STARRS Podcast
STARRS Interviews and discussions. See our website, starrs.us, for more information.
STARRS Podcast
Preserving Military Excellence through Leadership and Unity with Tom Burbage and Bruce Davey of the Calvert Task Group
Join STARRS & Stripes podcast with host CDR Al Palmer, US Navy ret, for an inspiring conversation with leaders of the Calvert Task Group: Naval Academy graduates Captain Tom Burbage, US Navy ret, and Lieutenant Commander Bruce Davey, US Navy ret, as they all share their remarkable journeys shaped by deep-rooted family legacies in military service.
From Burbage’s childhood dreams sparked by naval officers to his impactful career at Lockheed Martin, and Davey's exhilarating experience flying with the Blue Angels and his transition to a successful aviation consultancy, as well as Palmer's career as a F-4 "Wild Weasel" in the Air Force to becoming a Naval aviator, you'll find their stories and insights interesting. This episode explores the lasting influence of the "Greatest Generation" on military and societal values, and the ever-present need for readiness in the face of evolving domestic and global threats.
Covered in this episode are the pressing issues of today’s military recruitment and retention challenges amidst shifting cultural landscapes. Burbage and Davey discuss the erosion of the elite, motivating culture that once drew recruits into the armed forces, and how financial incentives alone are not enough to maintain a capable and motivated force. Drawing parallels to team sports, they emphasize the importance of fostering a sense of belonging, purpose, and responsibility to a higher cause beyond self. Also highlighted is the critical need for strong leadership and support from organizations such as STARRS and the Calvert Task Group to uphold the standards and effectiveness of our military.
Finally, they reflect on the evolving perspectives of veterans and the move from casual socializing to active engagement working on restoring the military by removing the divisive politicization and ant-American ideology in the armed forces. This is the focus of Calvert Task Group's new book, "Don't Give Up the Ship: Woke Politics are Endangering Our Military and Our Nation," which consists of powerful essays on the topic written by its members.
This episode talks about the collaborative efforts of STARRS, Calvert Task Group and the MacArthur Society, and their impactful actions and influence. With insights into maintaining military strength and unity, this episode reinforces the necessity of strong leadership and the elimination of corrosive elements to ensure operational effectiveness. Tune in to hear the compelling stories and valuable lessons from three naval aviators dedicated to preserving the legacy and integrity of military service.
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For more information about STARRS, go to our website: https://starrs.us which monitors and exposes the CRT/DEI/Woke agenda in the Dept. of Defense and advocates a return to Merit, Equality and Integrity in the military.
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Well, hello America. This is Commander Al Palmer, nited States Navy retired, and I'm with you as your host for Stars and Stripes. This is a production that's here courtesy of Stars, which is a nonprofit organization which is formed so that we can stand against racism and radicalism in the services. The idea there is we need to be able to make sure that our armed forces are properly prepared, are properly prepared, have the right attitude and the ability to conduct military operations around the world to defend our country. So it's good to be back with you here for another exciting episode of Stars and Stripes.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:I'm really pleased today to have a couple of naval aviators here to join me, so we've got a cast and crew of three Airedales, as we like to call them in the Navy sometimes, or maybe they like to call us that out of some other purpose. But we're here today to talk a little bit about what it's like to be able to serve in the Navy, what the challenges are in the past and in the present. Serve in the Navy, what the challenges are in the past and in the present, and also what we're going to be facing as we go up forward into a new era here, with some difficult things in our society. So with that, I'm going to introduce first Captain Tom Burbage. Captain Burbage was a naval aviator, was then a test pilot and after a stint in the air in the Navy, went to work for Lockheed Martin, and I'll let him explain the great things that he did there. And then Lieutenant Commander Bruce Davey, who was a fighter pilot and, most notably, a Blue Angel.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:So he knows all about flying in tight formation, and we'll kind of keep it that way here today, if we can. So, tom, first of all, sir, welcome to the program and tell us a little bit about how you got roped into joining the Navy.
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:Well, thanks, Aalan. Thanks for having us on. It's great to meet up with you today. Uh, uh, bruce and I have actually similar backgrounds. We come from a navy family. Um, I'm third generation, uh, navy my, my daughter, son-in-law, brother-in-law all navy, all navy pilots with the exception of my daughter. But that's how it started. My role models growing up were naval officers. They were. I went to see on uh, uss frank, uss Franklin D Roosevelt, with my dad when I was in sixth grade for a week at sea. Navy pilots and naval officers were what I grew up around. I wanted to go to the Naval Academy, I wanted to be a Navy pilot and I was lucky enough to do both. When I left active duty I stayed in the Reserves for another 14 years and got to fly the A7, the Corsair II and had an industry career with Lockheed Martin and was very fortunate to be involved with their two 5th Gen fighter programs, first the F-22 and then the F-35.
