 Please carry on everybody, grab a seat, please, please. Thanks so much, thank you. Hey everybody, you can say, hey sir, that's fine. Hey, thanks for coming, this is the third one of these I've done and I want to keep them going. This one's going to be a little bit different because I actually have a lot of stuff I want to put out. I have note cards here so you're going to have to just bear with me as I read to you a little bit. But there's an awful lot going on and I want to be able to, in addition to making some announcements, I want to be able to spend some time talking with you about the budget reality that we're facing because I know it's on everybody's mind, not just from a communications perspective, our job to explain this to folks but also because it affects our lives every day and it's going to definitely affect the lives of our civilians. So we'll get to all that stuff but I I'll try to get through this quickly without rushing it so that we do have time for your questions. So again, just some announcements, none of them are not necessarily related but the things I want to make sure I get out there. Number one, we stood up a new director at Inche Info, OI-7, a float media systems and that'll be headed by Janet Quigley. You all know Janet, a real pro, been on the team for a long, long time. I remember first working with Janet when I was at All Hands Magazine and she was on the TV show. So Janet, thanks very much for doing this. We're real happy to have you on the team but new ACI, OI-7, the same work, the same focus on making sure that our ships and sailors keep informed out there at sea, all the same responsibilities but now inside the the chinful umbrella. I think it's the right thing to do efficiency wise and I'm just really happy to have you back on board. So thanks very much. Very soon I'm going to release a PAO career continuum. Now this is for the active duty side so I want to be very clear about that. It's for the 1650s and it's something that and I can't take credit for this. It really the effort started Bruce and Denny really started this work and I was only too happy to inherit that and be able to publish it but I really believe as Denny did that it is important for us to provide the 1650 community some structure and to be able to help them plan their lives and their careers across the continuum. And that continuum doesn't just mean that you know that that it's jobs and wickets you got to hit. I'm not interested in checking blocks and we've talked about that before but it does include opportunities for education and even a little bit of you know getting out of the getting out of the lifelines of PA every now and then. So I think you'll find this very interesting. I've sent it out to the 06s. We're getting some feedback from them but I think we're about ready to push send on this thing and we'll send it out there. Clearly I want a value the feedback doesn't have to be just from the 1650s either. When you see this thing if you have ideas it's not etched in stone. We can always amend and modify and change it in fact that's exactly what I want to do. I want to have a plan that we can deviate from if we need to. And I also just to hit that point again about checking blocks that is not what this is intended to be. So when you look out there and you'll see okay at the 06 level maybe I should be looking at co-coms or you know or numbered fleet jobs or maybe the senior course at the war college where those are ideas those are potential opportunities. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to do all those things in that order and I'm living proof that that's the case. I mean I bounced around all kinds of different ways and I never had a co-com job and this is my first job at Chinfo so I mean it it doesn't there isn't a set pattern here we need some flexibility in the community to manage ourselves but it does provide a structure it does provide a planning tool a way for you to kind of look at your future and that's the idea. We're going to try something new speaking a career continuum and opportunities. We're going to try something new for carrier PAOs and this is a real hat tip to John Perkins up at the war college I'm not going to take credit for it when I was up there a few months ago. He said hey you know the supply core has a great department head school that they put their officers through before they go to carriers and you might want to look at that it's very very good very thorough and so we did and I talked to Rear Admiral Heinrich the chief supply core officer in the Navy great guy and I told him I was interested in maybe sending PAOs there instead of the course that we had been sending him to. He couldn't have been more supportive and so our first carrier PA a future carrier PAO is going to go there Jennifer Craig she reports to the link in this summer to relieve Steve Curry and we're going to get her up there to that supply core department head school and hopefully she'll have some good feedback for us on how well it went and whether it was it was worth the effort I think she'll find it is because it's the the the supply core takes very seriously their department head responsibilities on carriers as do we and I think what's going to be very valuable so I'm real proud and happy that we're able to do that and again hat tip to John Perkins so when you give me ideas be careful what you tell me because I actually might do it but and I was really and I had a chance to I was up at war college Thursday given the graduation speech if I don't know if you guys can believe but Ryan Perry actually did get his degree I used to think that the academic standards at the war college were high apparently I'm just I'm kidding I'm kidding they are I'm kidding they're very very high but anyway I had a chance to speak at the graduation and while I was there I pulled John aside and thanked him because if he hadn't brought this to my attention it never would have come up and so when you when I'm dead serious when I tell you I want your ideas and your thoughts float them up and and we'll take them seriously we do still have some manning challenges in the community and I'm primarily at the with the