STARRS Podcast
STARRS Podcasts includes the series STARRS & Stripes which interviews military veterans, talks about their careers and military service, and their concerns about what is happening in today's military. See our website, starrs.us, for more information.
STARRS Podcast
US NAVY IN EXTREMIS! Facing China's Growing Maritime Threat with Capt. Brent Ramsey, USN ret.
America faces a maritime crisis that few citizens recognize but that threatens our national security at its core. In this eye-opening conversation, Captain Brent Ramsey, a 40-year Navy veteran and defense writer, provides urgent insights into America's diminishing naval capabilities against China's rapidly expanding fleet and strategic ambitions.
- America's status as a maritime nation with 90% of global commerce traveling by sea
- US Navy has shrunk from 600+ ships during the Reagan era to just 295 ships today China's naval force now numbers 400 combat vessels plus 180 armed Coast Guard ships
- America's shipbuilding capacity is 1/20th of China's current production capability
- Chinese technology theft costs the US approximately $600 billion annually
- US Navy recruitment shortfalls and inability to meet readiness goals
- China's stated intentions to seize Taiwan by 2027 and achieve global dominance by 2049
- Current naval funding represents just 0.5% of the federal budget
- Critical shortage of skilled tradespeople needed for shipbuilding
- Importance of revitalizing America's naval industrial base and defense capabilities
BIO: Captain Brent Ramsey (U.S. Navy, Ret.) served 30 years in the Navy and 23 years in Navy Civil Service. His assignments included Commanding Officer, Cargo Handling Battalion TWELVE, Executive Director, Construction Battalion Center, Gulfport, and Mississippi Navy Emergency Preparedness Liaison Officer. He served as Senior Advisor, Center for International Maritime Security, and was Member and Secretary of the non-partisan Military Advisory Group for Congressman Mark Meadows (NC-11) for four years. He currently serves in the same capacity for Congressman Chuck Edwards. He is a Vice President with Calvert Task Group (CalvertTaskGroup.org) and on the Board of Advisors for STARRS (STARRS.US) and the Center for Military Readiness. CAPT Ramsey studied at Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, and is a graduate of the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Executive Management Program, the Reserve Components National Security Course, and the FEMA Emergency Preparedness Management Officers Course. He has written extensively on national defense matters since 2017.
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Well, hello America. This is your host, Commander Al Palmer of STARRS and Stripes. It's good to have you back with us again. I think we're going to have a very interesting show today. Again, I think we're going to have a very interesting show today.
Al Palmer:We're going to talk a little bit about our United States Navy its condition, the things that it's got that are going so well for it, as we always have but also some of the challenges that it faces going forward. The Navy is an important part of our defense establishment. Why? Because the power of the seas establishment. Why? Because the power of the seas, with two oceans on either side of us, makes it one of the driving forces in both commerce as well as defense. So having a strong navy to defend our external waterways is important, and we're very good at that. We have been for many years.
Al Palmer:But sometimes that gets off track when funding goes away or when politics may change it, and we're going to talk about that today with one of my favorite people, captain Brent Ramsey. Brent is a career naval officer, surface officer a little bit of time in submarines, I think, along the way, but he's been a defense writer for years. He's written very extensively on the Navy, the problems and the advantages that we do have, and it's great to have him with us, both as a writer but also as part of STARRS. He's on our Board of Advisors for STARRS as well as on the Board of Advisors for the Caliber Task Group, and he's been very active in trying to keep the Navy strong today. And, brent, it's great to have you with us again. Welcome back to STARRS and Stripes.
Brent Ramsey:Thanks so much Al Appreciate it.
Al Palmer:So tell us a little bit about how you got involved in the Navy. We all ended up, probably with some relation or some way of wanting to get into the Navy. What was your story? How did you get into the Navy?
Brent Ramsey:Well, I'm a Navy brat. My dad went into the Navy in 1942, right after Pearl Harbor and saw a lot of combat in both the Atlantic and Pacific during the war. And then, after the war was over, he decided to make the Navy his career. So I grew up. I was born in a Navy hospital. I grew up in the Navy, moved all around the country following my dad and he's a retired Master Chief. He's buried. He and my mom were both buried in Arlington. At any rate, there was no question what I was going to do growing up, because my dad told me I was going in the.
Brent Ramsey:Navy and back in those days you did what your old man said. So I was commissioned through the NROTC program at the University of Nebraska, lincoln, nebraska, in 1969. And, like you said, I spent my life, most of it, in the Navy, both on active duty as a reserves officer and also Navy civil service, and I even worked for the Navy for a while as a contractor. So altogether about 40 years of experience with the Navy in a while as a contractor. So altogether about 40 years of experience with the Navy in a lot of different areas some sea duty, a lot of time ashore, a lot of time with the Seabees Combat Engineer Force for the Navy.
