 Welcome to the Secretary of the Navy's All Hands Call, broadcasting live from the Defense Media Activity Studios. Today we're going to be taking your questions from across the fleet and around the world. I'm Petty Officer Andrew Johnson, and I'll be your host. Joining me on studio today, Secretary of the Navy, the Honorable Ray Mavis. Mr. Secretary, thanks for joining us, sir. Before we get things rolling and get the questions coming in, can you address us on the status of your Navy and Marine Corps family? You know, the thing that the Navy and Marine Corps gives our country, the unique thing is presence. We are where we need to be, not just at the right time, but all the time. We are all over the world, and the way we provide that presence is by doing four things. It's by concentrating on four things, people, platforms, power, and partnerships. People, the sailors and marines we've got are the absolute age that we have. It's the advantage that we have over anyone else, and trying to make sure that sailors and marines, families are taken care of, making sure that you've got the right tools to do your job, making sure that the deployment schedules, making sure that the stress on the force, that you're resilient, that you can meet these things. It's one of the reasons we put out 21st Century Sailor and Marine so that all the programs that we've got, you can go to one place and look at. But that is our age, are our people. Second are platforms. You know, we've got the best platforms in the world, the best ships, the best aircraft, but quantity becomes a quality all its own. And so we're growing the fleet. In the five years before I became Secretary, the U.S. Navy put 27 ships under contract. In the first five years I've been Secretary, we put 70 ships under contract, and we're growing the fleet to where we're going to get past 300 ships again before the end of this decade. Third is power or energy. You don't have to look any further than the headlines today to see how energy can be used as a weapon. And also it's important that we have a steady cost for energy because over two years the Department of Defense has had three billion dollars in additional energy cost. That's hard money to find and the only place we can find it is out of operations. So we train less, we fly less, we steam less. Or if the bill gets too big, we buy fewer ships and fewer aircraft and that's just not, either any of those is not a good option. And finally, partnerships. Marines and sailors have to be diplomats. You're the only people that a lot of foreigners will ever see, the only Americans that they will ever meet. Those partnerships are with the American people. Those partnerships are with industry that build our platforms but they're with our friends, our allies around the world. And if you just look at what the Navy and Marine Corps are doing around the world today, in the Pacific, we're in the western Pacific doing missile defense work. Marines in Okinawa and a rotational force in Australia. An amphibious ready group operating in the western Pacific. We just announced Pacific Partnership Station to do humanitarian assistance and disaster relief around the Pacific. You move a little farther west, Marines in combat in Afghanistan. Airplanes off a carrier coming in to do close air support for those Marines and sailors on the ground. We've got baton on the line. I understand it's in the fifth fleet right now. Chips in the fifth fleet are doing everything from counter piracy to security assistance all across that area. We've got Marines in the Black Sea rotational force. You go a little farther west. We're doing missile defense work in eastern Mediterranean and we've got road to Spain on the line today. I was there not long ago to welcome the first of four destroyers that were putting in to Rota to provide that constant presence in that area in Europe and around Europe. And here at home, we've got sailors and Marines spread across this country training, getting ready to go on deployment. The final thing I'll say is that as we come down, we're out of Iraq, we're coming down out of Afghanistan, but for sailors and Marines, we're not a garrison force. We will always be deployed. There aren't any permanent homecomings for sailors and Marines. We are America's insurance policy. We are everywhere we need to be. And we are there to give America options on how to react to anything that could happen in the world today. I'm really glad to be here and I'm really looking forward to talking to you and to getting your concerns and answering your questions and to talk about just what an amazing thing this presence that we give and the sailors and Marines that we have, the work that you do, the skill that you show, the sacrifice that you and your families make every day to wear the uniform of this country. Thanks for that opportunity, MC2. Absolutely. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. And to break the ice, we're going to start off right with that European presence. Roda Spain, go ahead with your question. