 The Surface Navy Association kicked off its annual three-day national symposium in Arlington, Virginia, January 15th. The symposium theme answering all bells, people, technology and innovation was hosted by Vice Admiral Tom Coatman to provide an opportunity for discussion on a broad range of topics. My main priority is to make sure that the sailors and the ships that they sail on are able to conduct prompt, sustained combat operations at sea because there are no point solutions. There is no one thing. There's nothing that I can say, see, you know, if you give me this X amount of money and I'll apply it to this thing, everything's going to be fine. Because there isn't, it's kind of the readiness kill chain. The symposium also hosted Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy, Mike Stevens, who spoke about the Navy's initiative of zeroing in on excellence. Zeroing in on excellence is about three things. It's first and foremost about developing leaders, secondly, zeroing on excellence is about good order and discipline. And then lastly, I call it controlling what you own. Among the topics discussed were extended deployments and the drawdown of forces in Afghanistan. So we know that we're drawing down right now out of Afghanistan for the most part. We're totally out of Iraq, with the exception of a few. But what does that mean for the Navy? Well, it means to the Navy, we're still going to stay busy. There's a responsibility towards us and the need for us to be currently forward deployed in the SENTCOM AOR, at least at the strength that we're at right now. And we'll continue to be deployed in the Pacific at the current strength and over time we will increase that. From the Defense Media Activity, I'm Petty Officer Matthew Halls.