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:So I've been around fighter aircraft my entire career, both military and civilian, and it's great to be part of this effort now, working with you and the STARS guys.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:Well, it's great, tom, having you with us, and that kind of background really does help people understand why we're doing it. Often, you know, when we have things like what STARRS does, we have a lot of digital and written materials that we have, which are wonderful, and I encourage anybody who's interested in that subject what's going on with the military to go to our website and see that. But it's even better to have guys like you as the faces of STARRS, so that people can understand not only why we do it, but who is doing the work behind the scenes here for STARRS. And then Bruce, of course, that comes to you, sir, tell us a little bit about how you got into the Navy as well.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:Well, I was just like Tom said. Our backgrounds are so similar it's really peculiar. My father was a naval officer, a graduate of the Naval Academy, and my grandfather on his side was in the Navy also, and I go back five or six generations in the Royal Navy as well from my mother's side. So I always wanted to go to the Naval Academy. I never thought about any other school, never applied to any other place, and from high school in northern idaho I applied, and, of course, since there aren't that many people applying for the naval academy from idaho, I was selected and went to the naval academy. It changed my life as far as what sort of man I would become the uh man I would become.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:The trip from there was one of real excitement and going through Navy flight training and then to a fighter squadron aboard Saratoga Fighter Squadron 31, the Tomcatters, and went to the Med during the end of the Vietnam War. I did not participate in Vietnam, I was in the Mediterranean at that time and then from there I went to the Blue Angels. And what a job that is. What a terrific opportunity to get to see all of America and fly shiny jets in front of people and meet a lot of people all over America, so just a terrific job.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:From there I went to Eastern Airlines, was there for nine years until Eastern went bankrupt and then went, applied and was accepted at United Airlines and flew there for 20 years and as a eventually as a standards captain a Czech airman, and then started my own business, aviation Efficiency Group, working with airlines for to make them more efficient and operate in better fashion, and since then I've retired from that as well and and now just interested in making sure that America gets on the right track here as far as so that my seven grandchildren and as well as my three children, one who is also a Navy pilot can live the sort of life that I've lived.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:Well, listen, guys, I'll tell you what. There's something spooky going on here, because you guys have three generations of aviators and Navy in your blood, and I've got three generations of aviation in my background too. My grandfather was an army air corps pilot from World War I to World War II in Korea, and then my dad was an aviator after World War II in Korea and then here I was coming in in Vietnam and all. But that's one of the secrets. I think in the past We've had a resource of families who are like ours, who have supplied their children, their grandchildren, their relatives into service because they understood what we were doing from our service. That's something that's starting to disappear today, sadly, and that's one of Star's concerns, as you know that we're now not able to rely on that resource as much as we used to in the past, and there are some reasons for that, which I want to kind of discuss with you. So, having said that, tom, what's your view of how things have changed in the military in the last decade or so that you can see?
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:It's a really complex issue, I think, al, if you think about the sort of the experiment of developing a candidate pool that's adequate for military work and how that candidate pool is now going through some radical changes in the K-12 school systems. The loss of patriotism over the years. When's the last time you saw a flag, an American flag, in a classroom or heard a pledge of allegiance from a young class, which we did every day when we were growing up? So patriotism in America are concepts that are somewhat lost on the current generation. And that is the candidate pool that has to come in and refresh the military, so to speak, on an annual basis. So you have that issue. You have the issue of bandwidth, where active duty military are required to be the tip of the spear.
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:Readiness is all important, particularly in a world where the foreign enemies are pretty easy to point at and spot. The Founding Fathers were pretty amazing in terms of their identification of both foreign and domestic enemies. Domestic is a lot harder to point to, but it certainly looks like there's some of that going on right now. So how do we, as the retiring generation, help influence the world that we're gonna leave behind? Our fathers did that, obviously. World War II. My father was a brand new ensign out of the Naval Academy in February of 1941 and he was the officer of the deck on the USS Detroit at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed eight months later. So, jumping right into the breach.
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:The greatest generation, as they called them, stood up for what was right and made the world that, as Bruce said, that Bruce and I and you and all get to live in. So we need to think about that. What are we leaving behind? It's a generational responsibility. That generation that you mentioned was key. If you look at the heartland of America, you look at the Judeo-Christian values and patriotic values that that group of society was brought up in, that's disappearing rapidly and so it's just a big concern.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:Well, and Bruce, what are your thoughts on that? I mean, we've all gone through the same kind of thing, but so where do you think we stand today and how do we address that?
