 Well, good afternoon. Welcome to our second issues in national security lecture held in the virtual world. I'm Professor John Jackson. I'll serve as host for today's event. Please feel free to ask questions using the chat feature of zoom and we'll get to them at the conclusion of the presentation. I'd like to ask now if animal chat field would like to say any comments before we begin the lecture animal. Good afternoon to all the participants here, and thank you for signing on. We're delighted to continue our issues in national security spouse lecture series, and I'm here with my husband, David Scoville, he's got a few words for the group. Hello, all welcome back. This is the second time we are meeting to handle the issues national security online. So it's what a great turnout last week we're thrilled and we have a special guest at the end of this this will be from our military one source we have Melissa, we are joining us tonight as well. So, welcome Melissa. Thank you, David. Thank you, Admiral. I'm very pleased to introduce our guest speaker, Dr. James Holmes. Jim is one of the most prolific writers at the college and is known by almost everyone in the maritime security business. He holds the JC Wiley chair of maritime strategy here at the college. And he previously served on the faculty of the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs. He was a US Navy surface warfare officer. He was the last gunnery officer in history to fire a battleships big guns in anger during the first Gulf War in 1991. He earned the Naval War College Foundation Award in 1994, recognizing him as the top graduate in his class. The version of his widely read book, Red Star over the Pacific is a primary reading on the chief of naval operations professional reading list. And most recently he published a brief guide to maritime strategy. I'm not exactly sure why but former sec death James Mattis considers him troublesome. This afternoon we'll explain why it's so hard for us Navy to prevail in strategic competition or warfare in the Pacific, even though it remains stronger than its competitors. He will review geography, naval budgets, combat capability and much, much more to show why there is a strong need to ensure that we are in the Pacific when we need to be there. I'm pleased to pass the digital baton to a friend and colleague, Dr Jim Holmes Jim. Hey everybody, thanks Captain Jay. Captain Jay was my actually my last boss on active duty, which I always remind everybody. I'm thrilled to be coming to it to you tonight not from spruance auditorium but some from somewhere along the shores of the Narragansett Bay to talk to a bit to you about us maritime strategy and zombies. I, and you'll see why I've actually reached back to the to the pop culture as I as I go along. Now this is a presentation that's been about a decade in the making as far as I can tell it originated with the art with the article that I've shown on the screen, which was a 2010 article for a journal over in South Korea and they asked how do you count up the size and the strength of a navy figure out who is stronger than home. And as you, as you can see from the side of the simple talking points that you get, especially in election years as I'll go through in the next in the next hour with you. So, if I can get the slide to advance. I think I think I'm actually having a little trouble getting my slide should work here. Let me so let me stop at this and start back up here. Okay, let's see what we can do here. Oh, there we go. So back to the opening back to the opening slide which shows are one of many of you know the war college obviously because you've been here obviously none of us are there. So anyway, let me get off to get off to Iran. He was actually the first time I noticed this was in the 2012 election campaign. I felt like Rick Grimes the start of the walking dead of which we were huge fans at the time. And the reason why is because these different ideas and different talking points about naval power kept coming at me I felt like I did nothing but answer questions every day about how to count up the strength of a navy and figure out whether we were enough to do what our strategy requires us to do. You know how it is fighting zombies. You shoot one down with a headshot and 10 more just like it come behind behind it. You ultimately exhaust your ammunition they trample you and they feast on your flash. So, I hope that I hope that I will debunk some of these talking points for you that we were likely to encounter this during this election year and hopefully make you into zombie fighters yourself to help you ask the hard questions when you hear these sorts of things. Now before I launch into the meat of it I will tell you that I thought about writing a special coronavirus edition of this lecture but I decided not to I decided to run it straight up. And but I hope that it's during the Q&A at the end we can we can talk about the coronavirus and how it impinges on what I have been what I've been saying and what we might expect to see as the election season heats up and host and hopefully as the pandemic winds down. So, with that let me run launch right into it. Here's my agenda. I like to provide my agenda straight up so you know exactly where I'm going all the way points. First of all, I want to look at our strategy, especially in the Pacific region and the Indo Pacific region as we've taken to calling it in recent years, which which which takes place under the rubric of the pivot to Asia term out of the Obama administration I'll talk a little bit about what we need to do. Then I will then I will consider whether we have enough forces in place to do what we need to do, which is to be able to win against our likely opponents under certain circumstances and thus if we can win we can hopefully And then lastly, as John led off by saying I'll talk I'll talk to you a lot about the geography of why it is hard to win, even if we do have enough forces in the Pacific to get to get it done. So, I'll leave you I'll leave it was sort of a wishy-washy assessment of where we stand and hopefully give you some tools to think about to think about whether we can get where we want to go. So, the idea of a pivot to Asia or as the Pentagon quickly took to calling it the rebalance to Asia back in 2011 2012 timeframe. It's a term that came out of an essay the from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in late 2011, basically saying that the United States needed to swing forces towards that towards the Pacific dealer or in order to counter the rise of China. So that was, so that was eminent was very controversial but I think it's actually stayed in place and in fact that our force structure does does indeed favor, favor the Pacific command by about 6040 now. Now if you whenever you want to get to know, or try to think parse out what our strategy actually is sometimes it's kind of hard because you listen to speeches and all that kind of thing. One authoritative place to look is simply in the documents that the services in the Pentagon published. The two of the two documents that I put on the screen in front of you the ones that have left is the 2007 maritime strategy, a Bush administration, a Bush administration document. It's kind of interesting this stuff is all bipartisan even though we may squabble with each other. The basic ideas seem to carry forth from administration to administration of both parties. So that and the one on the right comes out of the Obama administration the 2015 what they called the refresh basically the revised version of the maritime strategy for the Coast Guard the Navy and the Marine Corps. What are these are one of these documents basically say let me to to make a long story short let me just reach back to the 2007 strategy which was very tersely written I thought was a very good document. The basic ideas I think that pertain to us today are these and I think they endure into the into the other documents that shape our strategy. First the idea that the United States intends to remain number one in the western Pacific the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf region or the Indo Pacific region along with the along with the Middle Eastern region. And we'll combat power I think indicates that we intend to remain number one for the shelf life of these documents so the next 10 to 15 years, and it again it seems to be sliding to the right as each administration signs on to this idea. Secondly, and most controversially, the idea that we could that we will reserve to ourselves the right to seize local sea control at times and places of our choosing with allies prepared preferably, but but perhaps with not if our allies choose not to join us. That's actually a pretty controversial thing to say and that's that's at the heart of what we will be talking to