EP. 494: Dollars, Defense, and Reform: A Conversation with Senator Tim Sheehy

0:00I'm Bill Hamlet, the Editor-in-Chief at the U.S. Naval Institute. It is Monday, the 13th of April. We're here on the stage of the Jackson Taylor Conference Center in Annapolis. My favorite venue for doing a podcast and my guest today is Senator Tim Sheehy, Republican of Montana. Senator Sheehy was here at the Naval Academy and we were a bit of a drive-by, targeted opportunity. He was over talking to midshipmen and he- You ran into Jamie. She was at the door that day. I'm like, I think we want to be here together. The Senator is a 2008 graduate of the United States Naval Academy. He's a former Navy SEAL and now he is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. So it's great to have you here, sir. And more-most important, maybe for us, is that he is a life member of the U.S. Naval

1:00Institute and has been since you were a midshipman. That's the top bullet on my resume is life member of the U.S. Naval Institute. Amen to that. I do have to say thanks to our sponsor. So today's episode is brought to you by Booz Allen from Rugged 5G on warships to unmanned systems deep below the ocean. Booz Allen delivers technology that works where it matters most. Their AI-driven mission-ready capabilities help the Navy operate and win in contested environments, no manual, no road map, no problem, learn more at Booz Allen dot com slash defense. Sir, I wanted to- let's just start with some current events. Everyone's watching the war now, a tenuous ceasefire in Iran. I checked the sent-com front page, 13,000 targets struck one of the most stunning things from my perspective was a little over a week ago. Air Force F-15 weapons systems officer was rescued by a whole bunch of special forces.

2:01You are special forces, Navy SEAL, in Afghanistan, in Iraq. I'm sure you're involved at least in the planning, if not in real world, rescues of people, maybe behind enemy lines. What about that audacious, harrowing, amazingly bold mission, maybe surprised you or confirmed some things that you already knew? Well, a really good friend of mine who- another Academy grad here was our commander on the ground there, and it was a fantastic mission, and I think one of the most important lessons from it is, of course, history may not repeat itself, but it definitely echoes, and last time we tried to land C-130s in the Iranian desert, it didn't go very well, and it didn't go very well when we tried it this time either, so interesting how history echoes, but I think before we get in the specifics of it, we've seen a handful of really deft executions of incredibly hard missions. Midnight Hammer last summer, which most people, yeah, we bonded from the air cool, and they moved on quickly, but when you actually read the unclass, and if you have access to the

3:02classified version of Midnight Hammer, the attack on Isfahan and the nuclear risk of facilities, I mean, how challenging, technically and operationally that mission was for those air crews was absolutely incredible. And the fact that really nothing went wrong, yes, continuously we're used, there are a lot of minor hiccups, but structurally the mission was carried off flawlessly. Putting a bomb in an area of the size of this coffee table, the planes launched from middle of the United States, flew halfway around the world literally, at times, hiding visually behind, they'd bring airliners in and hide behind them, so that civilians looking at the windows of the airliners couldn't see our B-2 bombers in daylight over the Mediterranean, and then dropping bombs through a tube is literally like Star Wars, like flying the trench. Like Luke had to drop it down the air vent, literally. And then of course, the vent is well-emissioned, which was fantastic to see the Medal of Honor awarded that pilot, because the military has been under awarding our warriors for far too long, especially during G-Wat era, where the process for recognizing a valor on the

4:07battlefield, we have shortchanged an entire generation of warriors with the recognition they should be receiving for what they've done on the battlefield, and it's kind of an over-correction for what happened in Vietnam. There were a lot of paper awards in Vietnam, and we over-corrected by under- awarding a whole generation of G-Wat warriors, and it was great to see our Air Michigan Commander be awarded the Medal of Honor days after his mission. And I think that's important, because in the military, if someone does something bad, we punish them immediately. If they do something good, it takes us years to eventually give them, I mean, Ripley was awarded as Medal of Honor after he was dead three weeks ago, 60 years after he carried out almost heroic acts in the history of the American military. So the gap between how we were award good behavior and punish bad behavior is far too wide. And that does have an impact. When you get your award, I was awarded Purple Heart and Bronze Star for Valor years after, and I was awarded in a reserve center in Montana after I was island in Avie, it was very nice, but I wasn't with the guys I was with.

5:07It wasn't the same as you come home, you're with your team, and it's the people you know. But that mission was fantastic. And then, of course, this pilot rescue is fantastic. And where I'm going with this is, he asked about this mission is, the risk of what these missions entail, this mission could have easily been another Eagle Claw from 1980, which many folks are familiar with that mission. But like, that mission is why we have Socom, why we have JSOC, why we have a special operations community, instead of just random commandos that run around and blow things up, the failure of the last Iranian rescue of Americans, the complete tragedy of that mission is what led to the creation of modern day special operations. This mission could have, I mean, we were, you know, between life and death and success and failure in the battlefield, the seconds and inches. And this mission was that close to being a massive disaster of dozens of aircraft, the honours of Americans dead. And I think Venezuela is the same way and been out of Hamburg is the same way. So credit goes to the chain of command, regardless of what a silo or aileron.