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:in the world is something that a lot of people may have lost track of. Just an example when I was in Europe and when I was on an aircraft carrier there and had some vacation, I went up to Andorra, which is a small country in between Spain and France, to go skiing and when we were coming back it was about one or two in the morning as we crossed the frontier back into Spain and the Guardia Civil, the very powerful military civilian police segment of the Spanish government, stopped the bus and there was a lot of smuggling that took place between Andorra and and, uh, other countries and they had everybody off the bus. Very abrupt sort of thing everybody pull out your suitcases, everybody's standing beside the road at two o'clock in the morning, cold and uh, and they start going through everybody's suitcases and, and it was. It was a little scary to people. It was certainly scary to me. They came to me and they said passport and I handed them my United States of America passport and the guy looked at it and said the status and needles and I said See, I am a United States citizen and he handed me back my passport and went to the next person. Nothing, no, no, busting open my bags, no, hard, hard, assing me. And and that really reflected in my mind about what is the power of America. The power of America is that we are the preeminent power in the world and the citizens of America need to understand how important that is. That when you say I am a United States citizen, it's like Paul saying I'm a citizen of Rome to the, to Fetces, and so we, uh, we enjoy that right now.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:But if we allow our country to degrade, as as we are allowing it to degrade, into just part of the mass, then then trouble is brewing and there are, there are a bunch of wolves sitting on the outside that are hoping that we continue to degrade. And one of the main sources of our strength of course, probably the main, because our diplomatic corps seems to be a little wanting uh is our military. And what are we? What are we getting into our military? Well, we've. We've cut off, as tom said, the, the prime recruiting source, which is white, male, southern and descendants of military people. That's where most of the recruits come from in the military. Now, we have exceptions my son-in-law comes from a family that's never had anybody in the military and he's a Marine. But in general, that's where we come from, and if you degrade the importance and status of the military, then you wind up with trouble.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:And we're now at the point where recruiting is a problem. And we're now at the point where recruiting is a problem, and I'm sure you're aware that they've changed the recruiting protocols to where people don't have to meet physical fitness requirements, they don't have to meet educational requirements, they can have legal difficulties on their record and things that were unheard of a generation ago. So we're in a nasty spot in America. We need to have a strong military in a very dangerous world. We have created a situation within the military where that which that attracts the fine sort of people we've had in the past has been degraded, and I think that's a terrible situation and one that STARS and the Calvert Group are trying to address with our leadership in the military and also in our elected representatives say that you're both members of the Calvert group, named after Admiral Calvert, but it is like STARS, oriented toward making some changes in particularly things like the Naval Academy, as the Air Force Academy does sort of with STARS.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:But and we'll get to that in a minute because you guys have got a great book that's coming out and I want to talk about that a little later but this dilemma that we're facing, where the outside society has worked in many ways that have shifted in a hurry, whereas the military, as we know, growing up in it for generations, has pretty much stayed somewhat the same in the way it approaches the mission and what it has to do, what I see is, you know, the challenge is that most people don't understand the military and how and why it has to be different. In many ways. There's a difference in how people have to work as teams, how they bond together, how they work under really arduous conditions like we've seen at sea. Arduous conditions like we've seen at sea. You know, watching an aircraft carrier in action on a flight deck is an amazing thing, isn't it, bruce? And it is like watching a symphony orchestra playing.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:It doesn't start out that way usually, especially when you're working up the first time to go out to sea. But when that is perfected, it is music like in action, and that's the sort of thing that you don't see in the pertinent corporate world. I mean, these days, people work at a job for a few months, a couple years, move on to something else. There's not that corporate knowledge that still exists, there's not the bonding that occurs, there's not the will to stay because it's difficult, not because it's easy. And so you know, let's talk a little bit about that, because I think that's an important thing, that is, people are watching this program, can understand. Now we're going to talk a little bit more about why. It's not just that we'll pay you more money, we'll give you Starbucks in your barracks, we'll make things so easy that you don't have to worry, so you'll stay here in the military. It just doesn't work that way, does it.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:No, no, it doesn't at all, and a perfect example, like you said, is the aircraft carrier. When you're taxiing around the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, the guy that's directing you might be a 19-year-old wearing a yellow jersey and he is giving you wand signals of where he wants your airplane to go and you follow them explicitly and you follow them up to the point where your legs are shaking because you were so close to the edge of the, the deck of the flight deck of the ship. And yet you do what he says because you trust him and you believe in him and he believes in you. He knows that you're going to follow his directions explicitly.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:Tom was a was the division um leader, the, the division officer of the of the flight deck guys in the green shirts, and he can attest to that that the responsibilities that are given the young people aboard an aircraft carrier and in a lot of places in the military is overwhelming. It's amazing that you vest a 21-year-old with an airplane that can start World War III and you put him out to do that, but you also vest a 19-year-old with wands aboard an aircraft carrier and you're believing that he's going to do his job well and because of that, he does do his job well, and that's the charming aspect of the whole thing. And if we degrade that and that's the charming aspect of the whole thing- and if we degrade that, we're in trouble.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:So, as you have described it so aptly, everybody on the flight deck is wearing their own color jersey because that's their job. You know whether you're a purple shirt refueling, or a green shirt in maintenance and or a yellow shirt that's directing and the traffic and launching people, everybody has a job to do and you know what, what. No matter what color shirt you were wearing, no one asked you what color you were. No one asked you where you were from. No one asked you what your cultural heritage was or what kind of music you liked or anything. Their job was focused on just that part of war fighting and part of the military, and it's beautiful to watch when people don't have to worry about the outside stuff, if you will.
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:Absolutely.
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:Yeah, I can add to Bruce there a little bit. I was the V2 division officer on the USS Eisenhower, which is responsible for the catapult and arresting your operations on the flight deck, for two years. It was probably the two best years I had. I went sort of kicking and screaming because I was a trained pilot and felt like I should be flying airplanes, but when I look back on it, that was the core of leadership development and understanding how to work with. I had 148, 150 young men At the time. Ships were all male but they had to be molded into a top-ranked team because it's life or death, and that's one of the descriptors that Bruce and I have talked about.