talking to tonight. The idea that I can seize control of waters against against a major adversaries are sure such as the China sees South China sea, Western Pacific what whatever the case may be. That's actually a pretty controversial thing that goes well beyond anything that, for example, Alfred they are my hand our second president and the most prominent scholar ever to teach at the war college would have would have conceived of in the 1890s when when controlling the Caribbean sea and the Gulf of Mexico were the major tasks for the United States Navy and the affiliated services. And lastly the other bit the other big idea and something that you should also watch out for when you peruse the daily news is the idea that the United States is the keeper of the system. They're talking about the system they're talking they're talking about the system of international trade and commerce, especially maritime trade and commerce. This is that that leads into the next document that I'll share with you just briefly another one out of the Obama administration I stood up and cheered in 2015 when this when this document appeared online and immediately dump this dump this image into the into this presentation. The idea the idea and then here's page one of it. I just thought it was great because it's a front loaded that one of my favorite talking points to two page one. Why we safeguard freedom of the seas. When you hear the idea of freedom of the seas that's the idea that no one owns the sea. Very limited exceptions codified an international law the seas are a common a common if you look around Newport or any New England town a common is nothing more than green space that belongs to everyone and belongs to no one ships, ships, planes and whatnot from all nations may use this Common freely without being interfered with so when you think about what the United States is saying it is going to preserve the ability of shipping from all nations to use the common offer for purposes as they see fit, it will not allow will not allow a coastal state to essentially say that it owns that as China seems to do have done in the South China see in particularly where particular where it declares that it is sovereign meaning what it says goes so the United States has said it set itself against that idea that coastal states can actually in effect own the sea. Yeah, why we safeguard the freedom of the seas so that's it but if you think about it that's a really big task that we're talking about when you consider the amount of water on the earth. The amounts of potential adversaries who might challenge the freedom of the sea and so forth. So I would leave that idea out for you. Now before we leave the documents part of the presentation I just to show you that this I think does carry forward into the into the Trump administration. This is a document from last summer in which it which it essentially says just much the same thing as the last two generations have the Indo Pacific the combined Indian Ocean and Pacific region is the different Department of Defense's priority theater. If it's the priority theater that is job one it has primary claim on our resources on our energy on all the effort that we can that we can put into defending our interest in our ideals in that region. So again I think it is it's actually kind of a heartening thing when we when we swabble at each other all the time to see that there actually is some continuity in the big ideas that shape what we try to do in the world. So what this all translates into and again this these ideas of this idea of a 6040 split actually reaches back all the way to the Bush administration when 60% of the submarine fleet was already in the region and it continued through the Obama administration and into the Trump administration. Here's the USS Ronald Reagan which spearheads the US 7th Fleet in the very fine seaport of the Yokosuka Japan in the face really the face of our sea power presence in the western the question the question is though is this enough it says one thing to say we'll unbalance the force to favor our primary commitment as indeed we should but that doesn't necessarily mean it's enough to win against our likely adversaries and thus if we don't have the ability to win and if they doubt that we have the ability to win chances are they may not be deterred in peacetime. They must then mostly might try on things like an invasion of Taiwan or a slapping around Vietnam in the south trying to see whatever the case may be so I'm making light of a lot of this stuff by talking about pop culture but it is actually very, very serious topic that we're that we're into tonight. So this is where you start to encounter the zombies which again over some hand, let me still let me start by saying that none of these ideas, none of these ideas none of these talking points are wrong in themselves. What is wrong is to take a single simple idea and extrapolated as though it tells the entire story. But by the time you come down to the end you really have to factor in all of these things and it becomes a very, very complex, very, very complex assessment to make, which is one reason why we have things like war gaming in places like Newport to try to parse that and see how what happened under real world circumstances. So the first idea the first the first zombie that we need to that we need to shoot down is what I would call the idea that he who pays the most when he spends the most on on the armed forces wins. I guarantee you sometimes sometime this year, once the once the virus once the virus starts to a data bit and we start hearing more about strategic affairs you're probably going to see in some major outlet a chart like this this is out of the Washington post from the 2016 campaign, which we all remember so well, and look at it look at what it actually says, it's actually drawing a really simple inference, our defense spending dwarfs that of the rest of the world and therefore by implication, we win. We have to win because we're spending more than the next in this case for to 14 powers combined look how small China's spending is compared to the United States and in terms just of the visual blocks. If you believe China's defense figures which I would certainly take with a grain of salt, but the bottom line again it's it's really hard to extrapolate from spending figures to strategic and operational and tactical effect effectiveness. See, a lot of our stuff if you want to be the keeper of the system across the globe if you want to, if you want to police theaters from the from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean, you have to spend a lot. This is a this is a picture of the USS zoom off our latest destroyer which is just now entering service. When it was sitting over a pure one a few years ago on its way to a San Diego ship, the ship runs about $4.4 billion last count. That's a piece of kit for a destroyer. So if you when you look at our overall defense budget, yes it is big but things like this eat into it, or how about aircraft carriers which we're always hearing about whether they're survivable and this sort of thing. This is USS Ford which is now started to overcome it's it's growing pains thankfully. This ship runs about $13 billion. And that's just for the whole. That's before you start paying sailors before you put supplies and ammunition on board and before you put airplanes on board. So that's you take that $13 billion, put a couple of squadrons of F 35s were about at about $100 $100 or excuse me $100 billion of pop. You're probably adding another couple of billion dollars in on and on you're probably looking at when you look at the carrier and it's escort you're looking at probably over a $20 billion asset that's it that you're talking about a large amount of taxpayer dollars and again something that will eat into eat into that massive defense budget that we need if we're going to do big things in the world. It doesn't really stop there that's just recapitalizing the surface fleet and naval aviation. A project that's about to get underway this summer, including right here on the Narragansett Bay over over a constant point is the construction of our new generation of ballistic missile submarines at about $7 billion of pop we're going to get to what we're going to get to 12 of those in about so for a total of $84 billion. Our ballistic missile submarines are wonderful but they're but they're getting old and they have to have to have to be replaced. And this is a this is a project that's the Navy certainly under Admiral Richardson before Admiral Gilday RC and the Navy feared that it was going to eat up our entire procurement budget, even without buying anything else. So, we've got a whole lot of stuff that we're trying to do in the to in the 2020s. And I think that's something we really have to