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Sergeant Andrew Griffin, Fast Company Europe. I have a question for the Secretary of the Navy. Sir, my question to you is, with the situation going on in Ukraine and Russia, do you have any vision on our presence having a greater impact on the actual conflict? I've got a tradition at all hands called. I give a coin to the first question. It's going to be a little hard to get it to you, but I'm going to make sure I get your name and we'll send this to you, okay? This is yours. Now, on your question, what we do is we give options. We give the national leadership options. We send an extra ship into the Black Sea. We've got additional Marines in Bulgaria and Romania as part of the Black Sea Rotational Force. And we're doing work with our allies in the Baltics and around Europe. Our job, as I said before, is to be not just at the right place at the right time, but at the right place all the time so that our national leadership has those options so that they can make a decision as to what our response is, what we do in this crisis or in any other sort of crisis. But that's what the Navy and Marine Corps give this country. And that's why we are never a garrison force. That's why we're never at home for very long. That's why we are forward deployed and that's why we're putting those ships into road of where you are. All right, and moving right along, continuing with our global all hands call theme, we're going to take our next question from social media. And who better to handle that than the United States Marine Corps? Standing behind with an update, Sergeant Cassandra Flowers. Yes, here we are in our social media cell and our first question comes from Travis. And he would like to know, what is the SECNAV's position concerning the national budget and DOD funding? How does the SECNAV see the next 10 years of the US Navy and USMC's strategic policy affecting the proposed DOD budget? Great question. Number one, we were under sequester for about a year and it's just a dumb, dumb way to cut. Everybody expects as we come out of two wars that we're going to spend less on defense. But the important thing is how do we do that? How do we do it in a smart way? How do we do it in a way that keeps the capabilities that we need? How do we do it in a way that keeps the tools for you that we need to have? So Congress fixed 14 and 15. Now they didn't get back up to where the President's budget was, but they gave us some stability for 14 and 15. So we can do some planning. Past 15, it's up in the air. Sequester is supposed to kick back in and 16 going forward. But we're working very hard to make sure that we don't cut in this mindless way and just using this MEDACS approach. The National Defense Strategy of the United States, the President announced in January of 2012, is a maritime strategy. It's what, for us to do that, we've got to keep a great Navy and a great Marine Corps. We've got to grow the fleet. We've got to make sure that we have that presence. And that's what one of my jobs is in terms of making sure that the budget that we have reaches what we need to do. Now we're going to take some risk in some areas, but what we're going to focus on are things like building ships to make sure that we can maintain that presence. We're going to focus on the things that will try to make sure that the force that you have, everything that you need to do. Looking out 10 years, if you can, on the budget, we're growing the fleet. We're trying to keep faith with sailors and Marines. Now the Marines are coming down in numbers. The Marines went up from 175,000 to 202,000 during the surge in Iraq. We're coming back down, right now the number for the Marines that we're drawing back down to is 182,000 Marines. Now Marines can do the job that we need to do with 182,000 and we can keep faith as long as we're given enough time to do that, we can keep faith with Marines and with their families in terms of how we get to that 182. The other thing though that's been hurting us in the budget is these things called continuing resolutions. Congress doesn't pass a budget on time. We're supposed to have a budget by the 1st of October. It's been the spring in a lot of years. In fact, I've been secretary now for almost five years. We have never had a budget on time since I've been secretary. And if you've got a continuing resolution going, you can't do things like put a ship in a shipyard because that's called a new start. You can't spend any more money on a program than you spent the year before regardless of the need. And so we've got to fix those two things, continuing resolutions and unsequestered, all the time recognizing that the American people are demanding and should expect that we're going to spend less on defense but that we will keep this country safe and we will come down, we will make these reductions in a smart way and not in just this ham-handed cut everything a certain percentage way. Always a tough question but something everybody's always asking about. Moving right along, we're going to take a phone call coming to us from Korea. Korea, go ahead with your question. Hello, my name is Kelly Reeves and I'm stationed with my husband here in Korea. And my question is also regarding the budget but from a family standpoint, with the smaller military budget on the horizon, has there been any more discussion about replacing the current housing and food allowance programs, the BAH and BAS, with a standard locality allowance that would consolidate our dependent allowance, OHA and COLA together? And then can you comment on how this might affect overseas military families with regard to our housing and living allowances? I don't know of any effort to move toward that one local allowance that you talked about and that would be a DOD-wide thing. That wouldn't be just the Navy or just the Marine Corps doing it, that would be for the joint force. That would be for everybody. As I said, I don't know of any movement in that way. The things that we're doing, the things that have been recommended on things like pay and allowance is to slow some of the growth. It's not to cut anybody. It's not to cut anybody's pay. It's not to cut anybody's allowances but it is to slow the growth because military pay and allowances have grown 40% more than the private sector over the last decade or more. And we're getting to a point and we're really at that point where we're going to have to decide whether we are able to buy the tools that your husband and fellow Marines and fellow sailors need to do the job in order to get... because personnel costs are taking up such a large part of the budget. In the Marines, for