Brent Ramsey:And how I got into my study more detailed study after I retired of the Navy at some juncture back in 2015 about I found myself on the military advisory group from Congressman Mark Meadows. At the time my wife and I lived in Western North Carolina in Mark's district and he had been elected to Congress and a friend of mine, Shanghai, got me on his military advisory group and he said hey, brent, you and the others on my advisory group write articles about the military so that I can comment on them, so I'll know what issues are facing the military and it will strengthen my ability to do things helpful to the national defense. So I started writing in 2017 and I've continued that, just today published another article on China in a venue called the Patriot Post.
Al Palmer:So as a service brat, you saw all of the workings of the military from inside, which obviously helped you get adapted to the Navy, probably easier than the average bear right.
Brent Ramsey:Well, yeah, I was stationed all over the place, shipboard, ashore, with the EOD community, with the Seabees, with the P3 community. I had extensive experience all over the world really and saw a lot of different elements of the Navy and as a civilian I spent the majority of my time as a civilian with the Seabees, but a lot of it was also with the oceanographic community. So really, my 40-year career I got exposure to virtually every part of the Navy. I didn't really have any exposure per se to the submarine community other than one day as a midshipman, a familiarization cruise on an old diesel boat. But I was stationed on an aircraft carrier, I was on a tin can, I was on a cruiser, a nuclear-powered cruiser. Like I said, a lot of shore duty all around the world and, like I said, I've made it my business since I retired.
Brent Ramsey:I like to tell my friends, retirement is a myth. If you have an active mind and an interest in our country, you never really retire. So I've been involved in, you know, veterans issues since I retired, belong to MOA, Naval Institute, Association of the United States Navy, Navy League of the United States Navy League of the United States and have done what I can to stay current on what the Navy is doing. You know, strategically you mentioned in your intro we're a maritime nation From our founding. Even before our founding, everybody knew it was important for us to have a strong navy. We're surrounded by water on three sides. We have more water coastline practically than any other nation on earth. 90% of the commerce in the world goes by sea. Just about 70% of the commerce that US itself depends on transportation by sea. Itself depends on transportation by sea. So if you go back through history, many historical figures and presidents and diplomats have all stressed the importance of the Navy.
Brent Ramsey:When I was on active duty and you too, Al Reagan was president he made it a goal to build the Navy up to a 600-ship Navy. We almost got there back in the 80s, but now the Navy is in dire straits. As a Navy man, I would call it in extremis that's a nautical term when your ship is in danger and about to have a collision or you're entering combat, whatever. In extremis is an expression that means extreme danger, and we're now in a position where the Navy is extremely stressed, overcommitted. We don't have nearly the number of ships we should have. We have manpower problems as well. So I've made it my business to become an expert on those topics and have written extensively, as you alluded to, about that and what it means to the defense of our nation.
Al Palmer:Well, you know, as I think about it, back about that time when Reagan was in office, you know I was back in Washington in the Bureau, but we were then, like you say, fighting to keep 600 ships, but that was way down from the earlier 70s, as I recall. We were up around 700 or 800 at the end of Vietnam. But even if you go back further back into World War II, didn't we have something like 6,000 ships that we made, with shipyards all across the country?
Brent Ramsey:Right those shipyards all gone.
Al Palmer:Have we gotten rid of that capability entirely?
Brent Ramsey:Yeah, and back by the end of World War II we had tremendous shipbuilding capability and, like you said, thousands and thousands of ships and the industrial capacity to build ships quickly, thousands of them, and that you know politics and peace breaking out and the nation turning its post World War II. And by the time I was commissioned we had I don't know the exact number, but we had, I think, something like around 800 ships when I was commissioned in 1969. And we shrunk further from that to below that number and then when Reagan was elected president, he decided to build the Navy back up to 600 ships, but, just as a marker, 600 ships we had at the end of Cold War. Today, right now, we have 295 ships and I would argue that the world is a more dangerous place today than at any time since the heightened threat situation we were in during the worst parts of the Cold War, where we were worried about the Russians or the Soviet Union. Today we have hotspots all over the world.
Brent Ramsey:Obviously, what's going on in the Middle East, where we're having to keep ships on station to try to keep the sea lanes open. We have the threat of China and the Pacific, where they're intent on dominating that whole region and really their goal is to rule the world. So their sights are set on taking over Taiwan in the near term and capturing the superconductor industry. Taiwan leads the world in production of chips for our most advanced computers. China covets that, as well as the land and the other technology that is available from Taiwan.
