 As Secretary of the Navy, I'm responsible for recruiting, training, and equipping almost 900,000 sailors, Marines, and civilians who spend every day working to defend the American people and our national interests. Every day, Navy ships, submarines, aircraft, and Marine Corps units are deployed worldwide to protect America. They are there around the clock, far from our shores, far from their families, far from home. They are America's away team. Today we operate in a world full of new and dawning complexities. To face that world, we must focus on developing ways to improve our systems and ensure that we are able to embrace new concepts at a pace that keeps us ahead of our potential adversaries. To help us do this, I'm forming Task Force Innovation, a group of subject matter experts and others from across the Department of the Navy. The Task Force will focus on three main areas. The first is using innovative practices to create and maintain an adaptive workforce. This isn't about teaching people to be innovative. This is about making sure our system harnesses the creative energy which our sailors, Marines, and civilians already have. Second, the Task Force will work to make sure that we are effectively viewing information as an asset. And finally, they will help emerging capabilities have a clear and quick path to the fleet. These will include new concepts like adaptive force packages, unmanned systems, non-lethal weapons, directed energy weapons, and additive manufacturing. The task force will help us use our greatest asset, the intellectual capital of our remarkable workforce, to its full potential. The Navy and Marine Corps have a long tradition of leading technological change and developing new ways of doing things. We need to press forward with emerging capabilities and our next generation weapons and operating concepts. Task Force Innovation will help us develop creative solutions to the most demanding things that lie ahead of us and maintain our legacy as innovators. We remain from the Marine Corps, Semper Fidelis, always faithful, and from the Navy, Semper Fortis, always courageous.