have a debate about as a nation. But even that, even that doesn't really doesn't really tell the entire story. Estimates have it that a Chinese PLA Navy sailor, sorry, excuse me the Chinese PLA Navy can actually put eight to nine sailors in uniform for the cost of one American sailor, because we do pensions we do health care we do all that we pay more generously and so forth. We have high cost labor much like in the old in the old in the old top gear if you if you used to watch that one imagines this professional race driver the stick is not low cost low cost labor to drive around these super cars. And I think that's really really a metaphor for us personnel policy in the military. Yes, we should do it, but it is also something that that that's equalizes that defense budgets that are seemingly lopsided in America's favor. So I'm going to ask the hard questions when you hear this sort of simple metric, indicating that the United States is feeding to when become because it simply is not the case. This is not an important it's not, but it's certainly does not tell the entire story. Okay, so let me move on to the next, the next fallacy that I would call to your attention. I would say this is a way I call this he who weighs the most. Well, I mean, you get statements even from the greats in the field. This is a friend of mine. This is a Robert Cap on one of the great geopolitics scholars of our age. In stage in the sprues auditorium a couple years ago, and he said he said a striking thing the United States Navy is the largest in the world by far. The Coast Guard is the 12th largest Navy in the world. Well, he might say Bob might actually get an argument from he might actually get an argument from the former Pacific Fleet intelligence chief Captain Jim Fanell, who a couple years ago did a did a wonderful chapter projecting that the PLA Navy might actually have about 500 ships by the year 2030 at a time when the United States Navy is struggling to get to 355. That it throws a little bit of I think that throws a little bit of cold water on the on the idea that that we are so much bigger than the PLA. I mean, it just doesn't make any sense if you took the numbers, or how about my co handling another one of the greats in the field of defense studies down at the Brookings Institution rightly observes that the Navy hasn't emphasized does technology over numbers. We're still in the same place. Our tonnage is still three times of China's. And that sort of starts to get to the knob of it you're actually talking about aggregate target of the fleet you're not talking about capability or anything else like that. Our ships are bigger. Well, I mean that's not again this is another statistic that is not meaningless. If we want to do things in the Western Pacific, we have to carry a lot more fuel a lot more supplies we have to bring all our ammunition and so on and so more just to get into the theater so by simply by definition we have to have more capacious vessels even to even to get into the combat theater. But again, I think this is a this is a really misleading statistic. We simply can't say that because we weigh the most we have the most tonnage in our fleet that we that we went so what. I mean if you take that logic to its extreme this is the most powerful warship on the planet Earth. The Emma Merrick out of the out of the mayor's client over in Denmark, which books in about 550,000 tons it's it's about five times it displaces about five times what the USS Ford does if you take it if taken in terms of displacement, which obviously makes no sense whatsoever this is an unarmed freighter it carries cargo. It's not a warship at all, but the logic of gross tonnage makes that makes that a logical thing to say. So, please do push back when you hear this sorts of this sorts of statements, assuming that the United States because we have a bigger fleet in terms of size is definitely going to win, unless we're going to ram each other I don't think it actually works. I mean think about it as we try as we try to recapitalize the Patriots for the post Tom Brady era is this you could coach Bella chick is trying to recruit to the offensive line or let alone to the quarterback of the nation. He's got a lot of bulk he he he abides by the law of gross tonnage but yeah love that's it on his on his gut right there actually it's really awesome. But if you're if you want to actually have a metaphor that I think actually mean something and when you when you look at tonnage turn to turn to sumo wrestling. If this guy on the on my right here. If that guy is a metaphor for these days. Okay, if we take that to all our tonnage and turn it into effective combat capability that's a cool thing. If we can sling the PLA. I'm pretty good with that. So please please ask the harder questions as when you hear terms like the idea that gross tonnage is going to actually make the difference in battle it seems it's simply not me need not be the case. Yeah, next to a false idea would be I think this is the great one. Teddy Roosevelt. This would be the idea that sort of the counting up halls is that is the way to determine who is definitely going to win. And again not a meaningless statistic but also but also taken as the only index of who's going to win in battle which is what it's all about. And I think this is a this actually brings up it's almost a battle of false ideas or a battle of talking points between people who think numbers are everything numbers of holes or everything and numbers that numbers of halls really been very little at all. You'll be this would this would be one argument that I would expect to see heat up in the fall as we come up to the election with the Republicans with the Republicans emphasizing numbers of halls and the Democrats pushing back against that. We'll see how the how the political constellation shapes up. Now, this is this is another another one from the early stages of the of the 2016 campaign as we were having the conventions and so forth. And this is the idea talking point that the Navy is now the smallest since 1917. This refers to the number of holes in the Navy and indeed if you should if you scroll back to 1917 when we had just embarked on the on the fleet build up that would make us a Navy second to none. It is actually true. But how much does it mean that's really the question. They actually concluded that it doesn't mean very much which is kind of which is kind of get to their credit in that sense. On the other side, or actually I built in a state a recent statement from one of the Republican members from the Senate separate C power subcommittee representative or excuse me Senator Purdue of Georgia. He's basically saying the same thing the Navy is the smallest sense. We were a one ocean Navy. Now we need to be a two ocean Navy we better get lots more halls in the water very fast. So that's on the one side on the other side as I said you'll that there will be spirited pushback on this idea. Probably from the leftward side of the aisle we'll see how that so we'll see everything shapes of it so it's not always easy to predict by by a terms are in terms of what political party who's going to be pro big navy and who's not Joe Courtney of Groton is a big submarine guy obviously because that's in his district and he chairs the committee in the house. This is a but here's a here's a represent. That sort of thing you will hear this is a secretary maybe it's our last secretary of the Navy under President Obama in fact he was Secretary for President Obama's entire term. And he says it's pointless. It's pointless to compare this this Navy of today with the 1917 Navy something. We advanced would you put this today's Navy up against the Great White Fleet who do you think is going to win. And that's basically what that's basically I think what he's saying ships today are much more technologically advanced and therefore it's a meaningless comparison, which is a fine point to make we should I certainly wouldn't stack the great white fleet up against our fleet today because it would never get within reach to get off a shot missile arm fleet and an aircraft arm fleet of such as ours. What gets lost in this I think is the fact that the strategic environment has also moved on by a century. The Great White Fleet faced one source for the threat or the threat to the threat today is vastly more vastly more menacing and thus you have to actually measure our naval power in relation to what we're actually going to face in combat if we get into a fight with one of the one of the potential red teams. Did the Great White Fleet have to face off against the stealth fighters put out by the PLA Air Force. I don't think so. So yes, I mean it's a so yes in a sense. It's a it's a fallacy to look back to 1917 but at the same time you have to update you have to update your