example, 63, 64% of every dollar, so 63 cents of every dollar goes for personnel costs. It's not because the Marines are more expensive. In fact, they're cheaper than any other service that we've got. It's just that we have gotten to that point where you've got to make a choice. Either we're going to get a lot smaller or we're not going to have the tools that we need or we're going to slow the growth a little bit. Slow the growth on things like BAH, slow the growth on pay raises, slow the growth on some of the health care costs. Without doing all this, in the words that our C&O uses, there's quality of life with pay and benefits and for families. There's also quality of work. Do you have the things that you need to do your job and do you have the training to do that job for the country? And we've just got to keep that balance. Say two. Alright, Mr. Secretary, next we're going to Camp Pendleton. Camp Pendleton, go ahead with your question for the Secretary. Morning, sir. Corporal Green, 1st Challenge, 11th Marines. I want to know recently, President Obama signed the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement. I want to know how that is going to affect the West Bank deployments and the location and the out-tempo? You're right that he just signed that with the Philippines last week, I guess. And we don't know yet how that's going to, what that means in terms of rotation, what that means in terms of who goes there. But we're going to keep over 22,000 Marines west of the international dateline. So Okinawa, Guam, Rotational Marines in Hawaii. And I don't think you're going to see up-tempo is going down in the future, either in the Pacific or anywhere around the world. Now what we're trying to do is make sure that when you do deploy, that you know when it's going to be and you know when you're going to come home. That we give you some certainty in terms of you and your families. Now the world gets a vote and you can, and so crises come up and best plans are going to have to be scrapped. But if you look at what we're doing with something called the Optimized Fleet Response Plan, we're starting with carriers, but we're going to move to amphibes, we're going to move to the whole fleet. And it takes for carriers a 36-month period and says here's when we're going to train, here's when we're going to do maintenance, here's when we're going to deploy. And then here's when we're going to come back home and be the surge carrier. That will give you an idea and some certainty for you and your family. As I said, we're going to move that to amphibious ready groups to our amphibes all around the world. Your deployment schedule though, the high up-tempo, the demand is going up, it's not going down. And so I think that these high deployments, we're trying to make sure that they're not too long because we've had some very, very long deployments, particularly of amphibious ready groups and the muse that they carry with them. We're trying to make sure that they're not as long as they've been, but again, the world gets a vote. How the agreement that we've just reached with the Philippines plays into that. It will play into it in some way in terms of our rotational forces. And my understanding is that's what that agreement talks about is rotational forces. And an agreement that we've got in place now is in Darwin, Australia, where we send Marines. We started out with a company. We've gone up now. We started out with about 200 Marines. Now we're around 11 or 1200 Marines. And we're building up to a battalion-size set of Marines with more than 2,000 Marines there. But on a rotational basis, not there on a permanent basis, and out and around the area doing engagements, doing training, doing exercises, working with our partners and our allies in the region. Alright, Mr. Secretary. As you mentioned earlier in the show, this is from USS Baton. It's a pre-recorded question for you, sir. Greetings, sir. My name is Quartermaster 2nd Class Lewis Blue. I'm from Rayford, North Carolina, and I'm currently stationed on board USS Baton. My question to you would be, what are some of the advantages and disadvantages about the eighth month deployment and if there were any plans to stabilize the deployment cycle in the future? Well, I appreciate the question, and particularly from Baton, since you're out there, you're in the fifth fleet right now. You've been there for a good while. The answer I just gave to the other question, we're trying to regularize deployments. And we're trying to make sure that we reward people who spend a lot of time at sea. We've increased career see-pay. So if you are at sea for three years cumulative, you're going to see a 25% increase in see-pay. If you're at sea for three years in a row, then you're going to get see-pay premium, and we're doubling that from $100 a month to $200 a month. If you're E-5 to E-9, and you've spent eight years just in your career at sea, then any time you're assigned to a ship, you're going to get a combination of those two. We're also looking at giving additional allowances if deployments go over a certain length. So if they go much over six months, we're looking at extra pay for sailors and Marines that are at sea for that long, because that is a really, really long time to be at sea. I was in the Navy more than 40 years ago, and six-month deployments then were pretty standard. Six months is not a short amount of time to be away from home, and so using this optimized fleet response plan, we're trying to make sure that our deployments are stable, that you can plan for it, that you and your families can plan for it. You know when you're going to be training, you know when you're going to go on deployment, you know when you're going to come back, and that we reward people that go to sea, and that go to sea a lot, because we are the Navy, and that's our job is