Brent Ramsey:So you know, we've got a war in Europe. I mean, like I said, we've got a. There's no news to anybody that we have a dangerous world and we rely on the Navy to keep the sea lanes open, keep commerce flowing and to protect our nation's interests. And the Navy has stretched extremely thin right now. It's just the conditions and the ability for us to respond and react to what's going on around the world is very much diminished. And unfortunately, the Congress has been asleep at the switch and has not provided the money, has been asleep at the switch and has not provided the money nor the technical means to build the Navy up to what it needs to be to protect our nation's interests.
Al Palmer:So, as I recollect, just a couple of years ago the Congress was challenged to do that and I think they authorized 355 ships, as I recall in one of the NDAAs then. But that means we're short even of what Congress authorized before and probably funded. Has the funding changed much over the last couple of years, or is that kind of steady?
Brent Ramsey:You're right. The Congress did finally, during Trump's term I think it was about in 2017, around their timeframe increase the requirement for Navy ships to 355. The Navy now says the requirement is 381. We have 295 today. Unfortunately, the Congress never appropriated the money to get that process underway, to build up the size of the fleet. So, basically, since President Trump's first term to today, the number of ships in our forces has been relatively stable, static. It fluctuates up and down year by year and so, like I said, we haven't really made any progress at all. There was a slight increase, a slight bump in shipbuilding funds, but right now we spend I think in the current NDAA there's $35 billion allocated for shipbuilding. Well, that's half a percent of our federal budget. Half a percent. We spend five times as much on food stamps as we spend on building ships or welfare and various social programs. So it's my opinion that our Congress has been asleep at the switch, has not put up the money needed to build a strong and robust Navy. And the problem with that even if today they reckon, oh, we need way more ships, even if they appropriated double, triple the size of the appropriations for the shipbuilding requirement, you can't snap your fingers and make a naval vessel.
Brent Ramsey:These are some of the most complex machines on the planet. A nuclear-powered aircraft carrier You've been aboard carriers planet. A nuclear powered aircraft carrier You've been aboard carriers, you understand this. I was stationed on the Shangri-La. That's an old World War II vintage carrier. But aircraft carrier is the most complicated machine on the planet. It took us 13 years to build the USS Ford, the newest aircraft carrier, the first in the Ford class carriers 13 years.
Brent Ramsey:So even if Congress appropriated double, triple, quadruple the amount of money for shipbuilding today, it doesn't solve the problem quickly because it takes an immense amount of time. Ships are amazingly complex and it takes a long time. Now, could there be improvements in that process? Certainly With the advent of AI, and we may talk about in this interview, if you get to it, some of the Navy's failings on how it's managed, the shipbuilding account and the problems that we've had in.
Brent Ramsey:Even after money is appropriated for building a certain classes of ships, then the ships themselves turn out to be a dud, like the lcs, for example, a so-called littoral combat ship, where we spent uh billions and billions on this new class of ship and it turned out to be uh a bust. It's not a an effective. In fact, we've already retired nine of them. They were practically brand new ships, only a few years old, and we've put four of them out of commission. We plan to decommission two more and we plan to sell two more to foreign navies. So mistakes like that don't help the problem of getting up to a higher number of ships that we need to defend the nation.
Al Palmer:So that's a matter of requirements, maybe not being on spot on, you know, and what you actually need to produce. There also seems to be a problem with the delays and the diminishment of production over the years of ships in the shipyards to a workforce that's available to do that. I mean, even if we wanted to surge that to what level we might need today to build the extra ships we need, where do we find a workforce for that? And do we still have the active shipyards that could be put in effect kind of overnight in order to do that? And do we still have the active shipyards that could be put in effect kind of overnight in order to do that?
Brent Ramsey:No, we don't. Post-cold War, our nation, the Defense Department, orchestrated a tremendous consolidation of the defense industries with the recognition that the Soviet Union had fallen. The conclusion was well, we can downsize our military, we can downsize our industrial base. So that was done deliberately to mothball a lot of our shipbuilding capability and did not a lot of our shipbuilding capability and did not need to keep a large Navy. And so the fact is we have very limited shipbuilding capability that's in existence now. It basically our commercial shipbuilding industry is practically non-existent. I mean, we produce a handful of ships, commercial ships per year. Navy combatant shipbuilding is healthy and robust and we have a number of very reliable contractors big business, huntington Ingalls and the ship building that's going on now to build our ships. They're very good at what they do for the most part, with the exception of some of the mistakes which I've mentioned. The LCS, the Zumwalt class, is another mistake, but generally speaking, when we get around to building our ships, they're very good quality and they're exactly what we need. The problem is we just don't have enough of them. Now getting to your question about the industrial base itself and the workforce, that's a problem.
