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Today the United States can drone strike it's enemies almost anywhere in the world with non-explosive Hellfire missiles that deploy blades to slice through a target with almost no risk to nearby civilians. It is the latest-and-greatest expression of an American quest for precision strike that began in WWI, carried through (with sometimes disastrous results) WWII, into the nuclear era of the Cold War, and continues today in the drone age. With my guest James Patton Rogers we talk about the century long American quest for precision, the logic of precision strike when using nuclear weapons, and the emerging second drone age where every ragtag militia and terrorist group will have access to drones that 30 years ago were only obtainable by great powers. X/Twitter - @Jamespattonrogers Insta - @jamespattonrogers https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526125880/precision/ Buy the book with code WARFARE30 for 30% off. Follow me on X: ⁠⁠⁠@USNavyPodcast⁠ Follow me on IG: ⁠⁠⁠@USNavyPodcast⁠⁠⁠ Email me at: [email protected]

The USS Hornet was resting upright on the ocean floor 17,500 feet deep. It was mostly intactwith SBD Dauntless dive-bombers, TBD Devastator torpedo bombers and F4F Wildcat fighters scattered on the sea bed in concentric circles around the wreck. It had been there for more than 77 years, yet the wooden deck was still intact, minus bomb damage. The AA guns were still pointing up, as if still fending off Japanese "Val" dive bombers. This episode tells the story of the USS Hornet, told in part by the men who served aboard her in the ship’s less than two years of service before sinking beneath the waves, lost for 77 years. She was the carrier to launch the Doolittle Raid against Japan. She had fought at Midway and at Guadalcanal. Her planes had sunk half the Japanese carrier fleet, and she had been hit more than two dozen times. This is her story. Follow me on X: ⁠⁠⁠@USNavyPodcast⁠ Follow me on IG: ⁠⁠⁠@USNavyPodcast⁠⁠⁠ Email me at: [email protected] Nathan Drescher's Battlegrounds+ Newsletter: https://battlegroundsplus.substack.com/

US and UK forces have been jointly carrying out a continuous drumbeat of strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen over the past three weeks. Unfortunately, in the words of President Biden, “Well, when you say are they working, no. Are they going to continue, yes.” In the meantime while we wait for the strikes to work, the Houthis continue to launch anti-ship missiles at merchant shipping in the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, and they have scored a few hits that the US and UK destroyers have not been able to shoot down in time. We are playing an escalating game of tit-for-tat with the Houthis. We don’t really want to launch an all out air war against them because that would risk drawing in Iran. We could win that fight if it came down to it of course, but if the goal is to open sea lanes, and a war zone pretty definitively closes a sea lane off, so it would be a bit of an own goal in that regard.  In the meantime two U.S. Navy SEALs remain missing and were declared dead after going into the water January 12th during the search and seizure of Houthi weapons sourced from Iran being carried by a vessel in the Arabian Sea. On the more comical side on 24 January, the Houthi claimed to have attacked and sunk a U.S. destroyer with a missile, which is very not true. Given the situation, insurance companies are not eager to insure ships sailing into a quasi-war zone and have raised rates appropriately. This means a huge percentage of the shipping traffic which would normally be routed through the Suez Canal will now divert around the Horn of Africa, leading to much higher shipping rates, inflation pressure at home, and disrupted supply chains around the world. Follow me on X: ⁠⁠@USNavyPodcast Follow me on IG: ⁠⁠@USNavyPodcast⁠⁠ Email me at: [email protected]

The Fulton the First was the world's first steam powered warship. Designed to defend New York Harbor against the British in the War of 1812. She never saw action, but did succeed in scaring the public and British war planners and inspired the first generation of European steam warships who feared foundational shift in naval technology which the Fulton heralded in. Follow me on X: ⁠⁠⁠@USNavyPodcast⁠ Follow me on IG: ⁠⁠⁠@USNavyPodcast⁠⁠⁠ Email me at: [email protected]

Naval history is being made right now. The Houthi rebels in Yemen conducted a drone, cruise missile, and ballistic missile combined attack (with Iranian help) against a guarded convoy near the Bab al-Mandab Strait on January 9th, and just now the US and UK conducted a joint naval strike against the Houthi rebels in Yemen using planes and submarine-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles. Stay tunes for more soon. Follow me on X: ⁠⁠@USNavyPodcast Follow me on IG: ⁠⁠@USNavyPodcast⁠⁠ Email me at: [email protected]