to be forward deployed. We are the Marines, and that's our job to be forward deployed in there, around the world, and not just at a base back at home. But we understand the stress that that puts on people, on their families, and we want to, number one, make it more certain, and number two, reward you for doing that. And I hope you all have a great cruise, and get home very safe. Absolutely. Positive sea pay incentives are always well received, I can imagine. Our next question is coming to us via Skype, all the way from Afghanistan. Afghanistan, go ahead with your question. Good morning, Mr. Secretary. This is Lance Corporal Barron with First Battalion 9 Marines in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. When we get into country, we have a vast assortment of optics to aid us when we're doing our job. Will we be seeing these optics stateside as a part of our battalion's standard issue? One of the things that Marines do better than anybody is adopting new operating techniques, adopting new things to help them get their job done. Marines have done it in things like energy. We were losing a Marine for every 50 convoys of fuel coming into Afghanistan at the height of the fighting. Marines adopted things like these roll-up solar panels to power GPS and radios, solar panels to power tents, better generators, LED lights, stuff like that, and that's becoming a part of the kit for every Marine unit. Same thing with the other equipment that we have. And one of the things also that Marines do way better than anybody else is we're bringing our stuff back from Afghanistan and we're fixing it. We're looking at what Marines need going forward. Marines are going to get lighter because you're going back to sea. Marines have been used as a second land army for more than a decade now in Iraq and Afghanistan and you've been magnificent at it. But Marines going forward, the thing that they give the country is this amphibious capability. This forward-deployed, the expeditionary force and readiness, the force that's ready to go. If the fight is today or if the crisis is today, you're ready to go today. So we're going to take a look at the equipment. We're going to fix the stuff that we need to keep going. Marines get more for a dollar than anybody else in the service. And so I think the short answer to your question is yes, we're going to make sure that you keep all the things that you have in theater that you'll need to do your job, but your job may be different going forward. So that equipment may be a little bit different. But one of my jobs and one of the commoners' jobs and one of the sergeant majors' jobs is to make sure that you've got whatever tools you need to do the tasks that America gives you. And simplify, Marine, and tell your fellow Marines there, I've been to Afghanistan 12 times. I'll see you again soon. All right, Mr. Secretary, we've got a lot of people waiting on the line, but our next question is coming to us from Grottin, Connecticut. Grottin, go ahead with your question. Hi, how are you doing, sir? This is IT3 Robinson from Subbase, BCT. My question for you is noticing the recent changes in policies and regulations. Do you see anything being implemented for women with different hair types and textures, such as African Americans and Hispanics to be able to wear our hair in a more natural state? Yeah, that's one of the things that we're looking at right now. We're looking at that across the service, not just for African American women, but for everybody. Does it make sense? What allows you to do your mission and, you know, it isn't just a big old pain to keep up? And we're going to have the answers pretty soon. The Secretary of Defense has given that to every service to look at, and I've had a bunch of conversations with sailors and Marines about this, and I hope that with some of your input, we can get a good answer on this one. Who's next? All right, next question, Mr. Secretary, coming from our live studio audience. Lieutenant, go ahead. Good morning, sir. How are you? I'm Lieutenant Guadalupe. I'm stationed at Walter Reed, Bethesda, and my question is a little bit more towards the medical side. We're using a little bit more preventative medicine to treat our sailors and Marines. My question is, are we going to provide more of these services more on a fleet level, providing more nutrition, exercise, and health education to our sailors and Marines on the ships, and as well as shore side? Yeah, we've got to do that. The preventative stuff, make sure that we've got a culture of fitness, make sure that everybody's ready to go, make sure that no matter what happens, we can respond. The things that you mentioned, physical fitness, diet, helping people stop smoking or making sure that alcohol doesn't end up in a career ending or life ending incident. And these are a lot of the things that we're talking about in terms of 21st century sailor and Marine, trying to bring it all under one thing. It's way easier to keep something from happening than it is to fix it, than it is to rely on some of our great doctors and nurses and healthcare folks to fix. And so the reason that we do these PFTs, the reason that you see the fuel to fight things, how many calories are in something, are they good calories or are they sort of empty calories? Are they going to give you what you need? The reason that you see all the smoking cessation programs and the reason you see the emphasis on sort of de-glamorizing alcohol, not to keep people from drinking, but to keep people from losing their career or losing their life over just a bad decision. And preventing other things too, preventing sexual assault, preventing some of the things that are attacks on our shipmates. And so the whole notion of 21st century sailor and Marine, what we're trying to do is to stop these things, is to prevent them before they