emcee on the enlisted side but I want to give you a little bit of good news we are now we just got approved a new master chief billet at end paced west which is something we've been wanting to do for a long time so that means we'll go from four to five approved master chief billets which is terrific it's just more opportunity now for for our senior chiefs to look ahead and and know that there's that there's even a higher opportunity for them to excel and to lead now that said we have seven on the books right now so we're over even the five now that we have but I do think that with some retirements coming up and with with master chief hoolihan getting picked up to be the command master chief we're going to we'll get I think some flexibility here so for all of you chiefs and senior chiefs out there stick with us because there's some opportunities and we're continuing to try to to make that possible for you we've had tremendous response on the rust ignore navy media awards program tremendous 1250 entries this year which is up two and a half times from last year so it's fantastic because I think there's a lot of buzz out there and enthusiasm we of course we've there's more categories so there's more opportunities for entries of course but I I do think that there's a good energy there the judging is going on now it started about two weeks ago finishes up Friday and I really want to hand it to the chiefs mess for owning this I asked them I didn't I told them they're going to own it and they have done it and they've done it very very well the the feedback I'm getting from Master Chief McMillan is they themselves are enthusiastic and energetic about this because they know it's their program and that's the way it should be so I'm real excited about it again wrap wraps up the judging Friday is that right Master Chief and and then so we'll we'll be able to get the results out here how long do you think that process takes Master Chief so it wants to process the results first week of March okay great so anyway just terrific I'm just so pleased and so grateful for the chiefs mess for the leadership that they've shown here it's just been terrific now I know the last time I talked to you I promised you that one of the things that I would do over Christmas break was write down communication priorities my priorities as the chin foe moving forward into this year and I told you that I would get them out to you right after the Christmas holidays and here we are heading into March and I don't have them yet I actually did do it I actually sat down over the Christmas break and wrote it it's about three pages just like I promised you but then when I came back the reality of all the budget uncertainty really started to hit home and I began to I looked at what I wrote against what we were actually facing in terms of real significant changes to the way the Navy is going to do business and the way we're going to talk about the way we do business that I think they were a little divorced from reality so I didn't put them out to you on purpose and I think before I do anything like that I we need to get kind of through this a little bit more and find out where we're going in FY 13 from a budgetary perspective before I try to lay out some sort of vision document for you I just didn't want it to be completely divorced from reality and as I looked at it I thought it was so I just owed you that update I didn't forget my homework assignment I did do it it's just not quite ready for to turn into the teacher yet and so that brings me to the thing I want to talk about spend most of the time talking about and that's this budget uncertainty you know the Navy has been very vocal and very honest and transparent and very forward-leaning about the impacts the combined impacts of having no spending bill for this year and then sequestration on Friday if there's no debt deal sequestration will take effect and you can go online if you haven't already you can see all of we've been very open all the slides are out there read them for yourself all the impacts it'll take effect March 1st I suspect that you'll see communication from the department from the secretariat level on down about what specific decisions are going to get made and along what kind of a time frame they'll be made and I also expect that that kind of communication will continue throughout the spring the CNO is very committed to not making decisions before their time so there are some things for instance some maintenance availabilities which aren't supposed to happen until well well into the year there's no reason to cancel them now on March 1st but there will be some that have to get canceled there'll be some work that'll have to get deferred some things that we won't be able to do anymore but to the degree he can preserve some of his own decision flexibility he's going to do that and so as secretary maybes and I think that's exactly the right course so the challenge for us as communicators is that we need to stay abreast of all those decisions as they're being made more importantly the ones that aren't being made and communicate and find ways to talk to our own people about that we've been pretty active at Chinfo and pushing that stuff out to the community and certainly if there's feedback on how we're doing I'd be welcome welcome to hear it but I think we've done a pretty good job of that we're going to continue to do that we're going to push stuff to the community as fast as we can and as as efficiently as we can but we need the community we need the rest of the community all across the navy to share some of that load in communicating it can't just be secretary maybes and the cno that are out there talking and both of them have been we do need the fleet commanders we need the type commanders the numbered fleet commanders installation commanders we need them all out there co's all the way down to the co level and we've been pushing captains call kit material for that very purpose so for those of you here and for those of you that are listening to me online please feel free to use the material we're giving you and get your bosses out there they need to start talking and some of them are