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:When you're in a life and death environment like the military is, there's no place for second rate. You need to be. Your performance needs to determine how good you are and how high you go, and the young men who are looking at the officer corps particularly need to know that those are people they can follow. So when you think about the impact of some of the ideological changes that are happening in our society right now, there are two areas that are rejecting that slowly, but starting to reject it on a higher level. One is industry which responds to financial pressures and those kind of things they're seeing there's not a payoff for, and we've seen probably eight or nine major corporations depart the fold in terms of teaching the whole DEI ideology. The other place that is absolutely not welcome, I think, should be the military. Unfortunately, when you go through long stretches of peacetime operations, incentives get somewhat changed and it's incentivized to follow a path that's not necessarily aligned with where the military ought to be going, in our opinion.
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:So when you talk about one last comment and that is that we are a constitutional republic and that's what sets us apart we're not a democracy. The word democracy doesn't even show up in our constitution. We are a constitutional republic, and is that constitution strong enough to pull this pendulum back where it needs to be? And that's what I think we're starting to see is that that's starting to pull back. People are recognizing the smart forefathers that we had that put together, that Constitution. In some cases, all of us yourself, al Bruce, myself anybody in the military takes the oath of office. Anybody in the government takes the oath of office. It says they'll protect and defend that constitution. In some cases it's turned into a ceremonial process where I okay, I say it, put my hand on a Bible and I swear to the constitution. But I do my own thing and that's what's very troubling and hopefully that constitution is strong enough as a backbone of this country to pull it back to where it needs to be to pull it back to where it needs to be.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:And, al, may I add that the key element is that there is a place for insertion of other principles other than the meritocracy where the best people rise there, where that, where it's really not that important and and uh. But as the consequences of failure become more and more dire, then we can no longer go with these odd yardsticks of what color the person's face is or what their gender is. We have to say, okay, this is something where we, we have to have the absolute best, because the consequences of failure are desperate and and that's what the military represents You're, you're not going to lose a thousand dollars or a million dollars, you're going to lose a life. It's life and death. And so you have to have the best people there.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:And and I think the average american understands that the average american says, hey, we want, we, we want the best people in these situations. We want the best people in the cockpit of an airplane that is going to either discharge or not discharge a weapon. We, we, we want the best people there, we, and we don't care a lick whether they're a black, a white, a yellow, a green, an orange, or or whether they're a black, a white, a yellow, a green, an orange, or whether they're a male or a female or any other thing. If there is any other thing, and so. But when you allow that sort of thing to creep into these high consequence environments, then you do it at your peril environment, then you do it at your peril.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:Well, and young people ask us all the time and especially you, Bruce, when you're a Blue Angel so what can I expect? Can I be a Blue Angel? Is that something you can do right away when you get into the military? The answer is no. We put our hand up, we swear we're going to join and then serve, not knowing a bit about where we're going to wind up. I say and these young kids, some of them I was with an F-35 group there at Eglin in April when I was there with the Wild Weasel reunion.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:I was part of An amazing group of people but they said Star, you've been doing this, you're in combat. Did you know you were going to do that? And I said, hell, no, I didn't know that. Actually I was a draft dodger. I got out of the draft and got into the Air Force thinking I'd really dodged a bullet, and found myself getting shot at every day with bigger than bullets, with surface-to-air missiles, and so you don't know where you're going to go.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:But my point in saying that is you know it's a developmental thing. When you start out you don't know if you're going to be in the armed forces, part of it, or whether you be a truck mechanic or a yeoman or an administrative assistant, you just don't know. And it starts, you know, really, when we get in and in our case, when we went through training as officers, you've got to be ready for the leadership that follows, and that's part of that as well that I see now starting to diminish a little bit, and you guys can talk a little bit more about that from the Naval Academy side. But that's where it has to start. It has to be based on integrity, commitment, willpower and a strength of character that you kind of develop and hopefully it works out well by the time you get out of the Academy, right.
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:Al, I think to underscore one of your points that you just made, back in the day, there was a draft and Jim Webb, former Secretary of the Navy, had a great comment during draft days in Vietnam, which is leaders come through a leadership, development, accession plan, but the war is generally fought by civilians. So who do you trust your children to? Generally fought by civilians, so who do you trust your children to? You know, when you look at the discussion on recruiting and retention, it sometimes falls on deaf ears. But you have to couple that with the fact that we're an all-volunteer force. Right, we don't have a draft. We might have to reinstate it if we get to the point where we can't man ships and man squadrons and things like that, but right now we're not. So how do you incentivize recruiting and retention? It's not the way it's being done right now. I think we all kind of agree with that. In fact, all you have to do is look at the metrics and see that we're not performing that well in either category.
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:The fallout of both of them is readiness, and we're not doing that great in readiness right now either, if you look at the statistics.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:So you sort of have to keep coupling meritocracy best and brightest, particularly in leadership positions, and all volunteer force the Pentagon is more focused on paying people or providing some sort of comfort item or some affinity group that will get people to stick around for a little longer, and instead of recruiting based on what you're going to do and how you're going to develop, and not only that, because it is arduous, it's demanding, it's special that you're going to develop, and not only that, because it is arduous, it's demanding, it's special that you're going to feel better about doing that in the end. There's that dichotomy. There isn't there.