get done. But I want to do a bravo Zulu to Bethesda and to our corpsmen and doctors and nurses around the world for the great job that y'all are doing. And I'm so interested in healthcare that I married a nurse. Absolutely. Well, Mr. Secretary, we've got some great stuff already and it's turned up some social media buzz. Sergeant Flowers has got some more with an update. All right, we have a new email coming in from Chad Petrie. He would like to know, Mr. Secretary, are the LCS and JHSV programs meeting the needs of the U.S. Navy in your opinion? What is the likelihood of additional LCS orders beyond the 32 ships already ordered? Well, we've got a requirement for 52 small surface combatants. And the Secretary of Defense has ordered that we take a look at LCS. This is very normal. Take a look at it in terms of survivability, in terms of lethality, in terms of the whole program. There were concerns about LCS early in terms of cost. We've gotten that not only under control, but it's a pretty model program now in terms of how much these platforms cost. We've gotten it down from almost $800 million a ship down to $350 million a ship now. But we take a look at every single platform we do, whether it's the DDGs that we did, whether it's the Virginia-class submarines. It doesn't matter. When they come into the fleet, at some point we take a close look at are we doing them correctly? Do we need to change anything? How are these ships performing? And so the Secretary of Defense has said that we should take this close, detailed look, which I think is absolutely appropriate, that the options coming out or we keep building the LCS way we're building now, that we build modified LCS or that we build a completely new design, but take into account schedule and cost so that we make sure that we get those ships to the fleet. Because as I said, we've got this requirement for 52 small-surface combatants to meet our needs and meet our obligations around the world. Let's take it back to Skype. We're going back to Afghanistan. Afghanistan, go ahead with your question. Good morning, Mr. Secretary. This is H-1 Rudy Gutierrez with Med-Alpha here in Helmand, Afghanistan. How do you feel about opening the Chief Foreign Officer program to the Korman rating, Mr. Secretary? I'm going to give you, Doc, the very best answer I've got. I don't know. But I'll tell you what, I'll check into it and make sure that I've got your, make sure I can get back in touch with you. But I will look into that. I don't have a clue. All right. Moving right along, we're headed back to Rota, Spain. Rota, go ahead with your question. Hi, sir. I'm Y-3 Bassalier. I am from NMCB 74 in beautiful Rota, Spain. My question to you is, are any of the weapons systems currently being tested going to be deployed anytime soon? We're testing all sorts of weapons systems, and we're deploying some of them very soon. We're putting a laser weapon on the panse in the Arabian Gulf this summer to see how that weapon does in a maritime environment with all the salt and the corrosion and the heat of the Arabian Gulf. We're testing a rail gun, and we're going to put one of it probably on something like a joint high-speed vessel to test it out. I was just at the christening of the Zumwalt, and it's got a brand new gun system that is amazingly long range and amazingly accurate. We've got new missiles coming into the fleet. We've got, we just got weapon system after weapon system after weapon system that either advances on what we've got now are completely new stuff like the laser and the rail gun. And as soon as they're ready, we're moving them out to test them in the fleet to make sure they work not just in a lab or in a test area but in the fleet. And we're going to get you the most advanced things that we've got, and we're going to do it just as quickly as we can. Alright, our next question is pre-recorded coming from Yokuska, Japan. Hello, Mr. Secretary. My name is Staff Sergeant Adrian Gomez. I'm currently stationed at Combined Arms Training Center at Camp Fuji, Japan. My question is, how will budget cuts affect retirement for active duty military? Well, Congress has got a commission looking at retirement. They're going to report, I think it's early next year, but the notion that everybody has, everybody in leadership, is that whatever retirement system you joined under, that's a retirement system you'll retire under. So that if any changes are made to retirement, it'll be for people who join after those changes are made. So I think the answer to your question is nothing, it won't change. It won't change the system, won't change the amounts of whatever retirement you would be, you would get in any other way. Excellent, excellent. Let's check back in with our social media status. Yes, along with the hot topics of budgets, we have a question from Stephen from Ohio, and he would like to know, are we still going to be able to stay ahead of our enemies in submarine technology with the budgets and the way that they are? Absolutely. I'll give you a longer answer, but we own the undersea domain. We just announced we're buying 10 new Virginia-class submarines announced yesterday over the next five years. We're building two subs every year, and these are technological marvels. These are way ahead of any submarines anywhere else in the world, and we're going to keep that technological edge. We're going to keep that edge in the underwater domain. We've got Chief of Naval Operations, that's a Submariner, and he understands particularly well the importance of doing that, and that's one of his commitments and my commitments that we will never fall behind in undersea in just that presence and in what we can do in the undersea domain. Absolutely, great news for the sub-community there. Moving right along, we're headed back to Rota, Spain. Rota, go ahead with your question. Good