i'm not trying to impugn all of them but some of them are but we need everybody out there talking and and communicating with their people and with their families about what the impacts are going to be they're not insignificant these impacts there's been uh you know there's been i'll just say it now i mean you're going to see tomorrow anyway i've written an op-ed piece for the virginia pilot that'll appear tomorrow there's been this narrative out there that the the navy's been blustering on this kind of bluffing on this that that we've that we've been stomping our foot for political purposes or to create drama i can tell you nothing is further from the truth i spent a good chunk of time this weekend talking to the cno about these very issues and he's deeply concerned about the very real impacts that that these cuts are going to have on the ability of the navy to do its job now as i said before he and the secretary are committed to trying to do whatever they can in this fiscal year to keep the navy flush and they'll do that and i suspect you'll see the movement and decisions being made and then maybe remade as we try to figure out in fiscal year 13 how to keep forward deployed ready and as high but when you get into 14 and 15 it gets a little bit more difficult and so we just all need to you know be be aware of that it is very dynamic those slides you the first set of slides we put out on january 25th we just put out another set last week i think it was chris right last week updating those numbers because the the decision making process is very dynamic it's going to change again i can guarantee it and i like i said you have our commitment to keep you informed um what's it going to mean for us in a practical sense well you've already seen an impact on travel for instance um my travel has been cut back and i suspect everybody else's travel has been cut back i know it's affecting navco it's affecting n-pace it's affecting our i seaman uh in afloat media systems because there's a lot of there's a lot of work that needs to get done outside that uh and some of it's not getting done because you're not able to travel now we're going to preserve mission essential travel as much as possible but defining mission essential is a pretty tricky thing sometimes so travel is going to get hit conferences you've already heard i'm sure you know i've canceled the conference that we were going to hold in the spring didn't want to do it was looking forward to that uh greatly but i don't see how we can do it and justify it so and it's across the board navies the navies taking a hard hard look at conferences and those kinds of things and then of course there's the furlough issue which i know is is going to be an impact to all of us i want to stress that no decisions have been made on furloughs right now if sequestration occurs then i suspect furlough planning will accelerate uh we have told congress that we do are we are doing planning for furloughs uh but we've preserved the flexibility that the decision hasn't been made yet and then um furlough if furlough if furloughs take place of course uh our civilian employees will be notified by a letter that they're furlough that furlough will be will occur between the middle of april and the middle of october basically uh one day a week you you won't be allowed to come to work it'll be left up to commanders to determine uh how those furloughs are managed inside their command so nobody's going to dictate to a base co you know what days each what civilians are coming to work or not that's going to be up to commanders to do that for the chin foe staff it'll be up to me to do that and we'll work our way through that um to try to preserve as much readiness as we can with uh you know a workforce that's not going to be here one day a week and how we're going to do that uh i don't know the specific answers for chin foe yet but we are working on that i know this is causing great angst and uncertainty it's causing great angst and uncertainty to me too because i think you all would agree with me and this goes across the community we couldn't do it without our civilians it's just it's going to be incredibly painful uh and i i wish i had better news but that's really where we're at i can tell you this i'll keep you as informed as i can as things as things happen and as decisions get made um the nice thing about being at chin foe is we are you know the sort of the fulcrum of information here in the navy department so we'll we'll get news quickly and we'll be able to share it just as quickly as we can and again for those of you that aren't here and you're listening to me out there the same thing we'll push you we'll push you everything we've got on this so that you can communicate your bosses can communicate with your civilians i kind of got ahead of my cards here didn't i outreach that's the other thing that's going to affect us outreach in about an hour i'm going to be meeting with the cno and i've asked for the meeting so that i could walk him through the logic that i want to pursue with respect to navy outreach for fiscal year 13 we had a very robust navy week and 50 50 uh folk program all set up um we even had flag officers assigned uh to various cities and to all the navy weeks we mean it was kim marx had done and and rob null had done a great job laying it all out uh when when this hit we had it all kind of right after the holidays it was set and then this this reality set down on us and so what i'm going to tell the cno is i want to preserve as much as i can same way he wants to preserve maintenance for ships and aircraft i want to preserve outreach so i don't want to make any decision before it's time i'm not going to just say on friday all outreach is getting canceled i want to preserve the flexibility to do navy weeks in 50 50s maybe later on in the year if we can you know if the money is available on the other hand i got it i'm i'm past the point actually in making some very significant decisions right now there's a few navy weeks that are very close the first ones in march uh savannah and tampa um and uh i don't think we're going to be able to do those but that's why i'm meeting with the cno