Brent Ramsey:Now, those facilities, I mean we literally had hundreds and hundreds of shipbuilding facilities at the end of World War II. Most of those still exist. In other words, they weren't torn up and destroyed. Those sophisticated shipbuilding like dry docks and the types of facilities you use for building ships still exist. They're dormant right now. So there is some latent capacity there to revive the shipbuilding industry. It's going to take money and in fact the Navy and the government has been investing a little bit of money in recent years in trying to refurbish and bring back into activity some of these older shipyards, but it's very minimal effort. Older shipyards, but it's very minimal effort and it's going to take quite a bit of time to. You can't snap your fingers and bring a shipyard that's been dormant for decades back into operation again and of course it would have to be upgraded to modern technology and some of that stuff too. And the other aspect of the that you mentioned the workforce isn't there. The trades in this country are not a priority.
Brent Ramsey:We our educational system for decades now has emphasized. You know, everybody go to college and so we have millions and millions of high school students and they're all in the track to go into college and get degrees and whatever. And so the actual trades that you need for industrial operations like shipbuilding are very, very meager in this country. Again, there have been some efforts by the Navy to try to boost that. There's some defense money that's actually gone to invest in developing the trades. But, for example, welding as you might imagine you're a Navy man, you know this Building ships there's a lot of welding involved. Like I say, there's steel ships or steel and aluminum composite or whatever, and there's a lot of welding that's involved. To create a master welder, this is a very it sounds like wow, it's a trade. How complicated could it be? It takes five years to train a master welder Five years just to train one.
Brent Ramsey:Okay, we need thousands and thousands of tradesmen like that welders and ship fitters and electricians and you name it, all the trades it takes to build these massive ships. I mean people don't understand if they're not close to the Navy. The Ford displaces 100,000 tons. It's the most complex object created by man on the planet, right, and it takes very skilled people to be able to put those things together. Like I said earlier, it took 13 years to build the Ford. Now, that's outrageous. It shouldn't take that long to build anything, even that complex a ship, but that's what it takes.
Brent Ramsey:So we're in a hole now with not enough ships, hotspots all over the world, the Navy being overtasked and expanding a lot of our ordinance, like what has happened in the Middle East, because we've been using million dollar SM3 or 2 or 6 missiles to shoot down thousand dollar drones. And that's a national policy issue we probably shouldn't get into. But you know, we're in extremis. I'll use that term again. The Navy is in extremis. If an actual shooting war broke out right now with China, we would be seriously, seriously challenged to come out on top and the war games reflect that. The war games reflect that. If we got into a war with China in the Indo-Pacific. We would probably win, but it would be at a serious, serious cost the loss of many ships, capital ships and thousands of sailors dead.
Al Palmer:So it's a very interesting point, though, about the state of the defense industrial base. When it comes to shipbuilding, as you say, there's lots of places that are sort of dormant now, but it's that surge that needs to take place. So is it the Navy that needs to push that, or is it the political side? Who is going to be the mover and shaker that gets that going? Who is going to be the mover and shaker that gets that going? Or is it the industry itself coming alive and saying look, we recognize that there's money to be made and things to be done. We'll go out and find the people, we'll train them, we'll get it up. So who really has got the cards there to do that?
Brent Ramsey:Well, the president has said he's going to make it a priority to build up the Navy. He's said he's going to appoint a commission on the Navy. Now, the Congress appointed a commission on the Navy several years ago. I think it was in the 2023 NDAA National Defense Authorization Act. They appointed or created this commission on the Navy studying the requirements for the Navy. It never got even started. So I mean, trump has promised. President Trump should be respectful of our chief executive. President Trump has promised that he's going to make shipbuilding a priority. Now it's only 60 days in to his, or a little over 70 days into his, term here.
Brent Ramsey:I haven't seen much activity take place yet. Secretary Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, has also made similar statements. The Navy, of course, has said yes, we need more ships. They've been saying for a long time, so hopefully that's going to happen, but I haven't seen much happen yet to get that rolling and, like I said, you cannot snap your fingers and bring ships online. You know it takes even the simplest ship. We have wonderful ships. Some of our ships are wonderful, absolutely the best on the planet. The Burke-class destroyers are just a wonderful ship and we have a lot of those, but we need a lot more. But even those ships take several years each to build and that's an established production line In two locations. We've been building them for quite a long time now the Burke class, and so we've got it down to a fine science now. But even a more simple, smaller ship like a destroyer takes years to build. So we're in a very dangerous time now in my opinion, that if war breaks out, real war and aside from these flare-ups like the skirmish in the Middle East and with the terrorists and what we're doing to support the war effort in Ukraine, if we get into a shooting war with China, it's another whole ballgame.