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:I think it's a culture. You're losing the culture that attracted Bruce and myself and yourself, al and others, to go do this. You know, as you lose the culture and you still have numbers to meet, then you start eroding standards and you start trying to find other ways to incentivize people to come in. I've seen a couple ads lately that said if you're over 70, you can come into the force now. Oh, geez, okay.
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:I mean, there's limited positions you can go into, but the recruiting gates have been open to the point where and the candidate pool to fill it has changed rather dramatically too. With the culture that's been allowed to fester in our K-12 systems and the young folks that are coming up the chain, there's still a lot of outstanding folks there, yeah, and I think I just read something recently that only 23 coming up the chain.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:There's still a lot of outstanding folks there, yeah, and I think I just read something recently that only 23% of the population is actually an active part of that recruiting pool now, and that's pretty low.
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:And. Al the yeah where.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:Bruce Go ahead.
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:Bruce. I was just gonna say where Bruce lives. In Colorado, I was reading something the other day where there are cities and communities where military recruiters are not allowed to come into high school campuses.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:Yeah, well, that's left over from the Vietnam days. I think perhaps.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:You know, there's another aspect, too, Al that I think is important, that we need to think about too, Al that I think is important, that we need to think about, and the armed forces need to think about, and our civilian administrators need to think about, and that's that. You know you can. I coached basketball on the side for quite a long time and we didn't have the best uniforms, but we had terrific players and we were a great team and nobody wanted to get off that team and everybody wanted to be part of it. And the parallel with what you say about well, they're increasing pay and they're making the chairs better, and so on.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:Those are great and I would have loved to provided my team with great uniforms, but we didn't have the money for that. But we had great players. And why did we have great players? Because they had this team feeling of we're the best and we can wipe anybody out on the basketball floor, and everybody wanted to be part of that. And that's what our military has to understand and I'm sure the recruiters desperately understand this that everybody wants to be part of an elite force and if you degrade the force, people don't want to be part of it.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. The force, people don't want to be part of it. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. And that's where we it's a cycle that and you are to get it either getting better and better and getting better and better people, or you're going the other direction. Right now, we, this year, we have 22 000 billets according to the four-star admiral, 22 000 billets of sea-going ships that are unfilled because we don't have enough people qualified to go out on them. Well, that's a scary situation and one that needs to be dealt with immediately.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:Well, and I was just reading the other day that there are now 17 naval ships that are being tied up because they can't find the crews for them. They're mostly you know, the supply ships and all, but you know they're not. That's the problem is, if you don't generate the interest and the ability for people to prosper, grow and do more in the military, you're not going to have them to stay around, and just paying them won't do it. In fact, I ran the one of my last jobs in the Navy was running the Navy's reenlistment bonus programs, and guys from OPNAV, the guys in the five-sided building, would come over to me and say, look, you know we need to pay more money to these guys so they'll stick around. I say no, you don't, you know. What you need to do is inspire them to want to stay and give them responsibility and trust. That's what's going to motivate them, probably more than the money. I mean they'll spend the money in a weekend right On a new motorcycle and a few days at the bar. But you want to be?
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:able to let them stick around to prosper Absolutely. The interesting thing, of course, is that if you, as you, increase benefits and you focus on increased benefits, and that's financial or comfort of living and so forth, those are nice things. But when you focus on that rather than the team, whether you focus on that instead of you, know, most young men, most young men, the vast majority, I believe want to do something hard, something. Do something hard, perhaps something violent, something that is testing you, the manhood thing, and all you have to do is dangle that out in front of people. A perfect example is if you say only one person in this group of 20 gets to do this, then the vast majority are going to want to do this, regardless. You can, and selection in naval aviation is a perfect example.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:If you say, well, okay, only 1% of these people get to go aboard a big gray ship and be sit at sea for eight months at a time, then immediately everybody says, oh, that's what I want to do, because only one, one guy gets to do it, so I want to do that, that's this, that's the sort of scenario that you want to build into the program. But if you're building into a program that, hey, we, we're going to give you an extra television, hey, we're going to give you an extra television. Then that's not what churns up the butter inside the American male. And what churns up the butter is saying I want to do something, I want to do something hard, I want to do something that's terrific and I want to do something that sets me apart. And that's what we're looking for is those sort of people in our armed forces.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:And so I have to tell you that the people I've had on this podcast so far this year felt exactly the same way, and there are perfect examples of how that works, and that's the face that we need to put back on the military, I think. And it's not about just getting promoted for promotion's sake. It's because you're worthy of it and we've put trust in you. You've performed, you've got the skill sets that we need and now we're going to put you up a different level. That's the way it used to work and I see too many times today, particularly when you get past 06 colonels and captains, that's when it starts to deteriorate a little bit, because all of a sudden, people are not becoming or not staying as warriors and as operators. They're now transitioning into a political life, and you guys probably want to talk a little bit about that. Another subject we can get into a bit we can get into.