i want to walk him through that logic one of the main points i'm going to make to him is that aside from preserving flexibility in canceling stuff i still want to do outreach and i think it can still be done under these fiscal constraints we just have to be smart about it so we won't do navy weeks but we can still do outreach in those same cities maybe using reserves our reservists that live there it could be virtual outreach as well we have a lot of flag officers that that did 50 50 visits last year they've got these great relationships and some of them are their hometowns others are just towns they visited no reason why they can't get on the phone and do interviews or you know or stay in touch write letters i mean there's a way we can we can do virtual outreach as well but we are looking at scale down physical present outreach in some of those same cities we had navy weeks we're just not going to call them navy weeks because we really aren't they don't they won't really meet the same requirements of the navy week the fleet is getting ready i think to make some big decisions about their participation in fleet weeks and in navy weeks as well port visits i don't want to speak for emil gortney because i don't think these decisions have been made yet but it's very possible that most if not all conus port visits will get cancelled you know the blue angels are certainly under threat right now that it's it's no decision has been made there yet either but it's certainly possible that their flight schedule for this year will get canceled the thunderbirds will follow suit air demos and flyovers all that will will come into a greater scrutiny osd has put out some guides have they put it out yet rob there's it not out yet but it's gonna come out soon guidance that we actually helped them write that will sort of lay this out sort of at an umbrella strategic level same idea that i just told you that we're going to try to preserve as much as we can thematically it'll be more aligned towards wounded warrior and veteran reintegration into the communities around the country that's going to kind of be the theme that's a very legitimate reason to continue outreach so so that it won't just be that our participation will change but the context and the character of it will change a little bit too we'll keep you posted on this i'll let you know how the meeting with the cnl goes um and uh we'll we'll get guidance from him and then we'll we'll press on uh we talked about that i want to talk about family support is a little bit um the cnl has been very very clear that to the maximum extent he can with everything in his power he's going to preserve family support programs and initiatives and he's deadly serious about it i can tell you that for sure um and and we're going to do that but you know there's probably going to be some impacts for instance if there is a furlough a lot of our child care uh child development center workers our navy civilians so there may be an impact there the commissaries as you know they're looking at maybe shutting down one day a week i think here in the dc area they're looking at maybe shutting down on wednesdays because it's their slowest day so every wednesday you know it'll be closed i mean there's going to be some decrement in the benefits but i can promise you that we're just as committed to keeping these family support programs in place as we can try cares another issue that the chiefs are very very concerned about and have expressed those those concerns um you heard deputy secretary carter you may have heard him testify to this a couple of weeks ago that um that there's potential hits to the tricare program coming later in the year nothing firm yet but it's difficult to predict exactly how that's going to affect you're still going to get your you're still going to get the quality of health care that you have earned and the dental care and all that and your dependence as well but it may be longer waits that kind of thing so it harder maybe a little harder to get appointments again we'll keep you informed as much as as much as we can okay and this gets me to just the last point here and i kind of already hit this um the speech i gave up in newport um and if you haven't read it i'd ask you to go ahead and look at it not because i think it's this wonderfully eloquent gettysburg address like speech but but it but it does summarize for for me the crux and it gets right to this budget problem we're having of of what our responsibilities are not just as communicators but as members of the military and of the navy all of us and i told the grads one i think we need to do a better job of relating to the people we defend i i get i worry that and it's not so much for us because i think i think we do a great job here in the navy public affairs community but i do worry that we talk at people instead of talking with them you for me say that they want access to conversation not information and so i i i urge the graduates to think about the way they think about the people they defend and um you know you always hear a lot of hand-wringing well the american people don't know us they've forgotten about us they don't appreciate us and i just frankly don't buy that argument i think they do support us they do know us and they and they want to be there for us now do they know everything we do know because as i told the graduates they're pretty distracted on their own right now you know we're facing some significant budget issues we're wrestling with them they've been wrestling with them for a long time as well i guarantee you raise your hand if you know somebody family friend or otherwise who's either lost their job lost a home lost a car having trouble making payments yeah look at all those hands me too in my own family um it's serious and they've they've got real issues at home to worry about and it's kind of nice that they don't worry about us means they trust us you know they don't need to be thinking every minute about the capabilities of the united states navy because they know we got it they know we have a big job to do and they appreciate that and that was one of the points i made to them the other one was i