Brent Ramsey:The Chinese Navy is now 400 ships okay, 400 combatants. We have approximately 50 combatants in the Pacific, have approximately 50 combatants in the Pacific, indo-pacific. We may surge it up to 70 at times. But 50 to 70 of our ships I shouldn't say combatants, that's combat force, because part of the combat force is auxiliaries that are used to resupply our ships at sea. So it's about a two-thirds to one-third ratio. So 400 ships the Chinese have right in the South China Sea and their offshore waters and we have 50 to 70 combatants there. Now our ships are superior to theirs, but they're catching up because they've been stealing our technology for decades and they've improved dramatically the nature of their. It's called the plan People's Liberation Army Navy. Their plan is world-class now and outnumbers us greatly.
Brent Ramsey:On top of that they have an armed Coast Guard of another 180 ships. That Coast Guard is part of the Navy. It works for the Navy. It's not like our nation where the Coast Guard isn't even in the Defense Department. It works for the Department of Transportation or Homeland Security or Transportation, I forget now I'm getting my signals crossed here. It's part of homeland security. So in time of war the Coast Guard does chop to the Navy and become part of the naval forces, but in peacetime it's not even part of the Navy. So in addition to the Coast Guard they have what's called the maritime militia, which is a quasi-military collection of smaller craft numbering over 5,000 that they can also use for military operations, for interference with sea lanes and with logistics support and all kinds of stuff. It's called the maritimeitia.
Brent Ramsey:So they have massive forces in the Indo-Pacific and they are intent on dominating in the near term the Indo-Pacific, taking over Taiwan. They harass and threaten Japan, the Philippines, our treaty allies, australia, south Korea, constantly harassing and trying to imitate. It's called wolf warrior tactics. They use very aggressive at-sea techniques and tactics to try to intimidate the navies of other nations that have sovereign territory in the South China Sea. That China attacks, basically even has occupied some islands that belong to other nations and built bases on them. So it's a real poser. I mean, how are we going to defend our interest in the Pacific with a Navy that is at really a very weak point in time at this point in time?
Al Palmer:but, like you say, we're outnumbered now. But it's not just the, the, the numbers in this, it's also the quality of the ships or the capability. If we have great capability in our ships, that's wonderful, and we do. But when you have the numbers that are so much hugely outbalanced, uh, if you're china, you can afford not to have the greatest ships as long as you have enough of them to overwhelm the opposition. So, yes, that puts them ahead right now. And of course, they're building ships for other people, aren't they?
Brent Ramsey:Well, yeah they're building.
Brent Ramsey:Various reports have indicated that the Chinese shipbuilding capacity is more than 2,200 times the capacity of the US at the current time.
Brent Ramsey:That's how great they've built up their shipbuilding industry. And the other thing about the way the Chinese system works is the despotic regime that it is. Even the civilian shipbuilding companies are building civilian craft. Thousands of them come under the umbrella of their military. So the commercial ships are, to a degree, actually militarized and the navy of the Chinese can dictate to the commercial shipbuilders what types of ships that they're going to build, because those commercial ships can be turned to military use instantly if they need them. So they have a relationship, they're welded together like this, with the government of the regime dictating to the private sector in China exactly how to build these ships. And, like I said, they're commercial ships but they're militarized to a degree where they could be integrated into their navy, their People's Liberation Army Navy, instantly and would fall under their chain of command. So it's like having another whole set of vessels that can, and in that sense they have thousands, because they've turned out thousands of ships in the last 20, 30 years. They have the biggest shipbuilding industry on the planet.
Al Palmer:So, looking at the ships that we have, though I mean, like you say, many of them are absolutely great, some of them are not so great, as we've also discussed but looking at that whole lineup of ships, we're talking dozens or less in some classes.
Al Palmer:You know, compared to the numbers that the Chinese have, even though they're great, they're just so few of them that you've got to scratch your head and say you know, they ought to be awfully good to overcome the numbers that the Chinese are going to have, the numbers that the Chinese are going to have, and that you know when you can start with our carriers. We used to have, when I was still in, 12 carriers at any given time. Not all of them, of course, were nuclear at the time either, so they were a little easier to build, perhaps a little less complicated. But today, when we've got just 11, they're not even all deployable. There's always a couple that are down for maintenance, overhaul or refueling with nuclear material. So how do we go from that then, even to the other classes, where you have even fewer, and say, yeah, we're okay, we're not okay?
Brent Ramsey:and say, yeah, we're okay, we're not okay, no, no, we would like. Like I said, if we actually got into a shooting war with china in the pacific, it would be extremely uh challenging uh. One bright spot uh is our submarine force is far and by far and away superior and uh to to any other on the planet and uh, that would be a an advantage for us because we could uh quickly sink a lot of their ships with our very advanced attack submarines. And, uh, although they they are improving, is that I said earlier, they steal all our technology. Our security procedures are not very good in this country. We're not good at keeping secrets. I think I may have. Well, I didn't mention in this conversation, but I've written about.