6:10I mean, the president understands that if this thing goes wrong, any one of these missions, he's going the way of Jimmy Carter, as far as, you know, that will be on his record forever. So it takes a lot of courage to take that risk. And of course, the planning down to the chain, you know, General Cain is fantastic at really overseeing these missions as the chess master and getting into the details. And I think incredibly proud of our folks in the execution here. And obviously, it was a huge success. And then by the way, as we're doing that, we're sending Americans in the moon for the first time in 54 years. So pretty cool time to be an American. A couple of Navy astronauts in that mission, yeah, pretty amazing to me that they had a backup to the backup for the rescue mission. Let's switch for a minute to the defense budget. So the administration has dropped a request for 2027, $1.5 trillion, pretty staggering amount of money, right? What do you see as some of the top priorities? And as you, as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, as that comes through the

7:12process on Capitol Hill, what will you be looking to make sure survives, you know, the meat grinder that is sometimes the budget process and gets out at the other end, hopefully this fall, hopefully by September 30th, which would be great. What are some of the top priorities that you see? Well, you mentioned Armed Services Committee, and I think it's also important to mention that even arguably more important for the Navy is I'm on the Commerce Science Transportation Committee, which oversees our merchant marine. And I think our merchant sea lift capability is just as important as our combat naval capability when you want to talk about force projection and power projection globally. And as you look at especially a theater like Westpac, where we haven't obviously had to fight a war there in 80 years, especially we hope we don't, but if we have to fight the fight we're all training and planning for, China is not Japan. It's a continental power. We're going to be fighting a war where we're having to project logistics seven, eight,

8:149,000 miles away through literally over nothing but water into the backyard of a country that is five times our population roughly equal to us in economic might and build ships 232 times faster than we do. So the our ability to conduct sea lift is important. And of course that's not necessarily a Navy capability, that's a merchant marine, that's a sea lift capability. So both those committees that I'm on Armed Services and I'm also on Veterans Affairs but I think regarding when we talk about Navy issues and particularly whole growth for our fleet capacity, the Commerce Science Transportation Committee is just important. But my top focus number one writ large is acquisition reform. We need to reform the process for how we specify pay for by field and support systems. We've allowed the process to become the focus instead of the outcome. We've allowed procedure and compliance to outweigh excellence and performance. And we need to get back to risk taking and the concept of risk mitigation basically saying

9:15we want the process to be so thorough there's no chance that we have any fraud or mistakes or waste and abuse. And by doing that we've created a system that is really rife with waste and we've reduced acquisition risk but we've increased strategic risk because we may not be spending a dollar but by having the process take 30 years to create a new fighter or 10 years to build a new hole, we are absorbing strategic risk for the nation by not having enough vessels deployable at any one time to obviously secure free even navigation. And I think free even navigation is a term most Americans aren't even familiar with but the 20th century economic miracle in the course of the 21st century extension of that. Probably the single thing that's led to more economic growth in the 20th century than ever is the fact that free and open sea lanes have allowed commerce and goods to move around the world at a pace they've never been able to move before. And that's been secured by one thing, the US Navy. So I'm going to be very focused on acquisition reform with regards to speed and specification

10:16to make sure we shorten the distance between the warfighter, the end user, the actual customer and the manufacturer. Because in the last 30 years the customer has become for most of the providers, the customer has become the contract officer or the program manager or the PEO staff. And those aren't the customers, the customer or the congressman or the senators, you know those are oftentimes the customer. Hey we want to build this in your district we're going to put a factory in this district we're going to create this many jobs. The customer is that lands corporal looking down the side to those rifle. It's that 26 year old lieutenant at the stick of that fighter jet. That's the customer and we got to put the customer back at the center of the specification process. And then we have to be comfortable with quantity and iteration and that part of that comes from our appropriations process which is why the 1.5 billion trillion out of fence budget I support that fully because we've been kicking the can on CRs for 30 years and that's really like the source of a lot of this acquisition failure is the fact that we have not passed a budget on time. Anybody know when the last time we passed a budget out of congress on time was on time?