comparison, taking that strategic and operational environment into context or else you're setting yourself up for all sorts of miscalculations and perhaps perhaps we would even misplan misplan our force end up two weeks to accomplish what we need to so where I would leave you on this just sort of in a wishy washy way. No question about that we're going to lose some in action. Numbers are not everything. So again when you hear these when you hear these little talking points please ask the tough questions as I keep saying. Okay, and we'll do it. Ships approach, which would be that if we want to figure out which who's going to win in action we flip open we flip and over open the requisite volume of James fighting ships for the PLA Navy, the one for the United States Navy and compare these, compare numbers of halls compare types of ships compare weapons ranges, all these sorts of things and figure out who's going to win. If the United States Navy looks stronger on paper. We're good to go. Well, I think that's I think that's misleading because it implies that seapower is all about ships and dry it up is absolutely drives me none. A Chinese carriers not nearly as powerful as an American carrier which is true but also not really all that relevant. It's these. I mean if you look at what we are going to do and what we will talk about for the rest of our time together tonight, you will see that seapower is not all about ships and in fact I would say that ships and fleets every day as land based weaponry becomes more and more capable more precise and able to hit us at sea. I think this is the image this is the kind of image I think people have in mind when they go comparing American destroyers to Chinese destroyers or whatever the platform might be. This is an image from the Battle of Jotland in 1916 in which indeed the the German grand for the excuse me the German high seas fleet met the British play the British grand fleet out in the North Sea remote for many shore based weaponry and they decided with that on the outside involvement of shore based defenses. So that I mean that's very much a Navy on Navy engagement in that case the comparison makes sense but it doesn't make sense anymore. As I said a minute ago sea battle today maritime battle today involves a lot more than fleets. We'll talk about some of the things that it does does involve in fact it involves more than navies. I would say we are very much headed into an era of joint seapower involving not only the United States Marines which is which is remaking itself as a maritime force after after over a decade of land battles but also even the United States Army which is taking its maritime role seriously and even the United States Air Force, let alone our allies which also have a stake in this in this fight as well. Let me think about some of the things that land based forces can bring to the fight out at sea. This is a squadron of Chinese PLA Air Force fighters. If these things can range out over water if they carry anti ship missiles, they you have to you have to consider their firepower when you try to figure out who is going to win. It doesn't matter whether they need to ship missile comes from a ship or from a land based aircraft. If it's on the scene at the right place in the right time, it has to figure into the mix. The battles of talking points, especially in an election year, or how about this this is something that that is occasion an enormous amount of talk out in our field in my in my field of particular China studies in recent years. This is the DF 21D anti ship ballistic missile, evidently the first working missile of its type in the world. Yeah, a truck launched anti ship missile that from Chinese soil can reach out depending on estimates about 900 nautical miles out to see and hit moving ships. That means they can reach out and touch us long before we get to Japan, Taiwan, South China Sea, any potential combat theater. So that's it. That's something that we have to factor in and we'll talk a little bit more about that but it doesn't actually stop there. There's in 2015, the PLA during it during a military parade in Beijing unveiled what they call the DF 26, a longer range anti ship ballistic missile the Pentagon estimates that it can reach out about 2000 nautical miles, which means in geographic terms that if they can find us out at sea which remains an open question. Occasion is a lot of squabbling but if they can find us out at sea with this thing, they can hit us long before we get to Guam to the second island chain. So that's way out in the Pacific Ocean. So, again, this is another system that you have to factor into the relative balance of sea power to try to figure out who is stronger who can win who can if we can deter our adversaries. Here's a here's a representative. I'm not sure if this is that I can't remember whether with what this comes out of it might want to be one of the annual Pentagon reports on Chinese military power which are very much worth your time. But it basically shows if you look at these range rings in circling the Chinese coastline these are the shows how far this hard work can reach out. Whether it's that outer that this outer this outer this outer range ring indicates how far a bomber with land that with cruise missiles can go out and on inward, but you get to you get you get a sense by overlaying that onto the map exactly how hard it is even for us even to get to the fight. When you take all this stuff into account. So, again, it's not just the PLA Navy we have to worry about it's the Air Force, the Army, the strategic rocket force of the PLA, all these sorts of things can come into the fight and cause us harm. In fact, I mean just a just a couple of representative PLA Navy supporting forces, not part of the surface fleet or the carrier fleet. So I would describe the conventional submarine for for still even after all these years of Chinese military build up as the core of the PLA Navy as we've seen it take shape over the past 20 years or thereabouts. These are things that can work offshore, they don't need to go at high speed or anything like that they can perform century duty and thus try to do us harm as we try to get to the fight they can they can do us damage and thus make it hard for us to accomplish what we need to So down at the bottom the type the type 22 Hobay catamaran the PLA Navy is built about I think about 85 of these things that last count, each of which is stealthy small and carries eight anti ship missiles. That's something again that's that's suitable for lurking offshore performing pick and duty and perhaps obstructing our ability to get to the fight in a timely manner. In time, we're probably not going to accomplish show what we need to and therefore we have to take these things seriously, kind of like this gear is graphic right here at a CFCA down in Washington a few years ago. Just because it shows it shows visually what happens as you approach the theater from Hawaii from San Diego ever Washington whatever the case may be, you encounter more and more shore based and sea based Chinese weaponry. At the yellow zone about the time you hit Guam, and it gets read as we approach our bases in Japan, let alone potential combat theaters like Taiwan, or the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea or whatever. So this I mean this visually indicates the scale of the process, the other problem, and also shows that it shows how seamlessly integrated land, land based and sea based implements are for China, as it tries to control and limit our access to the potential combat zones. Okay, little eye candy something that's made something's made a lot of a lot of hubbub in the recent years since 2013 when China started digging up and basically fortifying islands in the South China Sea and and making things just basically adding another layer to this problem for the United States. As we think about how to do things in that region, or even this I used to get laughs out of this one back in 2012 when I first started talking about the China Coast Guard in the fishing fleet especially as the vanguard of Chinese sea power. It's actually true. China is a China in the South China Sea in particular but also in the but also in the around the Cinkaku Islands in the East China Sea has used it has used the China Coast Guard as the implement of choice to solidify its territorial claims to those waters and island features. But it's not even that I'd say but if you look into the fishing fleet and this was a used to get the laughs. I mean it sounds ridiculous to think that a fishing crap is an implement of sea power but if you embed a maritime militia as China has done for many decades now. If you put that if you put that in there you all of a sudden you have an irregular force that's able to go up against regional coast guards in