afternoon, sir. My name is Ellis Juan Tomas Gutierrez. I'm from NAFSA Fleet Logistics Center, Rota, Spain, and my question to you is, with the previous shootings onboard naval installations, what security measures are we taking and what is the long-term plan of action in order to prevent this? Well, when the tragic shooting happened at the Washington Navy Yard and we lost 12 heroes that day, we took a real close look at security, see what gaps there were. We took a quick look and then we took a much more detailed look, and there were some gaps. Now, we don't think and we don't believe that any of these actions that we've taken would have prevented the Washington Navy Yard, but they might prevent something in the future. So, we have taken some additional security steps to make our bases safe and secure for far sailors, for our Marines, and for their families, but having said that, we could make our bases into fortresses. We could search every single person in detail. We could search every single vehicle. What it would mean, though, is that you'd have not much interaction with the surrounding communities. What it would mean if you didn't live on base, it would take you two or three hours to get through the security checkpoint. What it would mean is that they would become fortresses, and I think that's not what we're looking for. What we're trying to do is, if there are gaps, is to meet them. And I think we've done that after the Washington Navy Yard. And if we find new gaps to address those, but the shooting, and the last thing I want to say, the shooting in Norfolk, the first responders were the ones that shut that down. We lost a shipmate, another real hero in that. But those first responders were the ones that kept that from being any worse at all. And we're going to make sure that we keep those first responders. We're going to make sure that they've got the tools they need to do their job, and we're going to make sure that we take whatever measures we can to make sure that the bases are as safe and secure as we can possibly make them, given the fact that those bases, we're not going to turn them into just fortresses that nobody can get in and out of. Alright, Mr. Secretary, we're going to... Rotten, go ahead with your question. Good morning, sir. My name is ETSN Avila, a station on the USS New Mexico. The question to you first, sir, is with the recent integration of females onto submarines, where will we see further female integration in today's Navy? We've got women officers today on SSBNs and SSGNs. And the big news there is there's no news. They've just been integrated into the crews. They're doing great. They've come back from several deployments now. Next, you're going to see women officers going into Virginia-class attack submarines. That's going to happen very soon. And then you're going to see enlisted sailors going into submarines across the fleet. We stood up a group to look at how to do that, making sure we've got the right compartments, things like that, making sure that we understand the way to integrate these into every different type of submarine. And what ratings we're going to need and how we can move women into those ratings onto submarines. But one of the things we found, whether it's on a service ship or submarine, the more diverse we are, the stronger we are. And the opening up of submarines were one of the last places in the Navy that women could not serve. We just opened up a riverine craft, which I think is next to the last absolute place that women couldn't serve. The only community that right now women cannot serve in are the Seals, and that's not a Navy decision. That's a special operations decision. But women in submarines, like women on service ships, like women in our Navy, has made us a better Navy, has made us a stronger Navy. Alright, sir. Heading back to sea, taking a pre-recorded question from USS Jason Dunham. I'm I.C.2 Allen on the USS Jason Dunham. My question for this sec nav is, many rates are known for the assets they receive during training, such as civilian certifications and clearances that make it more profitable for them to get out. How can the Navy convince them to stay in? Well, we're trying to convince people to stay in in ratings that are absolutely crucial like that. We've got re-enlistment bonuses for ratings that are undermanned but in high demand. Also, it's the service aspect, and it's the good that you do for your country. And we're trying to lower the stress on sailors and their families by doing things like this optimized fleet response plan that gives you more time to plan about when you're going to be deployed. We're doing things like if you go to sea, this increased career sea pay and career sea pay premium to make sure that people know that we value what you do and that you're very important. Now, having said all that so far, we're seeing record recruiting and still record retention across the Navy and across the Marine Corps. And I think that speaks partly to the things that the service and the military brings, but I also think it speaks to the patriotism and the dedication and the willingness to serve of people who raise their hand. And the fewer than 1% of America that actually puts on the uniform of America and raises their hands and says, send me. And that's an awesome thing to see. And that's the best part of my job is getting out and seeing sailors and Marines own things like the Jason Dunham that I went to the commissioning of Jason Dunham. And I think, except for El Salvador, I've been to every single place that so far that a call or Skype has come in from. And part of my job is to tell people how much not only the Navy and Marine Corps appreciates their skill, their dedication, their patriotism, but how much this country does. Because we're America's away team and when we're doing our job, we're usually a long, long