Brent Ramsey:There's an entity called the US China Economic and Security Review Commission. It's been in existence for the last 25 years. Congress created this commission several decades ago, to their credit, and its purpose is to assess and evaluate what is the nature of the threat from China, and that report consistently shows that each and every year, china steals about $600 billion worth of our technology and secrets, their intelligence gathering capacity and our lack of discipline. A lot of the research and development stuff is done through universities. There's over 300,000 Chinese that study at our universities. Why we allow Chinese to study at our universities is beyond me. They don't make a secret of it. They make public statements about we plan to rule the world. We want to be the ruler of the entire world. They consider themselves, the middle kingdom, the most important country, and so, technology-wise, we're a sieve. We allow China to steal us blind.
Brent Ramsey:If you ever looked at some of the advanced aircraft of the Air Force, they look like our airplanes. Okay, if you can look at them. Well, that looks like an F-16. Well, that's funny, but it's got the Chinese crescent on it.
Al Palmer:Well, they stole the plants, all these things.
Brent Ramsey:I shouldn't be laughing, it's no laughing matter. But you know, they've stolen us blind and we continue to persist. I mean, even if only one percent of the students who are placed as students at advanced research universities the best universities in the nation where we do a lot of this research are spies, that's thousands of spies that are stealing our tech and exporting it back to China. Why do you think their airplanes look like our airplanes and their ships are starting to look like our ships? Because they steal us blind, you know, and we just put up with it. So, people, if you, pew did a surgery, pew Research. They do surveys all the time. That's what they do. Their most recent surgery. What are the top 20 things that concern Americans? What are the top 20 things that concern America? You know illegal immigration, taxes, whatever it is. There's a top 20 list. They just put it out, the one that came out a month or so ago. China isn't on the list. China doesn't concern the average American.
Brent Ramsey:It concerns me because I've been studying it for years. But the American public is blissfully ignorant of the fact that China, in writing and in their speeches, says we want to rule the world, we plan to rule the world by 2049. We want to take over Taiwan. We want to take over Taiwan, we're gonna take over Taiwan by 2027. That's what they've said publicly, and on and on and on. But our public is blissfully ignorant of the fact that we're actually in a war. I mean, senator Cotton, to his very great credit, has just written a book which basically says we're at war with China. Nobody talks about it, nobody acknowledges it, but we're at war with China. They wanna rule the world and we're sitting on our hands. And the number one way we are gonna defend ourselves against China is by having a strong Navy. And we've allowed our Navy to become weak. And that's Brent Ramsey's story and I'm sticking to it.
Al Palmer:And Brent, I'm right there with you. I understand fully and it's sad from our perspective, now that we're a little older, we have that long view of what's happened now in the Navy and it's sad. I mean, like you say, when we were in it was 600, 700 ships that was meant to just recover to that. Now it's a fraction of that, almost half of it, and there we go.
Al Palmer:The other thing I noticed, by the way, just talking about the people, part of this, there was an article today about the Chinese being discovered bringing people in through Florida and Coral Gables and there's, all of a sudden a concentration of illegals coming in that way, being rounded up, and someone said, why in Florida? Why, all of a sudden, these large numbers of Chinese showing up? Well, it wasn't just there. It's also been that case in the Pacific, in Guam, in Hawaii, the Philippines. They're coming through that way as well and they just kind of get in and all of a sudden they're here If they're not going to school. Are they terror cells? Are they sleeper cells? What are they? So there's that aspect of it too that we just, like you say, have been kind of sleeping at the switch on.
Brent Ramsey:Patriot Post on China and your listeners are welcome to look at Patriot Post. You could see those articles, but one of the articles talked about illegal immigration and the fact that in during the time that Biden was president, an estimated 50,000 young male Chinese illegally came into this country. So here it is, 2025. We started deporting some of the massive numbers of millions and millions who were illegally allowed to come into this country during Biden's watch, but there's 50,000 military age fit male Chinese nationals in this country. What are they doing? What are they up to?
Brent Ramsey:They're no doubt they're military trained individuals who were sent through the pipeline which originates in Central America and up through. There was an actual whole process. There's all these NGOs and the UN and various other malign actors were intent on ruining America, so they facilitated the whole illegal immigration mess. That was the policy of former President Biden and with millions and millions of people illegally coming into this country, and under the cover of that, because they just blended in, 50,000 Chinese were allowed to sneak into this country. Now, what are they doing? What are those 50,000 men doing in this country? Where are they? What are they up to? Are they preparing to attack our military installations or are they just subverting our installations by illegally taking photographs of military operations in progress or sneaking on the base? In fact, a numbers of them have actually been caught trying to sneak on board some of our military bases.