the South China Sea or even navies that are vastly outmatched by the PLA Navy. If you're if you're a Coast Guard if your Coast Guard is more powerful than your adversaries why not use that instead of sending a big hulking destroyer and making yourself look like a bully. And that's it and this is what China calls or that what we call and what China is a practitioner of gray zone operations. When you hear that term it's and we're talking about using implements such as these to try to accomplish big a geopolitical things. Bottom line is we asked this young lady again that's the strongest fleet the strongest Navy need not win an action. You have to keep the focus on the strongest force. And again that's why we do things like war gaming at these various scenarios is to try to figure out who brings the most combat power to the decisive place and the decisive time makes itself stronger and wins. And I think that I think that I think we argue about this a lot because it's the answers are really murky at present. Little light little little quick from from Albert Einstein a century ago. And I would leave you with this not everything we can count counts, not everything that can be count or not that not everything that counts can be counted. You're leaving a lot of the human dimension out you're leaving all of these a lot of a lot of subtleties out of this equation, if you just focus on Navy's and try to figure out who's that has the strongest fleet. Some of all these bad ideas, and you get stuff like you get stuff like this out of out of another wonderful scholar. This is John Mirish. Chicago who basically concludes in his in his well regarded book in fact it's so he's field, but he basically concludes that the United States Navy and the US military are 10 feet tall we are unbeatable. Let me break down this passage from the intro to that look. What he's saying a parse what he's saying it's really kind of striking he says that he says President President day China does not possess significant military power. It's pretty strong state. And that's that's made itself it's made its Navy into a blue water Navy in a very short time has done all these other things that I've shot I've shown you on the screen. And here's how he here's how he justifies that conclusion, it's military forces are inferior to those of the United States. Those two things necessarily go together. I mean China China if you look if you scope back over the history of Communist China for the last century China has China's Red Army and now the PLA PLA PLA Navy and the other arms have made a habit of winning the weaker party and actually winning. They defeated the, they defeated the Chinese Nationalists in the Civil War in the 40s, and they gave and they gave and they gave as good as they got with the Japanese before that. And then of course there was civil war even before the Second World War. So the weak can win do not do not be taken in by the idea that the United States, just because of all these quantitative measures is automatically going to win. And once you once you once you accept those premises though it makes perfectly perfect sense to say that China will not pick a fight with us because they are inferior and so and so forth. So, again, I think this is a deeply flawed way of looking at the military balance in the Pacific, which brings us to the last point that I want to touch on with you, which is the geography the geopolitical the United States only plays away games think back to those strategic documents we let off will be number one in the Indian Ocean in the west of Pacific Persian Gulf Mediterranean to go a long way to get there. So geography works against us and the adversary works against us as well if we get into a fight with that adversary. It's really hard to be the away team teams home port or home field and prevail just as in sports. There's a no Naval War College lecture is complete without a word grant. Seen century Prussia, and he tells a he tells us a very simple thing in many words as he has a habit of doing. But let me break it down for you a little bit. And this is so you get a sense of what you're what our students are going through. And he said if a consummate says the best strategy is to be very strong, which kind of makes sense. I mean, it's sort of, you know, by low cell high type stuff, go to gold's gym and work out all day and make yourself the nuances are a lot more than that. First, you want to be stronger on the whole. Yes, I would like to have a bigger bigger armed force. But the main thing is to be stronger at the decisive point. Where is the battle going to happen. If I can make myself stronger at that play in that battle, and it doesn't really necessarily matter what my strength is relative to my adversary. That's really the to improve your but possibilities of doing that cause of its wants you to stay concentrated so that you can hope to make yourself strong and win. So he proclaims that the highest in the slide or the highest and simplest commandment of strategy if you if you will, is to stay concentrated the thing for the United States to do and that's a relatively easy thing to do. If you're the if your potential opponents of the United States, not only China but also Russia and especially Iran, the nations that are trying to give us a hard time at the end of the day. So he follows up. He restates it's a little bit more simply he says look, you have to employ such forces as you have with such skill that even in the absolute absence of absolute superiority again the overall force structure, you do attain that relative superiority at the decisive place in time. You do that you have a good chance of winning. And that's our again that's a hard thing to do for ourselves. Why is that the case. Google Earth you can tell me look at the size of the Pacific Theater the one where we want to make ourselves master of for the for the foreseeable future. That can you can see the United States over to the right you can barely see the illusions to the top and China and Japan off to the left. That's a really hard theater to traverse even in good times, let alone as somebody is trying to obstruct our access to that theater. You know, we know that zombies can swim so let's figure out with how we can slay them as they obstruct our thinking about the Western Pacific. First and foremost, as I just said, and any little. This is a big, big theater, biggest, biggest body of water on the face of the earth. It's just it's just a difficult place to do to do to do things. I mean, for example, the Santiago, Santiago chile is 10,000 miles from from vanilla from from vanilla. You know, this is the same figure similar figures would apply to potential combat theaters as well as a long way to steam. Let's say here's our historical map to help us start breaking it down a little bit this this dates from World War two and it's from by the way it's from one of my favorite cartographers a political map maker by the name of Richard Eads Harrison. If you happen to like these maps which I will provide to you later, you can get out and Google his name and you can find all these wonderful maps out of the Fortune Atlas of World Strategy from 1943 1943 1944 there about what he is thinking in this but in this particular map is what Japan was trying to accomplish in the Pacific during that from in the 1940s. I've outlined I've outlined Japan's defense perimeter this encloses what it wanted out of the war. It basically wanted control of the Western Pacific, as well as the South China Sea in particular was just where a lot of natural resources that Japan needed to do what it thought it needed to do lie. And of course, poor country and thus, and thus it wanted control of this vast sea space. And this sort of this is roughly if you look if you read Chinese statements of purpose and if you read their documents and listen to what they say this is this is roughly speaking what China would like to accomplish within the next decade or two. It would like control of the waters, not only out to the first island chain Japan Taiwan Philippines but also even beyond the second island chain which runs down through Guam. And it's it's roughly comparable to to what Imperial Japan was trying to do back there in the 1940s. So that's a big thing. That's a big theater that they are trying to subdue if you take Chinese strategist at the world or at their word rather. But there is a bigger theater. First, let me show you the theater that I just showed you on Harrison's map. These are the what the this is that theater again. So again the first island chain out to the first island chain that China sees and then out to the second island chain this is what China cares about most. It would like to have control of these in order to accomplish a manifold bunch of things that it has been talking about for many