way from home. And people don't get to see just how good our sailors and Marines are, just how talented they are, just how educated and trained they are. And part of my job is to try to get that word out. And it's to go thank them, thank sailors and Marines on behalf of those people that they protect. Alright, Mr. Secretary, we're going to give you a chance to go back to El Salvador. We're going to try it again via Skype. El Salvador, go ahead with your question. Good morning, Mr. Secretary. My name is M.A. Warren Ridgway from NSF Lakehurst, Knoxford, Dixie New Jersey. My question is, what can be done to improve the joint federal travel regulations for single sailors serving in O'Connor's duty assignments? The JFTR rules seem to be inconsistent with how single sailors and married sailors are treated with respect to housing and allowances and pay entitlements. For instance, married sailors on O'Connor's PCS orders get housing and dislocation allowances when assigned here. But single sailors do not. That's one of those issues that we struggle with all the time. And the best answer I can give you is promise to go back and take a look at this particular instance. But I'll go back to my own experience. When I was in, as I said, 45 years ago, I was single. I got paid less, I got fewer allowances, and I always found myself on duty on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. I had a family, too. I wasn't married, but I had parents and aunts and uncles and folks that I wanted to be with. And so it is always a pull and a tug because we want to make sure we take care of dependents. We want to make sure that we take care of families. But we also want to make sure that we are fair in the way that we do it. And I'll just take this and get back to you. Alright, Mr. Secretary, head into the West Coast, back to Camp Pendleton. Go ahead with your question, Camp Pendleton. Morning, sir. Sergeant Armstrong here with 1st Marine Division Communications Company. Why does it take so long for Marine and fellow service members to receive their VA benefits after their enlistment? You know, it shouldn't take as long for Marines or anybody to receive VA benefits. And one of the things that DOD and the VA are working on is shortening that. Marines and Navy, we've shortened it more than anybody else, but it's still too long. We've gotten it down to about 180 days down from it was more than 300 days. It was a year before you were getting it. We've cut that more than in half, but it's still taking too long. And their efforts underway at the DOD level, their efforts underway at the VA to have one set of records to make, you know, we ran a pilot and the Navy make one determination of need. So the physical fitness determination, the disability determination would be made once and not twice the way it is now. And we're hoping that the lessons learned from that can be rolled out. It's taken too long. There shouldn't be that gap in between the end of service and the VA. I know that people, it's a DOD-wide issue. It's not just Marines. It's not just sailors. And I know that people are working on it. We need to do a whole lot better. Excellent. All right, Mr. Secretary, we're going to take it a question from our studio audience. Pet Officer, go ahead. I read last week that the Naval Research Laboratory has developed a method to create JP-5 equivalent fuel out of sea water. And I'm curious, is that something that's cost-efficient in that not only will we produce an equivalent amount of fuel based on the energy we use, but is it something that we're going to have to overhaul all our aircraft and our ships based on the new chemical composition? Well, it's still in the research phase. It's still in lab right now. It'd be pretty cool if we could do it. I mean, we seem to have a good bit of sea water to be able to do that. But anyway, I've been working on energy since time I came here. And one of the requirements that we have for a new source of energy is just what you were talking about, that they got to be a drop-in fuel if we're going to use them across the fleet, if we're going to use them across our aircraft fleet. Because we've got most of the fleet we're going to have for the next years and years and years. We're going to have to use the most of the aircraft. And it would be just incredibly, prohibitively expensive to change those engines. And that's why, you know, biofuels that we've now demonstrated with the Great Green Fleet at RIMPAC two years ago and that we're beginning to buy now have got to be drop-in fuels. They've got to be cost-competitive with fossil fuels and they can't take any land out of food production. And those are our requirements. It would be the same for any sort of new fuel unless it's sort of a niche fuel for something like unmanned underwater vehicles or something like that. Then we could design the vehicle around the fuel. But if we're putting it in the whole fleet, we got the engines. And the great thing about the biofuel we use so far, as I said in the answer to a previous question, the big news was no news. The engines didn't notice the difference and that's what's got to be the case. But it would be cool, wouldn't it? Thank you very much. All right, moving right back to Groton, Connecticut. Groton, go ahead with your question. Good morning, Mr. Secretary. I'm E.T.T. Peser from Submarine Squadron 4. My question is, in terms of the med board process, is there something that can be done to improve this in terms of time frame and communication throughout? I'm going to ask you to repeat that. I didn't catch what process. I just didn't hear you. Oh, med boards. Same sort of answer that I gave on the VA. We are working to make sure that med boards, disability determinations, medical determinations are made only once between the service and the VA. We're trying to make sure that they're done