11:18Yeah, 1997, 30 years ago, well you missed a zero close, 1997 is the last time we passed a budget on time through the appropriations committees. Too long. So it's been CRs is how we've been kicking the can on. That's become the customer process, yeah. And it's really ridiculous that that body, especially when you look at the last six months of two government shutdowns and remember the congress still get paid during shutdowns which is ridiculous that the employees of the agencies that are being shut down don't get paid yet are expected to keep doing the jobs but remember the congress do get paid. So the budgeting process in all respects is broken and I think as we try to invest long term into rebuilding the Navy to the size we need, it's going to take up front investments, it's going to take multi or security for those companies to make the investments, build a new shipyard, build 10 more dry docks, hire the staff, invest in the technology, they need certainty that the customer will be there. Do you see consensus coming for that for that acquisition reform and for getting budgets

12:20passed on time? Oddly enough, absolutely. I mean of course we're in a hyper partisan time but I think both from a rhetoric perspective as well as from a voting perspective you've seen in the last year, there's in this Congress there's bipartisan focus on defense access reform. Like one of my partners in this is Elizabeth Warren on Massachusetts. Not exactly a political ideologue aligning with this administration but her and I and many others are in a complete agreement that how we acquire replacement parts, how we specify and field systems is so antiquated. It's really an analog system for a digital age. So we're trying to bring those two paradigms together to say we have adversaries moving at the pace of the threat while we move at the pace of bureaucracy and that's not going to cut it. Yep. Back a little bit with Epic Fury, 13,000 strikes, it's a huge number of weapons expended, huge amount of readiness expended, we look at the Ford, USS Ford on 10 months deployment probably headed towards an 11 month deployment.

13:20How do you see and maybe what part of that $1.5 trillion helps to reset the force, rearm the force, where do you see that sort of trade off between current and near future readiness and future capability being bought? Well I think the, a lot has been said about the expensing of all the munitions that our magazine depth is getting low and our magazine depth was already struggling in many respects but this is actually probably the best thing that could happen for our magazines because we're clearing a lot, a lot of legacy munitions and it's forcing us, like I was just on the phone with one of our munition manufacturer CEOs on Friday and he's talking about how you know they've never had an order tempo this high and they're being able to iterate and invest in new capabilities because of the order frequency they're having now then he's like when I was having sporadic orders for dozens of systems he's like I'm not going to double the size of my factory or invest in new machines or train my staff more when I have no idea if you're going to order any more munitions next quarter or the quarter

14:21after. Right. And having been after I got on the military I had a defense company so I've been on that side as a supplier where I'm trying to pace my manufacturing I'm trying to control my supply chain to say how many of focal plane arrays how many Germanium and silicon windows how many laser range find how many of these base systems that go into my integrated system my going to invest and put on my shelf because I have no idea when the next orders are coming and the reality is most businesses simply make the decision that we're not going to, we're not going to spend money at risk. We'll order when you order from us and that's led to a domino effect where lead times for systems have become obscenely long and we're talking years I mean and this isn't all just for ships and fighter jets they can say hey we have this optic that goes on the tip of your missile you know Germanium windows and for a focal plane arrays how long to replace this optic size of a water bottle that goes on the missile well it's got a 14 month lead because my you know crystal supplier has to grow the crystal in a kiln literally and then we have to mill it down and then code it and it's got to get shipped around the world so

15:22the supply chain reinvigoration is happening now because of the orders refilling these magazines. So yes there's a short term impact on how many health fires how many JDams we have sitting on the shelf but it's exercising the muscles in the supply chain that are not just giving us the ability to create more quantity in the back end they're also increasing the quality because we're looking for alternatives to say how can we and set up a $2 million health fire missile can we do the same thing with a $200,000 missile that can do 98% of that task for 10% of the cost. So do you see that coming that that's some of those absolutely exquisite missiles I don't see it coming it's already happening I mean it's already happening as we speak and I've been in fact I have a piece of legislation going into this NDAA specifically that will give priority to contracting systems that are focused on quantity. So we love our exquisite systems we want them but let's be very clear if you look at our defense industrial base and how it it's complexion today I should say it's complexion over the past 30 years

16:23it looks eerily like what the German military industrial complex look like in 1938 or 940-41 which was highly exquisite systems highly centralized decision making very advanced platforms that were very expensive and not easy to replace and every German tank and German plane and German U-boat and German gun was better than everything we had at the beginning of the war but our ability to produce quantity and iterate on those systems throughout the war because we had the quantity behind it and the iteration of different models we ended up having better technology by the end of the war because that iteration quantity and iteration actually creates quality I mean look at the Elon Musk and SpaceX he hasn't designed the perfect rocket by sitting in a room for 20 years and designing the perfect rocket he's designed the best rocket in the history mankind by literally just making the best rocket he could then launching it and figuring out where I want to launch the next one and by iterating over and over again and taking that platform risk he's bred excellence so we're trying to insert a lot of that mindset into our defense acquisition process to encourage quantity in addition to quality and an iteration