think i told them uh we got to understand the world of politics a little bit better i'm not saying that we you know as i said don't declare openly for a party you know how i feel about being apolitical and keeping your political opinions to yourself particularly those of us in this business but we do have to understand the business of politics it's not it's not good enough to just say well oh that's that's them that's not me and you know they're wrong and we're not you have to understand that business and uh the difficult task of governing and yes i know it's partisanship is bitter in town it's it's perhaps more bitter than i've ever seen it in washington and i've been here consecutively since you know 2005 but even before that i had a couple of tours in dc it is it is bitter right now and i can't explain it and frankly it's not my job to do that and i wouldn't even want to try but we have to understand it and we have to realize that they politicians whether they are they are political appointees above us in the executive branch or their elected officials on the hill um they are every bit as patriotic as we are they believe in this country every bit as much as we do they have perhaps a different view that's okay that's the business of democracy and i just wanted us i wanted the the students to understand that but not to treat it as if it's something different and apart it's not uh and then the last point which i don't need to tell you is that i i i um i talked about my views on strategic communications and and the fact that communication is a two-way street it always has been since caveman days and and that that has never changed i mean all the social media in the world and technology the speed with which information travels doesn't change the fact that people still need to talk to people and listen and that was my main point listen and let go of a little bit of control and so back to what i said before we all have a responsibility uh especially in times that are uncertain like right now to communicate to talk to one another and to our people and your commands people and their families if ever there was a time uh where communication was critical it's now and it always has been but it's really critical right now and it's really critical that we join that conversation that we look for opportunities to insert ourselves and when you see something that's wrong factually or thematically jump in fix it correct the record don't be afraid of that as i said you're going to see an op-ed piece from me tomorrow on the virginian pilot because i've seen a a tone in coverage that i don't like and frankly is wrong so i'm pushing back my expectation is you'll do the same thing okay i'm going to shut up now and take whatever questions we might have okay yes this is being recorded so you have to be okay so i just wanted to bring up that the fact that um what you were saying at the end about our attitudes and how we think about the other people in american society i was disturbed by the navy times or military times publishing big headline today when i just struck the cover story it says you know troops to obama don't mess up our military yeah and my first gut reaction was it's not our military it's all it's societies it's america's military military so that attitude is something we have to also listen for and and correct when we hear it and see it i completely agree i mean there's a uh here i'll take that for you i'll just hand it to the next person i um i completely agree i i uh i i didn't go this far in my speech the other day although i had wanted to but i mean and gates talked about this before he retired that that sometimes and in some places in the military there grows an attitude that we are somehow superior to the society that we defend i what i said to the grads was you know we aren't different from americans we we come from them we are citizens too we come from them and we're all going to go back into american society we're all going to end up getting out someday we're going to hang up the uniform um and we have to remember that we are and if we start to believe that we are somehow separate and apart and better than that's even worse separate and apart is bad enough better than then we're in a dangerous place um in this republic and i really worry about that so it's a great point i saw i had the same reaction when i saw the cover this morning it's not a good place for us to be and i think kate's right to the degree we see that feel it hear it push back on it you have an obligation to do that you've read on my 13 rules rule number two is be skeptical so be the person in the room that says hey wait a minute this is this conversation is going a bad way need to turn it around good point who's next yeah danie wait are you gonna get a view of the mic danie a couple more lines on oh i7 why do i need to call them just a little bit deeper on what they are going to do or what their mission is is it technical is it a float media denotes what is it yeah a float media systems the job stays the same the installation the repair the modernization the and the procurement of systems for afloat commands to help them communicate it's the it's no different janet do you have anything you want to add to that see i nailed it so that's yeah well actually you it was nav c isn't that right janet you worked for nav c before yeah that was your claimancy but there's a microphone we were with dma defense media activity and then as a result of the break we're seated over at nav c but we transferred from dma off their roles and directly onto chin foes roles that answer your question you satisfied danie all right good sir i have a good go ahead oh just one more hey sir a bit of a professional development question you talked about your op-ed and i'm curious to know why why it's penned by you and not say somebody like ceo or the secretary or something like that why you chose personally to yeah and number two why you didn't choose a different paper i mean is it because the fleet concentration area why don't you use the post or anything good good questions one i did it because i take very seriously my role as the navy spokesman i mean that's what they pay