John Konrad
@johnkonrad · OSINT & conflict tracking
John Konrad is the founder of gCaptain, the leading maritime-industry news site.
1.5 million views, wow. The bots are on overdrive today. During Biden I was told by, checks notes, every Democrat on my entire feed that our ships looking like russian trawlers was a good thing. It showed they were spending their time of DEI training. Now that most of the fleet looks great except those returning from long combat deployments… it’s bad. I do agree this is unacceptable. We absolutely must hold @NAVSEA and our shipyards to higher paint application standards. We have to cut stupid environmental paint standards. We have to use commercial best practices for 5+ years hull costings. We need to defund and close @IMOHQ and get the United Nations out of our shipyards. We must build more ships to cut down on long deployments. We gotta get out of the Middle East. There is a lot he could criticize Trump for, like his first pick for SECNAV not moving fast enough on shipyard reform, but the majority of our fleet is looking MUCH better.
That would be the US Merchant Marine Academy model. Graduates all become licensed US Merchant Marine officers but can join any service after graduation. The purpose is so you can recall them if war breaks out during a mariner shortage. This makes a lot of sense for space. Gives you ready and trained officers in the event SpaceX makes a breakthrough and officer demand skyrockets overnight. The only problem with this model is right now we have a war during a massive Mariner crisis and the services (including the Army which is barely engaged in Iran) refuse to release their Merchant Marine officers. And the officers don’t want to go because merchant ships are big floating targets and the work is strenuous. They also don’t want their Army careers sidetracked. This is just one reason why I was thrilled when Trump and @SECNAV awarded Merchant Mariners assigned to the Ford Carrier Strike Group the Presidential Unit Citation. For many years the Navy and even the US Merchant Marine reserve put everything on hold to surge into the desert to help the Army and Air Force. It’s time for the other services to reciprocate.
This is a wild story. So they are activating a Merchant Marine Academy training ship to Diego Garcia to help in the Iran war. Meanwhile, WAPO is about to publish another hit piece that names me. So I haven’t had time to research this. But I’ve heard a LOT of rumors and speculation & since that seems to be the standard of journalism today, F it. So way back in the 1st administration, Trump got funding to build new, massive training ships for the 5-state US Merchant Marine academies. These ships are to train new USMM officers & can also be used for disaster response. But California was the biggest pain in the ass about it, so they got the last of the 5. All the other states have gotten theirs except CA. So early this month, @SECNAV held a Q&A session with families of the USS Lincoln & some were angry about that some food deliveries have been delayed. The media found out & turned this into a major news event. The food was arriving, but @MSCSealift ships were struggling to bring supplies all the way from Singapore. Many inside the Pentagon asked why not resupply ships engaged with Iran from Diego Garcia instead. As @mercoglianos explained, the Army recently defunded prepositioned ships there, so using it as a supply depot is not possible without surging port & warehouse equipment & soldiers there. But they can’t because…. a senior government source tells me there is an anti-air threat somewhere nearby that makes moving troops to this island that the us military uses but Britain owns and wants to sell too risky. So they decided to use these training ships instead. The problem is they are slow & the Panama Canal is experiencing low water & Houthis are shooting ships leaving the Suez. So they decided California Maritime Academy’s old, smaller ship would do. BUT the Navy is pissed that California shut down plans to build the new California Forever shipyard there. And @GavinNewsom is angry that he’s getting blamed for it. So Newsome decided to hold a press conference at Cal Maritime yesterday to publicly say how great his shipbuilding plans are (despite the facts) and to privately convince Cal Maritime not to send their ship to Diego Garcia. The White House didn’t want to give him a win anyway, so they decided to activate the New York Maritime ship currently located in the Bronx instead. These ships have a long history of arriving too late because they are owned by @DOTMARAD (not the states or academies) which is a broken risk-averse entity. So they decided sometime this week to activate it but that means students won’t be able to use it this year for lab assignments & training. So the students are probably going to be pissed; they are spending a lot of money on tuition & now can’t do their lab work and such, so they are going to complain to the parents. And then the parents are going to complain to the school administration. Then the school administration is going to ignore them because they don’t own the ship; @SecDuffy does. And there is nothing that parents or school administrators do unless they get NY Governor Hochul and Mayor Mamdani and their local congresswoman AOC to intervene. The best way to get Dems to intervene is, of course, to play victim & claim the loss of the ship for a semester will create a “mental health crisis.” Of course, it won’t. Students can be bussed up to Massachusetts if they really need a ship for a few days, but that’s an inconvenience. But the school is run by a former Navy Admiral, and he likely doesn’t want to be seen as being politically so… He knows the parents contacting the liberal press might get action as it did with the Lincoln. So he releases a statement suggesting they are ready for a mental health crisis that doesn’t exist to put it in the minds of students and parents to call the press and Mamdani’s office. The result is you get this nonsensical statement and a ship that might or might not get activated and, if yes, will likely arrive too late.
“We have cleared the mines Iran laid months ago”
NOAA Corps. He was a uniformed officer. And yes she absolutely did. Many of us tacitly or explicitly supported progressivism until your side’s ugliness and lies radicalized us. I personally fought @cdrsalamander’s anti-DEI campaign for over a DECADE. Never voted for Obama personally but I was overwhelmingly optimistic about his message of unity and hope for ALL Americans. Then what did he do? He turned us against eachother. And yet I STILL pushed back on Sal. I pushed back right up to the moment @PeteButtigieg took $1.2 TRILLION and poured it into EV chargers and “racist roads” And you know what?? I am from the Bronx. The roads ARE racists. Dem controlled Park Avenue IS pristine while the roads in the Bronx are TRASH. I wanted him to fix racist roads. WHERE THE F ARE THEY? The roads in the Bronx are absolute shit and kids are dying of asthma. My entire childhood Dems made promise after promise to MY neighbors in the Bronx while doing nothing but letting it burn. Mayor Pete radicalized me. And I became FULLY radicalized when Mayor Pete didn’t bother to check the NOAA before building that Gaza Pier. There is absolutely no way in hell that pier would have been built and killed 3 Americans if someone competent like Mr. DR was promoted to leadership at NOAA. But go ahead and bodyshame her again like you did yesterday. Tell the world how ugly you think she is. Then go ahead tell us how beautiful a 350lbs trans immigrant who’s sucking down Medicaid payments faster than pints of Rocky Road. Put that fat elephant on the cover of Sports Illustrated. You are a despicable human. ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY I want to help deaf Americans and minorities and the poor and the obese and the mentally ill parents and doctors who sterilize their kids. Problem is I WOKE up in a cold sweat when I realized people like you are hypocrites and theives sucking taxpayer money through NGOS. HOW DARE YOU BODYSHAME DR? You are right. I am woke. I do think you can find beauty in everyone. I do love every American who doesn’t commit fraud while being downright nasty to their fellow countrymen. I am WOKE AF. It’s called being a good Christian. Absofuckinglutely her husband getting pushed out of NOAA radicalized her. WE CAN NOT HELP THE POOR, THE DIVERSE, THE SUFFERING, THE BRAVE if we let nasty people like you defraud taxpayers while mocking, firing and berating those with the intellect and work ethic to help ALL AMERICANS Shame on you, you nasty awful woman.
This isn’t true. Progress on the MAGA Mandate slowed significantly before the Iran war even started. Iran war or not we still wouldn’t have a SAVE or SHIPs Act passed by congress.
War innovations over the past century WWI - battleships WWII - carriers Gulf War - massive sealift Russia - Ukraine - Drone swarms This is a pivotal time in history