17:29by accepting risk and the development process of our systems awesome I wanted to ask you a question you were over here talking to midshipman over in michelson hall about defense acquisition today an opportunity to talk to midshipman I'm sure they asked you some some great questions and uh so can you share with us a little bit of maybe maybe something that you shared with them on the process of acquisitions or maybe leadership if they ask you questions about leadership and also we have a very small audience uh here in with us today and so unusual for the proceedings podcast we're actually going to have an opportunity for a couple questions from the audience so I'll ask the folks in the audience to it's unusual to have so few people attend one of your guests we're usually saying well I draw such a small round the podcast has usually been uh virtually via something called stream yard looks like a zoom call and occasionally we have somebody here you know in person we do a podcast but it's just me and them on the on the stage and it's just a it's just a podcast that's recorded but today I do have a small audience and so

18:32the audience gets to ask a couple questions I'll ask you to tee up a couple questions but um to your conversation with the midshipman what we're talking about so I'm on the board of visitors now which is an interesting experience because uh you know I'm a grad my wife's a grad we met here um and uh after I graduated uh you know I started buds four days after I got my diploma and then after I finished seal training I got my trend at seven days later I'm on my first mission in Iraq and then you know as all of us who are in the teams you know those years were just you were deploying constantly you know uh six years five deployments back to back and that was just the nature uh during the warriors but I'd never really come back and been involved with the academy at all I think I came up here once when I was a seal officer to run at that time we had the seal screener for prospective you know uh it was a very in retrospect it was a pretty you know fly by night operation when we were picking our former seal selects like it was basically it's like hey we got a bunch of guys want to be seals bring some seals up here and beat the shutout these kids for a couple days and make sure they're in a lot of pain and and it wasn't really a great process other than just

19:32make sure they're in a lot of pain uh so they quit and decide not to be seals now we've come a long way in the seal selection process for the academy where it it it it's really amazing to hear how thorough it is now but point is I hadn't really been involved in the academy at all until I was put on the board last year um when I was elected the Senate so um it's been great to get back involved and going from being essentially a mid shipment to now being on the board of visitors I kind of miss the whole like you know come back as a T. A. D. Ensign and be a professor and be a company officer so it's been interesting to parachute back into the academy from the perspective of being a board member now having really had no connections since I was a mid shipment so um anyways whenever I come up for a board meeting I reach out to the staff and just make myself available um because I know when I was a mid shipment I essentially never saw an elected official I mean you know a congressman a senator was a home one you know uh and let alone get a chance to sit with one and ask questions and I think especially for me too is a even less so elected members were like when I was here as a mid shipment um we didn't have a lot of access to officers with combat experience

20:34either I mean most of these staff when we were here were you know not nothing against them but they were generally especially as someone who's going to go in the seal teams they were they were a peacetime folks so we were 20 year old kids about to take away I mean we knew and when I was your old 408 like you knew when you graduate you're going to the war like you knew there was no question if you want to marines like going seals like we all knew we were going into combat immediately and yet there was very few officers here or even NCOs who had combat experience who could mentor us to be like hey this is what you're going to face as a junior officer going into combat like here's what it's like to have someone killed in your command here's what it's like to kill a person here's what it's like to have you know multiple real casualties not on the book and that raw conversation and ever occasionally we'd have officers come up and talk to us but um so I remember being in mid shipment and being really thirsty for that first-hand experience of leadership development and really wanted to just can we talk to somebody who's been there and done that so um I tried to make myself available now and and remembering how I felt as a

21:37midshipman and say listen I've been a small unit leader in combat um and now I'm obviously I had a business leadership uh had about five other employees CEO of my own companies and now obviously elected leader um this is the one of the the cradles of leadership excellence for America at least second it was make myself available and I kind of asked whoever's hosting the class what do I want to talk about constitutional government sometimes combat leadership sometimes today it was acquisition reform because I think I know it was a J.O. and obviously it's a midshipman I had no concept for how we actually acquired the gear that we used and and especially in the Navy where we're a platform centric service our technology is foundational to our ability to win in battle so I think it's very important for our officers to understand the process through which they get their technology and get their platforms and also the process through which things like proceedings they can affect that outcome where lieutenant can write an article and say hey you know here like I'm members of lieutenant I got some trouble but it ended up working where I was frustrated with our one of our systems we had I won't get specific on it but we had a system that just quite frankly wasn't working well

22:41and the feedback to the traditional chain of command just wasn't functioning so you know I went around and kind of wrote a memo that pissed some people off but it did fix the problem because it was very clear from the tactical usage level there were a lot of stakeholders in between the PEOs and the program managers and all these people have these weird titles at these offices you couldn't even understand what the title was who had equities in what this project meant well I like this contract I wanted to go there or this is my buddy here and the equities weren't aligned with what the warfighter needed or wanted they were aligned with what the acquisition process asked for they weren't the real stakeholder and at the other day when you when you're going to have lives in your hands as a junior officer I don't care what feathers you got to ruffle like I will do whatever it takes to bring my team home alive and when we were having some other systems I simply said I don't care who needs to read this email we are going to fix this problem before I deploy with this broken system and I got a whole shitload of trouble but the system got fixed so talking to the midship about that like listen that's great that's the priority thanks for coming in I guess