me to be and i believe the the chin foe should be the spokesman and this is an issue that is i mean could the cno or the vice chief of penned it yeah they could have one could argue that maybe i'm a gortney could have penned it but i believe it to me it got right to the the character in our integrity when it comes to making decisions it wasn't the issue about truman's the op-ed piece if you haven't read it it's basically walking the reader through why truman was delayed that it wasn't an act of drama and it certainly wasn't political pandering on the military uniform side so um i felt very strongly that we needed to push back on that argument and i was very comfortable with me doing it as the navy spokesman speaking for all the flag officers because there's there's not one particular flag officer that was responsible for that decision first of all was secretary pennett's decision based on advice that we gave him the uniform side and secretary maybes as well i just felt that there were so many people involved in this that it was probably better to have it crystallized coming from me and again i take a i take that responsibility very seriously about being a spokesman and i tend to want to be more i tend to want to be active and why the pilot we had this discussion over the weekend and i think there was a couple of things first of all it is sort of the paper of record for the united states navy if you think about it and it's in the it's the major newspaper in the biggest fleet concentration area and the truman is there in norfolk and i just felt that it was appropriate and i i frankly i was a little concerned that if i placed it anywhere else the placement itself could look political you know what i mean like if i tried to get it in the post i mean that's a little hamfisted i think i was writing as much for the truman families and the sailors as i was the critics and so i felt again it just made a lot of sense to go with the virginia pilot does that make sense it was well gut at first i mean i i woke up saturday morning and read george will's column and i know george and like him very much a great respect for him i called him and talked him through the logic behind it and he was very grateful and appreciative for the context he didn't have that when he wrote i don't think he necessarily i mean he's not going to change his opinion or his peace and nor was i asking him to do that but i wanted him to know what it was like for us and he asked me and this is what got me at the near the end of the conversation and i you know it's but i called him cold i mean i hadn't talked to him in probably over a year and so he was very very gracious to take the call cold didn't know i was going to make this call but near the end of it he goes well you guys had to have known you guys meaning the military leadership in the navy the uniform you had to have known how this was going to get perceived that you guys were going to perceive as being political and trying to ram this down on congress and i said george i don't know that i don't know that we that we would have i don't think that's true i don't think we we knew we knew that or that we would have predicted that that would have been the way it would have come across that's when i hung up with him man that little exchange was just in my brain and i thought like i got to do something about this and so i talked to the cno on saturday morning he had not seen the piece by then but had heard about it and had similar concerns and i told him what i was thinking and he agreed that it was worth a shot so based on that conversation and and what was already in my brain i went ahead just we just put some pen to paper i mean and that's what we came up with we worked it yesterday with uh with the cno who had some very very good suggestions and changes to it and also with the secretariat secretary may maybes's staff as well and and i showed it to george of course so because i do mentioned secretary panetta in there i thought it was important for george to see it and understand it and to know where and when it was going to run i mean the president's going to newport news tomorrow so you know i didn't want anybody surprised that this was going to be in there not that it's going to cause a problem in that regard but so we socialized it yesterday and then that's where we are right now is that in one official point can you talk about just the need for speed now in the old days you get an op-ed somewhere it could be a week long process and running all the vetting and all that other kind of stuff yeah it was very important uh to me that we you know once i had seen the piece saturday and i had the conversation with george i knew time was of the essence because you're right if i mean everything is the speed of heat these days and if you don't um if you see something wrong or an idea that you want to correct you you got to do it then you know i i'd rather have an 80% sort of solution and pushing back on something or clarifying something than 100% a week or 10 days from now when it's irrelevant the um the window for making this case is very small because as we get longer in the week the issue is not going to be whether the navy was being political or not it's going to be the actual no kidding march 1st here they come you know what i mean um so the window was very very in my view i wanted it today uh but the pilot doesn't do op-ed pieces on monday they don't have an op-ed page on monday and we didn't get it to them until yesterday afternoon right chris so um it wouldn't have been probably wouldn't have even if they had an op-ed page we probably wouldn't have got in today but i wanted it today i wasn't trying to be too cute and putting it in tuesday because because of the president's visit i wanted it now because the only you know it's the attention span right right now because of that piece on saturday this idea that the navy's being political is fresh and it's out there and it's picking it had been picking up steam all week so you gotta if you're gonna kill something or at least try to kill it you gotta do it when it matters you can't wait because then if i were to do this later in the week first of