decades. But again, there's a bigger theater. What is the United States theater that it cares about that and everything else. Well I mean you can just look at this visually and you can tell us what some of the dilemmas this presents to us. If we have interest in the Atlantic Ocean the Indian Ocean Persian Gulf Mediterranean Sea South Atlantic whatever the case may be. This vast experience is going to tend to stretch out us forces as presidents and the secretaries the defense parcel out forces to try to uphold our commitments in each one of these places. It's going to tend to disperse our forces at a time in which China has the luxury of keeping its forces within that red zone that I've depicted on the map. So we will be spread out. In class of it's in terms that's going to provide advantage for the PLA in fights that Beijing cares about right now, and for the foreseeable future. If you think Moses again bringing down the highest and as a simplest commandment of strategy, stay concentrated. That's easier said than done for the United States military. What happens what happens if if President Trump or whoever occupies the overall office starting next year says okay we're going to concentrate the vast majority of much more than 6040 we're going to put all of our military power in the Pacific in order to dominate that red zone. That's our priority theater that's what we care about. What happens then. You're going to be end up paying heavy heavy opportunity costs. What are those forces doing all that kind of I mean that's obviously a silly example that would never happen but I mean, hypothetically it could. But at that point you would be sacrificing your commitments elsewhere on the globe, whether it's defensive the Atlantic, whether it's whether it's holding up, holding up our alliance with that with NATO or whatever the case may be. But again, Beijing can compose as a dilemma. If you care about coming into my backyard and defeating me. Oh well you're going to you're going to lose out on a whole lot of other commitments that you really care about. And that's something that we really have to contend from a from a strategic and a political standpoint, which of those commitments could we do do with that. If we can't do without them, then I think we're in we're in real trouble in the western Pacific. There's I mean there's just physical distance. Think about think about there's just that sheer distance of the across the Pacific Ocean from that Google from that Google maps, or Google Earth map I showed you a minute ago. It's just hard to get there. Here's another map from Harrison from the second World War show in the world divided between the axis and the allies. There are included brass that our forces have to traverse to get to places that we care about leaving from the east coast to the west coast, sweeping around the left side or the right side of Eurasia and Africa in order to get into the theaters. It's just not an easy to think to do, especially when you consider that a lot of the sea and air routes would be contested by any savvy opponent, which which Beijing most assuredly is. It's not just distance. It's not just it's not all those things but it's also the fact that the adversary gets a say in whether we reach the reach the theater. We have to have basis in order to support our presence in these remote regions. This is a picture of picture of Pearl Harbor the first time I went there in the in the mid 80s late the late Cold War, very big very expensive and very extensive basing facilities again this figures into that that cost equation that we talked about earlier on. To wrap up the the geophysical aspect of it. This is a metaphor that I really like. And this is something that if you think back to your basic physics whenever you study high school college whenever you study the last. This is a graphical depiction of the inverse squares law, which basically states in a nutshell that if I ever a radiation source a source of light or whatever the the intensity of that drops off, not in a slow and gradual way or slow and gradual and linear way, but it goes off a cliff. It drops off by the square of the distance from the admitting source so if you look if you look if you look at this. If the if the intensity is all is this at this distance from the source, it's one quarter that it by the time you double the distance and one ninth once you get out to triple the distance. To me that makes it a wonderful metaphor for how it is how hard it is to project military power from your shores. You have to have some sort of boosters in order to do it across many thousands of miles such as in the Pacific, whether it's bases like Pearl Harbor, whether it's a big logistics fleet, which is actually kind of being these days, all of these things figure into our ability to project power into into distant combat theaters, especially in our adversaries backyard. So again, it's one thing to it's one thing to be cause of it or to be Moses or to be whoever and say, time. Fine. That's a simple thing to do, but it's really hard to do in practice. And this leaves like this this leaves aside another important another important part the fact that the enemy in battle is not a potted plant. My adversary is not going to is not going to sit and let me do what I want to. He probably has a pretty good idea what I'm going to try to do I'm going to try to surge forces across the Pacific for places on the West Coast and Hawaii to relieve the seventh fleet in Japan to do what we need to do to concentrate forces in the theater and do what we need to do. But our adversary has every incentive not to let that happen. He has as many brain cells as we do as much desire to win possibly even more so since the fight will be in his own backyard. He's he's going to exert himself to the utmost to try to keep us from actually accomplishing our strategy. Here's a face I like to put on this idea of the red team. It's and thinking about the adversary not being a potted plant not being an inert mass who does what I want him to do. This is a general Paul van Rieper back in 2002 van Rieper, he was hired to he was hired to play Iran in a in a war game called Millennium Challenge. And he was given Iran's military resources was your pretty bear bones. And he was given the task of fighting a US Navy Task Force sitting offshore in the Persian Gulf. Obviously we were talking about country a country be all that kind of foolishness we do in war games but it was Iran. And he was wildly creative. He took that that slender endowment of resources, and he put it to great use and in fact he in fact he defeated the US Task Force. I mean just a one silly example was actually wasn't silly was a wildly creative the United States Task Force shut down Iranian communications cell phones and whatnot. So he's doing crazy stuff like using mosques to transmit operational orders out to the fleet to go get him. I mean you can I mean he just he just showed himself to be a master of using what resources he had to to good effect this was a prototypical case in which a hypothetical weaker power defeated a stronger power. And something that backs up what I've been seeing about China which is far more powerful than Iran, especially today. So if you think about it in sports terms which I love sports metaphors never never listen to people who make fun of them. The United States in a very real sense is in the place is in the place of the great Bruce Lee in fists of fury when he goes into the opponent's dojo and has to take down all the dojos are all the all of Japanese his Japanese opponents using his using his fists of fury. Yes he got it done, but at the same time the odds were really stacked against him. Are we in a place in which we can hope to go into our adversaries dojo and actually actually accomplish what he did in that movie back in the 1970s. I think that's really what that's really what we have to bear in mind. I mean think about that think about the advantages that go to the home team any home team. I think about going into college station Texas and the SEC football and playing Texas A&M where they claim to be the home of the 12th man. They have all that they have they know the area they have they have the advantages of morale manpower is nearby their bases are nearby nearby. They do they're simply a plentiful number of advantages that go to the home team, especially when facing off against a visitor that's come a long way like the United States will be. So right so right there there's advantages. The crowd gets to the crowd that the home team that the people in the in the host country. I mean they provide that morale advantage. They might be able to in the case of the Chinese fishing fleet they might be able to go out and harass the visiting team, much as visitors to Duke University's Cameron Stadium find out