23:46hearing you say that you support 1.5 trillion billion whatever it is you sounded that said that almost like it was reaching in your pocket and getting some bubble gum when just like you're zeroing in on acquisition reform when do we pass a balance budget again 37 trillion you know we can't continue this and the party in power you know has no benefit of balancing it you know it's just spend like drunken sailors but that bills come and do and is there any interest of your focusing there while you're sitting there or is it just we're just going to continue as usual and at some point down the road when it's holy shit how do we get here something's done yeah it's not 37 it's 38.6 now I think so unfortunately it's worse than you described but you're absolutely in fact in fact I've given a speech about I'm giving a speech on Friday about

24:47exactly that that you know we hear of the greatest threat to america is the southern border the greatest threat is Islamic terror or greater whatever and I'm giving a speech the greatest threat is actually our debt that's our greatest threat because when you're fiscally unsound then you become captive to interests that are not necessarily best interests of the country so my answer to question is very simple we are a constitution republic democratic elected so whether directly indirectly our elected officials represent the interests of the american people and I'm a former business guy so I'm all about the balance sheet and the P&L statement I'm making sure that they line up unfortunately very few people government our business folks and at the same time we're an expression of the priorities of what the american people want and whatever I am asked that questions I'm asked that question frequently is you know one was the last time anybody saw a campaign rally where the slogan was balance the budget balance the budget pay off the debt pay off the debt so the political incentives don't align with it because quite frankly american people have said you know I don't really care we've been hearing about debt for years and

25:50the clock keeps ticking and I don't even know what it says anymore and it's not right but the truth is as a democraticly elected constitutional republic the elected officials are a reflection of what the priorities of their voters are and the priorities of the voters have not unfortunately been to solve our fiscal crisis now they should be and now there's a whole discussion we can peel the onion this you know the 17th amendment which most people you don't know what that is change the direct election of senators senators were not elected for the first 150 years of our country they were appointed by governors and the state legislatures and the point of that was exactly the question you asked the point of that structure was to say that there are going to be times when we have to do things that are very unpopular for the american people and they're not going to like so the House of Representatives is supposed to be the popular reflection of what the people wanted to say it was supposed to be the cooling saucer of saying hey you're going to have to do something that everyone really doesn't like but because you're not elected by the people you can take that

26:51political risk because you don't have to really get any elected and we did away with that for some good reasons there was a lot of corruption going on in fact montagne a lot of I don't know when I get a rabbit hole but a big reason why the 70th amendment was done was passed and we did away with the appointment of senators was montana uh marga's daily in William Clark anaconda copper company 75 cents of every dollar spent in the state of montana in 1901 went to one man and that was marga's daily William Clark owner of and subsequently like owner of anaconda copper company it controlled the entire state we had the biggest combine in the world and butte montana and every cent and montana every dollar 75 cents of that dollar went to one person and he basically owned the state as a corporate colony and he bought himself a senate seat and because of that the 70th amendment was put in say we can't allow he bought his way through the state legislature so when is this going to happen it's going to happen when we have our next fiscal crisis unfortunately I wish we could solve it sooner but as you as you saw in the even last year the decisions process there was a recisions package I'm not being partisan it was being factual

27:58there was a recisions package proposed by the current administration supported by many republican members of congress a recisions essentially means we're going to go into money that was appropriated from the previous again I'm not being partisan I'm just stating facts here the bi administration had a budget we were operating under cr like we've been doing for 30 years because we haven't passed a budget the recisions package went in to remove we're going to move I mean it was going to be hundreds of billions of dollars and ended up being nine billion and we barely even passed nine doing which is functionally nothing we we add four and a half billion a day to the national debt and even where they're probably you know apparently the party of fiscal San Diego Republicans couldn't even get our way to a nine billion dollar recisions package which is equivalent of two days of national debts so it's hard problem solved I hate to fall over real quick fall over real quick fall over so you still make it sound like it's not your problem oh it totally is right but you say you know I'm elected in and the and our country doesn't focus

28:59on it but like you I started a company and part of what and our customers for sale range of delta greenberry don't exist et cetera but part of my stick was I'm your shoot around the corner again I've looked ahead of you and I know what is coming you as a senator need to look around look around the corner for the country and even though the populace writ large isn't concern they should be because right now yeah the crisis comes the China buys so much of our bonds et cetera and this calculus that we have ongoing now with global politics puts us in a very tenuous situation where it may come to bite us and instead of a little bite it could be a huge bite and and just to say you know yep we'll deal with it later some point later we'll be gone but do you all right over here Brian hey senator Brian Alkowitz retired some reiner now part of the industry I'm curious with your focus on acquisition reform and the maybe the