all i don't think anybody would run it and even if they did it would just be lost in the clutter nobody's gonna pay attention so you gotta be fast i had um a couple of guys from out jazeera come in uh to see me the other other day last week these are guys that you remember jeremy young and josh rushing you know we worked a lot with them on this on the joint staff and um good catch up with them and uh josh asked me uh just out of the blue he goes so how has social media changed how's it changed your life as a spokesman what does it make different and the one word answer i gave him was speed and you know so when you even when you do an op-ed piece and it's going to run in a daily newspaper there's still a social component to this you know because it'll hopefully it'll make the rounds in social media and it'll get around but it's speed everything today is about speed and and i think even without social media we'd be dealing with significant speed issues but it just makes it that much faster and if you're not up to up to step if you're not willing to engage and sometimes doing it without permission i mean if you think it's the right thing to do and your gut tells you do it and then you know if you have to ask for forgiveness later ask for forgiveness later but but we have to be faster we can't you can't over you can't overstaff stuff you just become irrelevant and i asked him how has it changed your life as a reporter because it's changed everything and he gave a great example um uh a couple of weeks ago you may have followed the protest activity in Cairo but they were the story had begun to emerge that small groups of young men thugs were targeting uh women who were coming out to Tahir Square to protest and in a very organized ugly way carting these women off the square and and raping them and assaulting them and they were even so sophisticated that they had hand signals i mean they i mean it was it was a team approach here it was just ghastly and he said thanks to social media and and witnesses tweeting hey i just saw a group take a young woman down this alley to this corner behind that building uh law enforcement was able to by following twitter get to the scene and some and break some of these up before they happened but it also allowed the media to get there as well and they believe the combined effect of media attention at the site of the crime before the crime is taken place combined with law enforcement presence all thanks to social media has helped to reduce the occurrences now i think it's still a problem over there but it's there there sure sure seems to be some deterrent effect so it's changing everything it's it's immediate everything is immediate yeah a 190 participants from across the fantastic um there's several questions that have come in regarding reserves um how is the crc sequestration going to impact at and the role of reservists it will affect at to the degree that i mean it it and i and i wouldn't want to speak for vic but um if i i think uh at will be okay but there'll be a much sharper look on on training opportunities in general for reserves um they'll have to be justified just like everything else we're doing but because the reserves you know part part of their very existence is to train it is mission essential work i suspect that they'll still be able to do that but i wouldn't want to speak for each co about the the how how they're going to manage that did that answer that okay yeah liz at least right now our guidance is just continue you know obviously use the same discretion on planning things but we don't have the same right the same problems with the travel and things like that yeah because it's essential to what you're doing i mean our cut back quits and exercise or scale something down right there isn't the opportunity to go right but normally t's what i'm saying that's essential to being a reservist is to preserve those skills so i don't expect that that'll my that's so basically i was right right i love it when i hear i'm right good all right sir i have a question from lieutenant commander steve curry from the abraham lincoln he wants to know with the the budget issue would you consider extending orders to four years or keeping paos in a local area longer no um no i what right now we're not looking at changing tour links and right now there are no this is a good question because it gets to you know one people are thinking about uh while they're still going to get pcs orders you are still going to get pcs orders this year i can't predict what it's going to look like in 14 and 15 but we're not anticipating any mandatory adjustments to tour length or cutbacks and pcs orders now again i'm not the chief and able personnel but that's where we are now we're still pressing on with all the moves that we have scheduled to do this year and plan to do this year so your prds won't be affected and i have no intention of of artificially on my own uh changing those prds i mean so much of we're small community um and uh the daisy chains have got to keep going so i want to try to keep as much stability and normalcy in prds as possible but it's a great question steve great question commander will marks at the naval academy he asks the public seems to support at least some cuts to the defense budget why haven't we emphasized communication points advocating the authority to move money around from lower to higher priority items rather than just communication points for getting money back into the budget well we actually have will i mean um if you go back and look at the testimony that the vice gave to the senate and the cno gave on the house side and and frankly all defense leaders that one of the things they have repeatedly talked about is the lack of flexibility under a continuing resolution to move money around there's no what they call what we call transfer authority now i want to be clear and the cno made this point to me yesterday when we chatted that even with transfer authority it's not going to solve every problem this fiscal year but but he has been very very open uh about wanting that authority and they and he's and he's addressed this with hey and secretary maybes have addressed this