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:You're talking about retired senior leaders that go into the industry side.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:And what are the incentives?
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:One of the incentives for completing a stellar military career is there's opportunities. Military retirement is early, relatively speaking, to business and corporations and things like that. So there's another chapter in your life that can come after the military side. And if you do have an excellent military record or serve in an elite unit, like Bruce did with the Blue Angels, there's things that can happen beyond that. Sometimes it gets mischaracterized politically, I think, in Washington, as a bad thing. It's not necessarily bad to have experienced military folks working with defense companies because they can keep the operator's perspective, and I know a lot of outstanding, very senior officers that have been on boards of directors that I've been on and I really look up to them and their opinions when they do that.
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:So one of the real challenges we have is we live in a soundbite world. Very few people will peel the onion and try to get to the core of issues or the impact of policies, or there's too many people that act on emotions and optics and don't really get into what is really driving the country down a path that's gonna come to a fork in the road pretty soon, and it's the old Yogi Berra thing's going to come to a fork in the road pretty soon, and it's the old Yogi Berra thing. When you come to a fork in the road, you take it. It's sort of the analogy that you said about your life.
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:You didn't decide to be a wild weasel when you were in high school. You know things happen, you take risks, your life unfolds ahead of you and sometimes that gets very difficult for young folks to sort their way through based on what they're hearing through other channels, like schools, like education, like transgenderism, like all the you know loss of, in some ways, loss of the focus on church. You know, not too many kids could grow up in a family that's committed to religion and church these days certainly not as many as when I was growing up. So there's all kinds of factors that are influencing, I think, the young minds that don't line up with the culture that we're talking about. In terms of maintaining strong defense, the Constitution is. I keep referring to it but it requires three major things it requires free and fair elections, it requires equal justice under the law and it requires a strong defense. And those are three elements that, if they're all eroding at the same time which some could argue that that's what's happening today Then by definition the nation's becoming weaker.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:So how does someone listening to this podcast, who's out there today wondering what to do about this? What do they do? How can they help?
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:Well, the first thing you do is you have to get informed and not be overwhelmed by bumper sticker mentality. If it can be written on a bumper sticker, it isn't well thought out. You need to investigate more deeply those things that people are saying, and so the first thing you do is rip the bumper stickers off your car and stick with in-depth analysis of what's going on. That's the first thing. The second thing is think very seriously about what the people are, that are, what their motivation is, that are talking to you. Is there a motivation that is perhaps less than enviable from a purity standpoint? And if somebody is profiting and I offer up the Black Lives Matter movement, which I think there is some genesis of that that made good sense, some genesis of that that made good sense when the leadership winds up very well enriched and not much going downstream, that doesn't play well. And if somebody investigates further, they discover that this is not something I want to be part of. So that's just one example, and within our political system there are plenty of those sort of examples where people are enriching themselves by sending young people off to war, when there, when there isn't a good reason to send them off to war, and we need to be as as citizens, our responsibility is to investigate what the circumstances are surrounding our country and try and choose the best people to be in the situation to dictate how we continue.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:And I think that's the key element in how we operate, and I'm not advocating one political person over another. I'm just saying that you've got to look at their policies and what their performance is and then make decisions based on that. And the last thing is we can't be subject as citizens. We can't be subject to the general feeling is this that somebody communicates to you? Because the general feeling is this is what some corporate moron has passed down to the person that's broadcasting it on television and saying this is what everybody believes. I don't think everybody believes a lot of this stuff that is being foisted off on the american public. I think the american citizen, when given an opportunity, does a pretty good job of deciding hey, let's think about this clearly and make a decision of what's good for our country, because there are some real problems in solutions.
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:Yeah, can I add something to what Bruce just kind of struck a chord with me when he talks about the bumper sticker mentality? I think that's a good part of the start of the Calvert Group. To be honest with you, about four years in 2019, 2020, you know, we were a social group, played golf now and then chased grandkids, you know, watched TV and we decided to come off the couch and get involved. And that's when I first met Rod Bishop from Stars and others and we started peeling the onion back a little bit off the couch and get involved. That's when I first met Rod Bishop from STARS and others. We started peeling the onion back a little bit and we found ourselves in a world of bumper stickers. And how do young minds particularly, but how do minds in general, sort that out? We didn't know what to do. Are we going to march on the Pentagon? No, we're probably not going to do that.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:Are we going to go kinetic?
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:Probably not, although we had some that wanted to. But we started writing essays and we started getting some of them published and they were opinion pieces and they were trying to get that bumper sticker out of the way and start really diving into what are the issues that are affecting us. And STARS was a great mentor for that, and MacArthur Society at West Point, and we've sort of come from a loose formation to use a Blue Angel term to flying under the letter S or whatever the heads up is. I think we're in line. But the essays by themselves were 48-hour, 96-hour shelf life. People read them and say that's interesting and then you move on to whatever.