30:01actually the departments changed towards the PAE structure the portfolio acquisition executive do you see anything changing within the hill and it's oversight functions of the budget to allow those PAEs the the ability to restructure where they're putting funds and try and take advantage of the the successes and and cut the failures yes so a couple of things so the Durham you know the direct report managers that's been I mean I it's not a totally new concept but we've greatly expanded it and essentially what that's doing is you probably know is taking these these durperums are saying listen these are strategic programs that are of critical national importance instead of letting this be shared amongst all kinds of different equities in an alphabet soup of offices and agencies we're going to consolidate the authority under one single individual to drive that you know F-47 you know obviously golden dome you know Columbia class we're going to take these critical systems and give them to we're going to cut the bureaucracy out and stop the sharing and empower one person to drive it so that that's in the spirit of that we're also looking at changing the

31:01treatment because for example vessel leasing I've advocated for that actually wrote an article saying's not too long ago about it how owning and building vessels is great we need to do more that yes no question but we also need to explore alternatives especially when we talk about our fiscal picture leasing vessels has long been a practice various nations various navies throughout centuries so changing how we treat the fiscal structure of our dollars is important because right now if we leased something there's no benefit to leasing because the Correctional Budget Office and government accounting office they force us to calculate the entire lifetime impact of a lease at the moment of signing the lease so if we want to lease a sea lift vessel and we want to lease it for 15 years or 20 years we have to treat the whole 20 year cost at least at the moment we signed the lease that's what's counted in the budget and therefore there's no fiscal incentive to actually go into a leasing model where we can defer that cash commitment or have a more

32:06flexible cash commitment we have to spend it all up front and directly as far as submarines given I'm sure you're focused on that is multi-year appropriations so instead of having it be a one year at a time well here's half a billion towards a submarine okay great well that doesn't build the whole submarine that gets us like a third of the way there or according the way there having multi-year appropriations so that those shipbuilders those subbuilders can plan they can lay out more facilities they can hire more staff they can make the commitment to new technology they know that there's going to be a multi-year commitment for that acquisition so those are all different parallel efforts that are underway primarily driven by the Senate Armed Services Committee to make those those changes structural if I couldn't yeah I'm actually thinking also from the aspect of as the the the number of line items and then reprogramming on money and allowing that PAE whether it's for submarines or pick your pick whatever yeah they've got that portfolio of things they've got a winner over here but one of something else in their portfolio they want to take that

33:06money kill that and move it over as opposed to the the long laborious process that can be you know so I've been below the program wholly and actually not directly related but very exactly described we just did that with NASA a few weeks ago yeah so Jared Eisenman our new administrative for NASA and I've been French for a long time and and I worked hard and supportive his appointment because he's just a fantastic human being and you know immediately as soon as take it over NASA there's programs that are funded here that the president's command is to get to get to the moon before China so if the singular focus and primary outcome of my leadership in NASA is getting us to the moon then I need to eliminate distractions and consolidate resources around that singular goal and I need the authority to move things around so like we just did that with NASA there's a lot of other efforts with each branch the Marine Corps kind of self-funded their whole forces nine twenty thirty but that that process is happening and I think you know Goucher has some some ideas around subs and that same vein thank you sir yeah correct eight two parts on

34:06your leasing issue we actually did that 20 years ago with a high-speed vessel out of the Pacific from INCAT wildly successful it ran a foul actually with the other services and particularly the Air Force you wanted to support the C-17 they are responsible for moving Marines and equipment so being sensitive not only to the budget side of it but also those inter-service rivalries that can impose some of the challenges but actually I have a question a little bit more sensitive and it actually it's sensitive to the lives that were lost of the sailors in December of 2019 in Pensacola the three sailors and eight of them that were injured and the commitments that our current president had in his first term to ensure that the Kingdom Saudi Arabia lived up to the commitment of supporting that since then there's just been nothing but legal maneuvering so that Saudi Arabia would not be found liable for that is there anything that you can offer on the Senate Armed Services Committee to say how are we going to take care of those sailors sailors that were injured in the horrible way and killed by a supposed ally no yeah you're not

35:10wrong on that and and I think it's it's it's not just the Pensacola shootings of course there's ties to 9-11 and many other terrorist attacks the first one towers and others that have been either indirectly or directly tied into Saudi either Saudi cells or in some cases alleged that the Saudi government has been directly responsible I think you know that the reality is right now in this fight with Iran Saudi is arguably you and Saudi are the most aggressive anti Iran actors in the region and I think it's unlikely we're going to see any specific action from the admin on that immediately somebody because for obvious reasons weren't where the middle of shooting war but I do know that there have been a lot of ongoing discussions there's I won't say his name just because you know I'm not sure he wants it out there but there there's a very capable and active lawyer that is basically his whole life's work is going after the Saudi and Iranian