with members on the hill in private meetings as well so we have asked for that we have talked about that but we shouldn't oversell it it will certainly ease uh the strain on the operating and maintenance accounts this year but it isn't going to alleviate all the problems we're going to face genie did i get that right right it's not going to solve everything but it certainly would make it easier for us to to move money from other accounts into the operating accounts so that we won't have to cancel all these availabilities and we won't have to cancel all these exercises and deployments um but it does come if you take money from say your investment accounts into put it in if you if you have that authority okay so that's great you can preserve some of your operational ability but it comes at a cost to something in the future too it's about trade-offs and it's about balance and understanding what the risks are so you can take money from a program uh a future ship or a future aircraft or something like that but you know so that gets you readiness now but you're gonna you're gonna end up paying for you're buying into your future later eating into your future later anything else here in the room sir what's being communicated we've been very clear with uh osd in the leadership secretary panetta deputy secretary carter about the real readiness concerns we have in the navy i mean you've seen those slides those slides have been shared with with the osd staff and as the as the cno made clear again over the weekend with me you know it's important that people understand that the decisions that are being made for instance the truman decision all being done um in collaboration and in coordination with the osd staff but i think we've been very open and honest with uh with osd and on the public affairs side too i was you know i um talked to george a couple of times over the weekend and you know we're i'm doing my best to keep him informed of everything not only that we're doing but what we're saying about what we're doing so i think there's been a pretty good lash up there i'm not aware of any any holes in it um i didn't get any pushback on the outbed george and i i sent it to him and i and we talked about it um he agreed that it was a good thing to do and didn't he didn't have any changes but but on the on the the communication side i have been keeping george informed and osd informed about what we're doing and how we're doing it and when we're going to say what and the point one it's not just that we're pushing it i mean not from the no that's true i mean it's we have requirements to provide it's going both ways it's that answer your question because i don't know if i specifically got at it okay what else you got any out there lieutenant mike hatfield from in pace asks on behalf of a contractor for contractors whose contracts and end at the end of this physical year what will happen to them contractors um it's hard to talk about this in any kind of a blanket way those uh the contract work that we are currently under that will continue uh so so contractors working under a valid contract continue that you know that we've already paid for that's not going to change um but what the department has asked all commands to do is take a look at the renewal of those contracts do you really need to renew it do you need to renew it in a different way or does it it doesn't need to go all way all together so contract work in general is getting scrutiny at the command level but i you know each command is going to handle this differently under the their guidance of their senior leadership but contracts that are currently in effect will continue to be in effect i got like five more minutes that's what i'm being told anyway anybody else chris yes thank you yeah we brought all hands back i think i sent a note out to the community on that um and it's uh up on up on the web a h dot mill um if you haven't checked it out please do again i i view as i said all along i view all hands as a dynamic iterative product and so i expect it's going to continue to change it's going to uh we're going to continue to improve it and make it better it's all it looks great my goal is to make it practical usable information for sailors and families and to be as immediate back to your question on speed it's another vehicle i'm i'm hoping another vehicle that we all use for speed to get the word out there um and navy times is a great job sometimes i think they do too good a job and i i want to give them a little run for their money here i think we can i think all hands can allow us to do that if we all use it and that's the point and we all have to be participating in this and feeding stuff to them unusable digestible bits oftentimes uh when we describe a policy decision it's in a navy dot mill story that is fairly difficult to get through uh and we've got to find ways to make information more accessible to everybody uh and i you know i i again i give a lot of credit to navy times they're able to do that they can take they can take a fairly uh what we would view a complicated or complex policy decision and break it down and here's the top five things you need to know about it we don't do that we just lay it out there we you know and we take the nav admin or we take an all-nav or whatever the message traffic was that define this thing and we we hash it into a navy dot mill story that's not going to be good enough anymore we've got to get better at making information usable and digestible good question oh i'm being told to tell you that if i didn't get to your questions and you have any questions you want to send them to me separately i will certainly follow up and get you the answers i will do that i'm committed to that i'm gonna stop here thanks again for your time it matters to me i know everybody's busy and i know there's a lot going on i'm going to keep doing these we'll do that we'll do another one in a couple of months as well but i'm always available it doesn't have to be in this forum you can always get to me any number of ways and i promise i'll get back to you with as best of the best answer i can thanks for your time thanks for listening have a great day