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:The next issue of the day is when you assemble them into a book and we spent quite a bit of time putting this book together. It brings you a couple of things. Number one it gives you a time history from 2019, basically to 2024, and the tone and the direction of the essays changes over time and I find that one of the interesting things about the book is it does show you how opinions change based on the environmental issues that surround us. The other thing it does is it opens up another genre, like yourself. It gives us a chance to talk to people like you, which we wouldn't do if we were just writing an article that showed up every month or so. So the book opens another access point for us to try and influence opinions, to try and increase awareness, to try and dig down get people to seriously dig down underneath the bumper stickers.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:Well, it sounds like a really great resource and just reading through some of it, you guys hit on the same issues that we are in STARS and hopefully that offers, like you say, some suggestions for people to get active in doing something about it, and that's, I think, the end result here, hopefully.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:It's a charming thing, the interface of STARS and the Calvert Group thing, the interface of stars and and the Calvert group, that and and I joke about this with Tom and I think probably with you too that that the Air Force stars group is just the perfect example of an Air Force operation. You, everything is structured, you know exactly where you're going, you've got people in charge of each element. Um, you've vastly over recruited. What anything we've accomplished at the calvert group. You have resources coming in because of that. Um, it's a perfect air force operation and it is accomplishing a great deal.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:And the Calvert group is started off as a group of guys and we have nowhere near the breadth that the Stars group has. That we're, we're accomplishing things, but we're not accomplishing things on this wide area that that, uh, that stars is doing it and we, I think we benefit from that. I think we have. We have the scout patrols that are, that are the Calvert group, and we have the, the mass of armed forces that is represented by the, by the stars and, and together, along with the MacArthur group, we're going to change people's opinions and change the course of what's going on in our military. I pray that's true rather than the consequences of something else happening.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:Well, bruce, I think it actually is and there's a lot of evidence right now that this is starting to be a major shift. And I think after the election I mean elections are elections, but in this case I think there's a cultural shift that's going to be associated with it one way or another and we'll have to see how that works out. But what people are telling me, particularly people who are in the public relations and fundraising businesses, say that this has got all the potentials to explode nationally as a real resource after the election. So we're kind of hanging on for that. But we saw that this last weekend when we had this small rally in Phoenix. Amazing energy, I mean I'm saying amazing.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:And for anybody watching this podcast, cindy's going to have that up on our website here shortly because they streamed it and in watching it it'll bring tears to your eyes. It's an absolutely great thing that we did this last weekend. But that's the action part of what we're doing at STARS, as I know you are with the Calvert Group, and the MacArthur Society does the same thing on the West Point Army side. So I think that's going to gain amazing traction here very, very quickly and you guys are an important part of that, and this book is a huge step forward for you, I know, and I can't wait to finish reading it. I just got started on it when I got my copy here on Saturday, but I'm looking forward to finishing it because I know there's a great deal of wisdom in there.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:Well, the interesting thing in that I know there's a great deal of wisdom in there. Well, the interesting thing in that, you know, people have said to me oh so you wrote some stuff in the Don't Give Up the Ship book. And I say well, you know, there are some really smart people that wrote some really intense sort of analyses, Tom being one of them, and my contribution pales, I'm afraid, somewhat to the intellectual capabilities of some of the other people. But it is a book that when people read it, they're going to start understanding things outside of the bumper sticker mentality. They're going to say, okay, I, I understand a little bit more about where we are, where we should be headed and where we have been heading and so I did an interview, really important.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:Yeah, I'll just kind of add uh.
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:I I did an interview, uh last week with a, with a guy that does a pretty big podcast out of Arkansas, and he made a comment that sort of rang with me. He said you know what's unique about your book? And I said what's that? He said you don't have any academics, you don't have any professional journalists, it's all written by guys that were out there and did it, wore the uniform, they're veterans and it tells a story and how things have evolved over the last, you know, four or five years. So I thought that was an interesting way of trying to capture one of the unique pieces of the book.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:Well, it is about being out there at sea, or in the trenches, or in the air, you know, not knowing what's going to happen to you, and relying on your own skills and your own resources in order to survive and to win. Because, honestly, one of my squadron mottos was there's no points for second place, especially in the fighter business, right.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:Yeah, don't give up the ship by itself. It has a interesting ring to me, and my father was a submarine in uh, world war ii and a career naval officer.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:And um, you, as a civilian and even as an as a land-based person, you sometimes it's difficult to comprehend what a ship means, that when you're aboard a combatant in the out in the middle of the ocean, this is your home, but it's also your life, everything about it is your life. You ha, and you and you have to understand that if this thing goes away, I go away, and that's what we're trying to communicate with. Don't Give Up the Ship. Is that mentality that we're aboard the ship America and if it goes away, we go away? It's the same sort of thing.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:It's desperate out there in the ocean when the storms come and your deck is moving 25, 30 feet up and down and you're trying to get back aboard the ship. Um, yeah, you're back aboard the ship. That's what it boils down to and if the ship disappears, that's the end of the hunt and we're. That's where america is. We are the ship that everybody in the world is counting on and we don't want to give up the ship. We want to keep that ship operating and we see holes that are being drilled in parts of the ship and we need to patch those holes and get them fixed and get on the right track again. So don't give up. The ship is a key element, but it's also a philosophy that says what you're riding on is your life and don't sell it cheaply.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:Well, and the other thing, too, is we need the right people to do the patching of those holes, do we not? And we need the leadership that can set the tone and and and liking it like at sea set the course where you need to go, make sure that everybody understands what their part of it is. And, as I was saying earlier, it's beautiful watching that in action when it really is fine-tuned on on a carrier, particularly, as you guys fully well know. And those young kids, man, I'll tell you, they're getting smarter all the time. And I think it's amazing when I was down at Eglin talking to the folks going through the F-35 maintenance school there, I mean these kids were just outstandingly smart. I mean, what do we do? Do we raid MIT for these guys or what? No, young kids coming out of the parts of the country.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:And I want to reassure everybody out there that there's no slack in that we can still find the right kinds of people. They're motivated, they're great, but it requires the right kind of leadership and the understanding that we can't let these other corrosive elements get into the door inside the military. When that happens, it destroys camaraderie, bonding, training and fighting, which is the heart of what we do you guys just so illustrously illustrated. Well, listen, any other last thoughts here. We're probably just getting close to the end of our podcast today, but, uh, but I'll leave it with you to leave some wisdom on the table here for people who are listening that they can take home with them and put into action.