every year when they go to play Duke in basketball, and more often than not come away defeated partly because of that crowd. And there's a lot of last silly sporting analogy but I think it's actually convey something it's it's almost like a WWE. Where you know you have a very you have a very weak referee there's nobody there's nobody to regulate whether we have equal teams in the fight. If the if the PLA has more to have is more stuff and more fight and more fighters more wrestlers to throw into the right, it can come into it can come into the right and hit us over the head with a chair, much as you see at WrestleMania. So, again, there's no end to enforce rules keep the teams equal. And in fact, each each side has the has the incentive to throw dominant combat power into the fight we don't want to we don't want to win fair fights, nor do our Chinese adversaries. So I think this I think this is a silly example that conveys something real. Again, never forget that the adversary gets a vote as this Iraqi lady in 2005 voting for a president in Iraq tells us. Guess how the enemy will cast that vote. He's not a potted plant, he's going to cast it against us. And we have to really figure this out or we have to take that into account. So, having gone through all that having talked strategy having talked fallacies having talked to geography and the strategy as it fits into geography. So I would like to start leaving off with with my hand who I mentioned at the outset, who gives us a really really broad but also extremely powerful formula to think about this relative balance of power that I think is much better than the talking points here and here in Washington DC in the press or whatever you read to keep up on the, on the events of the day. Here's what he basically says, and he's giving us a broad formula a way to think about that and it looks really simple but it's actually really really rich. But if I want to figure out that if my fleet, he's talking about the Navy but a joint force in this case, I need to figure out whether my fleet is great enough to take on the largest force, it's likely to eat in battle. So this is sort of this these are sort of the statistical measures do I have enough units do I have enough capability do I have enough supporting sensors to tell me where the adversary is all all these sort of basic assessment tools so that's sort of the stuff that you would need off with those basic quantitative measures. But that's where it gets interesting and then he starts talking about risk. Can I fight with reasonable chances of success is my fleet strong enough and big enough to fight so that I have a reasonable chance of success, how much risk am I willing to run. And that's kind of that's kind of cool as well I mean you get into the psychology start thinking about the President sitting back in Washington wondering about whether he should spend our forces lavishly for the for the value of the goal that we have at stake, all of these sort of political calculations figure in. And lastly, this is to me this is the most powerful, the most powerful word in the entire formula from man, likely. Think about if I'm China if I'm if I'm the PLA if I'm from the Chinese Communist Party looking at across the Pacific. How much of the United States armed forces am I going to face in a likely fight, whether it's in the East China see the South China see whatever the fight may be. Think about to those opportunity costs we talked about how much how much does the United States the US leadership care about its goals in the Western Pacific, relative to the Mediterranean Sea, given that we're historically an Atlantic facing power relative to the Persian Gulf given that we've been there forever. How much for how much force is President Trump or whoever and have us the Opal office prepared to break off from those other commitments to concentrate in the Western Pacific. That fraction of us forces becomes the fraction whereby the PLA commanders measure themselves and they measure the forces assigned to them. So again there's a there's a lot of political calculation that also goes into this this question of who has the strongest force and who is going to prevail. If I were to sum it up and I just shot at this down so let me know how I did. I think this is actually a better way of doing it than going with simple metrics. First of all, do do the manian thing look actually take those metrics do an amalgam of them and try to figure out who is physically stronger. Look at it look at the look at the political costs look at the actual costs of fighting in the Western Pacific given all that weaponry China can apply to the people incur by by actually committing to such a fight. If you think if you think about it if the United States sees itself as the world's dominant seapower, and if our superpower status status hinges on seapower and if we were like we calculate that we're likely to lose a large fraction of that in an afternoon in a fight off the off the off the Chinese coast or somewhere in the Western Pacific. Wow that's a that's a major opportunity to cost cost to pay for the independence of Taiwan for the sync coffee violence and these other things. And these are some of the politics that you really cannot cannot neglect. And lastly, closely related just think about how much risk each contender is willing to run China cares much is probably going to care more about what happened in its backyard that we are likely to care, since we will be in its backyard and therefore China is likely to be more accepting of risk, whereas we're likely to be more risk averse. And this has to be a factor that you build into these questions of strength as well. So, just my opinion template to me is a much better way of thinking about relative strength and about our future in the Pacific. Moving ahead. Lastly, this is the good this is how I would sum it up for you. This is the question we are really wrestling with and we that we're going to be wrestling with for the foreseeable future. A fraction of our forces will be going up potentially against the entirety of Chinese forces in China's backyard. So it's not just Navy on Navy. It's Navy is Navy on the PLA Navy supported by the PLA Air Force and all those and all those aircraft I showed you. And the enemy's army potential enemies army as it as implicit in the strategic rocket force that fields all those ballistic missiles for reaching out hundreds and hundreds of potentially thousands of miles to hit us. So you can you can you can conclude that the United States ship for ship playing for playing person for person remains superior and I do believe that we are, but at the same time when you take a fraction of your force and put it up against the whole of an enemy. Or far from your own home court. So that becomes kind of that becomes kind of a sketchy calculation and and not an easy one to hold forth with great confidence. So with that I will leave you with David. So when you see people like Professor Meersheimer again down down there in the middle in his classroom in Chicago or Bob Kaplan, any of these any of these other dignitaries again. I think that's a lot of people but when you when you hear them come out with really strong statements about the US China balance. I think I think I would start asking asking the hard questions and pushing them to actually to actually put substance behind those because they are deeply misleading at times. And with that we will turn to these lovely ladies and I will field your excellent questions that I'm sure are forthcoming. Thanks. Thank you very much Jim just a superb presentation. And a lot of questions here I don't think we'll have time to get through all of them but let's throw a couple out here to start with. How do the our allies joint forces and our partners fit into the US equation we've talked mostly about the US ability to respond to Chinese aggression. How do our allies and other folks joined in the contributions. It's a wonderful question and I deliberately met set this up as a solo US on China fight just to keep that just to keep things simple as you saw as you saw it took a lot of talking just to get through the this this rather simple diet between the two of us. But the, I mean, I mean if you think about it there's there's a lot of ways. In fact it's fact it's almost impossible to do what we want to do in the Western Pacific, let alone in Europe I mean really anywhere in the Eurasian and Western Europe or East Asia we just can't get it done without allies. First of all, I mean we I mean think about it said bases are necessary to boost the signal to boost our military power in these in these very distant theaters. About if we got into a fight in Japan decided not to be part of it. As indeed it's not competent to be if we have a fight in the Taiwan Strait, if Prime Minister