Al Palmer:So you know it's ridiculous.
Brent Ramsey:We're asleep at the switch. 50,000 Chinese running around in our country and their regime openly says we want to conquer America. Wake up America.
Al Palmer:We're at war with China, and what makes that worse is there's this kind of soft communism or Marxism that's taken place where, well, they're not so bad, they're just trying to level the playing field, you know, and it's okay if we deal with them because you know it's commerce and all that. No, it's not. It's an ideology that's damaging to the country.
Brent Ramsey:Yeah, I wrote about that. In fact, my article today in the Patriot Post is called China Bane of Civilization, because they have mistreated all of their neighbors. I mean, they took over Tibet, they took over Hong Kong. They're harassing Taiwan, the Philippines, vietnam, australia, you name it. They're not a good neighbor and they want to rule the world, and they're doing it by any means necessary. Plus, they have no moral compunction. They're an atheist nation, avowedly, officially an atheist nation. They don't have any moral values.
Brent Ramsey:Cindy's putting up the time Article for today. They don't have any compunction about doing whatever they have to do in order to seek their goals of ruling us. So it's a little off topic, but in order to defend ourselves. It's my opinion and the opinion of many others, I think, in my background information, going back to Alfred Thay and Mahan, teddy Roosevelt, ronald Reagan, walter Raleigh, the famous Brit explorer, everybody historical figures have recognized for hundreds of years that the path to national greatness is through a robust Navy, because the world is mostly water, if you haven't looked around, look at a map, look at a globe 70% of the earth is covered with water.
Brent Ramsey:We move people and goods by water, and so it was recognized by these great historical figures that it was important to our nation's success and health and well-being to have a robust Navy from our founding. One of the first things the founders did was create a Navy and an army.
Al Palmer:Yeah, they did that to get off some of the piracy out in the Mediterranean, exactly.
Brent Ramsey:We had pirates preying on our trade and it was hurting us economically. So we commissioned the construction of six ships and they went out and they started, you know, capturing and sinking all these pirates and protecting our trade. Yeah, the barbary pirates, yep exactly well so.
Al Palmer:So getting back, though, to the way that that the the world works with the navies, you know, one of the things we used to have back in the the 20s, uh, 30s, was, you know, know, the China fleet. We were very prominent in Hong Kong, for instance, philippines and other ports, singapore, but you know, we spent a lot of time developing the Navy in that part of the world, making that an ambassadorial kind of a function within other nations, and I remember spending a bit of time in Hong Kong when I was on the Constellation in post-Vietnam time, but we were always welcome there, even though they hadn't turned it over yet. In fact, that was the beauty of it was the British were still there, we were there, other nations were there, trade was booming at the time in Hong Kong, and as soon as the British allowed the Chinese to take over, that all just disappeared overnight, with a promise that they would keep a lot of it. They never did.
Brent Ramsey:Yeah, we used to have more robust, even formal, organizations. You remember the old CETO organization, which is kind of an Asian version of NATO.
Brent Ramsey:That's dissolved years and years ago, but you know, it is true that we need to keep a strong presence in the Pacific. We have Pacific parts of the US Guam is part of the United States. You know, hawaii is out in the middle of the Pacific and so we have strong relationships. We have treaty allies throughout the Pacific Japan, the Philippines, south Korea, australia, new Zealand. We have even good relations with Vietnam, for example. We're not a treaty ally with Vietnam, but other nations in Asia are cognizant of the fact that China represents an existential threat to them, so they are receptive to having bilateral relations with us and cooperating with us on defense matters.
Brent Ramsey:I mean, we've sold F-35s to Singapore. I believe that's not a treaty ally, but we've sold our newest, best, most advanced aircraft, the F-35 Lightning. There's three versions of it. We've sold our newest, best, most advanced aircraft, the F-35 Lightning. There's three versions of it. We've sold I think we're selling that aircraft to about 18 other countries worldwide because it's the best airplane on the planet and they want to get in on the good deal. So we do have a lot of potential friends in the Pacific that would help in an actual conflict out there. We've recently signed an agreement with the UK and Australia to build Virginia class submarines for the Australian Navy. We are actually going to station some Navy personnel in Australia coming up in the next year or so. So we are cognizant of the need to have these allies in the Pacific and to strengthen them so that they can help us if we get in a shooting war with China, which unfortunately looks increasingly more likely to happen in the coming years.
