you bet so those 2017 reports are are great um if you look at dr ewan graham's article which i believe he wrote well i know he wrote shortly after the deployment i was trying to remember which outlet but it's not coming to mind unfortunately but uh you know he got to watch from the fan tale of this ship that he was on uh the plan shadowing them basically across their whole deployment for weeks the plan just shadowed them every everywhere they went in the south

trying to see when helicopter pilots went out and came back to the ship they reported you know small boats around the carrier directing lasers into the you know the the windscreen of the helicopter which is incredibly dangerous yeah and you know the assessment is you know those are very possibly linked to the plan as part of china's maritime militia you know that kind of thing and and getting access to those guys saying like oh hey i i had heard that this is bad but now i understand because i'm sitting here eating dinner with you the pilot why it's dangerous you know what could have happened here? You know, how regularly does this happen? You know, with lazing incidents, we're seeing it all over the place. You know, Chinese boats have lazed P-8s,

they've lazed helicopters, they've lazed aircraft over Djibouti in the South China Sea and all over the place. And this is a widespread issue. And giving people access to the people who are experiencing those things and saying, like, you know, this is how difficult it's becoming and how unprofessional it's becoming is important. And, you know, the U.S. Navy, for whatever its faults is a genuinely positive actor at sea for trying to support and build good order at sea now someone actually pointed this out in something i was writing recently well okay well you're saying that but who doesn't support good order at sea and and you know in a way that's fair because the plan they do support good order at sea but their order right their rules their way

and that includes us not being there so highlighting the difference between the inclusive and open order that the united states navy is trying to support alongside its allies and partners like japan australia and then the closed order that the people's liberation army navy is is trying to cement in the south china sea and east china sea where you have to effectively act in, act counter to international law to obey what the PLAN is trying to enforce. You know, they are, they're slowly eroding the law of the sea and trying to territorialize maritime space according to their own vision for the regional order. You know, we kind of talked about this earlier, but do you know of any other branches and

services that do similar programs when i first started reading the topic all i could think about was the old um you know master and commander book series with you know having the scientist aboard the um old royal naval ships and i was like oh okay this is kind of different than that kind of academic not uh cataloging birds or anything well you can't go wrong with you know a master and commander reference and if we want to embark you know a steven maturin on each ship to to catalog interesting birds and and stick bugs i'm 100 on board with that i think every captain could probably use a steven maturin to challenge their assumptions now and then but uh like i said you know i know cna and the war college do that um the the u.s with its um southeast asia cooperation

and training exercise which i worked with for about five years actually about seven to eight years we do have a we have an academic portion of that uh but it's all on shore and it's basically it's seminars and some training that that academics and thinkers think tankers have been invited to in the past which i think is a great initiative putting them to see i am not aware of anyone doing it as well as the adf is i think the way the u.s is doing it right now is a bit more inwardly focused, you know, operations, analysis, that kind of stuff, as opposed to just sort of letting people come on board and learn, right? We're asking them to come on and, you know, research us, you know, hey, you know, watch this exercise, tell us what's going on,

talk about our C2, that kind of thing. I would like to see something a bit more like a informative tiger cruise for adults. And like I said, I think the ADF is way ahead of the game. I think the U.S. could get on board for minimal investment. You know, I'm sure there's some, you know, JAG stuff that had to be worked out. I'm sure there's some liability questions. But, you know, all as a as a friend and mentor once told me, all bureaucratic problems have bureaucratic solutions. So you can fix those things. You can get people to see and it wouldn't cost much.

You know, we already have the racks. Someone will pay the four dollars and thirty five cents a day it costs to feed them. We can do this. it's one of those opportunities that's good for both the service and the academics and i highly recommend the article to everybody out there so what are you working on next and how can our listeners find you on social media or other places so i'm on twitter at bd herzinger i'm on post now too but have yet to migrate to mastodon mostly because i heard it was difficult and i am not that swift on technology. And I recently started a substack called Sailor Tech Warning, where I'm

talking a bit about the Navy and the Navy Reserve, as well as the strategic environment that both inhabit. I actually have a piece coming out today that I co-authored with the former chief of the Indian Naval Staff, Admiral Karambar Singh, which I'm really excited about, about U.S. Navy and Indian Navy cooperation. And then another that I co-authored with the world's greatest research assistant, my AEI colleague, Ben Lefkowitz, regarding the PLAN's expansion in the Middle East and what their presence is going to look like in the future. Other than that, I think I am late on chapters for a book, not quite late on a second, and then furiously working on a third, which is kind of an open source Alliance Managers Encyclopedia on the US-Australia Alliance,

which John Bradford and Michael Bosak did one on Japan, which is a phenomenal resource. And I I highly recommend it to everyone. You can download it for free. That's another excellent Ycaps effort. Yeah, that's where I'm at. That's what I'm working on. And I have to give a shout out to Corey Shockey at AEI, who has kind of created space for me to do the things that I really love doing as a day job. Writing and doing things like this has always sort of been a nights and weekends deal for me. So this is a real first for me. And I knew I would love it, but I didn't No, I love it this much. So I'm just having the best time in the world.

It's always great, you know, to be able to write and study and, you know, things that you love and are interested and they make the day go a lot by quicker. So, well, thank you so much. And again, the name of the article is The Navy Should Take More Academics to See. It'll be linked in the show notes. And I appreciate your time. And thanks to everyone listening. Goodbye.

© transcript Emily Beynon Thank you for watching.