faster. And as I said, we've compressed the time for Navy and for the Marine Corps, but we still have to compress it some more. Because, you know, you can cite all the statistics you want to make sure that we're coming down in terms of number of days that we're getting better at these sorts of things. But if you're going through it, if you're the one that's waiting for that med board, if you're the one that's waiting for that determination, those statistics don't mean anything. We just need to do a better job of getting you an answer and getting you through that process quicker. And it's one of the things that we're focused on. Excellent. Let's take it back to social media. Sergeant Flowers, you have an update for us? Okay. Jason Martinez would like, sir, what are we doing to help our sailors and Marines transition to the civilian world? We're trying to do a lot to help sailors and Marines transition to the civilian world because most people that come into the Navy and Marine Corps don't spend a career. They spend one tour, two tours, and they go back out and they do great things. We try to start fairly early, up to a year before your transition date, up to a year before your end of service date. Take you through some of the benefits that will be there for you. Take you through some of the processes that you'll need to go through. Give you some options in terms of which way you go, whether you go for more education, whether you go for a particular set of job skills or job training so that you can move right into the workforce, or whether you want to become an entrepreneur, whether you want to go out and do something, start a business on your own. We've got these different tracks. We've also got an apprenticeship track that if you want to do something, I'll take, for example, welding in a shipyard and it relates to something you've done before. We can put you in with an apprenticeship program so that as you come out, you can spend some of your last service time actually in these programs so that when your service ends, you can move right into a job. Employers, the other thing that I and a lot of people are working on is making sure that employers get the skill that's coming out of the Navy and Marine Corps and all of our services because you've got leadership skills, you've got incredible technical skills, you've got the kind of skills that in terms of discipline, in terms of just life experience that every employer ought to be looking for. And one of the things we've got to do and one of the things I think we're beginning to do much better is to hook those employers up with people coming out of the military so that they can see how good our sailors and Marines are that are getting out so that we can see the skill and the talent level that they bring to any job and so that it's not a murky process and so we do that lash up before you get out of the military and not just sort of say thanks and see ya. But to have that good, strong transition process in place, make sure that you avail yourself of all the things we've got out there that can help make that transition and help make you as much of a success in the civilian world as that you were in the Navy or the Marine Corps. All right, thank you, Mr. Secretary. Moving on to our social media, we've got one more question from there. This question is from James. He would like to know, are there plans to improve shipboard systems or add satellites to increase connectivity and bandwidth so sailors and Marines can maintain contact with their families via social media and Skype from anywhere in the world? One of the things that this communications revolution that we're in, one of the big issues that it brings to us and one of the big challenges is bandwidth. Just having enough for our installations, having enough for our ships at sea, having enough for our networked systems, weapon systems, communication systems, all the systems that we rely on to do our jobs. And in addition to that, making sure that we can stay in close touch with our family, with our loved ones back home and we're gone on these long deployments a long, long way from home. And we've got some programs underway. We're managing the spectrum a lot more, a lot more actively managing the spectrum so that we can do all these jobs. We're bringing new stuff online, new capabilities online to make sure that we keep that bandwidth because the demand is getting bigger. It's not getting smaller. It's getting bigger from network systems. It's getting bigger from people staying in touch. Alright, Mr. Secretary, running short on time. I want to make sure we get one in. We've got the future of the Navy, DDG 1000. DDG 1000, go ahead with your question. Alright, go ahead, Mr. Secretary. Do you have any closing remarks you'd like to give to us? Well, the DDG 1000 is one of the futures of the Navy. It's named after Emile Zumwalt, who was a C&O when I was in the Navy. And one of the things he did, he paid a lot of attention to sailors and he ended some regulations that didn't help you do your job. He called them Mickey Mouse regulations. He also brought women and minorities into the Navy and made us stronger. And so, you know, that's going to be a great ship and it's got a great crew. Excellent. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. We certainly appreciate you joining us. I'd also like to say thank you to everyone else that was in our studio audience as well as our social media cell. By all, everyone at DMA, thank you for joining us. If you have any questions that didn't get answered, feel free to check out All Hands Magazine at www.ah.nil and we'll make sure we get those posted up for you later today. We'll answer the questions we didn't get to because I tend to be a little long-winded from time to time. Absolutely. So thank y'all. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.