Al Palmer:So if we do somehow manage to catch up a little bit here in the next couple of years and develop more ships in a little bit wider range, we still end up, though, having a problem of having the ability to maintain them, to repair them and also to man them. We're a little behind on the people side, are we not right now, when it comes to operational readiness and the way of ship deployments.
Brent Ramsey:Well, yes, during the Biden term, recruiting was very bad. It was really a consequence, I think, of the political emphasis of DEI and some of that other nonsense that President Trump is now turning that stuff around. It'll be hard to root that out. So the recruiting numbers are, thankfully for all the services are up. But it is true what you just said the Navy's been very shorthanded militarily. I think two or three years in a row the Navy missed recruiting goals by thousands. So we're understaffed. We're putting ships to sea. You've been to sea duty, I've been to sea duty. There's nothing worse than sending a ship to sea with not a full complement, because number one ships are dangerous. It's not like going on a caravan cruise. That's a fun thing when you go on a Navy ship.
Al Palmer:The fun is not part of the equation, okay.
Brent Ramsey:It is hard, dangerous work. As an aviator you know that way better than me. I was in the service Navy but I'm a qualified officer of the deck. I can tell you I've been up close and personal with a Soviet Yankee for five days chasing them in the North Atlantic. Nothing about operating a shipboard is easy or not potentially dangerous. So it is absolutely foolishness to send ships to sea without a full compliment and it just wears out the crew, makes everybody more tired than they should be, and tired sailors create accidents and I've seen a lot of at sea accidents so I know what I'm talking about. So under the best of circumstances, navy ships at sea operating in a lot of time, very extreme I've been. I've sailed above the arctic circle where your nose will freeze off, uh, you know just very, very arduous conditions. Saltwater is very corrosive. It's a constant effort to try to keep the ship repaired and functioning and I know I'm preaching to the choir because you've got probably more sea duty than I have, but it is true that we are desperately short of people.
Brent Ramsey:The admiral in charge of Fleet Forces Command has publicly stated the Navy is not meeting its readiness goals. We're supposed to have the ability to quickly ready and sortie to see 75 ships in an emergency right, 75 ships. We're supposed to be able to man them up, get them to sea quickly to respond to some crisis anywhere in the world. That's what our Navy is tasked by mission to do. Admiral Caudill says we can get maybe 50 ships to sea in that time frame. So we're at two-thirds of the metric, and even that, 75 ships. Like I said, the world is 70% ocean. There could be a crisis on 70% of the planet, somewhere that we need to put Navy ships on station, or even a humanitarian situation. There's a typhoon in Asia and we're going to provide support, humanitarian support, so we need to get ships over there to help out with the situation, rescue people from the earthquake in Myanmar, whatever it is. We don't have the ships. We don't have the manpower.
Brent Ramsey:So fortunately, with President Trump in charge now, he has said he's going to rebuild the Navy. Recruiting numbers are up and that's good. If we really can root out the political nonsense from the military and make a better pitch to the youth of America, maybe more people will want to join. But we do need to put an emphasis in the trades. It's not just college graduates that we need for the Navy. We need people who have those kind of skills that can, if they decide not to join the military, they can go into the defense industry and they can become a welder or electrician or whatever it is and they can help build the ships that we need. But those are emphasis that our country should make to rebuild the industrial base and to be able to build the weapon systems that we need in order to defend the country.
Al Palmer:Well, let's hope that that's going to happen. I know that the Commission on Defense Readiness reported that to the Congress here just last year before the election, talking about how behind we were both in the Navy side as well as the defense industrial base, and that's all going to, I think, happen because of what the president is doing. I think you're right, fred. I'm hopeful that that comes about sooner rather than later, but your writings on that certainly are very influential, I think, and we're happy to have you here with STARS to be able to talk about that the way we have today, and I hope our listeners will actually go to our website and read some more about what you've written about this. It's very important work.
Al Palmer:You know that we're doing and I think we're making some way here. But you're right, we've got some headwinds ahead of us here, but thanks to people like you, I think we're making some way here. But you're right, we've got some headwinds ahead of us here, but thanks to people like you, I think we're going to do it thanks al and it's great having you with us, sir.
Al Palmer:Thanks for all that you do both for us, for the calvert crew, uh, and keeping the fleet uh in motion. Uh, hopefully it'll get shipbuilding going again. And thanks again, brent, for being with us.
Brent Ramsey:My pleasure.
Al Palmer:And our audience will leave Brent's worthy writings available to you online, along with our podcast archive. There, too, you can look back and see what we had also done about the book that Calvert did on Don't Give Up the Ship, which is part of what we're talking about today as well. So, brent, thanks again to our audience. We'll look forward to seeing you again next week for another exciting episode of Stars and Stripes. Thanks for watching.