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:Maybe I think, if I'll start, I think, uh, I was taking some notes while bruce was talking here. Talking here because I hadn't thought about the analogy of the ship, but I think it's a great one, and America's ship we're on right now and I agree completely Al that there are some wonderful young kids out there, very smart kids.
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:I think the service academies are getting the cream of the crop. We're not. You know, we sometimes get mischaracterized as grenade launchers and outside looking in kind of stuff We've been careful to try and express to the leadership of the service academies and others.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:that's not who we are.
CAPT Tom Burbage, USN ret:We want to be a force for good. We're identifying issues and we want to focus on those and we want things to get back in balance. If we can contribute to the dialogue and the discussion and increase the awareness of the real issues that we face as a nation, that's what we're all about. So we appreciate you having us on, and I'll let Bruce pick up from there.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:Well, tom, listen, it's, it's. It's a pleasure having you on, sir, and thanks for your vision and your wisdom and what we've been talking about today. Maybe we'll get a couple of actual recruits to either Calvert or the Stars out of this, who knows? And, bruce, what are your parting thoughts here? Are you going to keep tightening up the formation here a little bit?
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:here a little bit. Uh, that would be a good analogy. Um, you know, it's funny that in the blues to carry it into the the concepts that with which I was familiar in the blues, there was sometimes a tendency you would get in a habit of doing something in a particular way, and it would not be a particularly good habit. It would just be this is the way I've been doing it, and and uh. And it would not be a particularly good habit. It would just be this is the way I've been doing it, and and uh. And it can creep in and slowly erode what your, what your real purpose is. And you have to be, you have to be careful. You had to. As soon as you saw something coming up that was bad, you had to address it.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:And I remember, when I was first at winter training, a thought pilot saying to me if you think of anything else when you're in formation, if you think of anything else, if another thought crosses your mind other than concentrating on exactly where you are and what you're doing in the maneuver that's coming up, that should ring an alarm bell. It should ring an alarm bell that's so loud and clear that you probably should clear the formation and and every now and then, throughout my three years with the blues I I would have a moment where I'd be setting up for something and another thought would cross my mind you know, boy, this is cool Blue sky, white smoke, or something like that and it would immediately slam into my consciousness that no, don't let this little thing disrupt you. Don't let this little thing disrupt you. You have a job here and do exactly what you've been practicing doing and focus 100 attention on this thing. And I think that's where we are in america.
LCDR Bruce Davey, USN ret:We've we've allowed some of the the concepts, the primary concepts, starting with the constitution, as tom so adroitly addressed, starting with the Constitution and then going through the precepts of military operation and how you must operate this way, and we've allowed some of that to degrade. We've allowed ourselves to waver a little bit and we should look at that immediately and say, no, I gotta shut that one off, that's, I'm off track, I've got to get back on track. And that's where we are in america. We got to get back on track and get our military operating and recruiting appropriately. We got to have the proper framework, we're going to have the proper leadership and these little divergences that can create catastrophic events will be eliminated.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:Well, that's exactly a good analogy, guys, and I want to thank you for that wisdom and for being with us here today. On STARS, I know you've both got a lot of work to do here and I also know that you're doing this on a volunteer basis, so don't expect to check here from Starz for this today, but I do want to thank you for being with us, and with that, we'll leave our viewers with this thought.
CDR Al Palmer, USN ret:There are some more things coming. On this podcast we're going to try to get into some more detail about what's actually happening. That's good and where this focus will go. And, as Tom so brilliantly pointed out, we're not a bunch of complainers, we're not people trying to tear anything down. Quite the reverse we're trying to build up our military, keep our warriors strong, keep the fight going and make sure that we can fight and win with lethality. And so with that, we'll kind of sign off here. Guys, thanks for being with us and for our audience. Please stay tuned for more from Stars and Stripes Al Palmer signing off. Thanks very much for being with us.