Mines! Torpedoes! Improvised Explosive Devices at sea! When the War of 1812 broke out there was no way that the United States could sustainably go toe-to-toe with the far larger royal Navy, and so Congress authorized “An Act to encourage the destruction of the armed vessels of war of the enemy.” The Torpedo Act promised one-half the value of any ship to any private citizen or groups who used “torpedoes, submarine instruments, or any other destructive machine whatever” to destroy a British warship. The act encouraged private citizens with financial incentives to attack the Royal Navy in new and spectacular fashion, and not just merely prey upon the British merchant marine like privateers. Of course, The Torpedo Act also created a significant problem: it blurred the lines of who was a legal combatant and who was not by allowing civilians to change the methods of naval war. If American civilians launched attacks against Royal Navy warships, would British commanders respond in kind? find out all of these answers and more in my conversation with Andrew Fageal. Andrew's paper on The Torpedo Act: jstor.org/stable/newyorkhist.94.3-4.221 Follow me on X: ⁠⁠@USNavyPodcast Follow me on IG: ⁠⁠@USNavyPodcast⁠⁠ Email me at: [email protected]

The poetic New Year's Day deck log entry is a uniquely American tradition which allows the Officer of the Deck to try their hand at poetry as the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve. This is a rare bit of fun in a legal document - but because it is a legal document all of the required midnight entry information must be incorporated into the poem as well! I read the 2023 New Year's Deck Log Contest winner, as well as an example which features a sudden call to fire from the battleship New Jersey off the coast of Vietnam in 1969. You can read the 2023 contest winners here: https://www.history.navy.mil/research/archives/resources-for-the-fleet/deck-logs/new-years-contest/annual-contest-announcement.html Follow me on X: ⁠⁠@USNavyPodcast Follow me on IG: ⁠⁠@USNavyPodcast⁠⁠ Email me at: [email protected] Happy New Year everyone!!

Six years after the First Sumatran Expedition, another attack on American pepper traders occurred. The US East India Station squadron responded with what can only be called a "vigorous" enforcement of American interests on the Sumatran coastline (aka we bombarded and burned the offending village of Muckie to the ground). Email me at [email protected] Follow me on IG: ⁠⁠@USNavyPodcast⁠⁠ Follow me on X: ⁠⁠@USNavyPodcast

The AUKUS pact between the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia aims to increase naval cooperation between the three countries in the face of a rising China. A major component involves the US and UK operating nuclear-powered submarines out of Australia by 2027, with plans to eventually transfer nuclear submarine technology to enable Australia to have its own nuclear submarine fleet. Together with Megan Eckstein, naval warfare reporter at Defense News, and Bryant Harris, Congress reporter at Defense News we discuss the goals, benefits, challenges, and political dimensions around AUKUS including building up the submarine and naval industrial bases, training Australian sailors on nuclear reactor operations, congressional concerns around protecting technology, and the role of export controls. We also discuss the pact hopes to boost interoperability and enhanced deterrence to counter China's growing naval capabilities in the Indo-Pacific region. Megan Eckstein on X: @maeday22 Bryant Harris on X: @brykharris More details on AUKUS. Email me at: ⁠[email protected]⁠ Follow me on IG: ⁠@USNavyPodcast⁠ Follow me on X: ⁠@USNavyPodcast

Why are we giving money and weapons to Ukraine? In light of the recent news that 48% of Americans think we are giving too much money to Ukraine, I discuss why, in fact, Ukraine aid is the single most cost-effective American foreign policy win since (at least) the end of the Cold War for a whole bunch of reasons: Aid to Ukraine allows the united States to focus on China. It destroys Russia's military for $0.10 on the dollar with zero American lives lost. It revitalizes our defense industrial base while long term hurting Russia’s. It is the morally right thing to do. It shows our allies we will support them in time of need. ...and we can easily can afford it. Email me at: ⁠[email protected]⁠ Follow me on IG: ⁠⁠@USNavyPodcast⁠⁠ Follow me on X: ⁠⁠@USNavyPodcast⁠

I talk with guest Sal Mercogliano about fuel logistics during World War Two in the Pacific theater. We discuss the Japanese decision not to target fuel tanks at Pearl Harbor, how the US Navy adapted to fuel shortages in the early years of the war, and compare World War Two naval logistics capabilities to those of the US and Chinese navies today. Sal's YouTube Channel Email me at: [email protected] Follow me on IG: @USNavyPodcast Follow me on Twitter:@USNavyPodcast

WWII naval aviation was miracle on many levels. The industrial output was immense. The technology evolved by leaps and bounds over the course of just a few years. The pilots got the glory, but the enlisted aviation maintenance rates were the men who kept the planes in the air. Before the war there was no real system to train these men, it was a small community of a few thousand men who learned on the job. But in the first three years of WWII the demands for this skilled labor exploded. The community expanded by more than 20x in three years and developed the complex systems naval aviation continues to rely on today to keep planes in the sky. Sustaining the Carrier War by Stan Fisher Stan's Website: stanfisherphd.com Email me at: ⁠[email protected]⁠ Follow me on IG: ⁠@USNavyPodcast⁠ Follow me on Twitter:⁠@USNavyPodcast⁠