36:14connections to various whether it's frozen assets shank sanctioned assets or specific victims that have that have that have been incurred by foreign terrorist organizations and in most cases you know the Saudi government was not at the senior levels was not involved aware or you know supportive many kind of course there are like 7,000 princes in Saudi Arabia and various competing families that for you know decades have have been jockeying and of course the title of prince there is a common one and oftentimes you know many of those many of those royal factions don't align with what the actual ruling the king himself or the crown prince would support so I think there's more to come on that but I don't think we're going to see anything in the immediate future given what's going on in the region over here Kappa Gaffney and senator uh H.A. Jackson common on machinment um curious to get your thoughts on uh working with allies and partners especially as we

37:16look forward with uh the naval blockade you know looking by time with Admiral Spicer previously and prior to the Iraq War you know when we're doing uh oil uh sanctions uh preventing uh smuggling so obviously quite a complex operation that needs to go on and oftentimes requires allies and partners we we had the polls working with us and I know from your your time in Afghanistan Iraq working a lot with allies and partners there but uh just interested in your your thought based on as we see the blockade playing out if uh you think anyone else will will come to uh to assist us yeah I mean right now it doesn't look like we're going to have much structural assistance from anybody else I mean um and I think something that we now need to come to terms with is um there really is not much allied naval infrastructure left under the NATO banner uh I'm a big sport of NATO you know deploy along Senator allies SCSS BS all that but the other day I think we have to be pretty transparent um in admitting that there isn't much of a NATO naval presence as the American Navy now NATO may

38:21have some air assets and ground assets you know the South Koreans and the Japanese and the Pacific you know obviously that's not NATO but you know so from a from an allied naval infrastructure standpoint there really is not much out there um the Royal Navy for decades was but I think we all have been rudely reminded recently that they the greatest navy and history mankind has let itself atrophy to the point where it's largely non-functional um French have a bit but really um you know Australians I mean the August program is is on life support and as much as I love Australia used to live there at a business there uh it's unlikely we're going to see any any major investment from them in that um as far as holes in the water so I think the allied support if it comes which I think we will have some of course I I should say we do already have allied support UAE Bahrain, Saudi Arabia um they they are they are 100 percent behind this no one wants the Iranian regime gone more than those folks do so they are providing a lot of support intelligence personnel logistics um so so they will be there they don't have a you know obviously a blue

39:23water navy like we do so I think most of the supports are probably going to be limited to air intelligence and logistics support as far as like visit board search and seizure operations um I don't think we can count on um any allied forces to do that there's also not many allied forces that can't I mean other than the SPS uh right now I'm not sure that there's any other soft units that really we'd probably feel comfortable even working with us on that I mean as you know VBSS as well a toughest highest risk missions that that we do in NSW it's not something you want the throw you know I don't care how highly trained they are if they haven't done that specifically that that's a dangerous thing to be doing thanks yeah time for one last question but preview of coming attraction to that point in the may issue of proceedings there is a great article about the recapitalization of NATO navies so there actually is a large shipbuilding program underway across most NATO navies because they they recognize that weakness they recognize where they are in terms of shipbuilding and and recapitalizing their navies so that's coming well

40:23I think that's so important just to you know our discussions with my fiscal hawk friend that back there is is incredibly important because you know this is an aspect of our fiscal picture that I don't think is ever really fairly painted which is um you know the western european economy and the free asian economies have really enjoyed tremendous growth on the backs of our navy that the american taxpayer subsidize when we've essentially subsidized western european's existence for the last 75 years um and that of frankly you know japan and australia too um and that hasn't come for free that's come for a thirty eight trillion dollar you know uh death that we're now running so I think you know the the military spending the national security strategy in our fiscal picture these are not d-link these aren't independent issues that don't hinge off one another um our ability and by our ability I mean the free world's ability to have economic growth has been very much rooted in the freedom and navigation that the american taxpayer has underwritten through a massive navy and I think you know that that bill whether it's tariffs whether it's you know you can

41:27couch it in which way you want to whether it's forcing our NATO allies to to to up their defense spending at some point has to come do and and you know that time is clearly now I had nick gerdon most recently assisted section in navy for research development and acquisition I have such a long list of questions to ask you but I'm going to keep it tight um last week goes at a conference we're talking about modular open systems approach and the need to you know set conditions for future success you know to to spend wisely up front so you can iterate and improve as a part of a life cycle so the the question is in as we think about the acquisition reform or acquisition continuous improvement what's the appetite at congress for you know setting conditions doing those investments so we could play that long game of moving fast because it requires upfront work yeah I think so by setting conditions you mean I mean like for instance you know setting up you know model based engineering and test environments and places where