Abe's government stands aside. Well, I mean if we can't say if he did if the Japanese don't want to be sucked into the fight they may not use let us use our bases at Yokosuka and Sassebo. At that point at that point it becomes really really hard to sustain our combat power in the vicinity of Taiwan. So, right there I mean there's just the question of soil and bases. But when you start looking at forces as well. I mean it's, I mean if you one thing I think that in I don't do classified work so I'm not exactly sure what the private conversations on this but we seem to be working towards an even more tightly integrated us and Japanese maritime force for you know on the first island chain principally the Chinese have met the Chinese occasionally will they always threaten the Senkaku Islands and they occasionally threaten the Ryukus. They like to go through the Miako straight south of Okinawa so there's there's a lot of threats along that first island chain and we've been working pretty closely with the Japanese to try to figure out how to prevent them from taking those islands. And also to help us should we see the need to to close those straights and basically shut the PLA Navy into the China seas, shut the Chinese commercial fleet in and apply commercial pressure that way on their economy. Yeah, you get as you can tell as you can tell you really just can't you can't distinguish that sharply between that sharply between us and Japanese forces so that's northeast Asia. And rather than get too long winded I'll just just to put a put a point in on the larger aspects of this China. I ended a pretty dark picture I always do that, but I think China is actually seriously overplayed its hands by being so bolding and by being so aggressive. Not just this year we can we can leave aside the coronavirus but really when you look what it's over the last. I would probably trace it back to Scarborough Shoal when it went into the Philippines exclusive economic zone and basically drove the Philippines out of waters where it has exclusive rights to harvest resources it's been very, very boastful aggressive and so forth since then. But the good news is that that actually starts driving the driving together allies that are worried that are worried about Chinese aggression. I don't think we'll see an actual formal military alliance unless China does really something really, really over the top aggressive but at the same time you've now seen Australia, Japan and the United States to quite which we call it. We're not having discussions about a defense. India is very standard office about operations with the United States and yet India is now India is now starting to work more and more closely with our military so. So there's, I think I've got put out a geographic point about bases force integration with Japan, which you could say a lot about the United States and Australia, and then simply the larger coalition aspects of this, the more China the more China pushes the more coalition partners are likely to unite and push back. With this list of allies in our list of allies, friends and potential allies, you're not going to take China's list of allies any old time who is it North Korea. Yeah, come on. Yeah, a number of our questioners have said, yeah, fairly dark presentation. The question is, what do we do to make ourselves best able to deal with this situation or their issues related to emerging technology or gray zone operations that might allow us to improve our situation. Yeah, well, the first thing is to do something that I, and you're actually seeing this happen which is a beautiful thing to watch with the, and I alluded I alluded to how the, where we're seeing an age of joint C power come on and join and join us of course being an alliance among the armed services. I think we're actually seeing the US armed services force themselves into a unified tool to push back against this stuff. If you want to read something wonderful from last summer if you if you like marine stuff you can read the common dots up planning get the common dots planning guidance from I think it was last June or July that the Marines at the Marines have actually under common not burger have said look, we've been fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq and places like that for a long time where we're not going to be a second land army anymore we are now going to integrate ourselves into the fleet. So you've actually seen the Marines do things to operate within within that zone of which I showed you over which aircraft and missiles. Down into small units that can operate along those islands and help the fleet get control of the sea, which is really what it's all about. So the US or the US Army has been all in on that the US Air Force is now doing stuff like using a 10 by a 10 aircraft that are designed to go against enemy armies on the ground with close air support. They're nice. They're now starting to do things like practicing using those against ships. It's just that there's a lot of stuff stuff stuff coming together so. And it's so again it's been a really good thing to watch and it's good to see our sister services take ownership with that and you can extend that logic out and look at Allied forces as well. The Royal Australian Navy doing things with us in the South China Sea which they've done in recent weeks to demonstrate against Chinese tactics there and on and on so basically we just need to get together and try to make ourselves a cohesive force able to operate at a long distance from our shores. One final question Jim to what degree do you believe the Chinese under report how much they are spending on defense and are we able to see behind that curtain enough to know how big a challenge it actually is. Yeah, I would hesitate to put a number on it. I think figures that come out of Beijing and it's not just coronavirus figures but figures that come out of Beijing are worth what you pay for them. Whether it's GDP figures. I mean think about GDP figures to just to take it out of the military realm a little bit. The Chinese Communist Party over the last over the last 30 years since really over the almost 40 years now. Yeah, we actually over 40 so ever since China started it's what they call the reform and opening project to the world this economic opening project. The Chinese Communist Party has test has tethered its political legitimacy to to providing a constantly upgraded standard of living for the Chinese people every year. So if you think about that that gives them an incentive to to to drive up GD figures by a certain percentage every year and who I mean who's who actually oversees those figures. There's really no oversight at all. I think that plays a point that also plays into the military budget as well. So yeah I would that would be very skeptical. You'd have to probably have to ask people in Washington who do a classified work and watch this kind of stuff to get a clearer signal but but yeah it's, I would I would hesitate to guess but but yeah yeah again I would not I would not take those at face value at all, especially as long as they have, they might be able to do more with last, as long as the fight is close in, which is what they care about. Last comment Jim your latest update on your most recent book on maritime strategy any any plug you'd like to put in before we sign off. Oh yeah yeah I want to whoever runs the Navy's the Navy's reading list I hope they'll put that on there pretty soon. John I think I know. No it's actually it's actually one that I would that I would actually come into the audience especially the spouses out there it's it's it's a really short book like it's called the brief guide to maritime strategy and it's I wrote it as a wrote it as a lesson to myself 25 years ago what would I have like before I actually started learning about maritime strategy to its credit the Navy and the sea services have recognized that it's it's a good thing to start having strategic literacy pretty much out of the year out of your commissioning source whether it's ROTC the naval Academy or whatever so it's a short accessible book that's designed to help those youngsters come up to this feed fast and I think it would also be helpful for for people who aren't sea service practitioners as well if you want to get a quick and dirty on how this stuff works so I reach back to my hand to the other greats like Corbett's and I put my own special sauce on it as well. Alright Jim well thank you very much was outstanding presentation I'd like to thank everyone who dialed in for participating this afternoon. We'll pause for about 30 seconds here and then we'll switch gears for our family discussion group so once again thank you all for participating next week will be back same time same location to talk about humanitarian assistance thank you very much.