42:36people can go and iterate on designs and improve and field them quickly as part of like basically industry government shared infrastructure yeah absolutely love it and it's almost like I plan of that question with you because you know well one of my one of my priorities I'm working on is something called matrix um Montana advanced training range integrated exercise area the point of this is we can have the best engineers the best technology we can spend 1.5 trillion we can we can do whatever you want but if we don't have places to iterate and refine our gear tactics techniques procedures then all that's for not and one thing that's become very obvious in recent years especially as we're moving out of kind of just traditional hardware kinetic systems as we start looking at cyber weapons space electronic warfare spectrum denial I mean the coin of the realm of the time for century battlefield spectrum I mean there's a reason why drones are flying around tethered on fiber optic cable in Ukraine because spectrum is so contested I mean you you look at even the battlefield during g-watt then you look at the spectrum usage and the spectrum

43:38how it was contested and it was like nothing and it was like wide open and now you look at a 21st century battlefield and the spectrum is fiercely fought over I mean it's like it's like an open patch of dirt and tarot I mean it is fierce competition with who's got more watts who's got more amps who's gonna overpower the spectrum of the other and that spectrum battle bleeds into everything that we do from GPS guidance systems to communication systems to everything we do touch a space now and if we don't control the spectrum or have reliable access spectrum or we can't deny spectrum to our adversary we are at a structural disadvantage on the 21st century battlefield and because of that change in battlefield topography we have almost no test areas nationally where we can reliably field systems and people with those systems to test electronic warfare spectrum denial GPS denial full spectrum like what we need to be able to do is have a j-tack go out in the field and have to coordinate air ground kinetic maneuvers with roder wing assets with unmanned assets with man

44:43assets and a spectrum denied environment with the GPS is being spoofed voice comms are being jammed or spoofed to give you bad information to where spectrum is being manipulated or denied because that will change almost everything of how we we behave on the battlefield both from a hardware tactics and a technology perspective so we're trying to create more training areas and testing areas because right now like as a if you're a small company trying to create it to keep going back same example but you know read about Elon's history with SpaceX you know some of the big primes literally would book rocket pads and missile ranges to prevent him from being allowed to launch his rockets early on in the SpaceX days because they saw a threat coming they said how do we block the scout from the market there's a reason why Elon's first launches happen in coagulant at all in the South Pacific because he couldn't get a launch pad at Canaveral or Van and Berg because a lot of the bureaucrats and a lot of the prime said we don't want this newcomer so we're going to literally just make reservations we don't want to be able to see those hotels we're going to book every room in the hotel for the next two years so he can't go this hotel

45:47luckily he found an old missile range that we were under utilizing in the coagulant toll and that's where he did his early launches because that's the only way he can get out of the the the rain system we have a similar dynamic at some of our ranges where you know there's only you know jerk two and you improving grounds trying to lake and basically one other in Nevada test site where you can go out there and there's an available spectrum for testing that you can really get aggressive and to get on those ranges is literally a two year wait list if you're a top secret cleared prime contractor if you're a rando nerd who thought up like my group was my company much a rando mass nerds thought up this new counter drone so that became the primary program of record counter drone systems for the whole military the Mattis family which was featured in your last article in proceedings by the way it's a picture of it took I'm a drive up today I was reading it we invented that in Montana and our biggest constriction for the ability to develop that system wasn't technology or spectrum or brain power and man power or money it was range availability where we could get that system in the field put it in the hands

46:48of the landscape will who's going to take it down range and iterate with it so yes we are trying to create more structural pathways where innovative industry can actually get with the customer and make magic because we've wasted so much money at DOD over the past DOD now DOD over the past decades you know there's all innovation up here and a innovation hub there we got this you know soft forks a forks all these stupid little projects where apparently we're innovating and burning money and innovation but we didn't we've never had an innovation problem we had an innovation adoption problem so creating the pathways where that innovation happens in a way that instead of just making a bunch of cool projects that sit on the shelf and gather dust they become structurally part of the acquisition pipeline yeah well unfortunately we're out of time this has been a really a much more in-depth conversation that I expected from a US senator I think I'm I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you are able to talk at a much more tactical level detailed level down into defense budgets down into operation that that that conversation about ranges fascinating

47:51to me that was that was a really amazing I think a detailed answer my guest today has been senator Tim Sheehy Republican of Montana Naval Academy class in 2008 former Navy SEAL and member of the Senate Armed Service spending and a Naval Institute life member and senator thanks for your time you're always generous with your time with the Naval Institute thanks for stopping by here today for being on the show and for your insights in your time this is great thank you appreciate it yeah thanks to our sponsor so today's episode is brought to you by booze Allen from rugged 5G on warships to unmanned systems deep below the ocean booze Allen delivers technology that works where it matters most their AI driven mission ready capabilities help the Navy operate and win in contested environments no manual no road map no problem learn more at booze Allen dot com slash defense